Start Me Up

Hello,

again my apologies for the length of time in-between posts. I have been working a new job and although it is awesome and precisely what I have always wanted to do, ever since I was a little boy in short pants with a cape, I have also been working preposterously long hours and not been able to make the blogging curfew (aka, my bed-time).

However, it's not all bad news. Allow me to explain. Because it is a bit of a strange thing working for these fledgling Berlin start-up companies and loads and loads of people seem to be flocking here to join in the fun, I thought I would write a list about the best and worst of it for anybody else mulling over the decision.

Das Brot

Yep, sure, I know - it's a bit odd doing a post about bread on a blog that has the word 'glutenfrei' in its title, even if that word is in parenthesis. Nevertheless, I press on, because it's (half) my blog and I find it mildly interesting. So, I present to you, with nary a flourish, my List of Things about Bread in Germany that I Find Mildly Interesting, Certainly Interesting Enough, at least, to Ponder Over, Wistfully Perhaps, While I Sip my Soy-Chunk Coffee in the One-Room Apartment I Call Home while Alone and Unemployed on a Tuesday. 

Things you wouldn't necessarily think of but are dead obvious once you realise.

The internet is a list maker's paradise. Sure, most of the internet is pretty much just a massive collection of useless, interrelated horrible opinions, but it's also a convenient medium for cataloging a number of similar topics and then sharing that collection with strangers. I swear I've never seen so many lists in my life than inadvertently on the internet, and I'm an organised chap. So, to participate fully in this e-sperience, I have made my own list, very rapidly, of some stuff I have observed in a month in Berlin. I call it:

Things you wouldn't necessarily think of about Germany but are dead obvious once you realise.

• Water from the tap is really, really cold.
• Hot food gets cold really quickly. By the time you've buttered your toast and walked into the next room, you're just having cold, crispy bread for breakfast. 
• The Berlin Underground is a box, not a tube. 
• (For my nerd friends: the Berlin Underground is a rectangular prism, not a cylinder.)
• Splashed/spilled water does not dry up quickly, or at all. 
• Your salary sounds much more generous when it's cited in monthly payments instead of fortnightly but, on a closer look, they're probably ripping you off. 
• Beer is cheap (and plentiful). I mean SE Asian level cheap. 
• Cider is elusive. 
• Boogies freeze in your nose, then thaw and drip out of your nostrils when you're aboard a warm train.
• Berliners still have early Perth-morning frost breath at midday.
• Tomato sauce bottles do not specify that they should be refrigerated after opening -- but it is recommended to keep them cold. 
• Water takes yonks to boil.
• Shrinkage is rampant. My fingers are much smaller and my wedding ring is quite loose.
• When Vicky's shopping list contains "100 paper", she means "loo paper".
• Vicky will laugh at you if you ask, "what's hundred paper?"