Well, here I am, soaking up the free wifi in a hotel lobby in Berlin. Tres global glamour! It would probably be more enjoyable if I didn't feel like someone had reamed out my ears with a wire brush, but them's the breaks, I guess, when you fly slightly ill.

The flight was actually pretty fun-- in a mad splurge, I decided to make up for my rotten month by splashing out on a business class upgrade, so there I was sipping a Kir and nibbling mcadamia nuts, being waited on hand and foot and thinking to myself, 'darling, the service on British Airways is lovely but their champagne is just TOO too dry for my tastes.' Yes, you can all laugh now. Anyhow, I was brought rudely back to earth by the transfer from Heathrow Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, involving several bus schleps and a wait-on-line-to-enter-holding-pen-to-wait-in-an-even-longer-line security checkpoint. Eccch.

Berlin seems quite different now from when I was here seven years ago. The mad crush of construction everywhere is pretty much finished and it's full of fancy schmancy new buildings. Also, no more shelf toilets-- and for those of you who've been to Germany before and know what I mean, you KNOW that's a big improvement. The RIAS people dragged us from pillar to post this morning, starting with the Reichstag, then a former Stasi prison, and finally a meeting with the transportation minister-- I fell asleep, which I've been told was the most entertaining thing about the meeting. I'm going to write a more official and professional account of the day over at rias2007, so head over there if you wanna hear more. In the meantime, I leave you with this picture of me with one foot in the East and one foot in the West, straddling the inlaid line in the pavement that marks where the Wall used to be.