Conclusions are the Hardest Part to Write
The last time I wrote I was in Berlin and the World Cup final had just been played. The city partied that night until it got light. At least the people on the street below my window did. I was lame and went to bed around 1am. The next day I woke up and wandered through tired but clean streets to the grocery store, seeing no evidence of the night's revelry except for one or two half-full, plastic beer cups tucked away in the corners of window-ledges.
I managed to cram a whole lot of life into my last 36 hours in Berlin. So much life that I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep, except for the odd twenty-minute episode, between Monday morning and when I got home, which was about 2am Thursday, Germany time. So what did I do? Well, I read my book by the Spree River; I visited with a friend in a creaky, old Friedrichshain apartment; I saw a German country band with a Russian bass player named Boris who played a bright red stand-up bass; I went swimming in a lake 40 minutes by train outside of central Berlin; and I had a nice dinner cooked for me.
And then I crawled onto the night train from Berlin to the Frankfurt Airport, flew to Vancouver via Montreal, hopped on the PCL from the airport to the ferry and eventually arrived home to sleepy, little Victoria (and in true island form, ran into people I knew of the ferry).
Have a look at the photos below.