Der Himmel über Berlin

...flights to the Emerald Isle. Arriving August 23rd. Oh wait! Isn't that the weekend of the Irish blogmeet? Interesting.

So I'll be there. And if it doesn't happen, well, more family time.

Hurrah!

I know none of you care, but I am pooping my pants with excitement. Just eight more days!

My only problem is that I don't know who put my full support behind. Italy or Germany? I think the fact that one of my all-time favourite players, Antonio Cassano, scraped into the Italy squad will push it in the Azzurri's favour.

Other teams I like: Turkey (cos this town will go fucking nuts if they do well) and Spain (Torres and Fabregas - nuff said)

Teams I utterly despise and hope they lose all their games 15-0: France (they're just so bloody French), Holland (those orange jerseys offend all the senses) and Portugal (Cristiano fucking Ronaldo).

Oh, and bizarrely enough, Germans love that Three Lions song. It'll be everywhere next month.

Anyway, sorry about the football post. Just needed to let some excitement out to avoid bursting.

Ow.

Lots of football yesterday morning after only a few minutes sleep the previous night, followed by lots of drinking and grilling in the park afterwards, complete with lots and lots of sun, followed by not much sleep last night has resulted in me being in rather a lot of pain at the moment.

You can see the sunburn sock border on my legs. All things considered, I think it's pretty sexy. Nothing like a sunburned Irishman to set pulses racing.

Add in my general unresponsiveness due to alcohol fug and my rather poor body odour (somehow managed to pick clothes out of the 'need to be washed' pile, rather than the 'have just been washed pile'), I am really not a good person to be working with today.

Still, there is something to be said for having a face so red and hot that you could fry eggs on it.

I am aware that the posting of yet another dating woe story significantly compromises the good reputation *coughs gently and unashamedly* of my blog.

But I have another.

And I'm posting it.

While bidding farewell to the stewardess on Tuesday (did I mention that she's a Lufthansa stewardess? If not, I should have), I noticed a poster for the Modena City Ramblers, one of my favourite bands ever. They're pretty much The Pogues, but in Italian. For an Irish Italophile, that's as good as it gets.

Since most of my friends here are ignorant imbeciles unaware of the wonderfulness of Italy, I asked the Italian to come with me. #1, for the record. (Still not funny, don't even think about making jokes, ye feckers). Since the venue was really really close to my place, I told her to pop along a bit before the 2100 kickoff so we could have a couple of sneaky beers.

2105: Called her and found out that she had made other plans. She was very sorry about her failure to inform me of this. I am pleased to report that I conveyed my disappointment at this decision in a very decisive and swear-ridden way. After a very swift number deletion, I was on my mildly drunken and lonesome way (of course I had been drinking while waiting).

Support band: really fun.

People there: all Italian, all very short. I felt like a giant, a giant who had just revisited a country, the language of which he once spoke.

The interval: I was determined to speak to someone. Anyone. Was enough lucky to spot that the guy on the stage checking the equipment was wearing a t-shirt bearing the name of a village deep in the Dolomites that I lived in for a month. So I picked out the most attractive female around me and asked her about it. Ding dong! TOURIST! From Sicily. No English, no German. Just Italian. Fantastic.

The Ramblers: wonderful. Belligerent crowd, reminded me of my time in Genova.

The Sicilian: very obliging until a kiss occurred, then she became very difficult. I am learning a lot about Italian females, I should have done this when I lived there.

In conclusion: Stood up by one attractive Italian female, going out with three attractive Italian females tomorrow evening.

I can live with that.

Had a date tonight. Met her at a wedding a couple of weeks ago, had a drunken chat and procured her number. Met the weekend before last, we got on well and agreed to hang out again soon. Which was tonight. The plan was for her to come over to my place, have a sneaky beer in my local downstairs before heading to the cinema to see In Bruges, an Irish film that had been highly recommended to me.

She arrived puntually (Germans, eh, gotta love 'em) and looked confused as she walked in the door and into my room.

Apprently she had only been on my street once before.

Her purpose had been to visit number fifteen - coincidentally that's my building.

She had been to the left apartment on the first floor - coincidentally that's my apartment.

She had been visiting her friend who lived in the first room on the right - coincidentally that's my room.

I am not fucking joking with this.

Of course she wanted to speak with her friend, my hosuemate, who she hadn't seen in ages.

I stood there like a fecking eejet as they chatted away for fecking ages about utter fucking banalities. As if I hadn't been bloody nervous enough without fate kicking me repeatedly in the balls with this shockingly improbable coincidence!

Things like that really bother me - I am more or less an athiest but there really must be someone up there making crazy stuff happen just in order to have a big giggle about it. I must be a source of endless mirth for this particular sadistic deity.

Anyway, managed to wrest back control of the situation and get out of the apartment, only for her to refuse to go into my local. Can you believe that? Brad and Landers and Kelly and Grit can contest to its wonderfulness. She thought it was too seedy (in her defence, people say that about things I like all the time...), and instead suggested we grab a beer and drink it on the street. Now I don't know about rain on your wedding day, but that was pretty fucking ironic to me.

Onwards on upwards, wading through a jungle of dull conversation. At least it was in German.

Got the tickets. Rambled around and looked at the Philharmonic Hall that had suffered a slight fire earlier today. She told me about how she had been there once before, drunk and stoned, and left early cos it was boring. Not a good way to make a good impression on the Ramposaurous Rex.

Film was really great. Colin Farrell was excellent. Highly recommended.

She seemed surprised when I didn't follow her into the u-bahn afterwards. Her 'We should do this again sometime' was interrupted by my airy 'Safe home', already turning on my heel.

God, dating fucking sucks.

Hold on to your pants, folks, what I am about to say may change the way you look at the world.

I have discovered a consipracy theory. A big one. If my blog gets deleted as a result of this post, it won't be because of BCUK bosses, this goes way deeper than any of us could possibly imagine. However I am happy to put myself on the line in order to reveal the truth.

Here goes.

After a week of being out in the sunshine on English Camp, I had rather chapped lips. This happens to me quite a lot. No big deal, smack on some Vaseline and two days later, you're ready for some more all-weather action.

Last week, however, I was out of Vaseline (and anyone who even thinks about suggesting that this had anything to do with a certain pair of visitors will be in Very Big Trouble), so I picked up some Blistex Daily Lip Conditioner. A week on, my lips are still sore and dry.

And here's my theory.

Theydeliberatelymakeitsothatitdoesn'tactuallyhealyousoyoubuymoreandmoreofit!

I wrote the above in a secret code to throw them off the scent. I trust that the more astute amongst you will be able to crack it.

The bloody stuff tastes really good too. Hard to stop using it even though I know it's not doing any good.

It's the beginning of the end, folks. Spend your last hours as you see fit.

Haven't had many of those in the last few days. Luckily Landers has been keeping blogland updated on the goings-on over here in Berlin. I think he's doing a better job than I could, so just go there and read. READ! NOW!

Well, from my point of view it has been a wonderful but enormously tiring few days. I've been up at 0700 each morning, heading off to a camp in the northern suburbs of Berlin and then popping home to meet the visitors. Got the afternoon off on Tuesday to bring Kelly, Brad and Landers up to blog HQ.

It was pretty funny for me to see people positively bouncing with excitement to see a place that is the humdrum of daily life for me. Vasco and Flo were really excited and honoured to meet the dedicated folk who made the long trip over. I won't reveal any more, don't want to spoil Landers' next post...

I was sad putting Kelly on the train to the airport, her visit was far too short. Unlike her arms. She almost knocked me over with a bear hug in the airport. I can report that she is still the wonderful ball of friendliness and enthusiasm that many of us were honoured to meet last November.

Brad and Landers - what an utterly charming pair of gentlemen. When in their company, it's pretty difficult not to feel very anally penetrated comfortable, relaxed and welcome, and spend a hell of a lot of time laughing.

Well, that's the Amazing International Berlin Blog Meet #1 done for now. There'll be more of them. Lots more.

Off to sleep. Another 0700 tomorrow, and then a glorious weekend of sobriety and sleep.

So let's take x, and presume that the opposite of x is y.

If we invert y, does it become x?

Wait, perhaps I'm not making myself clear. I shall try to illustrate my problem with practical examples.

Let's say that x is the concept of coolness and being attractive. So therefore, the opposite of that, y, is a mullet, right? That short at the front and long at the back? Yuk. Mullet is definitely the opposite of cool and attractive.

So, back to the equation. If we invert a mullet by, say, giving someone a haircut that is stupidly long at the front and ridiculously short at the back, does this inversion mean that that is cool?

No? No-one knows?

Well, let's ask my fucking barber.

The fucker.

A quick glance at the flag thingymajig in my sidebar indicates that the overwhelming majority of the readers of my dribble are in America. How the heck is this possible? Who are these people? Why do none of the rest of you with flag counters have America invading you?

The UK hits make sense, as do the ones from Germany and Ireland.

I want to bloody know. Own up, Americans! What are you doing here? What do you want from me?! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!

P.S. If any of you feckers say it's something to do with my, like, totally un-American accent, I'll, like, get totally pissed, dude.