Today was the first day of spring. A very chilly day it was. And at 9 when I looked out of the window I could see snowflakes. Many of them. All the cars are white, the streets are pretty white too. I am all excited about it especially as it has also been snowing in Switzerland and David is going to come over soon (easter holidays) and we plan to go skiing, snowboarding for a day or two. Excellent!
This Sunday, ther will be a record fair at TU Berlin Hardenbergerstrasse 35. Should go and check it out.
Last Saturday as I was walking through Kreuzberg, I found some record shops. On Bergmannstrassen and then Zossenerstrasse. 4 of them in total. But there are more. Might check them all out tomorrow 
Pandoras Box
Stubenrauchstr. 70
12161 Bln.-Friedenau
030 / 8527594
Flohmarkt
Strasse 17. Juni’s
10587 Berlin
jeden Samstag + Sonntag
2×2
Wilmersdorfer Straße 60
10627 Berlin
030 / 3234072
Groove Records
Pücklerstraße 36
10997 Berlin
030 / 6188639
Comeback Records
Hasenheide 9
10967 Berlin
030 / 69401433
Cover Schallplatten
Kurfürstendamm
10551 Berlin
030 / 3956452
Steady Records
Maaßenstr. 5 in 10777 Berlin
Fon: 030 / 217 27 20
Fax: 030 / 217 27 21
Pehlgrimm
Yorckstr. 71
10965 Kreuzb
030 / 7853046
I’ve been in Berlin for the last 3 weeks now. I like it here, the guys at work are nice and I’ve been bowling, to an African restaurant, clubbing and to the killer’s gig. There’s another gig I would like to go to. LCD soundsystem are playing next Tuesday in the Ostbahnhof in the Fritzclub.
Tomorrow I will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the Dunmore Cave and next Wednesday I am going to meet a distant relative for dinner and drinks.
Too bad it is going to be so cold over the weekend. They are even talking about snow. Which would probably be quite nice for the polar bears they’ve got in the zoo here. There is a young polar bear baby called Knut which is everybody’s darling at the moment.
Ever since I finished uni I cannot freely choose my working and computing environment anymore. This means a windows laptop at a linux desktop at work. When in Berlin I am a windows only guy. Fortunately it is possible to install your own software, for example Firefox.
Outlook even though a big nuisance in itself is still quite useful even though it requires quite a few tricks to make it more usable. Calendar integration, contacts etc are what I use it for. IE however in its v6 incarnation is a pain as it doesn’t have tabs. And so are internet cafes in Berlin where you can only use IE, not tabs, German language keyboards, mostly dirty. At least it is reasonably cheap at 80cents to 1.20 euro an hour. Considerably cheapter then calling a Swiss landline whicht is a bit more than 4 Euro for half an hour. A rip off. It’s probably less then half that to call a landline in Turkey, Asia or anywhere more distant then Switzerland.
Most annoying of all though is that every stupid single one smokes in the internet cafes. They should all be hanged!
I got an email from Jane yesterday. It went like this:
HELLO
My name is miss Jane,i saw your profile today on (www.fotki.com) and became interested in you and i will like to know more about you so that i will tell you whom am i and also send to you my picture for you to see me and communicate well,Plesae i will like you to email me back at my email address at CENSORED Please you mail to me will be highly appreciated and remember that colour or distance does not matter but love matters a lots in life..
Miss Jane…………..
So I told her in kind words to bugger off and leave me alone to which she replied:
Dearest One
I have read with keen interest and concentration your romantic worded email where you exhibited your intelectual powers/talent as expected from a well educated man like you.
My names is Jane Fred. I presently live at Rue 14 unit 20,Parcelles, Dakar Senegal as a refugee. I am 22 years old . I hail from Tutsi tribe -in Republic of Rwandan Central Africa.
I was the only child of late Dr.Fred Morgan.My late father was the managing director of a Gold and Diamond Minning company in Kigali. Unfortunately, he was wickedly poisoned to death by his business associate on one of their outings to discuss a business deal in oversea.I was in my second year in Applied Mathematics department of University of Rwanda in Kigali before the death of my loved father.
When I was about trying to come over this irreparable loss in my life, Satan was let loose again and civil war broke out in my country. Civilian masacre became uncontrolable and my dearest mother was also a victim.It’s only me that is alive now and i managed to make my way to a West African country Senegal where i am living now as a refugee.I would like to know more about you.Your likes and dislikes,your hobbies and what you are doing presently. I will tell you more about myself in my next mail.Hoping to hear from you soonest.
Yours Forever
Miss Jane Fred.
It also came with three photos, one of which is 
And now I am wondering whether that would turn into some kind of scam like the nigeria scams. Promising me all her fathers money if I would pay the bank charges etc. Or maybe she is just looking for somebody to get married to. Who knows.
A guy from work had asked me whether I wanted to see the Killers as he had a ticket but couldn’t go. I said yes of course. While I don’t know all their songs I have got one of their albums and like their music. They played in the arena treptow near Warschauer Strasse. The arena has space for several thousand people and was quite full but not sold out. Mumm-ra played as supporting act and where quite good. The people liked it.
The Killers opened with 3 of their hits but then continued to also play some of their not so well known material and stuff from the new album Sam’s Town. They came back two times and played a good two hours. 
Tonight we are going for dinner in a Cameroonian restaurant called Bantou Village. It is situated at Kamerunerstrasse 2 and managed by a woman from Cameroon.
Gaston, a guy originally from Cameroon is taking a group of us there. Looking forward to it.
Bantou Village is a small restaurant that serves food from Cameroon. We had ordered a buffet and this is what it looked like:
There was delicious fish, really nice skewers of meat, Yum? root and some bitter vegetables with meat.
After dinner a few of was went to an old house in Oranienburgerstrasse. It is similar to Rote Fabrik in Zurich in some regards. Lots of tags, paintings, scribbles on the wall. Art exhibitions. The small of pee in the staircase and five levels. On the fifth level there is a bar and a balcony kind of thing without windows. So that you could jump out and break your neck if you wanted to. On the outside of the house you are still able to see bullet holes from the 2nd world war.
Axel and I then went to the Warschauer Bahnhof where we wanted to go to a club right at the water called Watergate. A dum and bass club where A guy called Gerald was dj-ing that night. But we didn’t get in. We went to Club 103 instead where they had live acts on. One of them was the aim of design is to define space which I cannot really recommend
On the way to the club 103 we had also been to L.U.X where they played quite music, people played roulette and Axel spotted one of the members of Einstürzende Neubauten
I decided to take the train to go to Berlin this time. First of all flying is annoying because of all the added security, and there has never been a lot of leg room in planes. And as I am staying in Berlin for 3 weeks I had more then the amount of luggage I would usually take. City Night Line trains connect some major swiss cities with Germany. Leaving at 8pm it took me about 12 hours to get to Berlin. At first I was alone in the 2 bed compartment, but from Basel to Hannover I had company by a guy working for some kind of light/lamp company.
I had forgotten just how nice it is to leave a city in a train at nighttime. It is dark outside and cozy inside the wagon. The sound of the wheels on the track is a comfortable sound even though a bit loud at times. The train passed through many cities that I’ve never been to yet. Frankfurt, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Hannover, Braunschweig before I had to alight in Berlin.
The day before I had arranged to get a one bedroom studio flat for a month and so had to go to the rental company to sign the lease and pay the rent. It all went smoothly and I could move into my flat at Buelowstr. 45 just after 10am. As you can see on the google map it is very close to the U7 underground station Yorckstrasse. And the U7 takes me to Siemensdamm where I am working in just over 20 minutes without having to change lines. An excellent service. I had decided to get ticket covering public transport in all of Berlin for a month.
I am going to be in Berlin for the next three weeks. Leaving in Zurich, the CityNightLine train will take me straight to Berlin where I will be arriving before 8 on Tuesday morning.