Der Himmel über Berlin

I have been rambling around the mountains in the south of Poland for the last week, and it's pretty close to being the best thing ever. Apart from being really good to get out of Berlin for a while, I think it's making me a better person too.

In Berlin, I go crazy when people speak to me in English. Now that my German is good enough to communicate more or less effectively on just about anything, I find it really offensive when people respond to my German with English. I also get really frustrated with myself when I hear my own small errors, or when I fail to express myself as creatively as I could in English.

Here, however, it is nothing short of a major triumph to make myself understood, even on the most trivial matters, usually resorting to exaggerated mime to make myself clear. The people are wonderful though, they are in the same boat and are generally very willing to do everything possible to communicate.

However my time here has taught me that by far the most effective tool for communication that humans possess is the smile.

It communicates everything I can't. It says I want to interact with you, it says that I'm sorry that I can't speak your language, it shows my appreciation of your patience with me, it shows my gratitude when we do manage to make our respective points.

So when I get back to Berlin in a few days time, and those fecking smart-ass Berliners don't appreciate my attempts to relate to them in their language, maybe my smile in respose will be communicating a slightly more understanding 'Fuck you'.

Sometimes I wonder why the hell I bother living in a big city.

I usually think this after a weekend in the countryside. Especially when the countryside in question is located in Cheb, Czech Rep, and I'm there with the missus and one of my best friends, who lives there, and we spend the whole weekend eating and drinking but spending incredibly small sums of money in order to do so.

One evening we went to one of the town's more expensive restaurants, atmospherically located in a dungeon with a wonderful dripping roof, paid less than €10 and received three enormous meaty dinners and three enormous, delicious frothy beers, brewed right there in the dungeon.

Tourists flock to Tuscany's beautiful rolling hills, but they pay for it. I sat 100m up on the walls of a beautifully preserved castle, ready to burst from happiness from the sight of the river winding its way through the thickly forested hills, flanked by the exact same red-roofed houses that you send postcards of when in Siena. There wasn't a tourist in sight. No-one trying to sell us tacky souvenirs, no queues, no inflated prices.

My friend is an English teacher there, and one of the nights we hung out with his students. Bloody hell, those guys drink. Apparently even for breakfast, while in English class, which came as a bit of a surprise to my friend. They are also incredibly laid back and sociable, passing more and more booze around the group and expecting, nay, demanding that everyone take a slurp. With the result that the three of us had a much earlier night than they did.

We met some of them at the train station the next morning, gloriously drunk. They hadn't gone to bed. When asked where their drinking partner of the previous night was, one responded in wonderfully accented English, 'He drunk like pig five hours ago. He go sleep. I call his pig head now'. At which point he began to paw at his mobile before getting distracted and stumbling off, presumably in an attempt to get his pig head just as drunk as his friend.

Stepping off the train in Berlin, I felt briefly depressed at being back in a big city. You can take the man our of the countryside, but you can't take the countryside out of the man. Luckily I'm off to the south of Poland in a couple of day for another countryside fix.

The woman and I decided to treat ourselves to a swanky dinner in a bloody expensive restaurant last night. No occasion, just something we had been planning to do for quite some time.

Despite the place being rather upmarket, I didn't bother to get dressed up. Dirty t-shirt with a picture of a scantily-clad lady on it, sweaty shorts and two day's stubble.

After stumbling clumsily to our seats, the missus kicked her shoes off. Felt a bit of an itch in my groinal area, so scratched vigourously. None of the guests tucking into their €100 dinners seemed to mind. Between courses, we made out enthusiastically a number of times across the table. I might have even groped the missus in a rather explict manner, and she might have even encouraged this. We might have even sucked each other's fingers, while surrounded by crowds of upmarket Germans, who naturally frown heartily on this sort of behaviour.

We both ate our starters (mine was a simple salad with simple dressing and some sort of breadcrumbed vegetable) with our hands, ignoring the nicely-arranged cutlery at our hands. Same went for the main course (again, simple: a chicken breast lightly flavoured with an almondy sauce, with gnocchi) and dessert (a selection of fruits with raspberry ice cream and warm crepes). The soup, however, I ate mostly with the spoon.

So what of this unusual behaviour? Why were we not kicked unceremoniously out?

Because we were in Berlin's Unsichtbar, where the meal is eaten in total, 100% darkness. The waiters are all blind and have to lead you everywhere.

Quite an experience it was. We knew about the 100% darkness, but somehow it was much darker than that. You can't see anything. Anything. All your other senses become heightened, you can distinguish sounds you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Food tastes much more intense, if you can figure out what it is you're eating, of course. Because the menu is cryptic. Very, very cryptic. I knew I was getting chicken, but that was about it. Mobiles phones and smoking are banned, as even the smallest light would light up the whole room.

So I'm pretty sure everyone was behaving just as badly as we were.

Something amazing nearly happened today. I nearly, oh so nearly, got through an airport without experiencing extreme frustration and murderous thoughts.

The usual stress was present when getting from the rural midlands of Ireland to Dublin airport - sweaty packed bus at 3am full of snoring, farting holidaymakers. Oddly it didn't bother me this time though. Not even the old guy sitting in front of me who reclined his seat as far back into my knee space as he could.

Then the airport. For some reason the person who ejaculated all over one of the toilet cubicles didn't retrospectivly incur a death curse from me. Just went to a different cubicle, carefully, very very carefully.

Winner: Aer Lingus' automatic check-in machines for queueophobes like me. Didn't even set off the security checks, one of the guards was even polite to me.

At this point a brief flicker of a smile might have crept across my face. Maybe these airport things aren't so bad, are they? Maybe I should go home more often.

We loaded up, the ticket checker helpfully informing me that my seat, 4B, was at the front of the plane. How unusual, I didn't feel like loudly questioning her as to whether I looked like a fecking cretin. I think I might have even smiled and thanked her.

I couldn't help but giggle at the lone guy who, despite the stream of fellow Berlin-bound voyagers heading to the Aer Lingus plane right in front of us, made a beeline for the EasyJet plane across the tarmac. I might have even seen the funny side of the airport attendant running after him, rather than cursing the demise of human being's capacity for logical thought.

But then, the sucker punch - an hour sitting on the plane, first waiting for passengers from a connecting flight, and then, inexplicably, waiting for the UK to remove a ban on flights through their airspace. I sat half grinding my teeth and clenching my fists, and half hoping that there wasn't some sort of horrible terrorist attack.

A glance at BBC once I got back revealed nothing of the sort though. Why why why?

I hate damn airports.

The other day, the missus answered the door to some sort of salesman.

'Hello, he said, is your mother there?'

Bemused, she responded telling him that she was twenty-six years old and that this was her apartment.

But this is where I get a little confused. Does the guy deserve eternal credit for still trying to sell her whatever it was he was selling, or should he just have turned on his heel and left without another word?

I'm leaning towards the first one, to be honest. I can't help but admire someone that is that rampantly optimistic.