#kopenick

Union Berlin

Shooting 100-year-old film: Primor B2 Panchromatisch - by Maxime Evangelista

“Where in god’s name did he find 100-year-old film?”, you might be asking yourself. Well I recently went to Budapest, Hungary for a vacation with some friends. During our stay, we happened to stumble upon a flea market on Dozsdu Udvar, a beautiful little street filled with bars and restaurants. One of the stands caught […]

https://emulsive.org/articles/thoughts/shooting-100-year-old-film-primor-b2-panchromatisch-by-maxime-evangelista

In meinem Lieblingscafe in Köpenick, dem “Milchkaffee”.

I haven’t written my blog as often as I was hoping to when I first started writing it. The last blog post talked about the fact I was about to go on holiday to Berlin with a lovely Australian Tinder boy. That was back in February, and it is currently the first of July, and now I live in Berlin. For real. 

A crash course in the last 5 months: I went on holiday to Berlin for 5 days, 2 of which were spent solo and I LOVED it despite it being -11 degrees. 3 weeks after said holiday, I went on holiday again to Denmark (with a day trip to Sweden) with my two best friends, and the whole holiday I talked non-stop about how much I wanted to live in Berlin. We were staying with a friend of one of my best friends, and he’s British and moved to Copenhagen to study and now lives with his Danish girlfriend (and even has a Danish accent when speaking English... despite being English!), it really really made me want to take the plunge to move to Germany. On the last day of our holiday my friend Hannah told me to book a flight and be done with it, after saying ‘maybe’ one too many times, she just booked one for me. She picked a random date - June 19th - and paid for a one way ticket to Berlin. She said I didn’t HAVE to use it to move there permanently, but I could if I wanted to. So that’s what I did. I had a leaving party, I quit my many jobs, I said goodbye to the cute boy I’d been dating for a month, and I moved from Cardiff back to Somerset to live with my family for a week, before selling a lot of possessions (not enough, really) and jetting off to Berlin. 

I’ve been here for 12 days so far, and I’m loving it for the most part. 

Fortunately and coincidentally, my friend Philippine, who I knew from Cardiff managed to secure an apprenticeship with the Berlin Opera House, and she found out she was successful on the same day that Hannah booked my flight. Her apprenticeship is just for the summer, so we decided to live with each other. The Opera building she’s primarily working in is in a place called Köpenick, which is just outside of Berlin city, in the more country and rural area. It takes about 20-40 minutes to get to the city by train from there. We’re living in a town slightly further away called Friedrichshagen (Pronounced freed-ricks-hagen), and it’s beautiful here. At first I was annoyed that it’s so far away from the city, but I think I’ve come to terms with it already. And I’ll only be living here temporarily, so once Phil moves back to the UK/France/Korea (she’s a busy gal), I’ll move into a new flat. 

On Monday (tomorrow) I start German language school, it’s expensive, but it’ll be worth it. I believe it takes around 6 months to get to a level considered as conversational, and although I do know bits of German I am started from the very beginner level, and I’ve booked 2 months of classes. I don’t yet have a job, and I guess now with language school taking up my days that could hinder me further on the job front, but I think it’s ok. 

I just wanted to update the blog with my new life, hopefully I’ll start posting more, as I try to find new creative outlets and get back into being a creative human (life took a toll on my creativity, but I NEED a way back in). I’ve started writing a journal, and will be attempting to start vlogging, or doing some kind of video work. 

Here are some photos from my first two weeks:

Brandenburg Tor/Gate

Der Dom - Berlin Cathedral (There was maintenance happening on the other half, so I took an artistic crop)

The Reichstag

Lake Müggelsee during sunset.

Schloss Köpenick - Köpenick Castle 

Lake Müggelsee

Charlottenburg castle

A walk I took near my house