Berlin

Upon return from Japan, I caught another flight to attend a conference in Berlin. The fact that I could find my daughter's diaper in my baggage proves that I didn't prepare much for the trip. I didn’t even check the whereabouts of the conference centre until I arrived at the city.

It's late in the evening on a rainy Friday, and I went into a bookstore to find out more about this city. The first sentence from a travel guide book reads like this: If New York is the city that never sleeps, Berlin is the city that never stands still. It didn't take long for me to find out how this is so. Before I went on to the second sentence, the sun came out of the blue. Sure, the weather changes every minute in this city, I thought. Excited as a teenager on a first date, I grabbed my camera and was to leave the bookstore. The sad truth is that I found the very bottom of my shoe get loose at that very moment.

Ouch.

My shoe simply flip-flopped with each step, like a broken castanet. I got no choice but to buy all-purpose glue and tried to fix it. I told myself to forget about the shutterbug business and stood still for the glue to work.

And no prizes for guessing that the sun disappeared before my shoe could be fixed.

Just to make sure you understand what is meant by a city that never stands still, let me tell you my shoe could not be fixed. I bought a pair of new shoes, and the sun came out again.