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Today was the first full day for us all in Berlin and the start of the proper sightseeing with visits to the East Wall Gallery, Reichstag and other points of interest planned.

My plan started reasonably well as well as after a hearty breakfast we set off into the snow towards the East Wall Gallery, which although I had seen before was still impressive to see as there were still things to notice along it that I had missed on my previous visit – the stand out moment being the moment I saw a Mr Potatohead on the wall, perhaps not one of the original pieces adorning the wall, but a piece none the less.

The Nagelkreuz from Coventry at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis Kirche.

After visiting the East Wall Gallery we all went to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis Kirche a building that although damaged during the bombing of Berlin is still none the less an impressive building and was certainly worth visiting as this time I realised you could go inside (last time it had been surrounded by a Weihnachtsmarkt.)

After this though it was rapidly downhill on the tourism side of things as after alighting at Tiergarten an interesting looking path was noticed by one of my friends and eager to encourage them into my brand of exploration I suggested we follow it to see where it led.

I wonder what’s down here?

Whilst I have to admit I did enjoy the walk it led us on; as it was a nice riverside walk, where we were to decide to have a snowball fight I have to admit I was less of a fan of the snowman making.

Let’s all get the photographer!

There might be more of you, but my balls are bigger!

Now whilst I have to admit that the final effort wasn’t a bad snowman I’d sooner have kept on with the exploring of Berlin as the time lost wasn’t inconsiderable and the light that was lost even more important to me and my camera.

What a work of art.

After the snowman was finished the walk brought us out somewhere or other and due to a lack of a map which James had left in the hostel* we were using my patented “This way!” exploration technique which led to a strange device on what looked like an industrial estate – the device itself was I think something for catapulting snowballs across Berlin!  This led to my navigation being overruled, which to be fair did ultimately lead us to a U-bahn station.  Then it was time for food and as I had to go to the bank I wandered off on my own where I was to discover this site in the snow.

Don’t worry it isn’t a real one!

*Well, thought he had left in hostel as he found when checking his pockets some time later.

I have managed to achieve one of my ambitions of being an assistant English teacher today – getting an entire class to produce small explosive devices to take home and test.

Herr Jahn who teaches my favourite class regularly had a masterstroke of an idea a couple of weeks ago as their special Christmas lesson – make some crackers…

In Germany crackers don’t seem to be as common and from discussion it seems that if used they are used to help celebrate New Year and not Christmas as in the UK and so amongst other things I had to explain the kind of things we put in them and show them how to make them.

So in true Blue Peter style I broke out the bog rolls, crepe paper, glue and Kinder Eggs and showed them what to do and so that we had crackers that would actually bang we even had something to explode to put in them.

Herr Jahn had purchased a load of party poppers and through the addition of another piece of string it was possible to set them off by pulling on either end.  The fact the party popper was going off right by someone’s hand wasn’t important as we figured the bog roll should help shield it – besides party poppers aren’t that dangerous and testing also leads me to believe the thing might not even go off anyways.

The lesson itself went pretty well although we did have to deal with a shortage of crepe paper and the last couple of kids had to cover up gaps in the paper covering the bog roll, although as I pointed out to them that meant they had special two colour crackers unlike the rest of the class who suddenly had ‘boring, normal’ crackers thanks to my blaggery.

All that had to be added were Herr Jahn’s sweets and my carefully researched Cracker jokes and they were finished* and running off home with these untested explosives and I have to admit to being curious as to how many of these will have worked correctly.

*Although Herr Jahn and I were left with a floor to clean a bits of crap or rather crepe paper were left all over the place.

I am writing this after just having had my debut as a stand up comic and I have to admit I am glad to be sat back down again as I went down like the Hindenburg – in flames.

After two days of working on my act and finally finishing it on the train on the way to Berlin I was feeling pleased with myself, the jokes had worked well on a couple of friends that I ran them past, but the jokes weren’t the problem…

I was…

I’ve appeared on stage in enough things before and even had a couple of pretty decent roles where instead of being half a dozen bit parts I’ve been the lead man and I remember being nervous doing those – or at least I was until I got on stage, but stand up comedy is worse.

After all I wasn’t delivering the words of Shakespeare or Bond – I know I can do that. I was delivering my own lines and the lines were supposed to be funny after all I was being billed as a stand up comic and unlike with Shakespeare you don’t wait until the end for the applause, which you get even if it is only out of politeness. As a comic you have to make people laugh and suddenly confronted by an audience who were expecting me to laugh I couldn’t help but feel how inadequate my jokes were.

The hard work I’d put into devising the routine was wasted as I was overcome by stage fright and froze like a rabbit in front of a Robin Reliant – I tried, but I well and truly messed things up. I did get some laughs, but the biggest laughs were for my comments to myself about how badly things were going for me that and the story about what I said when a girl asked me, “Do you want to go to bed with me?” The only line that topped that joke was as I came offstage and muttered loud enough for people around me to hear, “And that ladies and gentlemen was my impersonation of the Titantic – sank without trace.”

It felt so weird, most of the jokes are tried and tested as they are a part of my usual patter all I did was put them into a sort of order add a few other jokes into the mix as links, but it was completely different with people there expecting me to be funny and with me deliberately trying to be funny – normally I just come out with things and people chuckle for whatever reason and I know sometimes it is at me, but that is the idea of some of it as I don’t worry if I make people laugh at me so long as I am trying to make them laugh.

I really can’t understand though why I fluffed it so bad, after all this 5-10 act had more preparation time spent on it than the 45 minute lessons I take and those generally go pretty smoothly.