Berlin lifestyle stories

There is always something happening in Berlin. And there is always something happening in my life.
Between partying at weekends, exploring the city during the day, meeting new people and of course babysitting and going to German classes three times a week I can't find a time to sit down and write a blog. I promise I will whrite something about my classes in the next days (maybe tomorrow), but today I'm sharing with you some (funny) stories from my life here.

Homeless people in our building!

There is a door in my room that leads to the second hallway of our building. The apartment on our floor and the two above (on the attic) are empty.
The first day when I came here, my family told me, that I can use the stairs for smoking. It´s very practical - I don´t need to dress up so much, cus I´m not really going outside and I don´t need to walk trough the whole appartment to the balcony (that´s especially usefull at the night when the family already sleeps).
So I made myself a really comfortable corner there at the window, with a pillow and an ashtray.
But one day both of them were gone! I had now idea what happend, but I found out later that day, when my au pair dad told me the whole story.

So that´s what happend - here was a cleaning lady cleaning the staircase and she found my stuff. She talked with her husband and they come to a conclusion that there is some homelass guy who is trying to make himself a space for sleeping on the hallway - so to punish him, they throw away his stuff!!
And they came to my host family to discus about that dangerous person! We laughed about that later, but at first, my AP dad was pretty angry about their behavior - he told them: "If there were really a poor homeless guy trying to find some warm space to sleep, I would bring him a hot soup, not threw away his pillow (which was actually from my au pair mom)!!" - 1:0 for my AP dad!


Stealing the baby´s stroller!

As the apartment is in the fourth floor in the building without elevator, we leave the stroller downstairs, but we always lock it, just in case someone would try to steal it.
One day we were out - mom, baby and me. The baby was in a really bad mood and was screaming, so when we entered the building, I said to my AP mom to go upstairs with her and I will take care of the stroller and bring up all the other stuff.
I took all the baby´s stuff out of the stroller and while locking it, the old neighboor came out of her apartment. Of course she doesn´t speak any English. And I understand just a few German words (a bit more now, but that was in my first week there). So we weren´t able to understand each other. She was kind of yelling at me and I tried to explain her where I live with mentioning mom and dad´s names - I hoped she would understand that and leave me alone. Finally she left, but I still had a feeling that she´s thinking I´m some kind of thief who´s trying to steal the stroller.
Later that day my AP mom met her and I was right - she really thought I want to steal their stroller!! The mom explained her who I am and now she kindly says "Guten Tag!" to me when we meet on the hallway. :)


Getting food for FREE!

This happend to us twice!

The first time was at the Ostbanhof station. Aimée and me where on the way back home from the Yaam and it was around 2 a.m. We came to the station, both very hungry!
Me: "Where can I get something to eat here?" (turning around, looking if there is something opened)
Some guys from across the station: "Heeeey, do you want cheesburger?" Imagine our surprise when they just came to us, gave the cheesburger to Aimee and went away without saying anything else!

The second time was at Zoologischer Garten. Again on the way back home from the party, we stopped at McDonalds to get some food. We were eating our burgers, when the guy from the table next to ours pushed his tray full of fries on our table ("Want some fries?") and went away without even waiting for our response.

Oh, I love getting food for free! :D

And so much else .. like walking for few kilometers in the rain to get something to eat and recording ourselfs with my camera for almost 20 minutes .. or train changing direction one station from where we wanted to get down and no one has idea what's going on .. or going to the supermarket to buy just few ingredients to prepare the dinner and comming back an hour later, because i couldn't find the most important ingredient and I wasn't even sure if I know the right German word for it (and I tried to call my AP mom, but there was no signal inside the store!!) ..

Well, at least I will have a lot of stories to tell to my grandchildren (when they're gonna be old enough to hear them!!) :)



Aimée and me at Franken

P.S.: Just in case you were wondering - yeah, it´s cold here! Like -12 degrees at the moment (feels like -20 because of the wind). My fingers were so frozen last night when I came home that I wasn´t able to unlock the door! I was sitting on the stairs for 15 minutes, waiting for pain to go away! I need a warmer gloves I guess, maybe the ones for skiing :D



Walking home last night