After another lovely breakfast with Doris, it was time for me to start on the long journey back. It was…. well frankly exhausting. I don’t recommend 6.5 hours of riding on a single day. I think I’ll stick to my parents riding scheme a bit more – 1.5 hours riding, break, with 3-4.5 hours a day max in future.
Luckily there was always McInternet for a coffee and a break along the way!
Coffee at McInternet
Along the way I also got to see what happens when a crash occurs for the first time – everyone putting on their hazard lights while at the back of the congestion, and a “Rettungsgasse” (Rescue Alley) forming between the two left most lanes. It was pretty amazing to see.
When you get to the front, each driver understands how a zip formation works too – drive to the front, one car from the stopped lane merging into the moving lane between each and every car. Luckily there was no one hurt in this particular accident, but a truck had some wheels explode and was blocking 4 of 5 lanes. Even though the traffic was backed up some 5km, it was constantly moving at walking pace in all lanes, and it only slowed me down by about 30 minutes.
Eventually I returned to Berlin around dinner time. Manja had very kindly invited me to dinner, and I arrived some awesome mixed veggies with an amazing garlic bread.
Manja and I had been invited to a party that evening, a end-of-season party at the Sophien Saele. It was nice – we chatted for a while in the courtyard before being given a private tour (One of her friends works there). It’s got an amazing history – being originally built in 1905 as a building for helping apprentices become master tradesmen and having survived the whole Berlin history since then. Since 1996 it’s been used as a theatre for independent German productions.
The evening was also saying farewell to a long-term star of the stage, for whom the colleagues put on a bit of a farewell show which was pretty moving. The show also opened up a small dance area… Well, a garage area which they did an amazing job at converting into a dance floor! It was great – the whole gang spent the rest of the night dancing to music which was a bit too loud for the space which was a bit too small for all the people… But I had a total blast and I think everyone else did too. Eventually my legs and ears started to give way though, and we split ways around 2am.
Listening to…
Leave a Reply