Ugignadl

Well, I don’t have much time at the moment, some other things are happenning (obviously material for a future blog post!) but I will briefly write an epilogue to the night I had in the most recent post, on the adventure with the BVG.

Ann was there to meet me at the apartment. We talked, she gave me some water (carbonated, naturally, as all water in Germany is), a map, and then left. I knew she didn’t enjoy waiting so long for me, I apologised but really I tried as hard as I could to be there on time! I was still sorry though.

I felt hungry and tired as all hell, but also somewhat excited. I have to mention that as I was walking from the bus stop frantically searching the street for the apartment, even in that state I could appreciate the scenery. It really is very aesthetically pleasing. The roads are cobblestones, there are trees everywhere, no leaves at the moment because it is too cold, but they still add a nice presence. The houses, yes houses: not this crammed in block feel that you have in oh, prettz much every other city I’ve ever been to, all have yards and other quaint things you wouldn’t normally associate with city living. The houses all have classic architecture, some are friggin’ enormous too. There is one “house” on the corner of the street, and this is somewhat typical, which has one family living there and is essentially a mansion. I mean, it has what, 12 perhaps rooms, four levels, a friggin attic with observatory, the kids have their own playground, it’s like crazy land, or at least far away land. Which I guess is true anyway.

OKOKOK back to my supposedly short blog post. I took some photos after Ann had gone, and yes, they are shitty. Some have not enough light, some are out of focus. So kill me. I was running on empty. I will take more photos later and do the whole area some justice. But for now…

These are also out of order. I’m sorry, but I really can’t be bothered to order them right now :D.

The kitchen! It’s small, yes, but quite functional. The oven in particular is mental. On top of the cupboards out of shot are a bunch of appliances. I have done some cooking, and the stove top is so amayingly powerful than it almost exploded a mixture of sauce I was cooking. There is also a dishwasher, on the right, but I have just been washing up by hand… old habits, hard to break ;).


You can see the door to the kitchen where the above shot was taken. Some of my junk is already spread around the place. The two tables there are the only tables, on the left is a view to the garden.


Oh yes this is a great shot. See that “thing” on the left? My wonderful bed. Actually, it’s comfortable, but pretty small. The cupboard is good, I have things hung up in there now. On the left there is also a space where Oliver has his personal things which I am not to attack…. who do they think I am :).


OK so just pan right a little from the previous. You can see the bookcase, the dryer and microwave in the corner, and the table from the other shot again. There is also a chair in the shot. Note the decided absence of the following things: television, telephone, computer, INTERNET! ARGH! Anyone who knows me knows that this is going to be hard to get used to.


Yeah this shot sucks. It is of the previous room from the entryway, and to the right out of shot is the bathroom, and behind is the front door.


The bathroom in all its glory. You can see the washing machine, the basin, around to the right is the toilet, to the left a little heater and the shower in the corner. I must mention that I have been arguing with the shower for a long time. At night recently it has been about 4 degrees, sometimes colder (according to the thermometer inside, outside it is definitely colder still). Of course I like the cold but I’m not some kind of half breed lizard man with no blood at all. In short I still like a hot shower. Well for the first few days I didn’t get that… because, now I don’t know how I worked this out, perhaps trial and error, perhaps survival instinct because my body was about to hibernate if I had another ice cold shower, but there are four controls for the hot water. FOUR. To get hot water in the shower, you need to turn them all in a specific combination. It’s like a bank vault where having hot freaking water is the national treasure. There are two knobs in the bathroom, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. Actually there are two in the kitchen but it is my suspicion that one actually controls some other item in the apartment. The combination required for hot water in the shower is to turn the wall knowb in the bathroom to the right, the floor knob all the way to the left and the same with the living room and kitchen knobs. Note that if you want hot water in the other rooms they all have their own combination too. I dare say that you can only get hot water to one object at any one time, and these knobs control water flow. Still, for that efficiency, it’s a real pain in the ass.


Turn the previous shot ninety degrees right, you get the front door.


A really bad angle shot of the balcony. You step out the window onto a balcony. There is a beautiful garden here.


Ah. The garden. It’s really quite lovely. This shot of is sucks massively because it was night time and I used a flash. I will take a better shot later, in higher resolution.


Again, the balcony. Note the yards of the other places: these are supposedly apartment blocks. Don’t look it, right?

Well that’s it. I’ll wrap up this blog post with what I did after I took the shots. Yes, it can be said right here and now that I am a sucker for punishment. Having not eaten in literally days I decided to go for a walk. Yes it was late but I didn’t care. I don’t want to bore you with details, but essentially, I got lost looking for food, and managed to walk for perhaps three hours. I actually, now this is sick right, I actually enjoyed it though. There is a beautiful little river/creek nearby which I wlaked along. I did find my way back, albeit from the reverse direction, and of course that just went into the good old brain to hopefully build up some kind of cognitive map of the area.

I crashed at about 1:30 in the morning with the goal of getting to the Freie Universität by 11 am. Lofty perhaps but… well, I made it this far :D.

I promise to keep my blogs a more manageable size in future!

Thanks again for the comments all. And no Mikey, I didn’t sleep for 18 hours, jetlag does stupid things to your body, and for me it made me sleep much less. I only ended up sleeping for four hours :(.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 3:14 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.