here is a jolly face only viewable from the top of the reichstag

here is the top of the reichstag. i arrived at 7.30am to avoid a two hour queue. it worked very well. my queuing lasted 30 minutes (ie until the door opened at 8am). If i had arrived at 8am then my queue would have lasted no minutes as they let everyone in when the doors opened. very early Sunday morning is the time to go.

i caused trouble with the security people because i stepped forward when i shouldn’t have despite being told in incomprehensible German what to do (i assume). i then forgot i had some spare batteries in my pocket and the more he quizzed me the more confused i got and it was all very stressful. i made it through in the end though.
later that day this experience would be repeated at Berlin Airport where i even had to take my shoes off and have them put through the machine. i used to look like a hippy, but these days i obviously look more like a terrorist.

here is one of berlin’s busiest roads. it’s empty because it was 7.30am on sunday. much of berlin seemed empty. i later found out why, but you’ll have to wait until later this evening for me to upload those photos !

saturday evening was the reception to end the conference. after my walking i was little tired and only did some small dancing.
here was a view of the sunset:

here are some of the people from the conference:
warning. this man sells PONS (passive optical networks)

this chap was the jolliest man at the conference. he’d been retired from BT for 12 years but still comes back for more. probably similar to watching open university in your spare time. i hope i’m like that when i’m retired.

this man is one of the nicest on the planet. he’s also just like the dad from the kumars so he’s also one of the funniest !

this man is called jos and he has the same dancing style as me. we had a jelly legged dance-off. it was a close thing. i thought he had won for sure, but he graciously conceded defeat to my younger more nimble legs.

this man was a contendor for the greatest dancer award. he’s greek so it’s in his blood. we made sure all the plates were well out of the way

i found a tall building and went up it at sunset. it was such a clear night you could see the sun go down over the horizon. very nice.

click for big version:

i went to the reichstag last night. there was a massive queue for the dome so i wandered about in the park in front of it. the charilion was playing and there was an echo almost as loud as the original sound itself from the nearby buildings. this made it sound even more fantastic !