"Hurtling" is the only word that can be used to describe the events of the past 24 hours. The movement from having time to finish the project, and having no time at all, was worryingly fast and uncontrolled. Yesterday afternoon was a mad rush to complete the remaining editing, writing the final section introductions, and generally panicking. However, I allowed myself the night off to visit a couple of places that I have been eager to go to.
The first was a tapas bar in Neukölln called Gastón. As an enormous fan of Spanish cuisine, I was desperate to give this place a try. When I first arrived about 7:30, the tiny bar was packed out. After standing awkwardly behind the crowd at the bar for a few minutes, I gave up and left, deciding that I'd head to the jazz bar and try again later.
A few U-Bahn stops away in Kreuzberg, Yorckschlösschen reminded me of a traditional English pub. Wooden beams striped the walls and posters of jazz legends were plastered on the paintwork between them. I chose a seat in the larger back room, a small wooden table with bar stools clustered around it. The amiable middle-aged waitress came and took my order - a conversation which we managed in German - and came back shortly with a generous glass of Rioja. Sat with my book and a glass of wine, listening to soft jazz crooning over the stereo... if it wasn't for the lure of tapas, I could have stayed all night.
When I got back to Gastón, around 2 hours after my first attempt, the bar was just as full. Luckily, I spotted a stool at the end of the bar. After I'd been sat there for a minute or so, a girl and a guy a few years my seniors came to squeeze into their place on the window seat next to the bar. We got chatting (inevitably, as we were sitting so close) after I'd ordered my food and drink in an odd linguistic combination of Spanish and German. She was from Paris, a recent graduate like myself, and had been living in Prenzlauer Berg for 18 months. He was her boyfriend, a chef in the tapas bar who hailed from Barcelona. After thinking I'd spend a quiet evening with my new book, I instead ended up talking, eating and drinking with this cute multicultural couple, and juggling basic vocabulary in three foreign languages - something that got a little more difficult after the Spanish anise liqueur and the gin.
On returning home I found my flatmate and the other two members of her group'd layout team still hard at work. It was nearly one in the morning. They left shortly after, and I went to bed about 1:30 with strict instructions to my flatmate not to work for too much longer (made a promise to myself to drag her form her laptop if she was still there at 2am, but unfortunately fell asleep before I could make good on it).
This morning has been the final push. After a hellish bus journey, we got coffee and pastries to power us through the final few touches. Now, the guides are finished. We all have that slightly lost look of people who've lost a purpose that has occupied their every waking moment for some considerable amount of time.
Plans for the final night are: a return trip to the tapas bar with the flatmate; an ice-hockey match at the O2 World stadium; and a final celebratory drink. Debating going out clubbing one last time, but considering the amount of effort that will be required tomorrow to pack and tidy the apartment, sleeping until the afternoon and trying to continue with a raging hangover is probably not the best idea.
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