“Ich hatte gern ein schwarma teller, bitte, uh zum mitte nahmen”

It’s been 8 months and 16 days since I moved to Berlin and that is possibly the only German sentence  I’m comfortable saying.

FYI, it is probably spelled wrong, but I think it adds to the phonetic way I have to say it in my head as I approach the counter of my favourite Turkish takeaway. Only to be told recently by somebody, its probably not Turkish but Lebanese and I’m a massive racist. Well, no one said that but you know, probably correct.

I revert back to being completely British usually when I’ve gone through some sort of trauma.

  • After a brutal jiu-jitsu session, I went to a spati to grab some water. The shopkeeper was playing on his phone and totally ignored me, no matter how much I went ‘hallo?’ ‘hallo?’ he kept on ignoring. So I went to leave and he suddenly looked up and asked if I needed help and my response was ‘Nah, you’re alright mate’ and walked out satisfied with my sassy retort and dying of dehydration.
  • After I got made redundant and I was struggling to hold my yoga mat, my bag stuffed with extra jumpers and miscellaneous crap I had left on my desk walking to Ostbanhof. A German man was staring at me as I struggled and didn’t move out of my way even though there was plenty of space and I was clearly barely able to hold my belongings. So the most pathetic of British traits rose in me, and I tutted loudly – making eye contact – like some kind of crazy person and I rode the high of his shocked face until I was blackout drunk later.
  • When countless friends and flatmates are shocked when I put the recycling in the recycling bin. You know, instead of taking it to the supermarket where I can pop it into a machine which will give me money back to spend in said supermarket. I go into full-on British politeness mode, chuckle and say something about being wary it’ll throw up an error in German and German people will indulge in their favourite past time ‘staring at you for no reason’. When really I should say ‘I have anxiety and I recently was staring at a bottle of Diet Coke in the supermarket worried about buying it because I don’t want to have this conversation again holy shit who cares’.

Things are a tad odd at the moment, being unemployed and all. I’ve only been back for a few days after my break in the UK, which reminded me why I left the UK and why I’ll probably end up going back anyway.

I’ve flitted from doing nothing, playing video games, binging Netflix series, googling how you start up a Cattery (p.s. you need a massive house and land and shit, how unfair) and doing an exercise I haven’t done in a year which caused me to lie down all day today because of extreme exertion.

When I have time to myself I tend to do the same things I used to do when I was in a dead-end job and bored – dream about doing something completely different (hence the googling ‘open a cattery’ at 1am).

here comes that quarter life crisis everyones talking about gabe the office

So far my insane ideas that I’ve been babbling about for the past year keep reappearing while I’m staring at job ads and I’m having that referred pain headache from my bad posture. They include but are not limited to:

  • Writing a YA adult novel that’s probably horrible derivative (hey E.L. James did it).
  • Becoming a National Trust ranger (you need a driving license urgh).
  • Walking Lands End to John O’ Groats (Fuck you, I will do this).
  • Starting a blog about something and living pretty off those sweet ads, guest posts and affiliate links (I have no strong interest, just 400 medium-sized interests, apparently you need to be passionate about something to really do this).
  • Relocating to Brecon and living in a three-bedroom house by myself for £500 a month.
  • Retraining to become an estate agent (I know alright, I just love snooping around people’s houses – hey maybe that’s what my blog could be about?).
  • Twitch streaming me playing video games that scare me while I’m pissed (hey, I think it would be funny)
  • Move to Berlin (Hey that was something I actually did)
  • Make my cat Instagram famous

For the meantime, I’m still here, I’ve given myself until mid/late February to make a decision if I’ve not got anything until then – then maybe I’ll ship off somewhere else, Bristol, London, Edinburgh – these are all places that I like that I could see myself in but its all very up in the air at the moment.

So for now, I’m going to try and do less sitting around and be more productive. Ticking off some of the aforementioned list, or making plans to tick them off, maybe go places in Berlin I’ve never been, maybe do some sitting around because hey when do you have the opportunity to do that and still get paid?