burn before reading

It's noisy. Of course it's noisy. You can't wedge thirteen million people into a space without the volume going up a little. Especially if many of those people like to pray in their mosques, and need to be reminded of when to do so. The call to prayer sounds bizarre through the loudspeakers - artificial yet earnest, tradition utilising modernity to keep apace of a place that moves at a breakneck speed that it seems entirely comfortable with.

When the praying and the honking and the ringing and the shouting and the bartering and the invitations to eat all get too much, we take a ferry out to one of the Prince's Islands, Büyükada, some ten kilometres off the coast of Istanbul. There are no cars on the island, but there are packs of friendly wild dogs. We meet an American girl who lives up a hill with her boyfriend and dog, with ten more hounds staking a claim to the hill that rises up behind their little house. They are aloof, those dogs, inbred as all heck with ears pointing bizarrely at all sorts of unexpected angles, and as charming as could possibly be.

We pack up some beers and take off up the hill. The dogs follow and lead. Our own personal protection unit, constantly revolving around us, occasionally coming close for a scratch around those crazy ears. We pass through another pack's territory, and there are some growls from both the invadees and invaders. Two wild ponies appear from nowhere and gallop away, looking for a different type of tranquility to the one we've found.

We pass a sixth century monastery and arrive at the top of a cliff. Behind us, Istanbul lies like a lazy great beast, snoozing in the dusk. In front of us, the ground disappears and drops into the Sea of Marmara, stretching further than we can see. We sit, and the dogs lie all around us. In two hours we've moved from the epitome of bustling action to the most remarkable and unexpected peacefulness I've ever experienced. The power of the juxtaposition leaves us sitting in silence, reverential. The dogs lie there, occassionally nibbling at each other, probably thinking that these people are pretty big idiots from deriving so much joy from something so banal.

Reality returns and we have to get back down for the last ferry back to Istanbul. I consider just staying. Maybe for one night. If the dogs can sleep in the bushes, why can't I? But then, I might never leave, because only a fool would leave Utopia. Or would only a fool stay, allowing daily life to rudely invade a moment so extraordinary? I decide upon the latter.

As we hike down, the call to prayer begins in the small town at the bottom of the hill. As one, the dogs sit down and begin to howl. To Allah, perhaps, or maybe they're annoyed at the breaking of the silence. Maybe just for our benefit. Either way, we leave them to it. We've invaded their routine enough for one day, and they have been the most remarkable of hosts.

The ululations and howling merge into one as we move on, making it seem all the more as though this place has somehow managed to synchronise the rhythms of man and beast, of urbanity and nature. On the ferry back, Istanbul twinkles in the darkness, mosques and skyscrapers standing together.

I can't help but idly search for a metaphor. They're like scales of a disinterested snake, I think, happy to stick around on this part of the Bosphorous for a while.

No. No, they're not.

They're like the talons of a majestic bird of prey.

No, they're not that either. No, it's more like something completely different, something I haven't ever seen before. Some life form that is happy to let us parasite along with it, equally as ambivalent to our presence as our absence, until some day it stands up with a great shuddering yawn, buildings and people falling from its vast, broad back, and just moves somewhere else. It's far too full of life to just lie there in the same place forever.

Now that I am back in Berlin, I have Wanderlust on a scale not seen in many, many years. I feel reactivated after a couple of years of uninspiring back and forth between Ireland, Italy and Germany. I feel like I need a great deal more than that now.

It was the sort of little town that looked like it was a hundred miles from everywhere but itself. Cracked pavements, rustic taverns, folk who stand and stare at a sweaty Irishman who blurs past on a white bike. Streets with numbers instead of names, and roadworks that are landmarks.

It wasn't a hundred miles away though; it was just outside Berlin. Just across those big lakes in the west of town, past all the Charlottenburg cyclists who need the entire cycle path and the houses with pretty little gardens. And it wasn't even as rural as I'm describing - I just want to think that my knee is capable of taking me further than it actually is. I was there to report on a football match, one that turned out to be so schizophrenically full of incident that a nice, relaxing ride home would have been the perfect thing to help me process a fan revolt, two last minute goals and two red cards.

But my bike has a flat tyre. An unexplained one, like bruises after a drunken night. So I'm stranded. Marooned in the countryside. All the fans are piling onto buses that definitely won't take a bike, and then taking a ferry across the lake. What to do? Perhaps if I pump up my tyre real good and sprint, I mean bloody sprint, I'll be able to get to the S-Bahn station 6km away before it pfffft deflates again.

So I start ringing doorbells, trying my utmost not to look like some sort of nasty paedophile prowling the neighbourhood. Thank goodness for the angelic curls. I wonder if they make me look as innocent when matted down with sweat? I finally get my hands on a pump and take off at frantic speed. Knee feels good. Tyre's definitely deflating. Not all that slowly, but definitely surely. I get there though. Just in time. Buy a ticket for me and a ticket for my bike, and settle down for the long train ride home.

I'm interrupted from my exhausted stare into space by a bunch of men drinking beer coming into my carriage. They're not overly boisterous; I've just witnessed a fan revolution. I have my iPod blaring so I can't figure out why two of them suddenly jump out of their seats and scamper down the carriage in panicked, undignified fashion.

Oh. A ticket inspector. The most hated of all folk. A kindred spirit of the guy who fined me €40 for a ticket a couple of minutes expired on a train that was a couple of minutes late. Or the other guy who wouldn't let me use my ticket (valid for two) for a tickeless fellow traveller. The people who epitomise all that I dislike about Germany, with their pernicious, dogmatic adherence to rules and unfailing refusal to allow for valid mitigation.

So I 'lose' my tickets. Are they in this pocket? Or maybe this one? I just have so many pockets! Surely in this one? No. Wherever could they be?

But he doesn't hassle me. He doesn't get rude. He checks a couple of other tickets, and comes back to me. Patiently. Politely. He even smiles.

He's not playing his role. He should seem like a monster, interminably pursuing his prey. Not a man, a nice man, earning a living.

And I am taking his living from him. He could be catching those drunk idiots who scarpered off if it weren't for me and my delaying tactics. I'm stealing from him. Taking bread out of his children's mouths.

I'm feeling bad for a Berlin ticket inspector.

I fish out my tickets, show him, and wonder what life will be like in this parallel universe where everything is turned on its head.

As of last Friday, I am no longer the BCUK support dude.

The time had come to focus on other things. Writing. Translating. World domination, etc. As much as I was loathe to admit it, that was never going to happen from BCUK HQ.

For almost six years I was the guy on the other end, answering all of those questions that needed urgent answering. You wouldn't believe the things I got called. Nazi popped up a couple of times. All sorts of hilarious German stereotypes were thrown my way. I never had the heart to inform how wide of the mark they were. People just need to let stuff out - they are bloggers after all. We're not a group of people well-practiced in holding our tongues with only a computer screen to be offended - well, sections of us anyway. Luckily, online insults in my direction make ducks' backs look like sponges.

And there were the crisis moments. The Private Posts Problem. Tag-gate. Christ, the tags. The Arab Spring seemed tame in comparison to that. The ability to formulate diplomatic emails came in very handy there, as BCUK violently ripped bloggers' first-borns from their mother's arms, and stomped on their heads in front of them. Exaggeration? Seems appropriate.

But then, there were those who were unfailingly polite, pleasant and a pleasure to deal with. People who understood that in order to have a problem solved, it helps to not deliberately make new ones. A please and a thank you actually really, really did make a difference to my day. For those of you who said them (and both you and I know who you are), it's my turn now: thank you. I really mean it.

And to BCUK. I wouldn't still be in Berlin without this job, one that provided me with a desperately needed first payslip six months after making the move. The cupboard wasn't bare by that point; there just wasn't a cupboard. I don't want to think about what would have become of me had Vasco not seen my ad for English lessons and just given me a call. Serendipitous in extremis. Gratitude too.

Hmm, the future? No Dice Magazine, I hope. We're on Issue 2 and it's selling healthily. I've started working on Issue 3. People are starting to not ask me to repeat my name or publication when I introduce myself. That's got to be a good thing. Failing that, there will always be German words that need to be turned into English words. I enjoy that a lot too.

So, that's that. Whoever he/she may be, go easy on the next support dude, eh?