Back home

Well, it's been a really good week. I spent two nights staying with my brother which is always interesting since he lives in a little Buddhist community. It works out nicely since they always meditate at 7am so I know I can get the in the bathroom to have a shower, haha.

Unlike previous occasions, this trip was pretty much freestyle, with no great plans to do anything really. Highlights included the Funkturm, which was a nightmare to get to and turned out to be closed, the video game museum, which was completely empty apart from me but still good, and going to see Skyfall in Potsdamer Platz with an intermission that made it even longer. It wasn't all leisure either, I helped my brother shift some stuff for the Buddhist centre and took a look at his girlfriend's computer after the hard drive failed.

I was a bit worried about the weather with it being November, but while it was a bit cold and windy at the beginning of the week, it lightened up a bit and was pretty tolerable for most of it. It does get a bit annoying when it's very cold though since you get all layered up and then have to get on a train where you get all hot and sweaty.

The two nights in the hotel were good. It was a hotel I'd tried to stay in before but last time they fucked it up and I got shuttled off to another hotel, back when it was part of the AGON group. Now the AGON hotels are owned by Ibis but this one is owned by someone else. I had a room right up above the elevated tracks of the U2 line, but since I'm weird like that, I saw it as a bonus. It was fun to watch trains go past and the regular rumble of trains in the night was reassuring, meaning that there hadn't been some dreadful apocalypse that I hadn't heard about.

The journey  back today was fine, although it was a much earlier flight than I'm used to so it was a bit of a tired bewildered journey to the airport while it was still dark. On the plus side I got to see the new Ostkreuz station which is a big improvement, and I got there just as the sun started to rise and since the whole side of the station is glass, the view was amazing. I tried to get a photo but they never quite capture it.

On the way home I felt like watching something new and I found Transformers 3 and The Inbetweeners cheap in Morrisons. Transformers in Michael Bay form is terrible, it really is. It's just a showcase for ludricrous CGI. It was a tolerable enough brain disengagement flick though. The Inbetweeners is strange but bloody funny. I've finished the first season.

Strange to think that after tomorrow I have another week off. Except I think I will pop into work on Monday just to make sure everything is running OK and to say hi to people. Then it's time to look after the dog for a few days - hope he's forgiven me by then since he's ignoring me at the moment. Silly old thing.