Mayo?

Dear Germans,

Covering something in mayonnaise does not make it a salad.

At the supermarket there is potato salad, egg salad, fish salad, meat salad, cheese salad, and so on. I even saw bacon and egg salad once. If you can cut it into chunks and smother it in mayonnaise, then in Germany you can buy it at the supermarket in ready made 'salad' format.

When its not being used as the main ingredient of a salad, mayonnaise can also be found on chips and slathered all over bakery sandwiches. But one time I asked for mayo on the sausage sandwich I'd just bought from a stall, and the woman looked at me like I was crazy, as if I had asked for chocolate sauce or something instead. Maybe if I had asked for a sausage sandwich salad, she would have understood.

Guess who's back?

Yes, I have finally got my act together.

And what has prompted this return? A deep philosophical realisation about German society? A shocking personal revelation? A life changing event on the U Bahn?

Nope, it's the rediscovery of Müller Corner of the Month: Pirate Adventure!

As sad as I am that there isnt actually a new Corner of the Month every month of every year, it was fun to find something that I haven't seen since near the beginning of my time here.

I wanted to illustrate this post with a picture of the said yoghurt, but I couldn't find one, so a picture of a Müller corner with reindeers in will have to do. Enjoy!

Christmas Trees

It seems to be some sort of tradition in Berlin that once Christmas is over, instead of putting your Christmas tree in the bin, recycling it, or using it as firewood, you throw it out of the window. As I was walking the other day I saw someone on the third floor balcony carefully manoeuvring their tree right onto the edge, and then giving it a final push until it fell and crash landed on the floor below. Luckily noone was walking or driving past at the time. The pavements are all currently littered with sad, abandoned Christmas trees, lying where they have been heartlessly pushed off the balcony, or swept up into great tree graveyards on street corners. As if January wasn’t cold, grey and miserable enough!

Happy New Year!

Berlin goes mental for fireworks! I thought it would be a good place to celebrate the New Year, but I had no idea it would be quite so insane. The idea behind the fireworks is to make so much noise that it scares away any bad things from following you into the New Year. Even in the afternoon, in broad daylight, there were kids letting off fireworks in the street, and there were just more and more as we headed towards midnight. We were at a flat party, and just before New Year everyone trooped out onto the balcony. There were fireworks all around us, from the big organised display at the Brandenburg Gate somewhere in the distance, through to fireworks being let off in the street right below the balcony. There were even fireworks flying out from balconies around us. The German attitude to New Year definitely seems to be something along the lines of ‘Why let a little matter like health and safety ruin your celebrations?!’ Luckily we all made it through the night in one piece, and hopefully the fireworks did their job of scaring away anything nasty – Happy New Year everyone!