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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Prenzlauer Berg, and all of central Berlin come to think of it, is a cafe society. Cafes are everywhere, full, it seems, most times of the day. Hardly surprising given that half the town seems to be freelancing; editing, designing, web-producing, screenplay writing, screenplay designing – I’ve lost count of freelance filmmakers, writers, journos, playwrights, and designers I’ve shared a quick chat with over ein kaffe bitte.

Everyone is freelance, including Ricardo, an italian journalist filtering out yarns about the Berlin capital. “I on’t know anyone here with  ull-time job,” he says, pating his dog nder the table at Cafe Liebling, a trendy wifi-friendly coffee and cake shop in Dunckertsrasse, on Helmholtz Platz.

With all this freelancing, with its intermittent pay and limited conditions (ie none), people seem to have little or no money. Funny then they hang around in cafes where a coffee is €2 a pop. The answer is, order once, and pay once, but sit there all day. Hardly a great business model for cafe owners who are probably as poor as their customers.

I glance over at my bike; there’s a five-year-old looking at it. Leave. The. Bike. Alone, my mind thinks. My expression works on a different premise. I smile at the mum, as if saying, “aaaah, how cute”. Glad mum doesn’t realise I’m really thinking, “if your kid so much as attempts to bolt crop my steel-reinforced padlock and dose the rottweiler next to it with rohipnol or poisoned meat chunks, I shall have words!”

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