Mountain climbing in Berlin

I cycled up the tallest, most fearsome peak in the whole of Berlin at midnight last night. Teufelsberg is a 120 m high mountain in the former West Berlin, built from 75,000,000 m3 of rubble deposited there after the war. Buried underneath the mountain is an incomplete Nazi military-technical school designed by Albert Speer.

The USA’s NSA organisation decided it would be a great idea to build one of their largest spy installations on top of the mountain during the 1960’s. The original spy domes and their protective fencing are still there.

I can neither confirm nor deny if someone may have breached the outer perimeter to inspect the domes at close range 😉

The dome

The moon was so bright that we could barely see any stars out.

The entrance to the domes

This is the entrance to the facility.

Our group of explorers

Our group of explorers admiring the domes in all their moonlit glory.

Barbed wire surrounding the dome

There is double barbed wire fencing surrounding the top of the hill to protect the domes. Guards roam the grounds 24/7, so anyone entering after hours should be super careful.

The dome

The domes looked beautiful in front of the full-moon.

F16 Fighting Falcon

My bedroom back in the 1980’s was adorned with multiple models of the F16 Fighting Falcon, an American fighter jet which capture my imagination after watching the overly cheesy movie Iron Eagle. Fast forward quite a few years, and I eventually got the chance to see some first hand at the Berlin Airshow earlier this year. The sound of them flying is incredible, as is the phenomenal acceleration.

F16 fighter jet against the clouds

F16 fighter jet on the ground

F16 fighter jet against the sun

F16 fighter jet

F16 fighter jet

A steep climb, including dropping counter measures, with extra photoshopping to show the plume better

A steep climb, including dropping counter measures, with extra photoshopping to show the plume better

A steep climb, including dropping counter measures. I did some "Photoshopping" (I actually used the GIMP) to show up the exhaust plume and counter measures better.

A steep climb, including dropping counter measures. I did some “Photoshopping” (I actually used the GIMP) to show up the exhaust plume and counter measures better.

WordCamp Norway

No I haven’t been visiting Oslo recently, but I forgot to post these pictures from WordCamp Norway, a conference I was attending there back in January.

WordCamp dinner

WordCamp dinner

WordCamp dinner

We stopped off at the palace after dinner. I used to live not far from here back when I lived in Oslo.

We stopped off at the palace after dinner. I used to live not far from here back when I lived in Oslo.

My new apartment :)

I learned a valuable lesson recently. You should never agree to move into a new apartment without seeing it first, no matter how temporary the arrangement may be! I was intending to stay somewhere for a month until I found somewhere more permanent. I didn’t have a chance to see it before moving in; the pictures looked fine though, so I figured it’d do. On moving in, I found out that it came with a screaming child covered in filth, a kitchen full of rubbish and dirty diapers and the bed in my room was full of food and dirt. I stripped the bed down to the mattress, cleaned it as best I could and tried to go to sleep. I then began puking my insides out (food poisoning) and bailed off to a hotel around lunch time where I stayed for two days until moving just out of the city to a house kindly lent by my friend Caroline. I told the landlord that I wasn’t intending to stay there because it was too dirty and that I’d return the keys some time before October 19th, when my rent was paid until. She was furious and demanded I return the keys immediately. Somehow she missed the logic that I had no reason to return keys for a room I was still paying rent for. I won’t bore you with the whole conversation, but here’s the highlights …

Tomorrow my husband will be be here. We will find you anyway, you cant hide … I
have all details from you. We will find you anyway … Pray to god that we will not find, you you dont know us!
Edited for Grammar and spelling corrections

The police have now had a chat with her and have asked her to come to the police station where she can pick up her keys (which I left with them). Sheesh.

After that debacle, I moved into an AirBNB place for a few days before moving into my much newer, much cleaner, and all round awesome little apartment 🙂 I have three rooms, one is more of a hallway, a living area and my bedroom (which is oddly triangle shaped) and a shared bathroom/kitchen. A quick trip to IKEA had me fully kitted out with furniture. Awesomesauce 🙂

ringbahn-living-room

ringbahn-bedroom

If you have any advice on how to fit a rectangular bed into a triangular bedroom, please let me know in the comments 🙂