Move Along, Move Along

I am 35 years old. In those 35 years I have lived in 3 of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom as well as Germany, the Czech Republic, the United States and, briefly, Belarus. In my 10 years living in the Czech Republic, I lived in a small town called Mlada Boleslav as well as Prague, in total though I lived at 8 addresses in 10 years. I have spent my life moving around, and can happily say that I enjoy it. My little brother, only 1 year my junior, took a different path to adult life, settling down in the Highlands and pretty much staying put, though even he has moved house within the same town a few times.

I often think that Mrs Velkyal has had a calming influence on me, I can watch football without apoplexy these days for a start. In the 6 years we have been together I have only lived at 3 addresses, and 2 of those cover 5.5 years. Even so, I find it nearly impossible to not think about the other places in the world which pique my interest. Perhaps growing up in the British Army gives you a taste for going somewhere new, a taste for always being an expat. I get the sense at times that if we were to move to the UK, I would probably feel like an expat even there, after all I left just after I graduated and haven't spent an extended period of time in my own country since.

I keep a mental list of places that I would love to live in, just in case my numbers come up on the lottery and I am suddenly flush with cash. Near the top of that list would be a return to Germany, mainly to put my Germanophilia into full swing, I love the German language (no I don't think it is "too brutal for singing"), German efficiency, German food and German beer, I like Germans and find their sense of humour funny, yes they have one. If we were to move to Germany there are a couple of places I would most like to live in, Berlin and Celle.

Mrs V and I went to Berlin a couple of years back and absolutely loved it, had Obama failed to win the election in 2008 there was a very good chance that we would have moved there rather than here. Celle is a smallish town near Hannover, and the place we lived in as children, it is also etched in my memory as one of the most beautiful towns in Europe. My attraction there is simple, I would love to experience the town as an adult, it is also entirely possible from research my great uncle Bill did, that my father's family originally came from that neck of the woods.

One thing is for certain, I don't feel as though I am done with travelling and seeing places new and intriguing.

Berlin

As I have mentioned before, I spent the past weekend in Berlin. I had a wonderful time. I can’t remember a European city I have been more instantly enamored with. On the train back to Prague I admitted to my fiancée that if we weren’t planning to move to the United States next summer then I would most likely be agitating for a move to Berlin. As a first impression of a city, the Hauptbahnhof (Main Station) takes some beating – a palace of glass and metal, with a shopping mall that would put most shopping centres in Prague to shame. For the first hour or so of being in Berlin, I felt like the village idiot who had come to visit his big city cousins.

The city’s public transport is everything that it should be, clean, efficient and regular – although the ticketing system is something that a Ph.D in astrophysics would be useful in understanding. For example, you can buy a ticket for 2 euros allowing you two hours worth of travel, with unlimited changes as long as you go in a single direction. We couldn’t work out if the day ticket was for a period of 24 hours after validation or just until the end of the day on which it was validated.

Prague and Berlin are very different cities. Whereas Prague has an unmistakable energy to it – it is a city where everyone it seems is trying to be the trendiest person on earth. If the trash magazines were to say that this month’s ideal look is an orangutan costume with bright green stilettos then that is all you will see on the street until the magazines say otherwise. Berlin however is exceptionally laid back, and while there is a sizeable artistic community in the city, it doesn’t translate into being fashionable for fashion’s sake.

Berlin is also a very open city, not just in terms of the people being very helpful and friendly. The city seems to have given over more space to pavements and cycle paths, as such people spend more time on the street. Almost every restaurant had a large number of table and chairs on the pavement, and they seemed to be doing a booming trade. Admittedly we were staying with friends in the most popular part of Berlin for sitting around in a café or bar. Within minutes of the apartment were several Indian restaurants, a Turkish kebab café or two, Arabian restaurants, various Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese establishments as well. On the last night of our stay we stumbled upon a superb Arabian restaurant with wonderful service, excellent Lebanese wine and lamb which just fell apart in your mouth – in short the best restaurant meal we have had in a long time.

Architecturally the centre of Berlin couldn’t be more different than Prague. While the former is awash with Baroque and Gothic palaces, the centre of Berlin is home to some of the most modern architecture in the western world – and yet it doesn’t seem out of place next to the magnificent cathedral or the fascinating Reischstag. One of my favourite sights was the World Clock on Alexanderplatz – largely because of a little historical anomaly, one of the towns mentioned on the clock is Pressburg. Pressburg is a town which no longer exists, though it has not been destroyed, rather it was renamed Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

So overall we had a great time in Berlin, and we are already planning another visit – so much more to see and just to be back in a city which is relaxed yet lively, cosmopolitan yet intimate, in short, a model modern multi-cultural metropolis.