We had our last hotel breakfast in Berlin at the Azimuth hotel around 8, walked around the nearby Ku‘damm neighborhood, which includes the „broken church,“ as I mentioned before, and then checked out a little after 9. The hotel was definitely the oddest out of the places we‘ve stayed—it is a fairly new hotel, apparently part of a Russian chain that has started to branch out to Austria and Germany. They must have taken over a much older, late-19th century hotel, of which they preserved a couple of big carved pieces of furniture, some huge wall paintings leading up into the lobby, a big marble staircase, and a reception room, now a bar, with a ridiculous amount of gold and red velvet trim. The rest of the hotel is all modernized, and our basement room („ground floor“ my butt) was down a labyrinth of hallways and locked doors. But we got to watch construction cranes in action—always a plus, right?
We got to the train station at about 9:20 and waited for Laurie to drop off Kai. Mark got an impressive show of German police in action that was kind of funny. We were waiting by one of the train station exits, and an older homeless man put his things nearby. He then started to become very irritated and began to kick the ground and mutter to himself. I nudged Mark and we moved ourselves and our luggage to the other side of the entrance, to get away from him—I figured the man felt that we were in his way or in his spot. Within seconds of us moving away from him, three policemen showed up and talked to him, very gently but firmly, about moving on, and then came to talk to us, saying that he was harmless and that moving out of his way was the right thing to do, but were we ok? Then they moved on, one of them with what seems to be the German substitute for a cop‘s donut, because he was clearly carrying a bakery-wrapped package of „Blechkuchen“ (sheet cake).
Kai joined us soon after, we said good-bye to Laurie, and then we were off—first to the main station on the S-Bahn (Berlin‘s „Elevated“), and then to Osnabrück on the fast train, which got us there in 3 1/2 hours. We napped for part of the way and talked to our seat neighbor, a girl from Amsterdam who is working in epistemic logic (and who memorably made herself a sandwich from scratch by cutting slices off an entire bread, cheese off an entire hunk of cheese, and cucumber off an entire cucumber with a sizable knife), and got to our destination at about 2. We caught a bus right away, and when we got to my mom‘s, she had lunch waiting for us, and had even baked a blueberry cake that was (unsurprisingly) excellent. Then we unpacked a little bit, started some laundry in her brand-new but very German washer (a German washer needs more instructions than most computers, takes anywhere from 1-2 hours per load, and, in this case, since it had an integrated dryer, more safety precautions than your average circular saw), and headed downtown for a little walk and a few items we needed. Kai also wanted to make sure he had his bearings and revisit old haunts (he lived here with me and Kati for a year after all, but of course Imke‘s apartment is a new location and requires new pathways to the downtown area). He was wearing his Heelies (shoes with built-in wheels that he‘s been wearing for the past two months) and reveled in the stares he got when he suddenly wheeled past on what look like regular-soled shoes. Silly! We got home about 5, resolved a few more logistics issues (having to do with Imke‘s computer), and had dinner (bread, cheese, cold cuts) just before 8. Now we‘re wrestling with a little more laundry (= another 3 hours of wrestling with the washer) but we can sit in the garden while we do that, listening to a blackbird sing from a rooftop, and I think we‘re all glad to have a quiet evening and no traveling for a few days. My mom‘s place is always home—even though it‘s technically never been my or Kai‘s home. 🙂