Short version: wait for summer.

Longer version does not include any stories of getting lost.

Concerning why I went there in the first place: Games and Decisions in Pragmatics II was great, I saw some really interesting talks and got helpful feedback and so on. My talk went ok, despite staying up too late the night before (I met some Dutch guys at the hostel — funny how Dutch has become my “instant connection”).

The hostel. Don’t stay at the A&O Zoo. It was expensive, no breakfast, grumpy people. On the second evening I moved to the Generator, which was much nicer. Far-too-self-consciously-hip decor and music playing all the time, but friendly folks, and much cheaper.

It’s a bit far out of the center though. Here’s a helpful tip: get one of those two- or three-day transport passes, it turns out that Berlin is big. I walked over a lot of it (it’s how I like to get the feel of a city) but wore myself out pretty quickly. (Oh, and just because the Generator is on Storkowerstrasse doesn’t mean you take the Storkowerstrasse stop on the S-Bahn. Duh.)

Here’s another tip: don’t go in the winter. At least, not if you want to see the city in daylight, and especially not if you’re planning to attend talks from roughly sun-up until an hour or so after sun-down (roughly 4:15 I guessed). It didn’t help that on the extra day I took to explore it was overcast — in all I think I saw the sun for about two hours max., over three and a half days.

Another problem with winter-time sightseeing is that museums tend to close. Or (in one instance) move their collections to somewhere persistently unfindable on the other side of town. I did manage to get to the Bauhaus Archive, which was small (the museum part — apparently the archive itself is enormous) but fascinating. As well as a bunch of finished products (and a well-stocked gift shop) I was particularly interested in the collection of working drawings, studies, and so on. Not enough typography though (a few poster designs, and a stencil alphabet study, missing —to my delight— the letter ‘e’). Might have to go on a type pilgrimage through the Netherlands instead.

You’re still waiting for the “I got lost” story, aren’t you? Well, I didn’t. Really. Honestly and truly. But I did take a compass with me, attached to my keyring, and I did make heavy use of it. It was overcast, remember, and I was using the metro system a lot. Pop up out of the ground somewhere you’ve never been before, and it’s handy to know which way down the street you should be setting out.

Speaking of the metro: I spotted an interesting difference between the Dutch and German attitude towards ‘black riding’. (Ticketless, that is, not on evil horses hunting down helpless hobbits… you already got that. Ok.) The Dutch method is to turn out a posse of GVB employees, wearing brightly-coloured GVB jackets. They get on at a normal stop, a few black riders get off casually using a different door, and nobody gets swords stuck in their shoulders. (I’m sorry, I just can’t stop.) The Berlinners, on the other hand, are intent on catching the perps. They’re in plainclothes. They wait until the train has left the station. Then they swoop down, lightning-fast, one from each end, making sure that they’ve checked everyone before the next station. It’s almost Darwinian: like they’re asking you to improve the gene pool by frantically leaping from the window and dying in the snow.

(Another odd sort of Darwinian gesture: the escalators in a certain bookstore (where I ended up spending several hours, and several tens of euros) all run upwards. If you’re incapable of climbing stairs, they’re happy to help you to the top floor (foreign language, maps and atlasses, self-help) but from there you’re on your own. Can’t get back down? We’re probably better off without you.)

I said snow: while I was there the daytime temperatures ranged roughly from -4 to 2 degrees. It didn’t actually snow during my stay, but there was plenty of leftover, and ice on the streets. I took one minor fall, thankfully without witnesses, and thereafter practised my penguin waddle assiduously.

And that’s basically it. Yup: I spent in three nights in one of Europe’s party cities and didn’t enter a single club, saw one museum and no parts of the wall, and in fact spent a goodly portion of my time in the English-language section of a bookshop. Funnily enough, I enjoyed it a great deal. The train ride home got old after the first five hours though. By the time I hit Amsterdam again I had finished every book I bought.

Time for another trip, maybe?