Down and Out in Berlin

Berlin ist sehr kuhl -

As you can see I've been learning deutsch. It's going well, but sometimes it feels like I'm forcing my mouth into weird shapes, like I'm making it do yoga moves without stretching. Can you say, 'The Lotus Position?' Oh God, I think I pulled my tongue.

Berlin's cool, we're renting a nice furnished apartment and I'm searching like mad for a job. The city seems to be built on unemployment. There's no money here. You particularly notice it when going for job interviews. It's like you're the only one in the whole city dressed in a suit. You feel like an alien from Mars.

People on the train point their fingers, while saying, "Hey! Look at the freak, everyone!"
All the heads turn. I'm thinking, 'Keep your head down they're not staring at you.' Everybody is staring. It's a national pastime.

I might as well have dressed in my birthday suit. Nobody wears a suit. Nobody has a job.

An interview I had last week I wore the 'said clothing' and the job was an editing position at a tourism mag. I pressed the bell at the entrance. Dark clouds loomed over this massive warehouse. It was like something out of Scooby Doo. A punk kid with a hundred piercings opened the door a crack. He was gawking at me like I looked freaky.

"Um..." I coughed to break our silence. 'I'm here to see Chris.'

'Cool.' He let me in.

Moments later, I was in a small office with Chris. He's one of the those young dynamic Americans who talk in catch phrases, went to some ivy league breeding house, and his major goal in life is to be listed in Forbes before he's 30. He seems like the only dude making money in this city and he's making a tonne of it from tourism. We talked for an hour. One of the kids had called me to come in, but he didn't have any editing jobs. Hell, he didn't even know why I was there.

I was all dressed up with no where to work.

His magazine is a free rag for tourists which has the same content reprinted in it each month with loads of advertising. The punk kids hand it out for him. Sure, there's more to it, but it's long and boring.

He did offer me a job though. It'll be writing for an upcoming guidebook in the future. That's not really helpful for now though, is it? So dressed like the New York banker, I said my good byes to him and his punks kids and went out into the wilderness of Berlin.

So tourism is rampant in Berlin. The art scene is amazing. Loads of artists seem to have flocked here. No, I'm not about to sign up as another arty types who sells his wares along the Spree every weekend. What would i sell? The pic above? It's hardly great. Or perhaps another visual interpretation on poverty and hunger. No i reckon those guys might have that covered.

So I'm trying to get some other writing work sorted out in London and other places where i can telecommute and I've got a few other things in the pipes, but things have certainly slowed down. I might admit defeat soon and take up some teaching work.