You know… I’ve been in such a
trance for the last 2 years that I forgot entirely about my blog- that I should
update it, that I should check it out, look at the stats of people who have
looked at it, pondered over how it came to be that I have several views from
Mozambique… considered that I even have a blog! The trials and tribulations of
the big city Berlin life, eh’?! Blog writing, or more so, having the chance to
engage upon it, really is a middle-classed decadence. I guess in the days that
I established mine and kept it updated relatively regularly, I was usually
procrastinating from doing my German homework, or avoiding cycling in to my old
part-time job in the lab up north of Berlin, Buch. Or just…not being so
goddamned busy! Now I am SO GODDAMNED BUSY!
And let me tell ya… the things I’ve
experienced since I last updated the world through my blog! Meine Fresse!
I digress, however.
It occurred to me this morning, whilst Skyping with one of my ol’ childhood besties (who will join me in Berlin in precisely 1 WEEK for a little European sojourn…finally!), who has an insatiable appetite for abandoned buildings and BERLIN abandoned buildings in particular (as did I), that yes, I used to explore these wherever possible, and in fact, I even had (have!) a painstakingly tricky to update (due to outrageous photo uploading time) blog about said ‘abandoned Berlin gallivanting’. This very blog you’re looking at now.
I also met the hop farmer, Sepp. He was the sweetest chap; with his rosy red cheeks and a warm heart, he excitedly offered me a bottle of his home brew, brewed using hop varieties he had created himself through hop breeding programs. As he proudly showed us the 3 new hop varieties this year has seen, I stood back and marvelled at how I came to be standing there- chilly and tired but with baffling amounts of energy.
Brewing Cristal's Raspberry Blonde Ale, circa August 2015
Addition of the 50kg of raspberries into the fermenter
A visit back to the homeland: Christmas with the Fam Jam, 2015
It occurred to me this morning, whilst Skyping with one of my ol’ childhood besties (who will join me in Berlin in precisely 1 WEEK for a little European sojourn…finally!), who has an insatiable appetite for abandoned buildings and BERLIN abandoned buildings in particular (as did I), that yes, I used to explore these wherever possible, and in fact, I even had (have!) a painstakingly tricky to update (due to outrageous photo uploading time) blog about said ‘abandoned Berlin gallivanting’. This very blog you’re looking at now.
I also met the hop farmer, Sepp. He was the sweetest chap; with his rosy red cheeks and a warm heart, he excitedly offered me a bottle of his home brew, brewed using hop varieties he had created himself through hop breeding programs. As he proudly showed us the 3 new hop varieties this year has seen, I stood back and marvelled at how I came to be standing there- chilly and tired but with baffling amounts of energy.
And it got me thinkin’… about times gone by.
Thinkin’ got me curious. Curiosity got me googlin’. I googled my blog, saw it was still there, had a little skim through my words and a deep chested chuckle at just how long ago that world now seems to have been…
Thinkin’ got me curious. Curiosity got me googlin’. I googled my blog, saw it was still there, had a little skim through my words and a deep chested chuckle at just how long ago that world now seems to have been…
Somehow I then felt a motivation to smash another entry out. But this time…about what?!
LONG SINCE retired from my foolish exploratory antics all those years ago, my older age has seen me instead resort to spending my rare and valued days off from work or travel sitting in the comforts of my cosy little apartment in Neukölln, Skyping with my family and friends in Straya, inviting friends to sit with me for Frühstück (breaky) at my large bay windows and listen to the Turkish bakers down below screaming boorishly at one another as obnoxious music blares and wafts of rotting bin juice drift into my coffee cup, or, on the rare occasion of me feeling guilt at not stepping outside on those days, I pressure myself into hitting up a Flohmarkt (fleamarket), which always make my heart flutter happily but in ways that make me angry at myself for not trying to get up and out of the house earlier since now the vendors all seem to be closing up their stands and I have only just arrived… complex feelings, them there.
Today has been one of those days, though I’ve not yet managed to get out of the apartment, and given that it is already 6pm, there is no chance I’ll make any markets, nor see any of these last summer time sunrays before this imminent Autumn looms in with its leaf stripping powers.
So much has happened over the last 2 years that I don’t feel capable of filling in the gaps. My entire existence has back flipped. But going back even further than Berlin alone, it strikes me that there was once a time when I was getting up at 6am to make my way into the staffroom at St. Albans Secondary Collage to prepare my lessons for a bunch of year 7, 8 and 9 brats as I endured that first-year of teaching’s compulsory baptism of fire thanks to the worst allotment possible. That existence could be aeons ago. I’m not even sure I’d be eligible to teach these days… there are tattoos on my arms.
I recently updated my curriculum vitae, motivated by my visiting Dad and a pure evil woman I’ve been working with. As I commenced updating the ‘Employment & Experience’ section, it struck me that the jumping around of professions from scientist to teacher to scientist to teacher to scientist to brewer…could be misconstrued as discontentedness. Would that be a misconstruction? Or perhaps a sober realisation.
Not trying to get deep here or anything, but…
If there is one constant in this chaos of a past 6 years or so, it is, funnily enough the aspect in which this blog was named after: beer.
Earlier this week I woke up at 5am to head out into the hop fields of the Hallertauer to harvest a couple of hundreds of kilos of fresh comet and cascade hop cones the size of my (very long) tongue to help out an esteemed brewer boyfriend of mine brew a wet hop IPA which will hit the market in 6 weeks or so. Just writing that paragraph makes me a little giddy. I can’t believe how happy doing that made me.
A snap shot of the last couple of years in picture form:
Brewing Cristal's Raspberry Blonde Ale, circa August 2015
Addition of the 50kg of raspberries into the fermenter 
A visit back to the homeland: Christmas with the Fam Jam, 2015
Brewing Cristal's Raspberry Blonde Ale, circa August 2015
Artwork done by my delightful Aunty Jude, Melbourne, Straya
The collaboration of the decade: Raspberry Fields Forever, a hoppy Raspberry Ale & Red Shadows, a dark ale. Mad collage making skillz acquired in my new role as Bierlieb manager ;)
Photo credit: Athanasios Boucharas, Braust 2016
Had my first photo shoot! That was, awkward. They put lipstick on me. Braufest Berlin, 2016.
Brewing a wet hop IPA with hop cones the size of...well, reference hop cones against pint of beer for ratio. September 2016.
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