Berlin (2.9.-4.9.)

2.9.
Berlin, another time, always worth a visit, I have been here often, the first time was in 1986 when I was becoming godfather the first time, the city was still divided then. My hotel, going under the name "Big Mama" is in one of the poorer quarters of the German capital named Wedding. The hotel is really nice, in an old building from the seventies with 9 floors, completely renovated, very modern spacious rooms with a functioning high-speed WiFi (nice). Lots of head scarf ladies, many people of foreign descent here, a very colourful mixture of what humanity has to offer. It took me a while to work out how to get there by public transport, and then I spent a long time to find the address of the dermatologist whith whom I had arranged an appointment for 3 September (nothing serious, just a check-up to look at my liver spots to be done every two years). It was rather complicated to find this address, as on one side the street ended with number 48, and number 23 (where the prcatice is) is on the other side, but more or less parallel of number 90 on the other side). This is not my first visit to a doctor in Berlin, I remember an emergency visit to the dentist in 2006.
I took some photos on my way, and went to the Kurfürstendamm later in order to have a look at the Gedächtniskirche (Church of memory) which can be visited. Not much to see yet, it is still in the process of renovation/rebuilding. Close to the church I saw a person begging for money, sitting in a strategic position, he was busy with his mobile phone. A beggar with a mobile phone? Aren´t they supposed to have no money? Ok, I have seen weirder things, but this appeared a little bit strange.
I noticed, that Berlin also has a hop-on-hop-off bus, the price is 12,50 € for one day, even cheaper than the one in Leipzig.
3.9.
This day turend out to be a little bit more adventourous as anticipated, since the dermatolifist checked my skin and discovered a spot on my forehead which was cancereous, fortunatley not malignly so, after checking very thoroughly the rest of my body he decided to use the scalpel on the cancerous spot and another one on my lower leg, and he did it more or less immediately, when i told him i would not be back so fast. Now a I have a bandage araound my right leg and a big plaster on my forehead. this is still Berlin, people are used to strange appearances, and maybe mos of them think I wanted to go through a wall headfirst, let them.
No need to worry about anything, everything went smoothly, and the worst which could happen would be another cut on my forehead, in oder to remove eventual residues. He told me, that this spot on my forehead i typicially for people who had been in contact with the highly toxic element arsenium (you used the oxide to solve family problems in a final manner, as I remember), and he was actually right, I handled arsenium compounds in the very earlydays of my study.
In the afternoon I took one of the hop-on-hop-off-buses (10 € only) to explore some other parts of town which I had not known before, such as the qaurter where all the embassies are located (the Japanese one is at Hiroshima street, a fitting name I would guess), lots of the embassy buildings were built in very different stiles. partly with materila brought from the country proper, I guess a certain strongly missed Hungarianfriend would have liked to see that.
Tomorrow it will be Cologne, and the next stop will be my home base in The Hague.
Unfortunately this site does not allow me to upload more photos, unless I pay for it which I will not do, and that´s a good pretext as any to end the saga here.
Thanks to everybody who read my blog, I am especially grateful for the nice and enouraging comments.
Don´t worry, this is not the end, there will be other blogs of future trips, but certainly on a different site.

Live long and prosper
Palien