It thaws. The pavements drip. Grey graffiti in the old station.

Berlin is very accepting city. You don't feel you have to be someone or something, to dress or behave in a certain way. Anything kind of goes - and not just the hip end of cool, but the duvet coated head-scarfed end of frumpy. A good place for us right now - definitely nearer the headscarf end.

We have 5 days till we leave: Ulrich finds a motorbike of my size for sale and organises a viewing tomorrow; he sorts himself out a flat viewing for tomorrow too, and in the afternoon we find out how the German state was born - and how it escalated so quickly into German-ness as the best way to be (nothing like the guilty conscience of defeat and years of occupation to force the mea culpa). We've completed the upper floor of the German historical museum - on our fourth visit. Its 1919 and the allied powers are rubbing their hands and Germany is dying of flu and starvation - but it exists.