It Means Little Froggy
May. 4th, 2025 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lupestripeLast week was another typical week, although the cancellation of a job interview on Wednesday did hit hard. It was one of my first bites from outside the industry I am so desperate to leave, so it did give me a little bit of hope. Alas, I was informed on Monday that the requirements of the job had changed and I was no longer in the running. At times it feels I am destined to be stuck doing what I am doing and it's really starting to corrode the soul. I'd just like a job in an industry I'm proud of, and the lack of action here is really starting to get me down. I have applied for over 100 jobs in the last year now and I know my CV is pretty strong, but I guess moving from one area to another is always going to be difficult. Wolfie is going to take a look at my CV next week and see if he can make any tweaks, while I am still applying for jobs as and when I see them. I guess I shouldn't lose hope, but it is all becoming somewhat relentless.
Last week was a good week in elections, with Canada electing the Liberals and Australia electing the Labor Party. The only blot was of course the UK, where Reform surpassed expectations and won a swathe of councils and mayoral races. This included my mother's council and she is far from happy. I know most people don't pay attention to politics, but rewarding the very group of people who have inflicted so much damage on the country through Brexit to address the very problems that they themselves have caused seems counterintuitive to me. I get that people are angry and Labour's Reform tribute act isn't helping, but I fail to see how this merry band of misfits are going to improve anything. It seems like a retrograde step, but then things change quickly. Four years ago, when these seats were last up for election, it was at the height of Boris Johnson's vaccine bounce and look where the Tories are now. The hope is that the left will have gotten their act together before the next General Election in four years' time. I fear they won't though.
Thursday was a national holiday, meaning Wolfie was off, but I swapped out Thursday for Friday as we were due to go on another trip. We would have gone a day earlier had we not booked to see Russell Howard live. This was at the Coliseum near Schonhauser Allee and it was touch-and-go as to whether Wolfie could make it as all of our recent cheese eating had triggered his bad foot (it is good, at least, to have this diagnosis confirmed). Fortunately, he could just about limp there, so joined me in the world's hottest auditorium as it was 25C outside and the heat at percolated its way in. The Coliseum is a converted cinema into an arts venue so we basically saw Russell in an intimate setting with about 300 people. This was a far cry from the sell-out arena tours he does in the UK. This European tour seemed to cover some strange destinations including Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia, but to see him in close proximity was a real thrill. It was a free for all regarding seats so we got there a little early - aided by work being light - and so we managed to sit right in the middle of one of the middle rows, allowing Wolfie to avoid using the stairs. This meant the view was splendid, both for Howard and support act Mike Mittermeier. He is a German comic, but did most of his stand-up in English. I thought he was quite good, although as a warm-up he started 20 minutes before the actual gig itself. I'd definitely check him out should he play in Berlin again.
Howard was fantastic, a comedian on top form. The gig was also very intimate, with a lot of back-and-forth crowd interaction and a whole 15 minutes at the start about Germany and Berlin in particular. I would say about half of the audience were Brits, with the rest being German or other nationalities, and there were definitely British nuances I suspect the Germans didn't understand. Howard was on stage for nearly two hours, such was his flow, and covered most aspects of his recent live show. We hadn't seen this - indeed we haven't seen a UK comedy act since 2019 - and boy have we missed it. It was a truly wonderful and hilarious evening that made me yearn to watch comedy again. We even grabbed a beer at the small lobby bar, with me pouncing immediately after Mittermeier had finished his set.
As the show started so early, it was finished by 9:15pm, which gave us a good chunk of the evening left. We thought of heading down to Manifest but en route, we were distracted by the Prater Garden. This is an outside beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg and is probably the perfect place to sit in the sun. Alas, it was nightfall when we walked past, but as we had been meaning to go, we thought we would pop in. It is quite a big space with a wooden hut at one side serving drinks and a wooden hut on the other which acts as a restaurant. It's nestled in between brick houses and some former industry, making for a unique landscape. We grabbed a half litre of standard German pilsner and had a great time sitting outside before moving on to Manifest. We had two beers here - the first outside and the second inside as we weren't allowed to stay out on the terrace beyond 11pm due to noise laws. We got chatting to the barman here, who is from Michigan but knew a lot about the German beer scene. We were dismayed to discover that Braugier has closed down as this is one of our favourite bars and breweries, while our back-and-forth on all the breweries in Berlin was really insightful. It is always good to know what's going on with the scene here. The beers we had at Manifest, many of them from Protokoll, were really good too but we could only stay for two as the bar was cash only on Thursday (due to their credit card machines failing) and we only had €35 of cash with us. Still, we did leave after midnight and although Wolfie was a little disappointed as he wanted to drink some more (and had even suggested The Castle) I said we needed to go back as it was getting late and we had a trip to go on the next morning. I felt a little bad about this and felt I had let Wolfie down, but I was also feeling quite tipsy too by this point and knew one more beer would be a bad idea. I think my headache the next morning proved this conclusion right.
Last week was a good week in elections, with Canada electing the Liberals and Australia electing the Labor Party. The only blot was of course the UK, where Reform surpassed expectations and won a swathe of councils and mayoral races. This included my mother's council and she is far from happy. I know most people don't pay attention to politics, but rewarding the very group of people who have inflicted so much damage on the country through Brexit to address the very problems that they themselves have caused seems counterintuitive to me. I get that people are angry and Labour's Reform tribute act isn't helping, but I fail to see how this merry band of misfits are going to improve anything. It seems like a retrograde step, but then things change quickly. Four years ago, when these seats were last up for election, it was at the height of Boris Johnson's vaccine bounce and look where the Tories are now. The hope is that the left will have gotten their act together before the next General Election in four years' time. I fear they won't though.
Thursday was a national holiday, meaning Wolfie was off, but I swapped out Thursday for Friday as we were due to go on another trip. We would have gone a day earlier had we not booked to see Russell Howard live. This was at the Coliseum near Schonhauser Allee and it was touch-and-go as to whether Wolfie could make it as all of our recent cheese eating had triggered his bad foot (it is good, at least, to have this diagnosis confirmed). Fortunately, he could just about limp there, so joined me in the world's hottest auditorium as it was 25C outside and the heat at percolated its way in. The Coliseum is a converted cinema into an arts venue so we basically saw Russell in an intimate setting with about 300 people. This was a far cry from the sell-out arena tours he does in the UK. This European tour seemed to cover some strange destinations including Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia, but to see him in close proximity was a real thrill. It was a free for all regarding seats so we got there a little early - aided by work being light - and so we managed to sit right in the middle of one of the middle rows, allowing Wolfie to avoid using the stairs. This meant the view was splendid, both for Howard and support act Mike Mittermeier. He is a German comic, but did most of his stand-up in English. I thought he was quite good, although as a warm-up he started 20 minutes before the actual gig itself. I'd definitely check him out should he play in Berlin again.
Howard was fantastic, a comedian on top form. The gig was also very intimate, with a lot of back-and-forth crowd interaction and a whole 15 minutes at the start about Germany and Berlin in particular. I would say about half of the audience were Brits, with the rest being German or other nationalities, and there were definitely British nuances I suspect the Germans didn't understand. Howard was on stage for nearly two hours, such was his flow, and covered most aspects of his recent live show. We hadn't seen this - indeed we haven't seen a UK comedy act since 2019 - and boy have we missed it. It was a truly wonderful and hilarious evening that made me yearn to watch comedy again. We even grabbed a beer at the small lobby bar, with me pouncing immediately after Mittermeier had finished his set.
As the show started so early, it was finished by 9:15pm, which gave us a good chunk of the evening left. We thought of heading down to Manifest but en route, we were distracted by the Prater Garden. This is an outside beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg and is probably the perfect place to sit in the sun. Alas, it was nightfall when we walked past, but as we had been meaning to go, we thought we would pop in. It is quite a big space with a wooden hut at one side serving drinks and a wooden hut on the other which acts as a restaurant. It's nestled in between brick houses and some former industry, making for a unique landscape. We grabbed a half litre of standard German pilsner and had a great time sitting outside before moving on to Manifest. We had two beers here - the first outside and the second inside as we weren't allowed to stay out on the terrace beyond 11pm due to noise laws. We got chatting to the barman here, who is from Michigan but knew a lot about the German beer scene. We were dismayed to discover that Braugier has closed down as this is one of our favourite bars and breweries, while our back-and-forth on all the breweries in Berlin was really insightful. It is always good to know what's going on with the scene here. The beers we had at Manifest, many of them from Protokoll, were really good too but we could only stay for two as the bar was cash only on Thursday (due to their credit card machines failing) and we only had €35 of cash with us. Still, we did leave after midnight and although Wolfie was a little disappointed as he wanted to drink some more (and had even suggested The Castle) I said we needed to go back as it was getting late and we had a trip to go on the next morning. I felt a little bad about this and felt I had let Wolfie down, but I was also feeling quite tipsy too by this point and knew one more beer would be a bad idea. I think my headache the next morning proved this conclusion right.
