The wrong kind of history

My sister visited and we went to see the stretch of the wall left up at Bernauerstr. I’d been before to the remaining part of the wall in Kreuzberg, which is covered in art and has been reclaimed as a gallery space, in a very Kreuzberg kind of a way. The wall left in Mitte is nothing like that, it’s bare and grey and sinister, and in each gap where it was pulled down they’ve put up one plain wooden cross to mark all the people who died trying to get across it. The fact that it was twilight and drizzling when we went did nothing to dispel the baleful atmosphere.

Berlin open relationships are a bit too weird for me. Surely it’s more reasonable behaviour for the girlfriend of someone you’ve slept with to chase you with a broken off bottle stem than to come and tell you how much she’s been looking forward to meeting you?

Keep mistaking my front door for the church’s and trying to force my key into its lock when arriving back in the early hours.

Getting colder

They seem to be unaccountably excited about Robbie Williams here. I suppose this could be explained by the fact that there are certain similarities between the whingeing show-off and the Hoff, also extremely popular in these parts and the man who famously sang the wall down.

I live in a church. At least I live in a flat built into part of a church building, and my bedroom has a mini flight of stairs in the corner which now lead to a blank wall, but once led to a door into the church that came out right behind the alter. Was woken this morning at 9.45 by the sound of organ music drifting through the wall. Strangely, it didn’t inspire in me any great feelings of piety or devotion.

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for literature. In a job I had years ago I once answered the phone to him, and when he said ‘it’s Harold here’ I replied ‘Howard who?’ Even all these years later, I still wish that I hadn’t.

Ill lit streets are not a good thing. The German habit of letting their dogs shit everywhere is also not a good thing. Put the two together, and add in autumnal carpets of leaves, and you've got a recipe for disaster. If you get through a week without stepping in the evil ordure you’re very lucky indeed.

I have a bad leg, and it’s not getting better. At times I find myself walking like a gimp. If all else fails I suppose I can get a job checking tickets on the U-Bahn, with all the other misshapen people.

Schadenfreude

Each doorway to each building in my part of Berlin has right in front of it a hole in the ground about one foot square and one/two feet deep, covered by a grate. This is positioned exactly where your keys would land were you to be unfortunate enough to fumble as you try to open your door and drop them. Said holes can only have been placed there for this reason. Nothing but keys goes into or out of these holes, and there can be no other conceivable reason for their existence.