July 22nd - A Mango Lassi and Berlin

"That was" I said "the best scratching of the back of the neck I've ever had". This sort of comment, I would expect, is exactly why people like me should never be awake with 5 other people in a dimly lit but fast moving cabbie, which is making its way quickly and effeciently to an airport in Paris... At a little under 4 oclock in the morning.

Unfortunately for me though, that was precisely what I was doing and, beneath the thunder and lightning of a storm that had just moved overhead, what I would continue to be doing for the next couple of minutes before arriving at the airport.

I was, as I had expected, wasted.
Not drunk, I don't drink, but wasted all the same.

The airport was - or rather seemed to be at the time - small.

We spent a significant amount of time standing in front of a counter, delighted to see that we appeared to be the first ones there, before realizing that we were in fact at the wrong counter and, upon finding the right one, that we were in fact the very last.

If my life was a video playing on a T.V. for which you had a remote, and you had made the wise decision of fastforwarding approximately 20 minutes or so, you would probably see me sitting in a waiting room chuckling to myself and sipping on a mango lassi that I found in the frozen food section of what can only be described as the workplace of a vendor of abslutely shameless crap.

If you got bored and fastforwarded another, say, hour and a half or so I would have just landed in Berlin.

Let it be known that I had completely misjudged the plane. Firstly, it was large and more importantly, it didn't crash. This was all very good news to me.

Berlin. Ahh, Berlin.

In my half sleeping frame of mind I managed to transport my body from one European stronghold to another (picking up a mango lassi on the way), take numerous metro rides to the city, get a cab to the hotel, get told that the room wasn't ready, go ouside, wander aimlessly, find a cafe, eat, stop eating, visit the Jewish Museum, come back, go to my room, write this and, what will soon be the climatic moment of utter relaxation: SLEEP.

I leave you now
with a thought
which I seem to have forgotten

Goodbye,
JF