Ich bin ein Berliner

The weekend was, quite simply, a whirlwind. I hopped on the plane on Friday night and took the 1.5 hour trip over to der Hauptstadt. The guy I ended up sitting next to insisted on buying me Champagne, so by the time I saw Maria's lovely face at the arrivals gate, I was already feeling the effects. I'm blaming the altitude. No time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down - we were straight on the bus to a house party at their friends' place. They had decided to make it a fancy party, so we rocked up in pretty dresses and most of the other guests had followed suit (ah ha ha). The sheer number of LBDs and black waistcoasts had the potential to turn this gathering into a wake, but we managed to keep our spirits up. We ended up playing drinking games, which in my fairly tired state I failed at miserably. Someone then had the idea of going to do some graffiti under a bridge (hmm... the evening was nose-diving at this point for me). Any onlookers would have been treated to the sight of me standing by bemused with my roller suitcase and a certain someone trying not to drip spray paint on her Kurt Geigers - mentioning no names... ;-) I felt like I was in La Haine. Almost. Well, if all the actors had been replaced by the cast of Six Feet Under.

So the next day I posed as a tourist on Maria's Free Walking Tour. There is something quite eerie about seeing your friends in a different context to the one you're used to - it was as if Maria had been replaced by a Tour Guide double. This weirdness was added to by the fact that she even has a different name - Mary - for doing tours (aparently 'Maria' was already taken!) This is stupid of course, I know that Maria knows all that stuff about the Nazi book burnings and the fall of the wall, but she doesn't usually give me talks about it. I don't think I am articulating this sensation very well, but perhaps some of you can emphathise?

I also got to earwig on what the punters were saying about her, which was, on the whole, quite retarded. One guy commented that she was 'like a little book' and another told her friend that she thought Mary was 'very historial'... But a compliment is a compliment! The same girl also made the observation that there in Berlin, you could walk around without realising any of its history, whereas Paris is 'more obvious'. Any comments on that?

Later that evening we went for a huge platter of sushi and rented a DVD because we were all falling asleep in the pub (pretty lame... we must be getting old). A lovely time was had by all.

On Sunday I managed to meet up with Euan, a friend from my Lübeck days, and we went for a storming brunch buffet and to a flea market, which made for a great Sunday. I amused Ashleigh by saying some Norwegian sentences. She summed it up in a lovely phrase - 'it sounds like Welsh German'. So true. Then it was my time to leave that city once again, and fly back to this city which is beginning to feel more like home.

I'm giving a lesson today on Robert (Rabbie) Burns... och aye. My luve's like a red, red rose.

Norwegian word of the day (it's back!)
pen = pretty. My favourite part about it is that you have to pronounce it in a Northern Irish accent (with a dipthong for those of you interested).