living in berlin

The Berlin Diaries – Spoken Word, Finally!

/ Dan Hackett / 1 Comment

403521468-stage-wallpapers

Oi you lot, guess what.

No wait, don’t guess, because there’s no point, because I’m going to tell you in around a hundred and fifty words’ time, and anyway you lack the means to actually respond to me beyond yelling at your laptop screen and, though it certainly tickles me to imagine you getting all red faced hollering at a small plastic oblong, in the end t’would be only a waste of both your time and mine, although I suppose I’ve already wasted my time by writing this – and wasted yours by making you read it – and so basically, what I really want to say is: I am deeply sorry for ever starting this sentence which is, to be frank, so lengthy as to be obscene, and I wouldn’t at all blame you if you logged off your computer right now and went for a lie down rather than read the rest of this god-forsaken shit-heap of an article. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – Blinding My Boss

/ Dan Hackett / 2 Comments

Wake-Berry

I always start these diary entries in the same way and I’m gosh darned bored of it. So here’s my newest introductory paragraph:

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

WHAOAOAKAKAKAKAKKAASDHOFUOEZZZZPPO

-KWIP!

 

See that^^^^? 100% Original. OG literature. Mark Twain said there is no such thing as a new idea. Well, I just proved him wrong. You’re full of shit, Twain.

What’s that? Joyce already did it?

Kerouac too?

Fuck’s sake. Fine. Whatever.

ANYWAY Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – Ten Thousand Lamplights

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

43310.jpg

It’s Saturday afternoon and I wake up in a bed that’s not mine. We smoke something together and watch some television before I leave but that’s a bad idea, always is, because if I smoke in the morning I’m in a haze for the whole day and don’t accomplish much, and I wanted to write today but it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s a lazy afternoon and I’m sleepy and smiling as I drift back to my place. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – The Wizard’s Lair

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

 

Thursday I braved the snow and lashing winds and headed down to the Bürgeramt in Wedding. ‘What is the Bürgeramt, Dan?’ I hear you plead. The Bürgeramt, my friend, is a frightfully dull bureaucratic building, an official government site where you have to sort out all your throat-slittingly boring paperwork, registrations, documentation, whatever. After three months living in the city, I have finally moved into a flat where I am able to register – which is a crucial part of moving here, as it allows me to get a bank account, get health insurance, get paid, you name it. The German word for this kind of registration is Anmeldung, a term which now boils my blood every time I hear it. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – New Year’s Eve

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

After three weeks at home in Leeds for the Christmas holidays, I flew back to Berlin on the 31st of December at 4.45pm. My lovely grandad gave me a lift to the airport, and thanks to 17 years in the military his punctuality is such that it goes way past being sensible and gets rather ridiculous. Four hours early, then, I checked in and sat drinking Guinness and reading until my flight – the last flight out of the airport that day, as everyone who wasn’t a moron had already got their flights out of the way, not saved them for last thing on New Year’s Eve.

Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – Neverland

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

I’m unemployed, and have been for almost a month now. That’s not to say I don’t have an income – I’ve been doing bits and bobs of freelance work, and have been pitching articles and short stories for publication. It’s going surprisingly well so far. It feels nice. It feels amazing. I’m living life on my own terms – making money for myself, no boss, no rules. I’m carving out an existence the way I want to, not the way my bank account dictates. Maybe you could do that anywhere, maybe not. Berlin treats skint artists and musicians and literary types very kindly. It’s built by them and for them.

Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – 15th October

/ Dan Hackett / 1 Comment

Today was awful. Just, awful. I lay on the sofa half-drunk for most of the day, groaning quietly, unable to sleep on the uncomfortable chairs. People came and went into the hostel, happy and healthy, going about their days, and I was just strewn across the room like a plaster floating near the drain of a public swimming pool. Alcohol can fuck you up. Drugs can make you a mess. But lack of sleep dissolves the very fabric of the universe around you and renders you a manky, gibbering globule.

Continue reading →