So some of you may already know, but in the last few weeks, my work situation has been... well, interesting to say the least.
Here's the short version. Australia's not in the EU, so I need a visa to work and live in Germany. Until May this year my work and residence permit has been restricted to a specific position within the company I work for, which became more and more frustrating. I'm a teacher - qualified and experienced in teaching English and German - but I was employed as, well, a receptionist. Albeit a receptionist who got asked grammatical questions and had to cover for her boss when she didn't feel like teaching, but a receptionist nonetheless. Making any changes to my contract would have involved a three-month ordeal of appointments and paperwork involving immigration and the employment office convincing them that neither Germans nor EU citizens could do the job. Problem with that is that not only are there Germans who are qualified English teachers, but that the country where my chosen teaching speciality originated is also a part of the EU. The United Kingdom.
When a teaching colleague resigned in August, I grabbed the job with both hands, and for one fantastic month, over four years since I started at the company, I was employed as a teacher. A week after I got the job, I was offered another position - a managerial role at another centre. Full-time hours, training for the next step up the ladder, and I would get to keep teaching - a reduced number of hours, but teaching nonetheless.
Bring it on.
The language school I work at has five centres around Berlin - I've always been based at one centre, but I've filled in at all of the others at various points. The centres are all the same in that they all teach the same method, but there are differences - at the end of the day, some centres are much busier than others. The one I've worked at until now is the busiest in Berlin, and the new location is one of the quieter centres, which is a great opportunity for me to learn the new job in a much less chaotic setting.
The location of the new centre is also very different. While both of them are on touristy thoroughfares, one in former East Berlin and the other in former West Berlin, that's the only similarity. The tourists in the first area are noticeably younger and more budget conscious - think youth hostels and pub crawls - while the second is clearly a more upmarket shopping area, home to Berlin's version of Harrods.
One thing remains the same though: the weirdos. Like every large city, Berlin has its fair share of weirdos. I have a theory that the alcholics, the beggars, the buskers, the undiagnosed mentally ill and the homeless that roam the city's streets are more visible in Berlin than in other cities partly due to the honesty policy of the public transport system, but that's a topic for another day.
The topic that inspired today's post is the kid I encountered on the way home. Walking past the six-storey department store I mentioned, I heard snippets of George Michael being played on the sax, and sure enough, there's a little kid and a saxophone that's almost as big as he is doing his best at
"Careless Whisper". Sounded pretty good too. He played to the end of the verse, with flair and attitude and all that, but when it got to the chorus, he stopped. He just stood there for the next sixteen bars and tapped his foot. Thing is, the sound of the saxophone didn't stop. It continued through the chorus, improvisation a-plenty just as before, then when the next verse started, he picked up his sax again and Milli Vanilli-ed his way through the rest of the song. Class act. Can't even be bothered sax-synching to the whole song.
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