The BVG - not just a transport network.

This post is one of those that resulted from a one-line note in my mobile quite a few months ago, on one of those rare days I didn't have a notebook with me in the underground. And yes, those days are indeed rare.

The BVG, as many of you know, is the city transport network for Berlin. It has its good days, its bad days, and its truly horrific days when major parts of the network strike, but in general, it leaves most of the other public transport networks I've had the pleasure (or, more often than not, the misfortune) of experiencing for dead. A spiderweb of trains, trams and buses connecting most areas of the city to most others, in a network so well thought out that the majority of Berliners choose to ride public transport over owning their own car.

Yes, the Berliners, and indeed ze Germans, are an environmentally conscious lot, which clearly gives public transport an advantage, but the BVG actually really is that good.

Living in a city which relies so heavily on public transport, you quickly learn to take a few select items with you every time you leave the house, so that you are not forced to endure the boredom of a: waiting for said transport, which to be fair is rarely more than about five or six minutes' wait (S-Bahn excluded, since they've been striking on and off for the better part of the last six months), or b: the ride in the public transport itself. One or two stops is tolerable, but then there's the walk to and from the station or bus stop, and add on a few minutes' wait, and heaven forbid you have to change once or twice in your journey, and that leaves you with at least half an hour of boredom which could potentially be alleviated by just one or two of a few small items.

My items of choice? For pure portability, an MP3 player, and usually at least either a book or my journal. Ultimately, I prefer to have at least two of these three items, to cater for battery failure or a particularly jittery driver impeding my writing or reading ability, but one will usually suffice. The problem is, choosing just one item leaves you open to the mercy of the choices of your fellow commuters. Choosing reading or writing material is practically begging for at least one of the kids in the train to play every single Turkish eurotrance or antagonistic German rap track that they have previously downloaded onto their mobile phone at the maximum volume that their Nokia can possibly pump out. Not pleasant.

The MP3 player is a better single choice, but then where do you look? If you're fortunate (that's a relative term, by the way) enough to be travelling by bus, or by tram, then you can quite happily while away the minutes staring out the window and watch the world go by.

Trains however, despite their inherent increased speed beneath the city from one rabbit hole to another, balance out this obvious benefit by removing all external visual stimulation. And so, should you have made the unfortunate choice to travel by train without bringing your own reading material, your only other option is to people-watch.

People-watching is where I get a large part of my inspiration for blog posts - so much so that I've  actually got a series of posts in the works at the moment, the results of my observations while travelling around Berlin's underground network over the last two years. The characters of the Berlin transport network are truly unique, and there's never a dull moment in the train, if you know what you're looking for. More on these in upcoming posts though.

Occasionally however, you spy someone in the Ubahn who catches your attention, and even more occasionally, it's positive. You find your gaze drawn to them, not because of the Turkish eurotrash they're playing at volumes loud enough to wake the dead in southern Argentina, and not because you have the distinct impression that he or she hasn't indulged in personal hygiene for a period of years. No, sometimes, just sometimes, you catch a glimpse of someone you happen to find rather attractive. And suddenly, you're quite willing to delay the arrival at your destination a little just so that you can stay in their line of sight for a few extra moments.

Then before you know it, and most definitely before you're prepared to part with the welcome visual treat that he or she has brought into the usual monotony of a BVG ride, the yellow doors open and he or she has disappeared into the masses swarming on the platform. Just a few more moments later, as if nothing had happened, the doors close and you're on your way, back into your bubble of your MP3 player until you too finally reach your destination.

This happens on a regular basis - at least to me - and for the first few months of living in Berlin, I simply learned to welcome the opportunity for some eye candy to brighten up the hour ride from my old flat to Alexanderplatz. One day however, I noticed a poster on the inside of the train, advertising yet another service of the BVG, but unlike the others, this service actually had very little to do with transport and tickets. They weren't promoting the latest subscription deal for a yearly ticket, or kindly asking you to refrain from subjecting your fellow passengers to your choice of "music".

The BVG's latest promotional innovation was a dating service. Genius! Why didn't I think of that? Why just let the man or woman of your dreams get off at the next stop and disappear into the throng of communters on the platform? Find them again on the BVG website! Who knows - it could be the beginning of something beautiful!

The glaring problem here? How on earth to get in contact with him or her.

Simple. Register your details on the BVG website, and he or she can find you there. You can register your name, mobile number, your clothing and the clothing of the person you're searching for during the journey in which your encounter occured, the stations you travelled between, and of course the date and time of the encounter. Then, all you have to do is wait for them to register their details, remember what they were wearing at the time and the stations they travelled between, find you on the website, and bam - love!

It's foolproof! Nothing can go wrong!

Ok, BVG. I've got a tip for you. Stick to transport. Dating services are clearly not your strength.

Back to basics.

You know, back in Australia, there was something that I absolutely loved doing. Something that made me forget about almost everything else.

Well, two things.

One is writing. Hence the blog.

The other is being around kids.

I was a Brownie Guide when i was a kid: I had the stylish 1980s brown and gold uniform, complete with school shoes on a weekend, and a whole collection of cool badges. The works. I was a Girl Guide too, but when I finished Guides, instead of moving on to Rangers, the next age group in the Guide movement in Australia, I switched from being one of the kids to being one of the leaders. Suddenly I was the one running activities, making pancakes on a Tuesday night in a local guide hall while a bunch of twelve-year-olds played Jacob's Ladder, coordinating holiday excursions to science museums, and weekend camps for thirty pre-teen girls, and I loved it!
I guess it was a natural transition for me. I had started babysitting when I was about twelve: the kids next door were about two or three years old at the time, and had a full-time nanny. I was over there a lot, helping out with the kids, and I also loved helping my aunty with my three young cousins, so as soon as I was old enough, it was logical that I take this on for myself: at one stage, I had four regular families I would babysit for.
I've never really had a favourite age group: school age, toddler, early high school. You can have a lot of fun with them all. But working with kids in general is what I missed in Germany. I didn't notice it for a while. For the first year I was here, I was teaching anyway, so I didn't really want to spend my hours away from school with kids. I went on a few church youth group camps, but I didn't have the regular contact that I got used to in Australia, and when I finished up at the school, that was pretty much the end of my regular contact with kids.

After a few months, I realised something was missing, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly it was. It wasn't until the opportunity practically fell into my lap that I realised what I'd been missing.
A friend of mine had been working at a community centre in southern Berlin for a couple of months, tutoring a group of about eleven children two nights a week in English, German and multiple other subjects. She asked me if I might be interested in taking over her hours there, since her own workload had significantly increased to the point where she couldn't keep up the twice-weekly commitment. "Sure, why not?"
After the first hour there two weeks ago, I knew this was something I wanted to do. Something I needed to do. This was the something I had been missing.
The kids are a mixed bunch. They all have African backgrounds, but almost all of them were born in Berlin, which makes their German better than mine in terms of slang, but I still have the upper hand when it comes to spelling, and surprisingly enough, articles and gender.
There's Laura*, a pint sized powerhouse who has all the personality of Queen Latifah and demands to be the centre of attention of all of the other kids, despite the fact that she's the youngest and the smallest. Or more likely, because of both of these factors.
There's Rene*, one of the youngest boys, who cannot decide if he wants to be the cool slacker, or if he actually wants to use his intelligence for good, not evil, and give some of the other kids in his class a run for their money.
And there's Tanja*, my secret personal favourite, described recently by the friend I took over from as "the kid you would most want your own child to be like" - charismatic, confident, intelligent - someone you just know has a very bright future in front of them.
But all of them have this strange yet wonderful ability to make me check my baggage at the door. Once I step inside this makeshift classroom, it's all about these kids for the next two hours: making up homework for kids who forgot theirs (either deliberately or not), explaining the solar system in German to a fifth grader, quizzing a twelve-year-old on the countries of the world, and simultaneously helping T revise for an English vocabulary test the following day while helping her friend M complete a written assignment in German at the same table.
Never underestimate the power of a group of kids to make you forget whatever's getting you down for a whole two hours. Even if it's only two hours, twice a week. That's four hours more than before.

Untitled

Despite my best intention of a few weeks ago to get back into blogging with a vengeance, with the goal of one post per week, the best laid plans were yet again derailed.

As some of you know, the last few weeks have been rather rough for yours truly. Why exactly is still a little too raw for my blog - or even for anyone outside my five or six close friends. I might post about it eventually, but at the moment it's too recent. I lost someone close to me back home in Australia - my grandfather - and while I have the clarity of mind to comfort myself with the knowledge that he is in a better place, I'm not quite back to being the usual genuinely bubbly Australis that my friends know me as.

Speaking of my friends, this blog post is for you guys.

After hearing the news, and after having booked the flight back home to Australia to be with my family for his funeral, I set about the task of telling my close friends.

The people who know better than to ask how you are, because the real answer, the answer you don't give to supermarket checkout chicks when they casually ask "Hi, how are you today?" as they're packing up your groceries into green enviro bags at Coles, is obvious to them.

They don't ask because they don't need to ask. They know that you're hurting and that the best possible thing they can do is exactly one thing.

They can just be there for you, in their own unique way.

There's picking you up at 9pm with a six pack of Smirnoffs in the front seat and taking you out to a salsa club so you can both dance your hearts out until the small hours, like you did many times just a few years earlier as uni students.

Or taking you to a soccer game where the three of you celebrate just being together again over a Carlton Draught and a "Four n Twenty".

There's watching deliberately light-hearted DVDs with you on your sofa at the end of a two-week period which saw you cross ten time zones to be with your family in Australia for eleven beyond intense days, culminating in an epic 45hour journey halfway across the world involving two long-haul flights and a nine-hour train journey back home to Europe. And on top of all that, grabbing some of your favourite beers on the way over to your flat.

There's also making work as easy as possible for you by keeping your news from the rest of your colleagues until after you have left, and accepting without question that despite your best efforts, concentration on your job at this point is just as possible as turning back time.

But the best? The best was gently encouraging you to get out into the sunshine of a Sunday in late August and while away the afternoon lying on the warm bricks of Schlossplatz in central Berlin, listening to the Berlin Symphony Orchestra perform a piece which your grandmother later tells you was one of your grandfather's favourites.

I guess the short version of all this is exactly the conclusion I came to in the eulogy I struggled to read at the funeral.

Thank you.

I thanked my grandfather for the twenty-seven years' worth of memories, stories and experiences he left me with.
And I thank you guys for being you guys.

Charlie. La bella amica mia. The fellow members of the Cat Spew Jumper Appreciation Society. Puss in Boots. Capt'n. Thanks. In all four languages. ;)

20 years later: tracing the scars of the Wall - former checkpoint at Heinrich-Heine-Straße.

Recurring visa issues have forced my work hours down to 20 hours per week, and while this is frustrating and somewhat inconvenient in terms of paying bills and enjoying this amazing city, it does have its benefits, one of which being that it leaves me with a bunch of free time during the week. So earlier this week, having finished work at 12.30, I decided that it was far too nice a Monday afternoon to spend it inside learning French and Italian vocabulary, and traded the language books for sunglasses, an MP3 player and my bike.

There are still a whole lot of places in and around Berlin that I want to explore more, so this particular afternoon I chose to venture north into Kreuzberg, specifically the area around Heinrich-Heine-Straße underground station.

Since this year is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and since I'm a bit of a Berlin history nut, I've made it my mission to visit each of the East Berlin/West Berlin checkpoints before the summer is over. Heinrich-Heine-Straße is one of the two within about 15mins ride from my flat. More about Heinrich Heine in another blog post.

So I ventured over to this particular border crossing, and like many of the others, there's very little of it left. So little, in fact, that had I not found it on the offical website of Berlin city, I never would have known it existed. The watchtowers are gone. There are no wall fragments here. The only marker is the double row of paving stones crossing the street at the place where this now busy north-south thoroughfare was once truncated by the "anti-facist protective barrier" as it was referred to by the government of the GDR (former East Germany). You could quite happily cruise on past, completely oblivious to the fact that for twenty-eight years, Berlin's streets, underground network, its rivers and lakes, and most heartbreakingly, the lives of the Berliners, were severed in two by this wall.

Today, twenty years after reunification, the scars marking where the wall cut through the city are in various stages of healing. Some, like Checkpoint Charlie and Bernauer Straße, have been preserved exactly as they were, and the adjoining museums offer visitors a glimpse of what life was like in divided Berlin.

But other scars have begun to fade. Some, like the former train checkpoint at Friedrichstraße station, have retained the original structures. Most however are like Heinrich-Heine-Straße though; the Berlin Wall has been reduced to a thin line of cobblestones crossing the street, and life in Berlin takes place on both sides of the pavers as if nothing had ever happened.

Beggars can't be choosers. Except in Berlin apparently.

I just have to share this anecdote.

Last Saturday, having been rostered on to work the weekend shift, I got to work about 5mins early, and as is usual for me on a Saturday, I had sacrificed breakfast time for snooze time, so by the time I actually got to work, I was indeed rather hungry, having not eaten since the night before. I knew I would be on my own at reception from 9.30am until 3pm, so if I was going to get food, it would have to happen on the way to work.

There's a bakery next door to my building, so I ducked in before going into the school and got myself two bread rolls and something called a "Nußschnecke" (loosely translates as a "nut snail", a scroll with ground nuts sprinkled over it), with the intention of making some lunch at work using the meagre ingredients of the two aforementioned bread rolls, the margarine that a colleague is generous enough to share with me, and my sacred jar of Vegemite.

But as luck would have it, this particular Saturday turned out to be one of those that wasn't ever really what you'd classify as busy - rather just constant. Every fifteen minutes or so, a rumbling kind of noise from my hungry stomach would remind me that I hadn't eaten, and I would think of my breakfast provisions in the kitchen, but every time I went to get up from the desk, either the phone would ring, a student would come to ask for help, or a prospective student would walk through the door, none of which I could really ignore.

Eventually it got to be 3pm, and having long since given up on the idea of having breakfast at work before going home, I put my Vegemite, the two bread rolls and the scroll into my backpack and headed on home.

Sitting on the train a few moments later, headphones in, my focus completely on writing legibly in my journal despite the arythmic rocking and jolting of the train, I did notice a very grotty pair of sneakers walk past me in the carriage. They belonged to a homeless man, a Strassenfeger vendor - one of the two Berlin street magazines: similar to The Big Issue. He did his usual spiel of having not been employed for over six months and being now authorised to sell this particular publication, and continued on to ask for donations of a few Euros or maybe something to eat or to drink. Usually I don't bother, but I've seen this guy on the train almost every day for the last few weeks, and he never seems to sell any of his newspapers.

So I took pity on him. I reached into my bag, pulled out the delicious Nußschnecke and beckoned him over. "Das können Sie ruhig haben, wenn Sie möchten," I told him politely, and handed him the bakery bag.

He half smiled. "Danke," he replied. "Wirklich, danke schön", he repeated and continued down the carriage to the door a few metres away.

When he got to the door, he took a peek in the bag. Then he turned and looked at me. "Was ist das?" he asked me, a quizzical look on his face.

"Nußschnecke," I told him.

"Na, das ist ja schön," he told me sarcastically, with an equally disdainful look. "That's great."

I was confused. I'd just given him food, and he was giving me attitude in return.

"Ich mag keine Nüsse. Hast du was anderes?"

I couldn't believe it. I'd just handed this guy my delicious Nußschnecke, my completely delectable nut scroll, out of pity for him and his situation, and he had the nerve to turn around to me and tell me, using the informal form of "you" no less, that you only use for children and people you know pretty well, that I should give him something else.

He doesn't like nuts.

Boo freaking hoo. That's the last time I give a homeless guy a nut scroll. Or food in general, for that matter. Soup kitchen, sure. Homeless shelter - absolutely. But no more of my food to the train beggars, if that's the thanks I get. Charming.

Kangaroos, koalas, wombats... and giraffes?

Germany has something of a reputation for being environmentally friendly, and despite Berlin's population being comparable to Melbourne (approximately 3.5million), the German capital is amazingly compact - it's perfect for cyclists, and the vast majority of residents rely either on their bikes or on the admittedly quite incredible public transport system - the BVG.

Compared to other public transport systems I've experienced around the world, especially the dog's breakfast that is metlink, the Melbourne public transport disaster, Berlin's BVG is a masterpiece. It's not perfect - after all, it's run by humans - but it's a bloody lot better than anything other public transport system I've seen.

In the carriages, again, a testament to German efficiency, 20cm TV screens broadcast news, sport, weather, Hollywood gossip and events and in and around Berlin to the commuters. For almost the entire month of February 2009, Australia was making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons - cyclones and floods in the north, earthquakes, a disastrous oil slick, and in my home state of Victoria, the worst bushfires in recorded history, just kilometres from my home city. Unfortunately I was reminded of this hellfire around my home every morning and every afternoon on my commute to work.

Anyway, one particular morning on the way to work in late February, Australia was yet again the focus of the news: this time it was the heatwaves in southern Australia. The screens are in pairs - usually one display shows the story, and the other a related photo. Sam the Koala had been a favourite photo for recent weeks, so I was rather surprised to see a story about Australia that wasn't accompanied by the grey, fluffy, bushfire survivor.

What was even more surprising was the photo chosen to accompany this particular story.

Sam hadn't been replaced by one of his fellow marsupials - he hadn't even been replaced by a dingo, or an emu, or a crocodile, or a fruit bat, which at least would have counted as Australian.

He had been replaced by a freaking giraffe.

Huh???

Musings from a rusty Estonain bus.

Musings from a rusty Estonian bus.

(Note: I was flipping through my journal the other day, and found a few of the blog-worthy pieces that I had put together while on the road recently in Estonia and Latvia. Here's one of them - more to come.)

Currently it's Sunday the 12th of April, and I'm trundling down the highway in eastern Estonia on a rickety old bus that in any other country with the exception of Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia or Moldova would have long since been consigned to the scrap heap (oh, by the way, I think we just left the transmission on the road about 100m back...).

Accompanying me is a busload of overstyled eastern European teeny boppers, more babushkas than I care to count and an entire regiment of the Estonian army.

Since I'd planned to be on this bus for about two and a half hours, I have of course brought my trusty mp3 and my journal - there's still 179km between us and our destination, Tartu, a university town in southern Estonia, a stone's throw from the Russian border.

And yes, my calculations of 179km in 2 1/2 hours are correct - this feat of Estonian engineering is chugging along at the lightning speed of approximately 70km/h. Even my 1987 Toyota Corolla could beat this. But considering the Estonian government department responsible for infrastructure seems to have chosen to lay the road with bitumen over a layer of industrial corrugated iron, speeds akin to those on Australian or German highways aren't entirely realistic, or even possible, on this particular road.

I've tuned out the chaos of the rest of the passengers and have quite happily settled in for two and a half hours of iriver music, when one of the army boys' mobile phones rings behind me.

And suddenly I hear the familiar sound of a drummer tapping his drumsticks on some VB bottles, followed by the melodic flute introduction to one of Australia's many unofficial anthems.

Men At Work - Down Under. Random.

Permission to heart Berlin until at least 2012!

It's official. After having submitted my application for a work permit and German residency in early March, and being told that the processing time would be six to eight weeks (yes, and I'm the Queen of England - just excuse me for a moment while I polish my crown...), Australis now has two pretty new pink stickers in her funky blue passport with a kangaroo and an emu on the front.

Might not sound like much, but these two stickers mean that yours truly has (finally!!!) been granted permission from the German Immigration Department, which I like to call "Höllenbrut" (roughly translates to "Hellspawn"), to remain a resident of the poor but sexy capital of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland until May 2011.

On top of that, the Federal Employment Office approved my work permit until 2012, so technically, it's a two-year residency, with automatic renewal for a third year, and as the icing on a truly stupendously amazing Kuchen, after three years, this permit becomes permanent. As of 2013, I'm a permanent resident of Germany, with unlimited employment rights. UNLIMITED!!!

Who knew it would only take two phone calls and five emails a day for the last two weeks to get an answer from them?

Oh, and in case you're curious, just because they gave me a visa today, and a two-year one at that, doesn't mean they're no longer hellspawn.

Telling an expat, and one from Australia no less, a country that is not only on a different continent, but a mere thirteen time zones and 14,500km away from Germany, and therefore a destination for which travel plans, let alone permanent relocation arrangements, require months of planning and lots and lots of €€€ (and even more $AUD), that the processing time for their residency application will take approximately six to eight weeks maximum, then proceeding to ignore all contact attempts from said Australian applicant, including but not limited to calls, emails, faxes and smoke signals, until four working days before their previous visa expires (ELEVEN WEEKS after the initial application was submitted), is beyond cruel and unusual torture.

Then, imagine my disbelief when the case worker assigned to me had the nerve to tell tell me today with typical German bureaucratic attitude "It was completely unnecessary to call and email us every day in the last few weeks. We were going to contact you eventually. You just need to learn to be patient."

The steam coming from my ears could have powered Puffing Billy for a good few months.

The Ausländerbehörde still = Höllenbrut.
(German Immigration = Hellspawn.)

But I have a visa, and that's reason enough for beer o'clock. As an added bonus, tonight I'm heading out to the movies with a friend: "Wolverine" - in English (yay!), Hugh Jackman looking incredible, and all of this with my mate Hans. Good times are in store.

Mr Bauhaus Trolley Man

4.22pm on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in January in wintry Berlin.

I'm working a split shift, so I have a few hours before I have to be back at work for round two. I've had enough of not having curtains - my room is on the third floor, and has a huge bay window, which is really great for the sunshine and natural light, but my room looks out onto a courtyard: 30m away on the other side is another apartment building also with bay windows on every floor, and next to that is a high school. Yes, not only can my neighbours stare right into my room, but on weekdays, about ninety students can watch my every move from the comfort of their classroom. *shiver*.

Anyway, there's a hardware store around the corner from me, so I ventured down there into the testosterone paradise that is the German hardware store, Bauhaus.

It's no Bunnings - the standard of service at the two DIY worlds are poles apart, and Bunnings' range is unparalleled, but Bauhaus isn't far off.

I wander around for a few minutes and eventually find the curtain rods and rings, without any help from their staff - all of the high school students I have ever taught showed more enthusiasm towards learning the past imperfect tense than German service staff show towards, well, service!

After a short period of deliberation, I decide to just note down some prices to compare with the Swedish homeware haven. Any excuse for an excursion to Ikea.

As I return towards the entrance to the store to continue on my journey around Berlin, preparing to brace myself for the subzero temperatures outside, I see something which brings an immediate grin to my face.

An older gentleman, perhaps in his late 60s or early 70s, is also making his way out of the store with a trolley laden with paint tins, curtain rods and various other items which suggested a spot of redecoration was in his very near future.

That's not the entertaining part.

The entertaining part is that suddenly this gentleman in his late 60s or early 70s suddenly takes a run-up of a few steps, leans forward, puts his entire weight on the trolley and coasts blissfully along through Bauhaus for about ten metres. His momentum starts to wane, so he repeats his run-up again and coasts a few more metres, before using his feet to brake just half a metre before the concrete steps down to the carpark.

Between Trolley Man and Oma Chuck Taylors, it is clear that even Berlin's senior generation has not lost its ability to embrace their inner youth, even if they only let it show when they're reasonably sure no one is watching.

Reason #43623 why Australis hearts Berlin.

The hint of summer in the Hauptstadt

In the last five minutes, I have managed to ascertain that spring has indeed finally sprung, for good, in Berlin.

I got home from tutoring tonight around 6pm. On the way home, I had been basking in the brilliant late afternoon sunshine streaming in through the windows of the tram, and by the time I got home, I was so energised by the sudden intake of Vitamin D that I abandoned my thrilling plans of burying myself in my blog or making some dinner while the sun was still relatively high in the sky, considering it was 6.30pm, and after a light-speed costume change, I jumped on my bike and wound my way through the narrow cobbled back streets of Neukölln to Görlitzer Park. I had spent most of Sunday there with a friend of mine, just chilling, dozing, soaking up the rays, and have since decided it is indeed one of my favourite parks in Berlin, if only for the people watching opportunities. Almost as good as Riga International Airport (More on that to come in a future entry).

Anyways, tonight I ended up back at Görlitzer Park, and no sooner had I cruised to a halt, claimed my two metres squared of grass and taken a drink of water, than I suddenly heard my name being called. Berlin is a city-sized village: one of my friend's former flatmates and one of his mates were on the grass only metres away. I hadn't seen them in ages, so I scooted over and hung out with them for a while.

As the sun began to sink lower toward the western horizon, taking with it the blue skies and leaving in its wake the first of the evening's stars, I remembered that since I had no lights on my derelict but trusty bike, I would have to leave before it got really dark - the German police are renowned for issuing on-the-spot fines for non-lit bikes, and I neither had the money nor the inclination to have my day spoiled by the Polizei.

As I made my way through the winding streets on my way back, I was treated to one of my favourite smells in the world: the smell of Berlin on a summer night. It wasn't quite as perfectly Berlin as it will be in a few months - June, July and August are the ultimate - but it was definitely there.

The deliciously hunger-inducing aroma of chicken and lamb slices sizzling in spicy marinades on döner kebab rotisseries around Neukölln, and the occasional wafts of perfumed smoke from the water pipes being smoked out on the pavement shisha bars all over Neukölln and Kreuzberg.

Australis hearts Berlin. Man, does she heart Berlin.