Berlin for one more night

Tonmorrow we have to shift luggage six times at least. Again on Monday night and Tuesday.

Irina, according to the Museum fur Naturkunde, was right: the birds in Vondelpark were magpies. They are bigger and rounder than the magpies I am used to seeing in the Central Valley. We did see hooded crows all over Berlin.

I brought the wrong shoes and I am nearly crippled, but since Emma needs to rest a lot I'm not ruining things.

Frank has been discovering the disaffected club scene everywhere we go. I have been photographing graffiti, birds, and brickwork. A couple of blocks from the hostel there is an endless squat, not inside a building but in its former parking lot, many odd little dwellings made of abandoned bits like in a favela or something. Behind them is a huge brick building which was apparently burned at one time and whose broken edges have been decorated with political and esthetic graffiti. Then there is a huge yellow crane which is poised, I think, to bring the building down, right on top of the squat.

In Amsterdam the rentable computers had the kind of keyboard I am used to. Here the keyboard is odd. The Z is in the top row, and the Y is in the bottom row, and there are umlauted O and A keys (which is understandable), and no double apostrophe for quotes, and some other characters which I think one must use the control key to get.

Have to sign off now -- used up my time.