Berlin Diaries: Summer

So I arrived in Berlin :) It's been few weeks already. My previous two visits to Europe was in winter and spring. But, Summer it seems is just great. 

Temperature is hanging around 20-30° Celsius. City looks very green, with many parks. It's rains every two or three days - light rain, compared to monsoon back home. Most of the days it's bright sunny, with cool breeze whole day. There is nice river Spree which flows through center of city. My office is just behind the river, which I very much like it. I am living in a society apartment and travel by public transport all the time, so far people seem very friendly (who said Germans are unfriendly?). Berlin streets are full of graffiti, in some cases more than expected. 

I have already been to most of popular tourist spots in Berlin in my last visit. So, I won't be much fond of visiting them again. What really excites me are small details, streets, people, parks etc. I have been trying different foods. I love sausages, and eat them all the time. Berlin has significant Turkish and Vietnamese population. I tried Falafel on first day. That was disaster, I could not even eat half of it even though I was hungry. I guess there are different types of falafel - I can't remember which one I ordered. Anyways, since then it's been no go for Turkish foods for a while(definitely want to try all of them sometime later)

Seems Berlin is quite cosmopolitan. I want to learn Deutsch, too bad that everyone speaks English with me. It doesn't seem that easy, especially pronunciation. I can't even pronounce word 'Deutsch'. How do people pronounce it? I have bookmarked this link to practice it :D I believe understanding basic written Deutsch should not be problem after some time though. My tax papers don't come in English, so I need to be able to understand them.

Deutschland has it's own keyboard layout, because there are four more characters in Deutsch than English. Keyboard was major hurdle at work for me. I tried to adapt to it for about a week. At the end, I found it too annoying for having to search for right keys instead of writing code. So had to order QUERTY keyboard.

While the type of work I do hasn't changed much - writing software for fun and profit, I am very excited to be in this city. Ich bin ein Berliner :)