If there’s one thing liable to put you off smoking, it’s waking up in the morning, ambling onto the balcony, lighting up a tab and staring at a funeral parlour, full-on in the face. The coffins, all oak and mahogany, almost rubbing their handles gleefully as they stare blankly at you.

It’s depressing, though not as depressing as waking up at 7.30am each day to the sound of drilling and banging, and a balcony on Falkensteinstrasse, Kreuzberg, that resembles a war zone; albeit a war zone ensconced in scaffolding.

Not just scaffolding. It seems the works does not involve repainting, per se, but insulation. The Turkish builders are lining the facier with six-inch thick mottled grey and white polystyrene, cemented to the wall and then cut away, before facing with plaster and filling with some sort of insulating goo. I wonder what colour they will eventually paint it. I rather like the mottled hue; it’s rather now, so textile.

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“I live with 26 people,” Natalia proclaims, “in the Happy House”. At 9am on a Sunday, I must either forgive her English, or my hearing. I’m sure she said 26, but we have been out all night, German beer is strong, and well, my eardrums have been perforated by techno.

She repeats: “Twenty-six.”
Oh, a commune? Ja!

Images of sixties’ free love or 80s crusty new-age squatters mince to the fore. Other senses stir, menacingly: petunia oil, for one, and dogs on string leads, yapping infinitum. Yeesh!

Berlin is fabled for squats and communes. Stroll down the industrial Kopenicker Strasse, parallel to the river in Kreuzberg leading to Mitte, past the swanky post-industrial riverside bar/restaurant/clubs of Spindler and Klatz or Watergate, and brash, near derelict squats abound, bordered by abanded shopping trolleys, rusting bikes, fenced off with makeshift metal fences draped in slogans shouting the latest political cause. “Spreefeu for alles”, “Nein A100”; “Squat the airport.”

Natalia’s commune is different. Way different. And during her guided tour of her less than humble abode, I’m distinctly impressed. For entree, it’s on the long wide boulevard of Potsdamerstrasse, in Schoneberg, the central west Berlin borough bordered to the east by Kreuzberg, and west by upmarket Charlottenberg. And it boasts a recording studio, a gym, some super-large, neat and well-equipped kitchens, and roof gardens.

Natalia has lucked out. Living a bohemian, frugal life for six months, while working “remote” in Berlin for an international fashion and arts magazine, she has ended up in a groovy commune.

How? “I don’t know.”
“Were you invited?” “Yes, but it’s not so simple. You have to pass a interview, with the committee.”

Here, in this typical Berlin Prussian townhouse block, live 26 untypical people, an array of types you’d never fathom could share life under one roof: a Swiss punk, fabled apparently in the London squatter movement of the 70s and a German air stewardess; a French artist and German communist journalist wit a penchant for DDR furniture; an Italian multimedia artist, an accountant, a carpenter, a Czech musician and a Brazilian illustrator.

Well, it’s not one roof, per se: it’s many roofs, on many levels, skirting ahigh the ubiquitous courtyard, some covered in gardens, some stretches in tiles or concrete, all housing a sprawling, labyrinthine alternative life being lived out in various rooms, mini-flats, kitchens, toilets, stairwells and grass roofs taking in numerous apartments, meandering about on various inter-connected levels, like a maze, albeit with no dead ends.

Accepted by the committee as a temporary guest, Natalia pays 180 euros a month, with minor add-ons for the internet and a charge for “food and non-food” (you know, the stuff you eat and the stuff you don’t eat, like bleach, and toilet paper, and washing-up liquid). Members have allotted roles, depending on skills – the unskilled cook, and clean. Some garden. It works like a dream, says Natalia.

She gives us the full tour. Her room peels off the first floor landing, through an unlocked two-bed “flat” she shares with the Swiss punk. How Swiss is he? “Not very.”

Her quarters are sealed off by a concrete door. “I think his old neighbour had a drinking problem,” she says. So it was divided off, with a mini-Berlin concrete wall slab.

Across the landing stands a sprawling kitchen, large enough for two big sofas and a big breakfast bar. It’s the party area, where the members on this floor, and this side of the building, share cooking and clean-up duties, and partying. Beyond the kitchen lies a back staircase, another room – “this is more private, a couple live here” – and upstairs to more rooms. Before you know it, you are on the roof, covered in grass and soil, boasting plants and vegetables, and other green stuff you smoke. Some commune stereotypes must persist.

The tour throws up a dingey ground-floor recording studio, a room covered in egg cartons, for soundproofing. Next door is a laundry room. There’s a games room, too, and a gym, equipped with treadmill, exercise bike and weights, no less. Upstairs on the fourth floor lies another secret garden, and a boiler room, and another laundry room. The Happy House is massive.

So how does it work? Natalia explains, earnestly. There’s a committee, of all 26 people, who debate goings on, events, difficulties, problems. Apparently the debates can get pretty acrimonious. One night, a drunken householder scrawled some pro-Palestinian graffiti on the living room wall. The committee met to discuss retribution: should he clean it off, leave it, or paint the whole living room? No one could decide, largely because everyone must agree.

“And if someone does not agree?” “Then we leave it.”

The commune is owned by a leftwing-minded man, who treats it much like a housing trust. All the tenants have to do is pay the rent and the bills, and they can do what they like, for as long as they like. Some people have lived here for decades. Children have passed through, too, although when they reach 18 they must pay up the rent or move on.

It seems the only reason why one would leave.

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I was warned. Martina’s apartment in eastern Kreuzberg, where I am now staying, is expecting a “facelift”. What Martina meant to say was “full-on facial reconstruction, mitt plastic surgery and bone transplant, performedwith pneumatic drill”.

OK, that’ a bit hard to say if you are German, despite all their flair with English. Perhaps she should have mimed it, dancing around with a hammer, smacking it against metal and stone structures, and shouting Turkish phrases such as”Woy oy, Mesmet, put the kettle on son, I’m gasping.” This may, or may not have sunk in a bit more. “Oh, I see, what you are saying is, ‘where I’m staying is gonna resemble the wholesale reconstruction of postwar Berlin, albeit focused entirely outside my bedroom wndow, all at one time and not spread over three decades!”

The facade in Falkensteinstrasse, a cute road stuffed with Turkish cafes, ice-cream parlours, retro furniture shops, bars and eateries, is covered in scaffolding, and on this Wednesday morning, at 7.20am, men called Mesmet and Anatoly loudly discussing something worthy of loud discussion.

By 7.40am they are ripping off the rusting old flowerboxes, albeit gently, as if a slight tug every five seconds may not wake me. Well it has, Mesmet, it has woken me. Slight, but loud, repetition does that pre 8am!

I feel like going outside onto the balcony and remonstrating – well, I would, if the old French doors weren’t stuck fast, swathed in sticky plastic sheeting designed to protect the glass (actually, it’s blue-tinted, making me feel as if I’m living on the wrong side of an aquarium): “Look chaps, just give it some serious welly, then I won’t be woken by the odious clang of clawhammer on rusting metal every five to 10 seconds. Go large, Mesmet, go grosse!”

Of course, bleary-eyed, a tad hangover and bandaged solely in boxer shorts, one shouldn’t try to correct a Turkish builder armed with a clawhammer.

Martina said I would be lucky, that for my minor stay here, the builders would not be starting work until  28 – I took that as meaning June 28; sadly, what she meant was 20 to eight. In other words, in English, NOW! 7.40am. Bang on the dot, with German punctuality, they go at it.

Martina, by the way, is now safely ensconsed in Bristol, at some urban planning symposium, probably in some lush Georgian mansion, serenaded each morning by wafts of Mozart and her frohstuck brought to her by a handsome man called Bristol Dave.

I’m renting her room for a fortnight. The Germans, being mildly thrifty – I said thrifty, not tight – are wont to do this. Websites serve such a purpose. The room-renter buggers off for two weeks, or a month, and they let it out to outsiders. People like me. This would not happen in England.

It’s very trusting of Martina, although her condition is contagious in Germany. Her flatmates are very trusting, too. Within minutes of meeting Diana  – a hospital anaesthetist (a profession that would appear handy at 7.40am this Wednesday morning, what with Mesmet and the Clawhammers knocking seven bails of scheisse out of my windowbox) – she has offered to lend me her car, to visit far flung places such as Spandau. Christine, the other flatty, currently applying for jobs, is also very friendly, and keen on meeting new flatmates. But at 7.40am, all she can lend this tired Englishman is her sympathy.

Sorry but that’s not good enough Christina. Perhaps you can put on my boxer shorts and go outside on the balcony and tell them to zip it until 11am. Come to think of it, that may work!

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Here arrives my first flatshare dilemma. Do German women prefer the toilet seat down, with the lid up, ready for instant access, or both up, or both down? Mein gott, I’m gonna have to ask or cause more Anglo-German rivalry!

Die toiletten in this old Prussian Kreuzberg apartment is bizarre. Encased in a separate room, just left by the front door, the WC is internatinally normal – long and narrow, almost an architectural afterthought.

However,  the toilet space takes up only half the acreage. What confuses is the long, long, slightly rising shelf which extends back to the small window, about two metres away. Attached is a metal window bar, about two metres long, a tad bent, which you twist when you want to open the window, for der freshen air, ja? It’s cute, albeit in a slightly rustic, possibly primevil way.

Anyways, Welcome to my new abode. I’m renting a room off Martina, who is off to the UK on study leave. Anxious to claw back some cash on her rent in Bristol she has rented it out for two weeks to me, at significantly lower rates than even the cheapest private room in a hostel. I’m glad; it was between me and a German Swiss chap visiting a university here, and I won: “Ja, boo, sucks to you Deutche-Swiss. I got the nod!”

This flat has grosse charm, as nearly all old Prussian apartments in Berlin. Accessed by a Munster-esque huge four-metre high wooden street door – yes, brown, again, and smothered in de rigeur tagging and graffitti – its dank, bare lobby, scarred only by seemingly abandoned prams and bikes leads beyond to a sprawling courtyard; a patch of grass offering a playzone for kids, and a cycle rest for adults. Either side of the front door are steps up.

Martina’s three-bedroom flat boasts the typical 3.5metre high ceilings, which is kinda like living in a squash court, albeit one finished with highly ornate cornicing mitt ubiquitous ceiling rose, all replete with wide oak floorboards. In the corner nestles an old heater, covered in glazed brown tiles with steel grates for ash, coal and air – every bedroom has one, apparently. It’s a sort of inverse Victorian chimney. If chimneys were belly buttons, this would be an “outey”.

Bizarre for a 3.5metre high apartment is the bathroom. Small and compact, it seems to have been cut in half – when I stand in the shower for a douche, my head tackles the ceiling. If I angled the shower head any further up I’d water the plants in the lounge above. I have to crouch – I feel like I’m showering in a submarine. Die douche im Das Boot!

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