Berlin Multikulti

 I like Berlin. It is good to be here. Still I can't wait to get back on my bicycle tomorrow. Other than mileage and a general directional trajectory I'm not at all sure what my aims are for this trip. It is a question much easier to ignore (and perhaps, in solitude and mental quiet, to answer) if I keep moving. So the city stop-off, grand in culture and welcome in amenity as it may be, leaves me a little uncertain. I love the murals on the Berlin wall's remaining fragments and all they say for Berlin's character and resolve. I love the parks and street art. I love the Turkish markets and the German, Mexican, Swedish and English hospitality, the varied diet, the history and the zeitgeist, the bars and the beers in good company. The Multikulti. On Wednesday night I saw Dizraeli (from Bristol of course) and Lee Westwood do folk hip-hop with guile and guitars in the crypt beneath a Kreuzberg church and really it was excellent. On Thursday night I broke my Kindle screen and spent this morning on the Amazon, Parcelforce and Couchsurfer websites to arrange its replacement's delivery ahead of me to Dresden. In its frustrating way that was also excellent; efficient customer service, international logistics, my father's assumed good grace in postal errands and the promise of warm, Dresden hospitality combining to deliver a very useful tool to a willing host I've never met at an address I've never been. That's the theory, anyway. I guess it is the limitless potential of cities that leaves me uncertain. Perhaps it can take years of habit and routines, work, life, virtue and vice to even begin to navigate that potential. For me scooting around Berlin on the big yellow bike, even shielded with shades and headphones and faintly embarrasing technical clothing, it is a little overwhelming.  So I'll be glad to slip away tomorrow, bereft of ebooks and 3G internet, back into the excellent pine woods which I hope will line the roads bearing South.