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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Eva is the most trusting person I have met so far. Well, I didn’t actually meet her. but that’s what makes her so trusting. Eva is away on holiday, you see, miles away on the Baltic, but it doesn’t stop her renting out her spare room. She has left her details with the exberliner flat renting agency and the keys with the neighbour.

It’s €125 per week, still cheaper than a private room in a nearby hostel, and she has one bedroom/office, with a small living room, and a kitchen, with a sizeable south-facing roof terrace/balcony. The neighbour, who has hurt her thumb and is off work, shows me in.

Eva is happy for me to move in if I like it even though she will not there be there for nigh on two weeks. “It’s OK, I trust you,” she says.

The words still jar. She has not even met me, yet … She … Trusts…. Me. It sticks in the craw. Why should she? Dumkopft, is she mad? Nein.

No one in Berlin seems mad, just trusting, accommodating, nice, friendly. Mad then? Probably not.

Her neighbour – let’s call her Frau Schmidt – must be mad, too. She just leaves me the keys after showing me a cursory glance of the living space, Despite my best attempts to tell her I am seeing more apartments, she leaves, putting the keys in my hand. A middle-aged east Berliner, she has had little or no schooling in English, though she probably speaks perfect Russian.

I have to ring the agency to explain to her. “Katja, the Germans are being nice again, help!”

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Soo-eun is a Korean stage and costume designer; by that I don’t mean she specialises in Korean stage and costume, even in cosmopolitan Berlin, that’s pushing it a bit. Come to think of it, there’s not many courses in Korean stage and costume design, although they are doing rather well at it apparently. Anyways, Soo-eun’s name kinda gives it away, nein?

Soo-eun has been in Berlin for three years, freelancing at the opera houses and theatres, she wored in Prague beforehand. She needs to rent out her room, by the month, or even by the week, if need be. In Berlin, everyone is seemingly a freelancer, and every freelancer needs  more money.

Her flat, according to the advert in the flatshare site www.easywg.de is right by the TV tower, at Alexanderplatz (Alex, for short), the mecca cum showpiece of the former GDR. Alex resembles Croydon, albeit with a f***-off 365metre-high TV tower, no Starbucks and little or no knife crime. It was the GDR landmark but one whose gleaming metal-panelled orb reflects a crucifix when the sun shines, nicht brilliant for a former country that banned crucifixes even on churches.

Great view from the lounge it may be – actually, it isn’t, you can only see the concrete stem, we are so near (which by the way is covered in graffiti adverts and slogans for Deutsche Telecom). You have to crook your neck up as if you are being lynched and then place your cheek right on the window to s much as even glimpse the top. Besides, there is nothing at Alexanderplatz here to do or see for Berliners; you know, real Berliners, locals like me.

I was lucky to find Soo-eun’s pad; as with many GDR blocks, the government saved money by putting lift entrances on every third floor. To access the 7th I have to grab a lift to the 6th and walk up. Trouble is, the 7th floor is a misnomer. There are a 7th and an 8th floor, but they are but a series of mini-landings accessed up stairs leading off the main corridors. Soo-eun’s flat is one of them. I’m hopelessly lost in a GDR council block. I need rescuing. Where is the Korean stage and costume designer cavalry when you need them.

Lovely as she may be, and cheap though the rent is (100 euros a week, beat that Croydon) the flat is sparse, too sparse, and Soo-eun works from home most days. her desk is plonked smack bang in the middle of the lounge, which has a TV in the corner and a small sofa opposite.

There, too, is no wifi – not in the plan. I re-emphasise that I was only looking and tell her I’ll have a think after seeing more flats. Besides, does she really want a flatmate, however temporarily who plans to roll in drunk every other night. “I don’t mind”, she says, “it will be good to have company.”

God, my guilt oozes for every pore.

Tim Berlin GDR, Berlin accommodation, Berlin walls, Berlin work, Entertainment, Mitte, Sightseeing, apartments, berlin, photos Accommodation, Alexanderplatz, berlin, Berlin accommodation, Croydon, Deutsche Telecom, freelance, Korean stage and costume design, Mitte