Just back from a short visit to Berlin - old Russian sector, mainly (and all Mitte). Lots of London-width streets, with trams and bendy buses. Lots of cyclists. A leavening of couriers, fakengers and a greybeard roadie* - but overwhelmingly outnumbered by utliity cyclists, despite (?) a complete absence of "facilities" bar the typical German shared pavement, which as in any case mainly ignored.
Child seats outnumbered helmets by - oh - let's say ten-to-one. Hardly a hi-viz anything to be seen and all just chugging along with the traffic.
I like just being in places where cycling is such a cmopletely normal part of everyday life.
Other than that, I was quite impressed with the outside of the Reichstag (no time to go in and the dome was closed) and the size of the Russian embassy (bigger than the Reichstag ...) - and as ever embarrassed by the status of English as the international language of science (and other stuff), which has to be problem for any scientist from the former Eastern bloc born before 1975, who will have had to learn Russian, not English, as a second language in school.
