Tired, but ready for Day Three!

Yesterday ended up being quite a bearable (rawr) day, with just enough short meetings and breaks to give me a few rests, and chances to run outside, through the smoky cloud around the doors, to get a breath of fresh air. After my last meeting at 4:30, and a social meeting at 5:30 with a Czech publisher, my boss and I went down to a Scandinavian social call in the halls, then headed back to the hotel for a hour and a half break before grabbing a taxi and heading out to the FFHof.

Or, that was the plan. It's mostly what happened, although the taxi line at our hotel was crazy long, so we grabbed our transit passes and took the S-Bahn first to the Hauptbahnhof (the big, glorious train station), where we changed for another S-Bahn to the FFHof -- although we missed our stop and got off at the next one, which was Romerberg, or the beautiful big square where I'd had dinner last year on Saturday night, and which I'm hoping to explore on Sunday with Doyce in the daylight. Cross your fingers it's not raining!

We walked back from Romerberg to the FFHof, me doing the exciting cobblestone shuffle in my heels, and stopped in first at a French cocktail party serving Veuve Cliquot, then a Dutch party, with food! The French was a very international party, with little Americans, as my boss explained -- although I told her I figured that out when she was speaking Italian to a Spaniard while surrounded by the French.

After enjoying the relaxing Dutch party, and speaking with a Dutch agent who'd spent her last holidays in Namibia (with Angelina Jolie! Ok, not really, but Europeans go on much more exciting vacations than your average American), we met up with a couple of scouts and another foreign rights agent, and took a long cab ride to a very out of the way club for a German party. Which was crazy.

Pretzels and sausages on one table, champagne handed out at the door with blue glowing ice cubes, soup at a cocktail party, speeches heralded by the muscial themes from Star Wars, and a lounge/opera singer in a tight black corset and giant white blouse singing "Carmen" in German and "Tonight" from "West Side Story" in English. Mere words cannot explain the horrors and the humour. Fantastic opportunity for German-people watching, though!

Got back to the hotel around midnight, and headed almost directly to bed, not getting my notes done -- so yes, I'm already falling behind on my genius plan. Ah well.

Today, my first meeting's not until 9:30, so i have an extra half-hour this morning to get ready/take it easy, and I'm hoping tonight becomes an earlier evening. I need sleep!!