Berlin

Berlin. ‘Oh my’ is all I can think to say right now. It is Friday. I have been here for 5 days now, and the crash course on what is what here continues. I feel, though, that my brain is full and cannot process another drop of input. This place is HUGE, and yes, I have to scream that word as I still cannot fathom it. It is so much bigger than I have ever imagined and I have only seen a small percentage so far.

The apartment search is becoming a bit more problematic than I had hoped it would be. Berlin has been overbuilt in the past 10 years or so; that incoming investment to renovate and build in previously blighted areas of the east has resulted in plenty of rentable space. The prospected influx of pilgrims arriving to a formerly unavailable Mecca of German pop and high culture was a bit over-hyped, I guess. This should translate into a very good thing for us. But, after looking at several apartments and rifling through the hundreds available on-line, we have not had superb luck yet. We are still learning the trade secrets, I guess. And, amongst those, one of the most disappointing to us, being truly children of the computer age, is the fact that, in order to find a really good apartment, the kind that get snapped up almost immediately after going public, one has to get the newspapers that feature the apartment ads on Saturday, weed your way through the secret lingo (you know, like in real estate ads, when it says “cozy”, they mean “tiny”), select what you’d like to see, and go to set “seeing times” that mostly occur the very next day, on Sunday. This seems to me to be not just a throwback method reminiscent of ancient days, but extremely ineffective especially in that several photos of the place are certainly not a feature of the newspaper ads as they are on the internet sites. The internet sites, though, seem to only feature the apartments that no one wants, some of them laying open for months on end before being snatched up out of desperation. I can only hope that said desperation will not come too soon for us, as it seems obvious that, in perfect German style, things simply run at a much slower pace that I would expect. That being said, tomorrow’s beginning of the whirlwind tour of potential apartments will certainly add another blister to my throbbing collection. (I think I have walked here more in the past 5 days than I have in the past 3 months in Baden-Württemberg.) I’ll let you know how it goes. Supposedly, many people show up to the best apartments, forcing you to elbow your way through the droves to see the goods. Then comes the competition to show who has the most preferable resumé, complete with several documents ensuring that we will not be deadbeats as renters. No one checked my credentials for the apartment in Pforzheim. But, hey, if this means getting a dream apartment where we will be happy staying for years, I am all for it. Besides, it can’t be any worse than the under-the-clothing kind of groping going into a credit check, etc. that one has to go through to rent a closet somewhere in America.

Truthfully, I am going through a rather pervasive culture shock at this point. My worries will, of course be greatly dampened when we get a place and the actual moving is over. But, I have the feeling that the idea of going from a place where choices were limited immediately to one where choices of all kinds are limitless will be one which sticks with me for some time. Of course, many of my friends already assume that I am a big city kind of person. I seem to be the last that will be informed of this.

As a side note, amongst the beautiful surprises that I have come across here, is one of special mention: I can listen to NPR here on a regular radio! Unbelievable. I feel like the country mouse on his first trip to the big, bad city.