ToDo: Invent Brilliant Title

Rohan is always able to make me giggle by trotting out the one phrase that he remembers from high school German – the above, which means "Quickly! Quickly!  Where is the toilet?  I have diarrhea!"  I suspect it is the particularly plaintive, panicked tone that he uses.

 

I’m happy to report that my recent, and first, trip to Germany did not require me to utilise this phrase. 

 

Mark and I flew to Berlin to spend Christmas with his sister, Sabina, her husband, Andreas, and their new baby, Matti.  Berlin is a fascinating city, shaped so distinctly by wars, including the Cold War.  Sabina and Andreas live in a really interesting pocket of the city – a short walk in two different directions takes you to where the Berlin Wall once stood.

 

The combination of a sleepless, stress-filled week before I left Seattle, combined with the time difference and a nasty cold meant that while there are some amazing and powerful sights to see in Berlin, the one I saw most of was the inside of my own eyelids.  My first night I slept 17 hours, last night I slept for 15, and the interim nights weren’t much better.  On one particularly memorable day, I was awake for a grand total of about three hours – in my defence, I did use part of those three hours to wander along the "East Side Gallery", the largest remaining section of the Wall, before a Great Weariness descended once again.

 

More photos to the side.