Berlin: Friday/Saturday
Sep. 23rd, 2018 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurAnother vacation, another set of impressionistic diary entries...
Traveling on Icelandair is proving to be a mixed bag. On the up side, the airfare was fairly low. On the downside, Reykjavik airport is a cold stop, especially when they ask you to exit right on the tarmac.
TIL that in Europe, exit-row seats apparently don't allow you to put your bag under the seat in front of you, spoiling an otherwise brilliant plan for a comfortable ride. And they put hard barriers between the seats, preventing the usual armrest-up cuddling. That said, nobody bought the window seat, so we were able to take the aisle and window seats, and have elbow room between us for our desperate attempt at a little red-eye sleep.
Our taxi ride from the airport to our hotel was fairly uneventful most of the way -- until we got to the main street, where there was a large (apparently right-wing) protest parade flanked by many (apparently left-wing) counter-protesters. Police had blocked the entire road: there was, reportedly, No Way To Get There From Here. So we paid our very-apologetic taxi driver, found a pedestrian-sized gap in the protesters, and lugged our suitcases via the kilometer of cobblestones the rest of the way. (Really, it would have been a perfectly nice walk except that big cobblestones and little suitcase wheels don't really get along.)
Not long after getting to the hotel, I started developing an unsettlingly ghastly pain in my right flank, somewhere around my kidney. Now, this is not the first time this has happened -- I remember it once on a previous flight, and Kate thinks this is the third time. Always during or after a flight, so kidney stones seems an unlikely explanation. But it was pretty horrible: only a level 4-5 pain, but absolutely unrelenting for several hours, enough to have me in tears at times. Whenever something like that happens, it drives home to me how people can wind up with opioid addictions and the like: when pain is that sort of constant, you'll do almost anything to get it to stop.
It wasn't until a while after Kate wandered off for dinner (leaving me to lie down and try to relax) that the edge of nausea finally turned into vomiting -- which, oddly, immediately sharply reduced the pain.
Kate's pet theory is that I eat horribly during and around flights (which is true), and my digestion is rebelling. My pet theory is that my belt pouch is digging into my side and causing some sort of internal bruising. We'll probably try to avoid both, and hopefully this will stop happening.
I spent much of the evening panicking about finding a proper power adapter. The front desk had plug adapters, to go from European-style to American-style, but those don't deal with the voltage adjustment; having looked up the topic the other day, I was all worried about that. Finally, in the middle of the night (once the pain had died down), my brain started working enough to remember that both my CPAP and laptop have transformer power bricks; looking at those more carefully demonstrated that both are perfectly content with European voltages, so I was worrying about nothing.
On the plus side, the Circus Hotel is absolutely lovely: not insanely expensive, and quite pleasantly decorated and equipped. I feel much too old to be staying here (the lobby is packed full of young hipsters), but our Junior Suite is reasonably roomy, all very new and shiny, and the area is right up our alley, packed with restaurants and shops. Service here is very friendly and helpful, contradicting stereotypes of German service, and everybody here speaks excellent English. (I am reminded that one of my subtler privileges is being a native speaker of the modern lingua franca.)
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Date: 2018-09-24 01:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-24 03:55 pm (UTC)