London - Berlin

This morning's presentation went well! The Minx was an absolute star, as I thought she would be; she has the opposite of 'red light fever', whereby the pressure of being on air makes your mind go blank. My contribution was straightforward, so all in I reckon we gave a good account of ourselves. Now we just have to wait until Friday next week to hear the outcome. 

That bit of business out of the way, we repaired to a nearby coffee house with my colleague, Paul, had a quick drink and used their facilities to get changed, after which Paul returned to the Lakes and we headed across to Heathrow to catch a flight to Berlin. 

And it all went very smoothly. We had a couple of hours in the business lounge, thanks to the oddly cheap tickets we'd bought to replace our original ones from Manchester (before we knew we were presenting, today), which was very relaxing, and then the flight was fine, due in part to the lovely airborne doze I had following a couple of glasses of wine in the lounge.  

And then we were in Berlin! I've never been to Germany before apart from a transfer at Frankfurt airport fifteen years ago, going either to or from Turkey, so it was a whole new experience. In some respects it's similar to the UK, except without eight years of unnecessary austerity measures and two years of government paralysis around Brexit: welcome to here's what you could have won!

But in many other respects, it's more traditionally European: wide avenues rather than cramped streets, an abundance of street cafés and so on. And with the Minx in charge of arrangements, we caught the 109 from the airport to our hotel, which was on a side street, with our room on the second floor. I was delighted to find we had a large balcony overlooking the street with ample room for a table and chairs. 

Despite the fact that I work for a software company, I have to say that the Minx is a far better user of tech than me. So, whereas I only use Maps for satnav or if I'm walking somewhere, she made use of the 'public transport' option to get us to the train station and then into... well, I'm not sure exactly where we ended up but it was by the side of the river, on a table belonging to one of the restaurants across the street. The service was wonderful, and so was the food and beer. Welcome to Berlin!

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Reading: ‘The Janissary Tree’ by Jason Goodwin