Ich bein ein… um… beeren, sil vous plait?

You’ll be glad to know that there will shortly be another “trip” arranged with Chris, and also this time his brother Jonathan. This time we shall be travelling to the lovely city of… Berlin. Yes, I’m finally taking the passport out for its first trip. Now, although I’m looking forward to it immensely, there are a number of things I’m worrying about.

Firstly, the language. I have a very short amount of time to learn an entire language, or at least enough to get me there, and survive the trip. I suppose all I’ll need is to know “Kind sir, I would like 3 bottles of your coldest, least expensive alcoholic beverage”, and “Please help, I appear to have fallen, and now find myself in a situation where I am unable to get back up”. Ultimately, the thing I want learn most is “Chicken Madras and rice, please”.

Unfortunately, the entire knowledge of Germany I have, comes from the first series of Auf Weidersehen, Pet, which, admittedly was filmed mostly on the site of what is now Albert Square in Eastenders. So, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really think that’s the most accurate place to get all of my information from…

The food too… what’s that going to be like? I have just checked Wikipedia, and I’m staying clear of Sauerkraut and Eisbein. Fermented cabbage and… er, whatever Eisbein is? Apparently, “it can be an alarming experience for the unwary tourist”. No, thank *you*.

Luckily, Wikipedia knows everything, and in fact this article has been enlightening and interesting… woohoo! Currywurst is looking promising.

Right, that’s the first thing I’ve learned, and it feels good.

I’m not going to say exactly when I’m going away on here, just in case when I arrive at Berlin, there are hoardes of fans waiting for me at the airport, screaming my name, clutching prints of the time a few years ago when I accidentally appeared naked on the webcam. Speaking of which, I’d better delete the images I have up there at the minute. Ahem. Seriously, though, I’m one of those people who will tell everyone who knows me anyway… I think I’ve told everyone at work about 50 times already…

“I’m going to Germany, you know…”
“Yes, we SODDING KNOW”…

Either way, there’s an un-nervingly short time until this trip going ahead. I believe flickr have hard drives on standby to handle the stupid amount of photos I’ll take. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, however, I do have 3.5Gb spread over a number of SD cards, and I intend to use as much of it as I can.. Expect more mammoth blogs after the trip takes place. I have a feeling it’ll be either a complete disaster, or the best time of my life, in the whole history of the world, ever. I have let Chris do all of the admin, as usual, as I’m useless at that type of thing…

I’m currently listening to “The Volume” by Shy Child, a band introduced to me by Big Phil at work. It’s a quality tune, though I wish I wasn’t listening to it on cheap headphones.

Actually, if I’m honest, these headphones are really good for the price I paid for them…. 98p. They’re the Magnavox ones from Asda, bought around the same time as the curries in the previous post. If you’re looking for some headphones which are cheap as crap, but actually AREN’T crap, I’d recommend these.

I shall update you on my foreign and German-learning antics over the coming weeks. It’ll be fun. Allegedly.

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MercuryVapour

I'm a man of few words. Any questions?

5 thoughts on “Ich bein ein… um… beeren, sil vous plait?”

  1. Pick up the ExBerliner mag to see what’s going on. I don’t know when you’re going but if it happens to be in the 1st week of August Berlin should be hosting the “longest beer garden of the world” (2.2km long) in the form of the Berlin beer festival. If you can’t get to see that, there are plenty of cracking pubs – I’ve had the Zum Nußbaum recommended but there’s more here http://www.xs4all.nl/~patto1ro/berlpubs.htm

    Whatever you do, don’t mention the war! I did once but I think I got away with it.

  2. Yes I share your concerns Jamie, as we learnt French instead of German. It’s a good job Jonathan has a rusty knowledge of German from school…..mmmm….

  3. Germans speak English. The English are one of the few peoples who speak no other language than their mother tongue.

    While I’ve never been to Berlin, I’ve visited Germany many times, you’ll love it. I would say that the point of travelling is new experiences, so try new foods/etc. If you don’t like them, don’t eat them, but at least try them.

  4. One the whole, many Germans speak very good English. Very good.

    There was a very good sausage in a bun stand in Frankfurt au Main rail station. Dunno if you are going anywhere near that (probably not) but look them up if you do. Probably all still made of stuff you’d rather not know the providence of, but much tastier than the grey, limp tubes of grease you get at most English sausage stands.

    I asked for a can of coke in German once, they replied in French, so I said thanks in English. True story.

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