Berlin, Friday September 12th; just notes

I’ve been in bed all day, hedding of deth, sinusing and exhaustipating. M’s been out doing miracles - finding out about the public buses, going to the ... (I seem to have cut something from here, now, 3 weeks later, whom nose what it was, sorry!)..

I see events are preceding you before you've even started...pardon me if I'm being a bit post-modern, we just got back from seeing Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Phil doing a wonderful contemporary program of Elliott Carter, a friend of Barenboim's and about to turn 100 years old; it was a tribute purrformance.

I've been in bed for two days (since the day-long train trip here from Krakow). Hed of deth and bloody old sinus exploding. I have an appt on Monday to see the doc.. have been out today, duly stuffed with drugs, on a 2 hour bus tour around Berlin, seeing highlights .. with a TERRIBLE auto-commentary, nearly 10 years out of date. it's 'on your left' and 'the next building' bits were all over the place... and there were lots of weird quotes - the Zoomerzet-accented woman who did the English version would say something like "therefore leading to the well-known quote of Herr NeverHeardOf: Sun's rays beaming down will live forever in the tree-tops". Hmm.. theses were sposed to be deeply deep metaphors for the crushing and renaissance of ze Cherman spirit after ze vars.. und I find myself not having a clue about what it all means.

That said, the actual sights were pretty strong stuff - the Jewish dead memorial; a bit of Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie... and some of the statistics about how many zillions of Russians sent in to batter Berlin to bits/ditto English etc. WWII facts are unremittingly nasty. Hence our reluctance to see Auschwitz OR the Salt Mines. A chance to see where deepest misery and hideousness happened? Let's leave it to my fertile-enough imagination!

I gotta go, it's M's turn on this puter, and I gotta go to bed. We hope tomorrow to go to see three museums very close to each other - Modern Art, Arts and Crafts Museum, and one other... all very close to the Tiergarten park and the zoo. Monday is posting day, and seeing the doc day, and I hope some clothes shopping day - I have ONE long-sleeved top and after all our culling and leaving of cold-weather clothes, it is now 6 degrees at night; barely 15 during the day. M is cold and I have no coat either.. seems a good enough reason to have a go, there are Salgs on everywhere for end of summer gear (which, in this part of the world, always includes jumpers and jackets!). The other night we walked along the uber-expensive designer gear shopping strip and I got ideas about my station, especially as to shoes. And some new Bvlgari purrfume but I can't merember the name.

AND shock horror I can't get into the StrawberryNet* site from this hotel's server, can you believe it??? Rampant consumer-discrimination!!!

*to order more unguents at Web discount prices, you know, I might not have enough!!!! :-p