Bored & Boarding House

(originally composed 02/01 17:00)
We safely arrived in Berlin at our boarding house which is called The Act of Balance. Upon arrival, we found out all at the same time that the owner of the property died 5 days ago, that our previous apartment had been rented, and that we were being upgraded free of charge to a much larger/nicer unit (for those looking at the website we were originally staying in type 2 but are now staying in type 3). The apartment is pretty big- ALOT bigger than our studio back in San Francisco. There are a few oddities about it however.

Lovely Art-Deco Couch in our apartment's living room.

1) We made an agreement with the owner that we would have high speed internet in the apartment, but due to the erm, circumstances mentioned above this did not happen. As a result, we ended up running from available apartment to available apartment (many of them nicer than this one!) to see if we could get a wireless signal. In the end, the only way I (vegi schnitzel) could get wireless is by sitting in the office directly next to the wireless router. Schnitzel, however, was able to get wireless in the apartment more or less, so we arranged with the manager that we would use the office whenever we needed to until they could have the wireless connection to our apartment repaired. UPDATE: We've since found out that this will not happen for some time, as the person who typically handles internet setup for the building is having a new kitchen installed and is too busy to see to other matters.

Couch & Matching 1990s Dentist-Office-Chic Table

2) There is a broken spot in the couch. We pointed this, and the fact that the main window can actually come off the hinges to the owners, but they seemed to have no problem with it, so I suppose we will just have to sit around it.

Somewhat intimidating / monolith-like living room furniture.

3) For some reason, the "large bed" is actually two twin beds that have been pushed together. This has resulted in much giggling from schnitzel and vegi schnitzel, who are beginning to feel like a Cold War Television couple.

Partially-broken, dangerously looming balcony window.

4) German television apparently consists of 25 channels featuring documentary-style programming about happily employed germans at their jobs. Considering Germany's racing unemployment problem, I can see why they would choose to saturate the country in this kind of programming in an attempt to boost moral.