Normally we have enough crap on Sundays with the tourist coaches trying to squeezes down roads never designed for more than the odd horse coach. But since they decided to turn half the old office space around here in to cheap hotels we are inundated with the bloody things. That or the dull tourist and its insistent trolly wheels noise. Or their insistence on chattering at about 10dB above the traffic on the Leibziger strasse on the way back from the bar.

It is great the Berlin is becoming popular but the city need to invest in the roads and install trolley carpet for my nerves.

Anyway here is the route for this year and we are thankfully near the end:

In case you are lost we are number 20 in the route. Or we were.

Winter is in and it looks like we are in for a cold one again. This apparently is a consequence of global warming. Personally I think it is a result of it being cooler snow tends to prefer the cold.

I wonder if the canal will freeze again, not nice for the birds when it does, but at least the seagulls will go away. Seagulls are a real pest in a city far worse than pigeons because they are aggressive, attacking the other birds and mobbing the ducks. No to mention what they do to the roof of the car.

As you can see Autumn has reached us on the island and the leaves are fading from green to the wonderful golds of Fall.

The island is becoming quieter as far as tourists go but the construction work continues a pace. The zoological garden where they keep the young human specimens is coming along one roof is finished and the other soon, So here’s hoping for a quiet October.

As you know I don’t post here very often but we have had a fairly noisy wet and terminally cold summer, not the best year on the Island. All not helped by the feeling of being stuck in the middle of some Cosmic Building Site. First the swimming pool, which is far to expensive for the locals to use but hell the tourists are happy, and moving to the Kindergarten. Kindergarten from the noises that come from that garden it should be upgraded to Jungle, small animals with big lungs. How do girls manage to scream so loud for so long without busting something.
Still as long as they study hard get good jobs and pay their taxes to keep me in my pension I guess it’s worth a little earache.

The Germans have a phrase which I think most of the world knows by now, mostly thanks to Audi (pronounced owdi as in that hurts, not ordi. btw), Schadenfreude. You know the pleasure you get from someone else’s discomfort. Well the blue collar Berliner seems to relish getting up before its light, running to work and then proceeding to spend the first half an hour of his working day making as much noise as he possible can. Building workers are experts at this, they finish work at about three thirty in the afternoon, but before they go they line up all the noisy tasks for when the start again the next morning, this is around seven o’clock by the way, Such things include throwing heavy waste into the skips, concrete blocks are a favourite here.
Seven o’clock is a time most of us are poking our mouths with minty freshness groggily squeezed from a tube, and trying to the pee inside the bowl. But for the little worker bees of Berlin it is the time to pay back the city that never sleeps for disturbing their bedtime, which I guess must be around ten o’clock, not a quiet time in Berlin. Well that is my theory anyway in any case it certainly smacks of the old Schadenfreude routine. To add weight to my theory the little buggers only keep the racket up long enough that you are resigned to get out of bed and make the best of it. Because between roughly nine o’clock and eleven they seem to go mysteriously quiet. Coffee and cake seem to be the reason for the docility, it is like the Diazepam for worker stress.
This morning I had the added joy of first a Strimmer spinning away outside my window, this was about seven o’clock but after only six hours sleep I can hardly read the hands on the little travel clock by my bed. I managed to fog this sound out but they weren’t finished yet, no they had another little instrument in the orchestra of cacophony the leaf blower. Oh how I hate the leaf blower, and how the Berlin street cleaner loves them. The whole purpose as far as I can see for the smelly noisy fans is to move leaves and rubbish on ground that is not solid enough to sweep upon. The floor brush was designed for moving rubbish on solid ground like paths and tarmac, the problem with the brush is it is clean and quiet. For a country that pretends to be the Eco bastion of Europe it sure like burning Oil, by developing as many machines as it can for as many purposes as it can find.
It is now nine o’clock and it has suddenly gone quiet out there, is that coffee I smell?
I appreciate the work people do to keep the city in order, when they do it that is, but please stop taking your frustration out on the rest of us. I am going to start hitting my keys after midnight from now on as loudly as possible as an act of defiance.

I haven’t posted on here for a while, I have been busy posting on my other Blog at marktomlinson.com but today one of my select readers left a comment, which I have to approve and that prompted me to pop in for a minute.

The main theme this summer, year in fact, has been the weather and it’s never ending ability to break new records. Well it has been no different on the Island, despite the best efforts of FIFA to disturb our rhythm we are still dealing with the same old problems. The watering hole is still there and probably deeper than last year but the survey team is busy measuring the size of the cracks in the Rhine at the moment and wont be down here for a while.

Tonight the Spanish and Netherlanders give us a little distraction from the heat, last night we saw Germany play in the pouring rain, we can only hope to enjoy more fine weather in South Africa even if it is only vicariously.

So until the next time thanks for popping in and take it easy out there as there is no break in sight, and  this could be a very long hot spell.