Berlin

Well, we're back from Berlin, which was sunny but very chilly. I had to buy a scarf. We had difficulty finding one costing less than 80 Euros and some were considerably more. Who on earth pays £100 for a scarf???

We stayed in former East Berlin - which seemed very odd - near this television tower in the picture above. And then we went up the tower - which was quite a remarkable thing for me to do, since I don't at all care for heights. You go up to the big ball bit and the views are extensive - see below. I hope you're impressed by my daring.


Berlin was very interesting in various ways, but the big snag for us was that I had gone to the dentist the previous Thursday for some treatment to a tooth which was causing me no trouble (but which showed problems on an x-ray). This was on the Thursday. "It might be a bit tender tomorrow," said my lovely young Irish dentist. And it was. So I thought nothing of it. It was worse on the Saturday but we were off to Berlin on the Sunday at 4.30 am so I took lots of paracetamol and ibuprofen and crossed my fingers and went.

And the tooth got worse and worse. We were due to come back on the Friday - today - and my dentist doesn't work on Friday afternoons. So this meant that I wouldn't be seen till Monday, and I have a full teaching day on Monday... so... we changed our flights and came back on Wednesday instead. When I say that we changed our flights, I mean we had to book new ones. Mr Life had to book new ones, to be more accurate. And the dentist saw me and things are now greatly improved.

Mr Life is a saint. Never a word of complaint. Even when I fainted on the plane and had to be laid out along three seats with an oxygen mask and "Is there a doctor on board?" and all that. Cringe.


Well, we did see quite a lot of Berlin in the three days we were there.

And I'll tell you more about it another day.

And it was certainly a memorable holiday though as you'll understand not entirely in a good way. I managed to speak a bit of German, though not much.

Unfortunately, my vocabulary is not good. I kept being able to translate things up to a point, such as: "It is very important that you should something the something, so that something something isn't somethinged." Menus were much the same: being a vegetarian, I kept understanding that that dishes contained potatoes, cheese, beans and something.

Many words and phrases did keep coming into my mind, such as the German for naturally, for example, immediately, hearty greetings - but it's a bit hard to fit these into a conversation involving what's in the pasta. "Naturally I don't want any meat... For example is there sausage in this dish?.... Bring me my meal immediately.... ".

I could have described the weather a bit - "Die Luft is kuhl* und es dunkelt", I could have remarked, or said something about the landscape: "Der Gipfel des Berges fulkelt im Abendsonnenschein". The wind certainly was cool and it did get dark, though there were no mountains to sparkle in the evening sunshine. But alas, the occasion never arose to impress anyone with these conversational gems. Pity.

* Kuhl should have an umlaut. But I don't know how to do them.