Well, slowly but surely we are once again entering winter. I guess at the moment I still don’t mind it, like it even, although I’m sure all that will change by March.

So much has happened lately that I really don’t know quite where to start.

Mum and Dad are back in Australia and Mum is just waiting for the next operation now. All fun and games there then…..not! The fallout from that whole situation appears to be that my sister isn’t communicating with Ina or myself any longer. We don’t really know what we did (or didn’t do)  - and really, who should be the judge of that?, certainly not my sister! After several attempts at trying to get some insight on the situation and with zero feedback we feel it best to forget about her and her childish ways. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say……

So many things between the months of July – September broke. Seriously! Let me start a list:

1.) Washing machine
2.) Electric toothbrush
3.) Network Hard-drive
4.) iTunes/iPhoto Hard-drive
5.) Mobile phone
6.) Home phone

And that’s only what I can think of off the top of my head. Anyway, have replaced most things now anyhow and the new washing machine we bought to replace the old one is kick-ass.

Been at my new job for around three months now (a bit over now I guess) and am still really enjoying it. The company has grown quite a bit just since I’ve been here already but the majority (if not all) of the employees (as well as new ones) at acrolinx are very nice. Still learning a lot every day and it definitely keeps me on my toes, my weekends are spent mostly relaxing these days after the tough week.

Had the shits a bit over the weekend, you know when you try to do something that should, in actual fact, be quite simple and it turns out to be a mission? Well, that can sometimes be used to sum up life in Germany. Let’s just remember what’s important here, one can purchase alcohol 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but fuck all else!! This can make a weekend a little more stressful in the first place because it means that all your shopping must be done on Saturday, which of course means that every other man and his dog is doing it on Saturday as well.  Sundays are a compulsory relaxing day where most of the time zero shops are open.

Anyway, to cut a long story short. Had to do some work on Holsteiner Üfer for Wolfgang and Doris so traveled over to Mitte on Saturday morning to get it out of the way whilst still having the chance to purchase anything extra we might need. Basically I had to drill and attach some steel bars to a wall so Wolfgang has something to hold onto when lifting himself up and out of the wheelchair. Anyway, thought I’d just get a bog standard cous cous salad from the bakery (they sell them at all the bakeries here lately) but unfortunately there was no salad to be had. I bought a bit of cake instead and figured I’d get the salad elsewhere. Well, somebody didn’t want me to have a bloody cous cous salad that morning because there wasn’t one to be found anywhere. When we got to Alex I thought I’d just buy a KFC chicken burger and even though it was 10.30am on a Saturday and we were in the middle of the capital city of Germany, KFC was closed with no hint of opening any time soon. Well, I guess I was getting a bit shitty at this point.

We finally got to Bellevue and passed the final bakery with no success, I simply did NOT want to eat a bloody bread roll with cheese on it. I cannot survive on a German’s staple dietary food source!! Safe to say I was a bit upset and cursed Berlin for the miserable city it can be at times.

Anyway, in the end we decided to get some late lunch after the work was done. Did the work and on the way to the hardware shop to buy a few things we needed to complete the job with went for lunch. First went to Dolores in Hackescher Markt but it was packed and not wanting to wait 45 minutes we went to Brauhaus Lemke where we waited for about 10 minutes without even receiving the menu. Ina wasn’t prepared for that and we got up and left. By this point I was kinda done with the whole idea of food so we just went to the hardware shop and on the way I bought the one thing you can always rely on: a beer.

This city just really sucks as far as food and availability is concerned, it’s not just me either, speak to anyone who has lived outside of Berlin (well, Germany in general) and they will tell you the same.

Well, finally finished building a new bike for Ina, I will have to post a few pictures. It is such a hot bike! To think that I’ve had the frame just sitting around for the last 10 years, I’m really glad I kept it though.

We went to the Röyksopp concert on Sunday evening at Astra and both of us felt like we were at a high school disco. Certainly not the type of vibe you’d normally get around our area (Friedrichshain) and certainly not the type of crowd we were expecting. Oh well, interesting all the same, don’t think we’ll be doing that again in a hurry!!

I guess I’ll end this babble of words for the minute and just let you all know that come the 14th of November this year our annual party will be back on. It’ll start early and end late so you’d better start saving up on energy for it now. More on that in another post though…..