Berlin FAQ Blog

So, there I was wandering across the Alexanderplatz yesterday afternoon when I happened up upon a gathering of onlookers and a brass band all done up in their most Prussian finery. Experienced as I am with the ways of the Big City, I immediately deduced that some event of import was about to happen, and as a "with it" person I was unable to pass by without taking in the vibes.

Keen observation informed me that the happening-in-progress was the momentous opening of the new City Toilette - and how often do you get the chance to witness such an event? Particularly when the person cutting the ceremonial toilet paper is none other than Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, resplendent in bright red tie and boyish grin. I stayed around long enough to enjoy a rendition of Berliner Luft, hear the praises sung of Wall AG (the company behind this and 160 other similar establishments sprinkled throughout Berlin) and to snap this exclusive photo of Mr. Wowereit descending into the bowels of the Alexanderplatz for an exclusive guided tour of the €750,000 subterranean structure.

No doubt it's a shining example of its sort, but at 50 cents a "go" (that's almost a whole D-Mark!) I'm glad of my iron bladder and extensive knowledge of more reasonable alternatives.

One for IsarSteve methinks: what looks to me like a very un-red, but distinctly London-style bus. (Or at least one from some left-hand drive country). No idea what it's doing in Berlin; possibly following the latest emigration trends. (Presumably the streets of London are now dominated by Polish buses).

In case you hadn't noticed, this weekend is Federal Government Open Day here in Berlin, i.e. a chance to go round various ministries and also Chez Merkel picking up freebies paid for by your tax Euros.

This year the Defence Ministry was at the top of the list. Now, I am a peaceable, bike-riding person with no particular interest in automobiles, but the display of heavy military equipment called out to some ingrained male gene and I was able to spend more time than Mrs. Penguin was happy about, poking around various heavy-duty toys, such as a Leopard 2 tank with a bulldozer attachment (apparently for Entirely Peaceful Purposes, according to the information panel, though I can imagine borrowing it to clear the pavement outside the Schönhauser Allee Arcaden of those "charity" stands staffed by young people who insist on appealing to my conscience via my bank account every time I go past, i.e. at least twice a day).

Anyway, once I'd got that out of my system, it was off to the Bundeswehr's language service department, where they were offering free Dari lessons, and I am not one to pass up on free language lessons, even if I've never heard of the language in question. It turned out to be one of the main languages spoken in Afghanistan (it appears there is no Afghanese language), and an enthusiastic Afghan teacher was there to give a 30 minutes introductory course with useful phrases such as "If you release me, the German Government will pay you handsomely and throw in a signed photo of Frank-Walter Steinmeier" and "please stand back while we raze this poppy field". Actually it didn't get that far, but I now know how to say "I am German" in Dari ("Man az alemani hasstam"), which could come in very useful in a hostage situation.

(For the language nerds: Dari is an Indo-European language, closely related to Farsi, and is written with one of those squiggly left-to-right systems of writing).

Well, the twice-a-week swimming plan has hit a small snag. It hasn't, like many good intentions, become a surfacing material for Hades-bound roads; but the ambitiously-named Europa Sportpark is closed during August for repairs. That means the only indoor pool which is open during the school holidays and is within reasonable commuting distance of Penguin HQ is the one in Ernst-Thälmann-Park. It's actually closer to Chez Penguin than the ESP, but memories from long long ago of it being in some way a little, hmm odd, have not hitherto encouraged me to go there. However, the penguin wings need training, so off I went.

It looks like - should I switch on my laptop, and the wireless thingy is running, picks up an open access point and connects automatically (as is its wont) - it would be grounds for the local bobby to come plodding along and arrest me for hacking.

Man arrested for stealing broadband

Good thing the bloke in the article wasn't sitting within sight of a primary school, otherwise he'd probably have got life for paedophilia or something. And if they'd found containers of liquid larger than 100ml on his person, no doubt he would have been put away somewhere very secret for a very long time.

Meanwhile, in presumably unrelated news, record numbers of people are leaving the UK.

From the Penguin Box of Random Photos: a building in Berlin. Where, or more precisely what is it?

Good news for residents of Prenzlauer Berg for whom closing times of 9 or 10pm are still too early - the Kaisers in the Schönhauser Allee near Milastraße (not the one in the Arcaden; it's about halfway between U-Bahn stations Eberswalder Straße and Schönhauser Allee) is open every day (except Sunday) from 8am until midnight.

If midnight is still too early for you, there's also a Reichelt somewhere useless like Wilmersdorf or Tempelhof which is experimenting with round-the-clock opening (I suppose you could say 24/6, due to the still-compulsory Sunday closing).

Anyone else remember the good old days when "late night shopping" meant until 8pm on Thursdays only? And on the first Saturday of the month, shops could open right through until 4pm, instead of 2pm?

If you've ever worked in IT, "never change a running system" is the number 1 mantra for saving unnecessary trouble. Unfortunately the kind of people who work in IT are the kind who like to tweak and twiddle. Such as myself. You see, recently I've been vaguely worried by a WLAN identifier in my apartment block which announces itself as "Finanzamt" (tax authority), and while I assume it's someone's idea of a joke, I thought I'd better check my own rickety setup to make sure it's not transmitting details of my many bank accounts on palm-infested islands in plain text to all and sundry, or offering free net access to drive-by pedophile surfers.

Everything seems to be AOK and hardened enough to keep Mr. Schäuble from sticking his nose where he shouldn't (note to self: must take the bomb-building instructions off the other website). While I was checking Mrs. Penguin's computer however, I noticed there was a system software update available, and being the efficient, helpful person I am, I installed it. After the compulsory reboot - tada, the wireless access failed to connect to anything. Turned out it was still working, but only after replugging the USB thingy and manually entering the connection data - after every reboot - and I had absolutely no recollection of how I'd installed the damn thing in the first place (apart from the fact that some slight trickery was needed). Grrr. Fortunately Mrs. Penguin was out, and after a while it occured to me I could try reinstalling the driver, and thank all the relevant deities, it worked again.

So, there I was with a laptop in hand and a few minutes to spare, and I thought it might be fun to see just how far the PenguinNet extends into the surrounding ether. 2.5 stories down is the answer, which is about what I expected. What did surprise me though is just how many other networks I was picking up - apart from the 'F' one, there must be two dozen available from the respective fringes of Chez Penguin, and holding the laptop out on the balcony, I was surprised to see a network (abeit quite faint) evidently belonging to the shop on the other side of the (quite wide) street, five stories down.

Anyway, no particular point to this, just a mild expression of my wonderment at about just how much stuff is floating through the airwaves.

What with Mrs. Penguin being from the Japanese archipelago and all that, I quite often find myself being expected to be an expert on Japanese cuisine in Berlin, which is always a bit of an embarassment because for whatever reasons we very rarely venture into the relevant establishments. I think it's because Mrs. Penguin has worked in too many and can't stand the sight of them. And the annual-ish Japan trip gives me ample of opportunity to eat more than twice my bodyweight in fish, before swimming several hundred miles through icy seas and standing on top of an egg in sub-zero temperatures all winter.

No, sorry, wrong train of thought. Anyway, it's the middle of August, which in Japan is the season of the O-bon festival, which is a festival of Buddhist origin to honour one's ancestors, or more prosaically a time to visit one's Heimat and generally eat, drink and be merry. Or if your Heimat is really too far away, just to eat, drink and be merry. Such was the idea behind smartdeli's O-bon event today, a place I'd never heard of until Mrs. Penguin stumbled across it on the interwebz.

It's in Friedrichshain, a little way east of the Boxhagener Platz, and while the website gives the impression of an ultra-cool designer location, it turned out to be the kind of place someone terminally uncool such as myself can feel at home in. It is run by genuine Japanese people (i.e. not one of those Vietnamese-run Thai-Sushi places) from, as a general impression, the alternative-arty end of the spectrum. The menu looks very nice, although today slightly more Imbiss style fare - served on cardboard at lower prices was on offer, such as this yakisoba (fried noodles) with chicken for a very reasonable EUR 3.50. Very nice - just like in Japan (though a little short on the pickled ginger), and not at all greasy. Definitely worth a return visit.

One of the joys of being a free agent is having to deal with health insurers directly, which in my case means having to complete the odd form every now and again. Now, as you may have noticed, there's this thing called the internet, and my insurers are very keen on promoting their website as the place to go for all your needs which don't actually require direct human contact, e.g. for downloadable forms, which you can download, print out, fill in by hand and entrust to the Deutsche Post so that some minion at the health insurers can input the data back into the system.

If only it was that easy. However, they seem to change their login system every 9 months or so, which means every time you want to access something, you have to fill out another online form before I can get any further. Then you get to the area with the forms and discover you need an extra "Freischaltcode" which they send by dead tree mail before you can get hold of the forms themselves, which are presumably extra top s1kr3t. Hah, thinks I to myself, they sent me such a Freischaltcode last time I went through this, and by a miracle I had actually filed it in the health insurance file, rather than the round one.

Did it work? Of course not. Grrr. Time to vent some spleen at an innocent hotline worker (hey, at least the calls are free). Turns out my login doesn't work because I haven't logged in since the last time I logged in, which was too long ago, and the Freischaltcode is only valid for 30 days anyway (not that it says so on the letter, of course).

To their credit at least, it's a very quick-to-answer hotline (none of that "Bitte warten Sie - pleaz holt ze lain" muzak which makes you want to pump sub-machinegun rounds into innocent bystanders, and let us be thankful that German isn't a language widely spoken in e.g. India), and it appears they're used to this kind of thing, and after some soothing words I was put through to the Department of Sending Out Forms To People Who Can't Download Them, who promised to pop one in the post today.