The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

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04/04/2007:
I didn’t want to spoil it in the title, but there it is. Sick Day.

Mike and Mary had an unpleasant evening and were totally wiped out by morning although their intestinal issues were beginning to at least subside. Kate was feeling a little bit queasy. X was feeling ok. As for me…I absolutely despise getting sick to my stomach. So much so that in her day care days, X merely mentioning one of the students getting sick to his stomach had me feeling off for days wondering when the other shoe was going to drop and I would get sick. So I was also feeling a little bit off, but was uncertain whether it was the real thing or if it was all in my head.

We had put off most shopping excursions for Day 7 instead of trying to make side trips to various places that we wanted to shop. We figured we would wrap up any remaining touristy things we wanted to see, go get souvenirs for friends and family, and have a fairly easy day.

After having a bite to eat, the 3 relatively healthy travelers set out. We hopped on the U-Bahn. Kate was looking a little pale but she vowed to tough it out. And tough it out she did. For about 3 stops. At this point she decided that maybe it wasn’t going to go so well after all, so we got off and hopped on the train going back towards the apartment. When we got to our station and got off the train, Kate was getting worse. She probably doesn’t want this story recounted, but it’s worth recounting.

She got sick on the U-Bahn platform. Fortunately there was a trash can nearby. X went ahead to stop at a drug store/apotheke to see if she could get some drugs. Meanwhile I was with Kate on the platform pondering the rather odd situation here. I didn’t want to abandon Kate on the subway platform, but I didn’t want to get too close because A) I didn’t want to get sick and B) I kinda didn’t want people in the area to know that I was with her. Later on Kate would have a similar concern that people passing by would identify us as uncouth Americans who come to Berlin, get totally drunk and party all night and then get sick in public places!

After this unfortunate event, we walked back to the apartment and were joined soon after by X carrying some sort of odd medicine that the pharmacist had confirmed was good for upset stomach through hand signals. It was a strange tincture that you mixed with water and drank. It had an herbal scent. Kate mixed up a dose, took a sip and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Meanwhile, I was still feeling fairly OK if not a little bit washed out. We decided to go on shopping expedition, take 2. On the way to the kneipe the previous night, I had spotted a toy/game store that I wanted to check out in the hopes that I could find a cool German game and maybe something for Lee.

On the way across the bridge, a man stopped us and asked for directions. FINALLY someone doesn’t immediately assume we are Americans! Unfortunately he was a bit disappointed with the result since he seemed to be in a bit of a rush and of course we could offer little assistance other than confirming that the large palace across the river was, indeed, Schloss Charlottenburg.

As we made our way to the game store, I was feeling OK…not great. When we walked into the game store, things immediately got a lot worse. I’m not sure if it was the temperature differential, but it was fairly chilly outside (in the 50s) and it was pretty hot in the store. Either way, in the store I started to feel unbearably hot and could not decide if I was just overheating or was about to faint, but either way, I felt that it was extremely important to get out of that store and into the cool fresh air.

After getting back outside I felt a little bit better, but still not great…more and more fatigued for sure. We decided to go back to the apartment and I felt worse and worse as we went. I laid in bed and slept, read, sweated, etc. My stomach started to feel queasy but I never did get sick. I did take a dose or two of the strange medicine which did taste pretty gross but it did settle my stomach.

X, meanwhile, was still feeling healthy, but was pretty much stuck. As if she wasn’t already hesitant to travel alone in an unfamiliar foreign city, she was doubly concerned that she was going to get sick sooner or later and did not want to be alone in an unfamiliar foreign city and getting sick! She hung out with me most of the afternoon which was very nice. At some point I commented that while I loved traveling to foreign countries, I think our next trip needed to be a cruise…I needed a relaxing vacation!

As the afternoon wore into the evening, Mike and Mary were still hiding out in their room. They reported that their symptoms had mostly subsided aside from just being completely wiped out. I was about in the same boat. Kate seemed to be feeling relatively normal and X had not yet developed any symptoms. X decided to keep her date with the family and go meet them for dinner and Kate also felt up to the challenge. We decided that our plans for a little party in the apartment probably should be abandoned. X and Kate left and I slept awhile longer.

Eventually I heard some stirring and found that Mike and Mary were up and moving around. I wasn’t feeling too bad either. We had some toast and tea and found that we could get the EuroSport channel in our apartment here, too so that we could watch more curling. We found it amusing that while the commentary was in German, many of the curling “terms” such as “takeout” or even “double takeout” were still pronounced in English by the commentators. We discussed our illness and how it might have come to be. Eventually we settled on a theory that Kate would later call “The Snow White Incident.” Remember the apples we ate on the train the day before? We had no way to wash them. Who knows what was on them, be it germs or some pesticide that will make you sick. This would also handily explain why X did not get sick - she had a banana. In fact she consciously chose the banana because she was concerned about not being able to wash an apple - which…good thought. Would have been nice if she had told the rest of us this concern!

However, since that fateful trip I have learned a little bit about norovirus and I have to ease Mike’s conscious (since he provided the apples) by pointing out that our symptoms were consistent with norovirus AND the “epidemiology” as it were also works out. You see, 6 weeks or so prior to our trip, X had a sinus infection and took some broad spectrum antibiotics. She then started having some intestinal trouble. I think it was a side effect of the antibiotic even though the doctor tried to claim otherwise (I think maybe he just wants to discourage people from diagnosing themselves). In any case, she was given a targetted antibiotic for this and was specifically told to not consume even the slightest bit of alcohol.

All through the trip, Mike, Mary, Kate and I were constantly sharing things, in particular beer. We would all order different beers and then try each others. All of us, that is, except X who was prevented from drinking beer. If any one of us had picked up norovirus - which would be fairly easy to do travelling on airplanes, busses, subways, etc - the rest of us would have very easily been infected through all this sharing of beer!

Nonetheless, “The Snow White Incident” is a great title so we’re generally sticking with that. It also gives us another reason to dislike Prague. When you get right down to it, our one day trip to Prague ended up costing us 3 days - the day spent travelling to and in Prague, the day spent coming home and then the day spent laid (and throwing) up!

X and Kate came back fairly late. Late enough that we were a little bit worried especially since we had no real way to get in touch with them. But they were fine. They had gone to a pizza joint that Maria and Colin had said was really good and they came back with very favorable reviews and had a wonderful time.

Unfortunately, we had a fairly early flight home and so we needed to pack before bed, otherwise we would have to be up at 5AM trying to get everything together. After packing everything up we went to bed with a heavy heart.

We were thankful that it looked like none of us was going to be sick for the flight home!

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!

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04/03/2007:
Our train back to Berlin did not leave at the crack of dawn as our train out did, but it left fairly early. Early enough that in order to do further sightseeing in Prague, we would have to truly get up at the crack of dawn. Instead we opted to sleep in a little bit. We woke and packed and got some breakfast from the cool kids lounge and then went down to wait for our taxi.

The taxi was right on time and took us right to the station.

For some reason, Nádrazí Holesovice was either uncommonly empty yesterday or uncommonly crowded today. We were in the station around the same time both days, but for some reason today there was a lot of people. Touristy people. With all of these travellers in the station who were there with a purpose, Holesovice seemed a lot less seedy than before. Had we stepped off the train into this environment I might not have been quite so skeeved out.

In the station were a bunch of American girls. Pretty young I’d say…17 years old maybe? They seemed *awfully* young to be travelling without any adult supervision…or at least a beefy male to back them up. One of them approached me and asked me about a train to Italy. “You do know there are other train stations, right?” She said that her train was leaving from Holesovice. “Is this Holesovice?” Yes. *Whew* For a minute I was concerned these girls weren’t even in the right station.

Meanwhile, our train was listed as delayed. I took advantage of the extra time to waste the remainder of my Czech crowns seeing as how by the time I ever come back that currency will be long-gone. I suppose I could have kept some as a souvenir, but I don’t need the clutter. Believe me.

At some point we decided our train’s arrival was imminent. We went out on the platform where it was shockingly cold. I believe there were snow flurries in the air. There was a single tramcar sitting on the track. Was this the cause of the delay? I suggested that we all just get behind it and push it out of the way, but this plan did not last long. Everyone was cold and we went back inside.

The train was not super late in the end. An hour, maybe? I don’t recall completely. We found our car and boarded and I was disappointed to learn that we did not get a cool compartment to ourselves. For the ride home we would be in normal train seats. Sometime into the ride, Mike revealed a stash of fruit in his backpack. He had the foresight to take a little snack along for the ride. X had a banana and the rest of us had apples.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Because we didn’t have private cars, and the dining car seemed pretty crowded, we went there in shifts. The girls went first while we held down the seats and then X came and got us and we went back and assumed their table at the dining car while Kate and Mary went back to the seats. On the long walk through the train we went through the smoking car which was astounding. You could smell it two cars away and it was thick with smoke. I’m pretty tolerant of smoke and it threw me for a loop! At the dining car I had some sort of sausage and lentil stew that I really liked.

We arrived back at our lovely apartment and kicked back for a few minutes to change, freshen up, nap and plan dinner. We also planned some activities after dinner - namely a ride on the 100 bus that goes around the touristy attractions so that we could see them light up at night. We also wanted to visit the Siegessäule.

All week long we had been going back and forth about visiting a kneipe. You see, my guidebook described kneipen as, basically old-man bars. Seedy joints where neighborhood people went to get blitzed after work. It specifically said that women rarely ventured into these dives. But Mary, on the advice of her guidebook and a co-worker had been lobbying to visit a kneipe listed in her guidebook. At some point I mused to X that maybe Mary’s guidebook described kneipen more favorably, so we decided to compare. Sure enough, Mary’s guidebook talked of the kneipe being a friendly neighborhood pub where the whole family goes out for a drink and a cheap bite to eat. It would be interesting to visit the kneipen listed in my guidebook to see if they really are seedy dives.

In any case, spurred on by the favorable description in Mary’s book we sought out the kneipe that she thought was most interesting. We stepped inside the main entrance and it wasn’t beautiful. It did seem like an old-man bar. In fact it was full of old men - actual old men in the 60+ range, a lot of them playing cards. This might not be the crowd we’d normally hang out with, but they did not seem a dangerous lot. We got some looks as we entered but nothing disconcerting. There were no tables in the bar but someone spotted a door leading off to another room. We went through to find more of restaurant-like area. This area was completely empty. We sat down at a nearby table.

On the table was little metal cube that had a picture on it of a crossed-out cigarette. Presumably this room was a non-smoking section. A bit of an extra bonus since people smoke pretty much everywhere in Berlin, including at the dinner table. While they eat. Shortly after we sat down, a pleasant waitress buzzed by the table and sat down an ashtray! We got a chuckle out of this. Evidently the non-smoking section is not heavily enforced!

Once concern with eating at a kneipe is that they are not really touristy so you are less likely to find English-speaking staff or English-language menus. I don’t know how much English the waitress knew - we all try to be polite travellers and just do our best in German and hand signals. She did fairly quickly determine that we were English speakers and did bring us an English menu. I always carried a guidebook that included a food dictionary, but having an English menu always makes things simpler!

This seemed like a good opportunity to get a Berliner Weiße which was described in the guidebook as one of the things you *have* to do in Berlin since it’s something pretty much unique to Berlin. I asked for it mit grün which includes a shot of a woodruff flavored syrup since that also seems to be the most traditional of all the options. Actually, I ordered a different kind of beer mit grün and I believe the waitress told me that you wouldn’t want to put that syrup in anything but Berliner Weiße, so I heeded her advice. It is definitely different and I can see why it’s very popular during the summer months!

For dinner I got this dish that had a name that I cannot recall but it was bloodwurst and liverwurst fried up with potatoes and onions and maybe some sauerkraut into a sort of hash. I think you would have to try pretty hard to come up with a meal that is more unhealthy and more offensive to the senses. It was really, really good. Frying liverwurst is a brilliant idea.

At some point during the meal Mike, who had previously mentioned not feeling very hungry, declared that he was going to opt out from further touring activities for the evening and just get an early night. He was looking a little bit pale. Mike and Mary departed and X, Kate and I finished up and paid. We decided not to go touring without Mike and Mary after a long day on the train. On our way back to the apartment, we got a little bit lost. A very nice woman noticed us huddled around a map and asked us (in German) if we needed help. At least I recognized the word for “help” in there somewhere. Kate used this opportunity to use the one German phrase she has truly mastered “Ich verstehe kein Deutsch” or “I understand no German.” The woman chuckled. We pointed to her on the map where we wanted to go and she pointed us in the right direction.

Meanwhile back at the apartment, Mike and Mary were in bed. Aunt Bern and company were supposed to arrive the next day so our plan was to meet them for dinner. Since we had this awesome apartment with this awesome balcony and the weather was beautiful, we figured after dinner we could hang out at the apartment. To celebrate the occasion I had picked up a case of Berliner Pilsener at ReWe during our last shopping excursion. I have no idea if it’s good beer, but really it’s hard to find BAD beer in German. In ReWe there were a couple of guys who were giving away some Berliner Pilsener schwag to go with a discount on the case and they seemed to enjoy practicing their sales pitch in English. We scored a pen, a lanyard, a metal motorscooter keyring and a model tractor trailer Anyway, we had this case of beer so we figured we’d crack into it. Kate and X and I sat and talked and drank for awhile. Well Kate didn’t drink because despite feeding her beer in every restaurant she just can’t get into it.

After awhile, Mary came out to chat for awhile. She wasn’t feeling all that great either. Suddenly, Mike runs past and into the bathroom and gets sick. Mary goes into to assist…and soon after she gets sick, too! After things started to calm down we got the sick soldiers to bed and then retired ourselves. Not a very spectacular day for us!

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!