Doing it sexy

I was prepared for many obstacles to my making a go of it here in Berlin to present themselves. I was sure, for example, that my lack of regard for the rules of German grammar would eventually catch me out in some way. I thought it was possible that my range of vocabulary would be too limited for me to hold down a job. I was prepared for everybody to want to speak to me in English, meaning I failed to learn as much German as I wanted to.

In fact, the main impediment to my progress at the moment is something so familiar to me that being reminded of it's presence is like being reunited with that teddy bear you spent your life carrying around as a toddler: comforting, if somewhat embarrassing. I'm talking about my incurable, incapacitating clumsiness.

On reflection, I think having been sacked from my bar job may have something to do with them having found the elephant's graveyard of broken bottles and glasses I'd secreted beneath the bar. When I totted up my breakages from overzealous washing up and badly filling fridges so that they became booby traps of falling bottles, and added onto it the amount of beer I'd either spilt or knocked over during my time, I calculated that they probably made a loss on me over my four shifts. And they didn't even pay me for two of them.

Today, I was photographed in a casting for an online advert for a beer company. The brief was that I needed to be able to open a bottle of beer with a lighter. The first couple of takes went well, and then the lady running the audition stepped up the level of complexity. I needed to walk forward holding two bottles, one in each hand. Then I needed to move them into the same hand, and open one with a lighter.

"And this time, do it a bit charming," she said. "You know: sexy."

Suddenly faced with all of these different tasks to think about, I lost all use of basic motor functions. My legs were like Inspector Gadget's giant telescopic appendages, and I was holding what felt like about twenty different bottles of beer in my hands, which were suddenly those massive foam fists they used to wave about on Gladiators. I wrenched away at the top of one of the bottles, and it exploded into the air, the lid knocking into the camera stand as a sticky spray of warm lager covered me and the floor. I leered at the camera.

"That was sweet," said the lady maternally, giving me a look somewhere in between pity and amusement that my incorrigible clumsiness always seems to invite. "We'll call you, ok?"

Don't Mention The...

Although I was unsurprisingly not invited back for more shifts at the cafe where I was so relentlessly rubbish, I was asked to be photographed again. This time, I could keep my trousers on: they asked me to pose as a man with a scar on his chest following a heart bypass, and a corpse.

I'm delighted to say that as you might expect from a German agency, they're taking their brief unrelentingly literally. They've been commissioned to produce pictures that will deter people from smoking. So far I've seen (or been involved in): man lying on the bed looking sad; man touching scar looking sad; woman in wheelchair looking sad; man blowing smoke into sad-looking child's face; and, finally, melancholy corpse.

The shoot took place in a disused hospital on the edge of the city. The building disconcertingly gives the impression that it was deserted in a hurry; that everybody just went home one day and didn't come back. The staff rota is still on the wall, as is the mobile number of the stand-in nurse. The cupboards are full of prescriptions. Most of the beds are made. I kept thinking I was going to walk into a room and find a patient still there, mouldering quietly away.

From somewhere in this bizarre building, they'd dug out a body bag to photograph me in. "Don't worry," said the stylist. "I cleaned it."

They put me in and zipped me most of the way up. The photographer leaned over me menacingly. "This is for Dresden," he said, and zipped the bag up to the top.

So there's another of my questions answered. You can make jokes about the war.

Naked Lunch

I've been really excited this week because I got picked for a modelling job. I'd pretty much forgotten about it as I'd sent my photo off a month ago, but I received an email a few days ago confirming that I'd be needed, and that I'd get more details nearer the time.

Then, the day before the shoot, I recieved the following email:

Hi Tom

This is approximately what we need you to do.

Today was the day of the shoot, and I spent 15 minutes lying on the floor on a fake bed made of polystyrene, completely starkers and curled up in the foetal position. The scene was made even more surreal by the photographer and his assistant, who were standing on stepladders to get a better shot of me, shouting at me in comedy German accents. I was asked variously to demonstrate more 'power'; to writhe around and grab my hair; to cry in anguish; and finally to rearrange my legs to better protect my modesty.

All in all, quite the strangest job I've ever done. And it answers one of the questions we've often mulled over at work: how much would you need to be paid to come into work completely naked? At €100 and a couple of slices of pizza, it turns out my price is credit-crunchin' low.

Coffee

I've had my first few trial shifts in a couple of bars over the last week in Berlin.  Being a barkeeper here is somewhat different to working at my local in the Essex countryside.  There, all you needed to do was wipe the taps thoughtfully now and then with a damp cloth and occasionally produce a warm pint of muddy water for the gnarled old men huddling silently at the bar.  The Germans demand rather more of their bar staff.

After 15 hours of work, I've learnt every insane combination of drink you can guzzle in this bizarre country (banana and cherry juice, anybody?).  I can just about get my head round serving beer which is 40% froth in a glass the size of a large infant.  I can even handle being paid at a trial rate which puts me a rung below the technoslaves working away on Apple's Chinese production line.  I just can't work the bloody coffee frother.

It doesn't help that nobody can show me the precise technique for achieving froth Nirvana; instead, I've been told I need to 'feel' it, much as I imagine a jazz musician feels their way through a jam session.  I've seen it demonstrated - mostly when my exasperated co-worker whips the test-tube Vesuvius I'm creating out of my hands and with a graceful movement gently brings forth a delicate cloud of froth.  One of them even suggested I start talking to the coffee machine, or praying to it like some horrible god.

My inability to produce good-quality froth makes me feel inadequate with an intensity I've not experienced since I was a teenager.  The waitresses whisper to one another as I skitter along the bar, scalding myself on the latest hastily-made coffee I've crowned with limp burnt milk:

  "Look at that, the new guy can't even make half-decent froth."

  "I know, it's pathetic.  Do you know he can't satisfy a woman in bed?"

  "I hear he's got a willy like a damp Wotsit."

In truth, I'm struggling to muster up the energy required to master this absurd triviality.  Why do people need to have their coffees topped off with a decorative  hump of aerated lactose anyway?  The wretched stuff disappears as soon as you put your spoon into it.

But I'm going to need to learn it.  Somehow, inexplicably, I've been invited back to do a paid shift in the week, despite the quality of my work ranging from unacceptable to barely adequate.  The coffee machine and I are now tied in an unhappy marriage of convenience.

So while I battle to learn this dark art I entreat you: next time you order a posh coffee, please spare a thought for the poor bugger who probably burnt half his fingers off perfecting that pointless milky top.

 

Fire!

 Even the fire stations in Berlin are covered in cool graffiti.  Who wouldn't want to be a fireman heroically carrying a scantily clad blonde from a burning building?

What you can't see is further down the building: the fire was started by an enormous dragon.

And the fire engines, incidentally, are luminous orange.  Nice touch.

€mployment

I had my first paid work this week, teaching English to six separate classes of middle-aged engineers.  The language school I walked into by chance to drop off my CV had double booked one of their teachers for the week, and so were happy to disregard my lack of any kind of teaching qualification.

The brief from them was clear, and the bar was high.  "The most important thing is that you arrive.  I don't care what happens in the lesson, they'll just be pleased to have someone there to speak English with.  But if you don't turn up, that's bad."

I did turn up, taught my lessons with some success, and went to the company's HR department to pick up my timesheet.  It was a trademark HR office: miles away from the rest of the business, full of women and completely bonkers.  It reminded me of the amazing admin office in Green Wing.

 Here's a conversation I had with their HR Director on my last day which could have come straight from that show:

HRD:  So did you enjoy your time teaching here?

ME:  Yes, very much.  I'd like to come back.

HRD:  Well, you've certainly made an impression.  I hear your methods are quite unusual - climbing and dancing on the table?

ME:  Um, I was trying to teach prepositions.  You know: over, on top of, underneath...

HRD:  Excuse me, can I interrupt you for a moment?

ME:  Yes.

HRD:  I've been wanting to say this to you all week.  You smell amazing.  Brigitte, look, come here...

At this point, I was smelt by a small group of women who all agreed that yes, I did smell lovely.

The good news is that I escaped unmolested and have now earnt my very first Euros.  I'll let you know if I get invited back for some more table dancing - hopefully of the academic kind.