I could see their fireworks, and I could hear their radio

Hi from East Berlin. Finally discovered that the university guesthouse has a room with networked computers. They don't really seem to go in for internet cafes here.

Where to start? I got in the other night after way too long a trip, and found this guesthouse place, and made it over to the dinner; good to see all sorts of people I know, and also got a chance to talk up the workshop I'm going to be running in June.

It's been sunny and gorgeous, and the conference is taking place at Humboldt University, in the middle of a touristy kind of area, not far from the Brandenburg Gate (though I haven't walked down that way yet). The buildings are all pretty monolithic, not in the communist era way but in the magnificent turn of the century kind of way. But once you get out of the magnificent buildings, there are a lot of old brick buildings and such, and rivers and bridges, on a slightly smaller, more intimate scale than the river and bridges in Paris.

Been hanging out some with Japanese speakers, which messes up my idea of which language to speak even more than usual!

Have been starting to find that people know who I am, or have heard my name, or have read my thesis. One student from Brazil said that my name had come up when they were deciding who to invite to give talks. I told her that I like to encourage that sort of thing... :) I certainly would love to visit Brazil.

Seriously on my mind is that I need to finish putting this handout together. It's a matter of data entry and concatenating an old handout on to the end of it, but even that little bit is impossible if I don't have a computer to do it on.

I really have to solve this computer situation when I get back to Paris.