Prague

Sorry for not writing for ages, [insert excuse here]. To make up for this (OK, maybe not just to entertain my loyal readers), I went to Prague for the weekend, and took lots of photos.

A friend, Sarah, is living there at the moment and kindly offered her couch and tour guide skills for the weekend. I took a night bus from Berlin arriving in Prague at about 6am. I managed to get a little bit of sleep on the bus, but it nicely set the tone for a sleep deprived weekend.

First thing on the list was a visit to Charles Bridge, the famous bridge in Prague that's on all the postcards. It's covered with souvenir stalls and tourists most of the time, but was very pleasant early in the morning in the off-season when we went.

Statue on Charles Bridge

Here are a few random photos from the rest of the morning.

I forgot what this was called, some building of some kind. It was close to the miniature museum, which was not very big, and had all kinds of really small art, so small they had microscopes set up to see the pieces.

Skodas everywhere! Noone else in Europe seems to think they are a joke, especially not in the Czech Republic. We did get asked to help push start one, though...

Then I checked out the castle, the biggest in Europe, I'm told. It was indeed very big, and pretty crowded with tourists, but there was still room to breath, I don't think there is in summer. Maybe I should have taken a tour, because I don't really have anything else to say about it, it had a nice feeling though.

The changing of the guards. Their bayonets look pretty scary.

Postcard shot of the castle.

Another clichéd postcard shot of the castle.

That night, we met Sarah's flatmate (Jana) at a pub in the region of Prague which boasts the most bar/pubs per square meter compared to the rest of Europe. It was a pretty crazy place, full of crazy Czechs. It kinda looked like a good old fashioned country pub, only it was full of incredibly drunk (+) people singing Czech anthems and jumping on the tables. Someone had a bubble blower, and there was a disconnected telephone hand piece and a ski mask on our table. The one owner/barman/chef somehow managed to stop for a chat with all the regulars, and people seemed to deal with their change themselves from a bowl on the bar. An old man with missing teeth pointed out that we had the same shoes, and showed me a special orthopedic insert he had put in his. This sparked a flurry of more shoes being removed and closely inspected.

Jana had trouble leaving...

Sunday, after a slow start, we saw many more of the sights. Unfortunately, my camera battery died, so there are no pictures for them all. They included; a metronome, churches, cemeteries, hills, bridges, old buildings, many small dogs and many more Skodas.

To finish we had dinner at a great restaurant which had been recommended by 3 different people at various times. And the last sight I hadn't managed to see was the astronomical clock, "the iphone of its day". It predicts sunset/sunrise, phases of the moon, zodiac, and all that jazz, and every hour it does a cuckoo clock kinda thing. So we are standing in front of the clock at 10.59pm, dozens of tourists have their cameras at the ready. Finally, the minute hand ticks over and the bells begin chime. Nobody breaths and the fingers on shutter buttons tense. Then the chimes stop. Nobody dares breath. Then the minute hands ticks over again. Some of the tourists begin to lower their cameras, people begin to look side to side. The minute hand ticks over again. Nothing happens... nothing happens... nothing happens. The darn clock is on the blink. Beaten but not broken, we give up. I'll be back, astronomical clock!

Thanks for reading, hope you are all fine. I hope I get to see many of you in a couple of weeks! I'm in NZ from the 17th Dec till the 10th Jan, so keep those dates in your diary!

1 Year!

Hi,

I have trouble believing it, but, according to my calendar I arrived in Germany a full 13 months ago. I was meant to write a big retrospective piece on the anniversary, but (as usual) it slipped my mind, and here I am a month late.

When I arrived, I remember I had 2 days of sunny weather and then winter hit with a vengeance. So this year, the weather has definitely taken a turn about the same time. I took this photo in Berlin about a month ago, when it was still warm.

It was an omen of things to come. Last week we turned the central heating on in the flat, I take my jacket with me whenever I go outside, leaves are rapidly yellowing and disappearing. Xmas decorations are appearing shop windows, and at street festivals they are serving gluhwein (mulled wine).

Although it feels like this year has passed really quickly, when I think back to what it was like at the beginning, I realised that it has really been a long time. Those early days I was really completely clueless about everything - German, supermarkets, buses, Berlin, my project, Germans. I feel like the language thing is the biggest thing that's changed. I'm definitely not fluent, or even competent, but I can survive using just German now. When the German knows that my German is rubbish, and they are very patient, we can usually understand each other. Living with 4 Germans definitely helps (although soon to be 3 Germans and 1 American), at parties and things people tend to speak German. So yea German has gone from a 1/10 to maybe a 5.5/10, which is good enough for me at the moment.

In other news, I'm worried I may be becoming a little bit too German. The things that I scoffed at when I first got here now seem pretty normal, like the not-talking-to-people-at-the-busstop kind of culture. And before it was "Wow, beer is really good and cheap here", but now it's "Beer is really bad and expensive in NZ". And I get really annoyed when a bus is more than 2 minutes late, just like a German. I also was talking to someone (German) at work, and he said he went to England for 6 months, and when he came back, people would complement him on how good his German was because he had picked up an English accent in his German. So I hope that I don't talk funny in English now. I think I definitely talk slower, and don't use as much slang, because otherwise noone would understand anything I was talking about.

But you'll be able to find all of this out first hand in a couple of months - I've booked tickets for Christmas and New Years in lil old NZ - arrive on 18th December, leave 11th January. Will be great to see all of you again, and escape another white xmas!

And just to pad this out a bit, here are some random photos from the last few weeks:

TV Tower in Berlin.

7m high puppet in Berlin for Reinunfication Day

7m high puppet's feet

Heidelberg, a city in the South-West. Was there for a conference/meeting thing.

Hope you're all going well, send me an email or whatever to let me know what you're up to!

Adam

Recent news

Hi everyone.

For once I don't have to start off with an apology about forgetting to update for too long!

Last week, Sarah came to visit on her way from Holland to Czech Republic. We went for a paddle in a flatmate's canoe on the river. This is my flatmate Maraike, she came too.

We also went to my first ever football match. It was in the Olympia Stadium, with seats for 100,000 people it was a real experience. Luckily the people we went with in the end weren't supporting the home team. This was good because the guests won (3:2, all the goals in the second half). They really get into the supporting their team thing here, at least half the people were fully decked out in team colours with flags and stuff. I was totally wearing the wrong colours, though...

This weekend has been a bit more relaxed, I went to check out a big (>50,000 people) anti-nuclear protest in Berlin. 300 tractors had driven across the country for it. Lots of music and people with "Atomkraft? Nein danke!" [Nuclear power? No thanks!] stickers. I found it strange how everybody seemed to be pushing a slightly different agenda. Some people were saying it's not about the safety, it's about what you do with the waste. But then so many people had Cheronobyl (etc) signs. One guy had a very cryptic sign which said [Nuclear symbol] + CO2 = [Skull]. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't nuclear have pretty low CO2 emissions? Anyway, I'm not going to really give my opinion on the issues, because to be honest, I don't know. Both sides of the debate have so much propaganda out there I don't know who to believe.

Anyway I've gotta go, hope this finds you all well.

Adam

I'm alive!

I know it's almost been 2 months since my last update, but I am still alive! Bad friend/son/grandson/etc!

So I can't quite remember everything that's happened in those 2 months, I'll try to catch you up on the highlights. As a warm up, here are a couple of pictures from Berlin I took when Nicky and her Mum/Dave were visiting.

Cool sand sculpture competition. Really amazing.

Gedächtniskirche (memorial church - it's hard to see but it's only half a church because the other half was bombed) and its memorial thing. I think I've already posted a picture like this, but no complaining!

The next story is my knee. Most of you have already heard, probably, but just to get everyone up to speed: ~6 weeks ago I dislocated my knee cap playing volleyball at work. I've done this 2x before, so this makes number 3. After number 3, they recommend surgery to adjust the alignment of the kneecap to prevent the same thing happening a 4th time. So 3 weeks ago I had the op, spent a week in hospital, 1 week at home, and have been back at work for a week now. It's healing well, and should be running around in a month or so. Here's an MRI scan (from the side of the knee) that I think looks pretty cool.

And last weekend, after my compulsory 1 week at home, I got to go on our annual lab retreat where we all go away for the weekend and do team building stuff. Was good fun, if a little frustrating sometimes not being able to join in with all the sports. Here's the whole team (this is actually only half our lab, it was split into 2 weekends).

Hope you're all well, let me know what's up in your corner of the woods.

Adam

Hurricane Festival

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from the NZ embassy here in Berlin saying that I should be very careful about swine flu - I should keep my personal hygiene up, and avoid large gatherings of people. So me and 3 other people from work (Kate the Aussie, Dietrich and Christin the Germans) decided Hurricane festival sounded like the perfect place to go. Three days of camping with 60,000 other people doesn't count, does it?

The 60+ bands playing over the weekend included Kraftwerk, Faith No More, The Wombats, Moby, Lily Allen, Pixies, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand. They were all very cool, Kraftwerk was definitely a highlight - and a bit bizarre, these 60 year old men standing perfectly still on stage in fluorescent lycra playing their keyboards. The Wombats were very good too, the crowd was really dancing pretty much for the whole set. Kings of Leon were good, but I dunno, they didn't have great stage presence I thought, they weren't much better than a CD. Pixies, on the other hand, were really fantastic.

The weather for the whole weekend was a pretty strange - it would be really sunny and hot 1 minute, then you would see these dark clouds roll in and it would rain and be really cold for half an hour, and repeat. But it was all good, better than being constantly too hot or too cold, I suppose!

Pixies playing in the sun.

Dark clouds rolling in...

... and then it rains! The people dressed in bear suits were in the middle of a soccer match and looked pretty soggy 10 minutes later.

Thanks for reading, let me know what's up where ever you all are now. I've finally invested 14 euros and got skype working (adam.idoine), add me if you've got skype.

Adam

Olympia Stadion, Teufelsberg and Karneval der Kulturen

Every time I catch a train to Berlin, at one stop they say "XXX stop, please exit here for Olympia Stadion". I always think it sounds interesting, but always have somewhere else to be. Last weekend I took the chance to check out what this stadium is all about. As is becoming a theme, I forgot my camera, but it would've been pretty hard to capture the place in photos. It was built for the 1936 olympics, and was intended to rival the colosseum. I haven't seen the colosseum, but I imagine this stadium doesn't fall far short of its goal. It was also really interesting to see the approach that was taken to the whole olympic thing - it seems like it was much more war-like, with statues of warriors and that kind of stuff everywhere. Heaps of links to Roman gladiator kind of culture. Quite a contrast to the "fair play" kind of ideas associated with the olympics these days.

From the stadium, I set out to find a hill called Teufelsberg. Teufelsberg is the biggest hill in Berlin (115m). On top there is a old US spy station used in the cold war to monitor, um..., something. Now it's all abandoned with broken windows and holes in the fence surrounding it. There's also a pretty exciting looking dirt bike track going down the mountain, and in winter there's a small skiing area. You have to be careful of wild pigs apparently, too. But none of that is what makes this hill interesting. What I found fascinating was that there's a nazi military school underneath this mountain. And on top of the school is 12 million cubic meters of rubble from the second WW. That's right, the highest hill in Berlin is completely man-made. There are trees and dirt and stuff now, but there are still bricks and concrete sticking up out of the dirt everywhere. Apparently, most cities in Germany have hills like this, Berlin has several.

This weekend, I went to the Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures) in Berlin. This is a big (~2 million visitors) parade and party all weekend celebrating the diversity of different cultures in Berlin. Berlin is definitely very diverse - the parade yesterday went for 9 hours! Here are some (quite poor) pictures from there:

Can't remember what culture these people were, maybe from Peru I think.

Actually representing a culture was kind of optional, most floats were just people having fun playing music, beating drums, dancing, or whatever.

Yes, and here you have the culture of assorted animals.

Just to make you feel a little better about the horrible weather I hear you've been having in NZ lately,  just after the parade, it started pissing down like a tropical monsoon. We managed to find a spot under a bridge, and wait it out, then it was all on again.

Huddled under the bridge.

And I happened to be standing in this torrent of water. At least only my feet got wet.

That's all the news I've got at the moment, hope you are all well, looking forward to hearing from you.

An update

Oh dear, I see that it's been three weeks since my last post. I've gotta get better at this!

Firstly, due to popular demand, I'll tell you something about what I do at work. OK, so I'm working (doing my PhD studies, with a "scholarship" thing) at the Max Planck (pronounced plunk) Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. This is one of nearly 80 MPIs in the world (mostly Germany). In ours there are ~400 people, including me. The annual budget of these places all together is ~3.2 billion NZ$, and they are the place to do research (not just science) in Germany.

I'm working on a project involving an algae called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This is a model organism for plants. Like people use mice to research human diseases, people also use this algae to research plant stuff, because an algae is easier to work with.

DNA is the information carried in an organism. It is the "blue print" that tells the cell if it's a dog, oak tree or worm. The information in DNA is written in a 4 letter "alphabet". In the DNA, there are sequences which describe a protein. Proteins are the things that actually do stuff in a cell, the DNA just carries the information. Proteins are not made from DNA, they are made from an intermediate thing, called RNA, which is pretty much a disposable copy of DNA. Now we get to my project, I am measuring how much RNA for every protein is produced under different conditions (like, dark, light, really light, starving, hot, cold, etc). Phew that was actually really hard to write, I hope some of it makes sense.

The annual Baumbluetenfest (blossum festival) has been on here for the last 2 weeks. You wouldn't guess it from the name, but it's the second biggest Volksfest in Germany, second only to the infamous Oktoberfest! The difference is, Oktoberfest is all about beer, Baumbluetenfest is all about wine, specifically fruit wine. It can get very roudy at night, but the 2 times I was there, the hoards of cops kept everything pretty civilised.

Here are some pictures I took in Berlin today.

Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedaechtniskirche - half was destroyed in the war, this half has been preserved as a memorial.

This angry looking baby was on a statue of Alexander van Humboldt, I think.

Berliner Dom, lamppost and Fernsehturm.

Berliner Dom again.

And that's all I've got for ya, thanks for reading, I hope everything is good back home.

Adam

Hamburg

I decided weeks ago I needed to go on a trip somewhere for the long Easter weekend, but couldn't make up my mind where. Living in the middle of Europe, it's a pretty hard decision, with so many famous places so close. In the end I decided to go somewhere in Germany because I'm embarrassed about how little I've seen of this country I'm living in. In the end, I settled on Hamburg, because I have some friends there with a comfy couch.

In Hamburg, the weather was amazing! For the 4 days I was there, I only put a sweatshirt on once, the rest of the time, I was walking around in a tshirt. The weather in Potsdam has turned too; green, sunny, warm! But Hamburg is a really nice city, quite a bit more open than Berlin, lots of big old (not actually very old, though, most of Hamburg burnt down ~100 years ago) merchant buildings, and heaps of water everywhere. The port is the 2nd biggest in Europe, even though it's 80km to the sea! There are lots of canals and lakes in the city too - the city has more bridges than Venice, even. In the city though, the highlight was probably St Nikolai church. It was bombed in the war, and hasn't been rebuilt. The bits that remain have been preserved as a monument. The tower is still ok, and we went up it for a fantastic view of the city. Unfortunately I left my camera in Potsdam, so have no photos of the whole weekend...

What Hamburg is famous for it's red light district called Reeperbahn. Kinda strangely, it's also the place to go for drinks at night. The drinks were soo cheap it was unbelievable, 50c shots and 1 euro beers. We intended to just go for a bit to see what it was all about, but the atmosphere was really great, so we had to stay an extra couple of hours. On Sunday mornings the fish market opens at 5am, so the traditional way to have a good Saturday night is to enjoy "the Kiez" until then, stumble down to the fish market, buy some fish, go home and cook it for breakfast. Yum... We took the shortcut version, and fitted a few hours of sleep in between. The fish market was very cool, again a very nice, friendly atmosphere, and stalls selling everything, including live guinea pigs.

Sunday we went to Florian's parent's place in Bremen for a bike ride. A very European bike ride. We rode along an asphalt path (as crowded as tour de France, almost) for a couple of hours to a Bier Garten where we had a Weissbier, then rode home. I didn't think it was possible, but even wearing (SPF5) sunblock, my arms were a little bit pink that evening! Aaah and that evening we had New Zealand lamb for dinner!!! It was great, tasted exactly like back home.

This is getting pretty long, so I'd better speed up a bit! We also went to Stade for a day, which is a really cute little town built in the middle ages, I think. It has narrow cobbled streets, houses that are sometimes 20 degrees off straight, and a canal. And I also went for a tourist trip on the Hamburg harbour on a boat. The commentary was in German, but I was stoked that I could understand some of what they were saying. Very big port!

And that was Hamburg, got back to Potsdam about 2am Tuesday morning, exhausted, but had a very good time. It was the perfect break, now I have to persuade my brain that it's no longer holidays and I need to do some work!

Thanks for reading, hope this finds you all well. I love hearing what's happening back home, so send me an email or something if you've got anything exciting (or not so exciting) to report!

Adam

Another update

As usual, I have to apologise for being so slack in staying in touch. Excuse 1: Nothing very exciting has happened in the last 2 and a bit weeks. Excuse 2: I've been real busy at work. The two excuses are probably very closely linked.

I did have a free Sunday a week or 2 ago, and went to see the East Side Gallery, a section of the Berlin wall that has been preserved, and decorated/graffitied/painted soon after the wall fell. Now, after 20 years, most (perhaps all?) of the paintings still visible have been restored, or painted fresh. Still, lots of them still look like they did 20 years ago. The

re's lots of new graffiti on top, I saw one tag dated the day before I was there, so it's definitely an evolving thing. Here are some pictures I took:

This is a very famous one, a Trabi (iconic East German car) breaking through the wall.

This one says something like "many small people in many small places doing many small things can change the face of the world"

No more wars. No more walls. A united world.

And this is in a different part of Berlin, showing how the wall looked when it was still in use. I thought it was an amazing contrast.

Back in Potsdam, after quite a few false starts, I'm hopeful that spring is here to stay. It was so warm today some people ate lunch outside, some even not wearing jackets! Buds are starting to burst, and a few bulbs starting to flower (see picture). I've really been hanging out for some sun, so it's great.

Hope you are all good, let me know what's up back home!

Adam

Bochum

This week I was in Bochum. Bochum is an old mining town a little bit south and a lot west of Berlin. Before I went, as I said, all I knew about Bochum was that the university looks like a spaceship, and that it's famous for musicals. The uni does look like a spaceship, but it's only famous for 1 musical (Starlight Express). It's been playing there since 1989 in the same theatre. There was even a statue of it in our hotel. There's also a subway station that looks like a coal mine. That's pretty much Bochum, not an aweful city, but nothing very exciting, either.

What was exciting, though, was the microbiology conference I was there for. This was a huge conference (compared to the other 2 conferences I've been to) - 1300 attendees, more than 600 posters, and something like 130 talks all up. There were sometimes 7 different programs in parallel, so nobody could possibly go to all the talks! It was pretty full on, so I didn't even get to work the trade exhibit for freebees, just a couple handfuls of pens. I also went into the wrong lecture hall at one point, and had to sit through the annual meeting of some society (in German), complete with voting for... something... or someone... Another highlight was the organ (like in a church) in the lecture theatre. There's something very strange about combining microbiology and organ music.

 

After all that excitement, I came back to Potsdam on Wednesday on a superfast train (250km/h). I've been hanging out for this weekend - need to catch up on quite a bit of sleep from the last 3 or 4 weeks.

Hope you are all well.

Adam

News

Hi,

I'm sorry I've been so slack with keeping in touch, I'll try harder next week. But now I've got to try to remember the last 3 weeks. I'm having trouble putting them in the right order, so I'm just going to put everything out of order, if that's OK.

I went sledding with a couple of friends the other day. It had s

nowed quite a lot for the week, but the Friday we decided to go had warmed up a bit, and it had rained quite a lot so the snow was quiet slushy. Slush is not acceptable for sledding, so we waited till about 10pm when it cooled down enough for the snow to become a bit more solid. We went to the biggest mountain in Potsdam/Spandau (a suburb of Berlin) (took about 10min to walk to the summit). 

Then proceeded to spend the next 3-4 hours walking up and sledding down. Needless to say, I felt it the next day!

Also went to a movie in the Berlinale (big, famous, film festival). Saw a kiwi movie called The Strength of Water - was very cool to hear thick "Northland accents". The director was there, and had questions and answers afterwards. A bit bizarre walking out of the theatre after watching Northland scenery for 2h into thick falling snow. Highly recommend the movie if you get the chance.

But the snow's days are numbered, I believe. It's definitely warmer, all the snow on the ground has melted. A few of us from work went iceskating last weekend, and the ice was kind of melting a bit,  I think it was the last weekend that ice rink was open. There are even buds on the trees, so spring must be just around the corner.

What's also just around the corner is a presentation I'm giving tomorrow morning (just to out lab group). I'm going to conference on the other side of Germany (in Bochum) next week, and giving the same short talk there. All the Germans look a bit sorry for me when I tell them where I'm going - but I have been told that the university looks like a space ship, and that it's the place to go in Germany if you like musicals, so it can't be all bad... Anyway, I'd better go to bed to get a good night's sleep before my presentation tomorrow.

Hope you are all well. Love hearing what you're up to! Yes, really!

Adam

Hello

Hi,

I have to apologise first of all for getting a little behind with this. Second, I'd like to thank you all for the birthday wishes. It was a little weird with the time difference, I wasn't sure whether I should start celebrating midday the day before or what. Birthdays are a big deal here, with solemn handshakes and heartfelt "happy birthday"s. It's also really (REALLY) bad luck/rude to wish someone happy birthday before it's actually the day. I made a banana cake with lemon icing to take to work, and it got polished off pretty quick, and had nachos for dinner.

Not too much else to report for the last couple of weeks, been working pretty hard, but still managing to fit in a bit more exploring of potsdam - here are some pictures of Ruinenberg, a water reservoir some king built in the 1700s. It's designed to look like ancient Roman ruins, but it isn't actually that old. I found it a little ironic that they are now restoring some of the structures, after deliberately making them look old in the first place.

My German's still getting better, still pretty slow though. I'm finding that I keep learning things about English in the German lessons. For example, Kunst is art in German, kunstlich is artificial - I'd never noticed that the root word of artificial was art until I learnt the German. Germans always apologise to me about how hard German must be to learn because of all the different genders and endings and things, but at least it's reasonably logical, and even though I'm sure I get the gender right less than 33% of the time, it's still understandable.

Happy Waitangi day for Friday, I'm a little jealous of the "perfect bbq weather" the Herald predicted for the weekend, so I hope you made the most of it!

Adam

Spring on the way?

Hi

Well since the last pictures, Potsdam has warmed up remarkably. 5C today, has been around that for the last week or so. The snow and ice is slowly melting, the river's flowing again.

In non-weather related news, Sarah came to visit from Scotland last week. Did the whole tourist thing in Potsdam and Berlin with her. The highlight of the Potsdam day was the windmill museum, located inside an actual windmill! All the information was in German but there were diagrams, buttons to push, and it was actually grinding wheat at the time, so it was 2 euro well spent.


It was still pretty cold then, so here are a couple more photos of snow and ice. I like the no swimming sign.



We also went on a pub crawl in Berlin. It was a HUGE commercial operation, more than 100 people I think, and half of them were really drunk and loud Australians, the other half were from Britain, in town for the Oasis concert the next night. Me, Sarah, and another Kiwi who's studying in Berlin were also going to the Oasis concert. First we met at a Kiwi cafe and drank Tui, ate kiwiburgers, wedges, and steak and wandered over to the concert. The concert was amazing - so many people it was hard to move. They played all their hits, and sometimes the crowd was singing along so loud that you couldn't hear the band!


My flatmate's birthday is tomorrow, so I'd better go help clean up the house for the party tonight. Hope you are all well.

Adam

Latest news

Just after the holidays, we had a cold snap here. Lots of snow fell, and we had -10C during the day, down to -20C overnight. This is colder than usual for Potsdam, and it threw the buses into chaos. Usually, being German, the buses and trains are scheduled to the second. The first Monday of work, though, stuff was really late - my flatmate heard her bus driver saying that he was 59 minutes behind schedule, so everyone though he was the next bus. The snow is still pretty thick, and, most importantly, the lakes have frozen over! So today I went for a walk on a lake. And here are some pictures:

Heiliegersee, not looking very much like a "sea". I think most of the population of Potsdam was here today.

People didn't seemed worried about cracks like these. They had cut a section out and you could see that the ice was about 10cm thick, so I assume it was relatively safe.

Nobody sunbathing today!

This is the river leading into the lake.

This boat isn't going anywhere!

On Thursday, I met up with a friend from school who's doing her OE, and had reached the Berlin leg. Got directions to the most German restaurant in the area, and had schnitzel and pork knuckle with sauerkraut, then went to a very cool bar on the 12th floor of an office building with great view of the city. Unfortunately, I forgot/didn't know that the train home has different times during the week than on the weekend. Facing a 3 hour wait, I decided to crash in Berlin, and luckily, there was a spare bed at the hostel Clare was staying at. I got up early Friday morning and made it to work an hour earlier than usual!

Hope you are all good, how were your Christmases and New Years?

Adam