Berlin: Friday/Saturday

Another 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.)

Berlin: Sunday

Today we slept off the jetlag, so by the time we fully crawled out of bed and were showered, it was time to look for lunch.

Lunch was, slightly randomly, at Transit. This was an excellent choice. It's a fun, funky little restaurant focusing on small plates of Asian-fusion food. We shared four little bowls:

• A couple of things that were vaguely like thin, Thai-flavored eggrolls.
• Peking duck (Kate's complaint was that there was too much hoisin; I thought they were great).
• A bowl of spicy wok-cooked beef.
• Beautifully crispy pork belly with an intense, somewhat salty sauce.

Overall, absolutely delightful, and pretty cheap. I'd happily go back -- we talked about the fact that an outpost of this place in Davis Square would be a huge hit.

The theory was that we were going to the Pergamon Museum today, since it was a rainy Sunday. But the line was about two hours long, so we punted in favor of the Bode Museum next door instead.

This proved a great choice, not least because their current exhibition, Beyond Compare, is just plain brilliant. The Bode specializes in antique through baroque art, and this exhibit added in lots of contemporary art from Africa. But it didn't put that in a wing by itself -- instead, it laced the African art throughout the museum, deliberately comparing and contrasting it with European artwork that illustrated the similarities and differences. I suspect many of our friends would absolutely adore this exhibit -- its anthropological viewpoint (stepping away from the usual Euro-centricity and viewing it from the outside) was very eye-opening.

Another interesting detail: the Bode has an enormous display of coins and medallions throughout history -- thousands of them spread across half a dozen rooms, covering the full scope of the subject. All sorts of neat examples, from the individual gold coins that would have been a year's wages in period, to the Obama medallion anchoring the point that this is an artform that lives on today.

For dinner, we talked to one of the concierges at the hotel -- he recommended several restaurants, of which we chose Marina Blu. This is apparently pretty new, and while it wasn't very crowded, it was downright excellent. Straight-up high-quality Italian -- focused a bit on pizza, but we were in the mood for pasta.

Kate went for a red-sauce ragu that respected its meat in a way you rarely see: instead of the usual "meat sauce", this has big, fall-apart-tender chunks of beef, a fine meatball, and generally the sort of meat focus you actually see in Italy, but rarely in "Italian". And I had a Carbonara that was admittedly not as good as I had in Rome -- but that's comparing against reputedly the best Carbonara in the world, and this was the second-best I've had. "Carbonara" in the US so often means pasta with bacon in a cream sauce, but this was the real thing: flavorful guancile with perfectly-cooked spaghetti, in a rich egg-and-cheese covering.

Truly excellent meal: if you find yourself in Berlin, check it out...