The epic weekend begins with a day of 5 cities

This weekend Axel and I went to Berlin to see the U2 concert. This will be my next blog, but I must first tell you about the Friday, the crazy start to the crazy weekend.

Axel's colleague's partner just gave birth a few weeks ago. Being Canadian and basically living parallel lives to us, we decided that they would be the best people to ask about getting an english-speaking doctor to help us get some tests done that our Strasbourg doctors needed me to do. Unlike in Canada, the US and in France, the labs to get blood work done are not separate but rather part of your doctor's visit in Germany. This means you must make an appointment with a Germany doctor before they suck out all of your blood.

I had spoken to an english-speaking midwife when we first arrived. She was great BUT she is on vacation until the end of August. In addition, to get tests, I would still need to see a doctor anyway, so we went to the doctor recommended by Jason and Laura. I emailed the doctor to ask if it was possible to get tests done and just introduce myself. And hope that she would be able to recommend someone near where we live. Well, it turns out her english isn't as good as we thought it would be, because her response to her email was "We are waiting for you the 16.7. at 11.30 Dorotheenstr." So I got myself an appt. (and now I just realized that I arrived a day AFTER I was supposed to...god pregnancy brain is crazy). Anyway, it turns out that getting there was an adventure. It's on a secondary tram line, which means I could take the slowest tram on earth, stopping every 5 blocks from Köln to Bonn, without having to get off. OR I could do a 3 transfer trip, saving myself about 20 minutes. Being a lot less mobile makes decisions like this easy. However, taking transit in Köln means that you must have enough change to pay for the trip or have a german credit card. I, unfortunately, had neither, but because Axel and I have rebelled for months without paying, I figure I would pay for a ticket half-way and see if I get caught. Well, I got caught, but I feigned ignorant and won.

I got to Bonn and, thanks to google maps (which finally didn't fail me in Germany), I got there in 10 minutes. The office was very dated (from the 50s) but clean. The two nurses were very friendly and when I gave them my card, they didn't take the numbers or anything. In fact, they didn't charge me at all. I still don't understand why not, because all of this was in german, so I'm still waiting for my bill, or whatever. They made me fill out a bunch of forms, and because we did forms in german class in week 2, I had no problem doing it! Woohoo! Deutschkurs comes in handy!

Then I got taken to the back room to get my blood taken, pee and weight. The nurse was super nice and had written questions she needed to ask me in english on a piece of paper. Unfortunately, she didn't understand my responses so I had to pull every german word I knew to respond so that she could kind of get what she was looking for. And then I met the doctor. The only way I can describe her is that she looks like she should be a teacher in Harry Potter. Her hair is all over the place, with clips hanging from random spots that don't actually hold any hair in place, and she was dressed in layers so you couldn't really tell what the actual outfit was. In essence, she was like a cat lady without all of the cats. And when we started our appt, I knew she had a heart of gold. She is one of these women who LOVES babies, loves pregnant bellies and loves her job. We went through some questions and she would ask me, put her pen down and look at me in the eyes to listen to what I had to say. This experience is a stark contrast from my french doctor who's all business with no time for chitchat or eye contact. Then she did an ultrasound and turned to me to say, "Wow, it is HUGE. Can you still breathe?"

I told her I could, and I really only stop once going up 6 flights of stairs to our apt everyday, and she was impressed that I was still able to walk around. So she then asked if the father was really really tall, because she checked the bone growth of not-so-little pickles. I told her no, and she point-blank asked if I was sure Axel was the father. So, we have a giant on our hands. She checked the blood flow of the uterine arteries (both excellent) and the liquid flow of the umbilical cord (also excellent) and then did all of the measurements and figured out that pickles was at the maximum growth for the number of weeks. In other words, it's huge.

So then I left, made my way back to the train station and just backtracked. On my way there, the brakes of the tram started a small fire, which didn't seem to alarm the driver who came and extinguished them during a 5 minute tram break! Ax and I met at the main station, figured out how to get to the middle of nowhere airport where Ryan Air flies from, and started the other half of my day. We hit Krezfeld to switch to get to Weeze, the location of the British Air Force and the emptiest airport on earth. And then we got to Berlin.