Ex-pat Newlyweds

I’ve inadvertently taken a sabbatical from the blog over January. I’m back. We didn’t blog about Canada — we saw so many of you there! But it was a lovely trip and I’m really touched by how many of our friends back home stay tuned to our adventures via our blog. Thank you!

I promise I’ll be better about it — besides, we have upcoming adventures to share.

But first, a few words on winter.

Another weeklong parking spot is found.

I had a herb garden once...

Germany is in crisis. The country is suffering its longest snowy period in more than 30 years. Even as I look out the window right now, snowflakes are flurrying around Arkonaplatz, being pushed around by the wind into a dizzying fall down to the ground. Some cars haven’t moved since December. My bike — oh! My bike! — I barely remember what it looks like (that’s an exaggeration … I could never forget that lovable scamp). You get the point.

It’s the kind of winter that makes you want to start every weather story with “In Soviet times…”

In not-so Soviet times, the Berlin Cathedral, the Spree Canal and the TV Tower barely showing through.

Much like Vancouver, snow scares people here too. They stay inside, work from home and — as I said — leave their cars stationed wherever they happened to have been before the roads became a scene out of Canadian b-list film (or Fargo). But, after getting over their initial shock, Berliners realised this used to be winter every year from them, and they’ve embraced it.

Among those Berliners, two Canadians made their way out to the Wannsee in the western-most limits to the city and skidded around the ice.

Josh skidding over the Wannsee.

Boats frozen into place have a rougher time with winter than the cars do.

Like most Canadian kids, Josh spent a good deal of his childhood at the hockey rink. On the farm, we had a dug out as our water source, and when it froze over in the winter, it made the perfect skating rink. My dad would get the smallest tractor on the farm and would push it all off, making way for our little blades to hit the ice when it warmed up to -20 (Celsius). I remember my brother learning to skate on the dugout, pushing a chair around until he was brave enough to go at it for himself. I remember the year that — despite it being the smallest tractor we owned — the ice just wasn’t thick enough in this one spot to support its weight, and the back wheel went crashing through.

It got towed out, no one went swimming and we kids were disappointed to learn we had to wait another two weeks for our own private skating rink to open up.

To be honest, I don’t remember the last time I hit that ice, or even the last pair of skates I owned, but that’s all changed.

After that day, we both wanted nothing more than to glide across that lake, instead of shuffling over it.

So we did it — we bought skates. And the following Sunday, we went back to the Wannsee to find it completely covered in snow. Bummer.

As Josh pouted, I pushed him onto the ice. Some German kids were playing hockey —YES! Hockey! — and had brought some shovels. Josh and I borrowed them, and expanded on a little loop already dug out. We pushed snow to make a ring, and families started to gather and push their own kids on mini blades out on to our little ring. We took turns shovelling, dusting and clearing. We stopped for little scuffers to go by. An hour later, we dropped the shovels, straightened our backs and admired our work as we skated through the “little loop” and onto “the rainbow” as the kids skating around us named it.And yes, the parents thanked us.

To be honest, all the shoveling tuckered us out a little. By the time 4:00 rolled around, we decided we had enough for the day and we plunked ourselves in the snow and made our feet get used to the sensation of being back in a shoe.

Now we just have to hope this weather sticks around long enough for us to be able to do it again.

Sabine takes a turn around the little rink in the snow.

Twenty years ago, Berlin’s streets were flooded with people celebrating. They were pushing, they were climbing, they were hugging and kissing, just because they were able to go see the other side of a city I now travel around quite freely.

Our little Berlin apartment is a mere 400 metres away from where the wall once stood. Our address would have been in East Berlin, near the divided city’s centre of Alexanderplatz. To get many places, we cross the border, now largely marked by a line of cobblestones in sidewalks and streets — a far cry from the dominating, 3.5-metre high concrete blocks that once divided neighbours.

Our neighbourhood, five years before the wall came down in 1984.

Twenty years ago, our vibrant neighbourhood would have been largely deserted. The people who lived in our space then might have just left it, making their way to West Berlin as fast as they could before the East German government decided to reverse their accidental decision to open the borders on November 9, 1989. The building would probably have been brown, dirty and might even have had scars left over from the Second World War.

Parking spots would have been sieged with Trabants, the East German car, as the air recovered from their fumes resulting on their fuel of gas and oil mixed together. Grocery store shelved would have been cleaned out of Moka FIx Gold coffee brand to make way for Coca Cola and issued bookshelves would be replaced by Billy.

Eventually, the abandoned apartments became filled with people looking for a free place to live, attracting a young and vibrant community, free to do what it liked with its low living cost. The lifestyle attracted others and the neighbourhood quickly gentrified.

Our neighbourhood today

Fast-forward to today, and who knows where the people are that once lived here, but I doubt any of my neighbours are once people who lived in East Berlin as adults. My apartment building has a sunny coat of paint, big balconies and Ikea-stylized kitchens. The only evidence of East Berlin is an appliance repair shop around the corner still specialising in the repair of East German brands.

Meanwhile, on a street just 400-metres from the Berlin Wall, 2.5 kilometres from where the first East Germans freely crossed into West Berlin, two Canadians in love live life with an appreciation for freedom that they never would have had if they stayed where they were.

It’s amazing what 20 years can do.

My housewifing has been taken to another level. Having all the necessary ingredients already in stock in my kitchen (one sign of my housewife status), I decided I was going to bake bread.

I’ve been baking a lot since that first weekend with the cinnamon buns. Last weekend, we had a hodge podge of Germans and Canadians over at our house, for which we (…this is a generous we…) made cinnamon buns, pizza (with the dough from scratch), a citrus salad and numerous pots of coffee. It was a success and all the food was gone by the time our many guests left — each full and caffeinated.

Muffins I can do without a recipe. I’ve mastered the flakey crust that holds gooey fruit fillings. My in-laws have had the joy of being my guinea pigs for many desserts, and never complained once. Eventually, dessert was my given contribution for family dinners and I was always happy to do it. Baking is my happy place.

But there was one oven-bound dough that intimidated me: Bread. Pizza bases, ok — but those hardly counted as bread for me… pizza bases get covered up with stuff. Bread, all on its own, was something I always wanted to get into, but the bread aisle at the grocery store was just too easy.

So, fuelled by a marathon of Top Chef, I decided I was going to tackle the bread. Missing sourdough, I looked into making that, but you need something called a sourdough starter, and wuickly rethought my plan. I turned to Jamie (Oliver), and with his idiot-proof bread recipe, I started mixing and kneading.

Three hours later (that includes rising time for the dough), I bit into my first piece of made-at-my-homemade bread.

I think I’m going to need more yeast.

Well, a mere three sleeps after dropping Josh off, I got to see him again. He was exhausted. Some fun facts from his whirlwind tour:

• total duration: 70 hours
• time spent in Berlin: 43 hours
• time spent interviewing: 10 hours
• time spent in airports: 6 hours
• time spent on airplanes: 21 hours
• distance travelled: 17,013 kms
• carbon footprint: about 3 tonnes CO2
• number of interviews: 3

(Taken from his post on his Tumblr).

Environmental degradation aside, his trip was a success.

We’re moving to Berlin! Josh accepted a very exciting position for Nokia Gate5. It’s going to be an amazing opportunity for him and I’m excited because we get to live in Berlin.

Now only to figure out what I want to do…

But first I’ll deal with this wedding, which is all of 16 days away. Wedding preparations are all I do these days. It’s stressful. For those of you reading this who aren’t yet married: Be warned. Planning a wedding is not fun and no one will tell you that because they either don’t know (because they aren’t married) or they are trying to stay positive for your sake (they are just liars).

A little story about what the last two weeks of wedding planning reduces some one to:

When Josh returned from Germany, his other mission was to get some of my favourite treats. This include: Kinder bars, Milka chocolate and Haribo’s Tropifrutti. He got them all and then told me to pull them out of his bag when I got home from work.

I started ripping through the bag. I was eight-years-old again and I knew there was something good in there for me. It wasn’t a very big bag and I got concerned when the first thing I pulled out wasn’t treats.

“Where are they?” I asked, the anxiety quite apparent in my voice.

“They should be in there,” Josh says.

By now, I’ve more or less destroyed the contents of the duffle bag.

There was no candy.

“They stole it!” I moan. “You had to check your bag and some one stole my candy!”

“No,” Josh says. Dead. Serious. He told me that they made him check his bag. That he didn’t have a lock and…. and…

By the time he got half way through his explanation, I was in a heap on the floor. Laughing.

“Those little treats were all I wanted,” and the laughter turned to tears. And then sobs.

Josh quickly realized how serious I was about those treats. He moves from his sleepy position on the bed and looks over at me, face turning red and tears running everywhere.

“Oh Beenie,” he says, a face full of remorse. “I was only kidding. They asked me to check my bag but I just went with it on the plane and I thought it would be funny and we could do a treasure hunt and the treats are in the closet.”

It’s 2:30 a.m. Why is the phone ringing?

Right. It’s because that’s when Europe is in business.

Josh has been busy. He estimates he has applied for about 40 jobs since we got serious about leaving Vancouver in December. He’s had a few phone interviews, some promising but the one at 2:30 a.m. was what he called “embarrassing”.

After scheduling the interview for 11:30 a.m. her time, one German HR representative asked Josh to speak German, at 2:30 a.m. our time. Needless to say, it did not go well.

Oh, and our wedding is one month away.