Not all of us are drinking tea and having early nights on the Tina Turner Tour; a number of colleagues were seen leaving the catering room at 9am this morning, looking wine-smudged and unsteady.
The recycling bin was full of empty bottles and cans. Very rock ‘n’ roll.
Now, how nice to have the bicycle again – I’ve missed frostbitten fingers. Cor, it’s cold. Really cold. Stopping at a newsagent’s shop to warm my nose from an electric bulb, I’m saddened to see that “spunk” is no longer sold.
This German liquorice – or is it Danish? – caused much hilarity one tour when my best pal Gary sampled the misnomer. ‘This spunk tastes a bit salty,’ he said before… I digress. Let’s get on with Germany’s capital.
A full fifteen Germans jump the queue this morning as I approach the metal detector in the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament. I know the British love queuing to the point of national fetish, but how can people unabashedly push in like this?
I murmur something unmentionable about ‘you lot leaving towels on sun loungers’ but decide not to bear a grudge. All the same, it’s worth watching the news tonight to see how many BMWs have been nudged into the ditch by black trucks on the motorway to Hamburg.
Amazingly, approximately three million people a year visit the Bundestag, centre of German lawmaking. Incidentally, should you – miraculously – be at all interested, the shorthand writers here can note an average of 400 syllables a minute. That’s faster than people actually speak. On the downside, a cappucino on the roof-terrace cafe costs £4.50.