Broiling in Berlin

We arrived after a LOOONNGG day/night/day of traveling.  The kids each slept a bit on the flight and during our 4 hour lay over in Cologne but I didn't sleep a wink.  For someone who likes traveling as much as I do it is amazing and quite sad that I have never mastered the skill of sleeping while in transit.
Out of character for us, we hired a taxi when we landed in Berlin as we just had too many bags and were too tired to do the commute on the bus/train.   We got to our apartment and walked in to a complete and utter hothouse.  We are the top floor apartment (4th floor) and it had been (and still was) very hot in Berlin.  I think when we arrived around 6PM it was still 90 degrees!  Our apartment had been closed for at least 24 hours (a friend rented it for the month we were gone but he left the night before) but even opening the windows didn't help much as there was absolutely no breeze. It was just hot, stuffy, stagnant air.
I remember when we were looking for a place to live back in October and someone told us to never rent a top floor apartment in Berlin because you will be boiling from May until October.  This seemed such an exaggeration.  How could a city like Berlin, being so far north, ever get that hot for so long to actually be annoying.  Well, they were right.  But they also qualified it with never rent a top floor apartment "unless it has AC" which fortunately for us our apartment does have.  It is probably as rare or even more rare in Berlin to have AC as it is in Seattle. It just typically hasn't gotten hot enough for long enough to warrant it. With climate change, global warming, whatever you want to call it even the biggest critics or naysayers have to see and feel that our planet is warming up year by year.  We were lucky in finding this top floor apartment that already had AC.  This apartment, although very nice and comfortable isn't really our style.  It is strangely fancy and feels a bit like living in a nice hotel.  It has its own sauna and whirlpool tub.  Everything is white - the walls the tile floors.  There are columns and palatial details in places.  But the "fancy AC" has been much appreciated. Even with AC the place took days to really cool down as the city just kept warming up and the air continued to be stagnant.
Once we offloaded our bags we were all a bit hungry, very tired but also a bit antsy.  We decided to pull our bikes out from the cellar where we had put them during our trip to Seattle.  We hopped on our bikes and rode to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for dinner (or was it lunch or breakfast? Traveling for so long and across so many time zones messes you up) Even though we were all dragging our feet a bit at the outset of the ride we all by the end agreed it felt so good to move and the breeze we made on our bodies by biking felt so good.  The air, otherwise, didn't move at all.
For the next several days as we recovered from jet lat we really

didn't do much.  We unpacked our bags and rode to town to get groceries and a few other errands but we pretty much stayed inside.  We didn't run the AC all day or even half of the day.  We just used it in the bedrooms mainly.  Each room has its own unit which is nice but a lot like our Seattle home with the heat it feels wasteful to use it unless you are planning to be in that room for awhile.  Many hours were spent with all 4 of us in Benjamin's room lying on his single twin bed, all of us reading.  His room is the smallest and therefore gets the coolest the fastest.
Benjamin wore only underwear (a different pair each day) for 3 days straight claiming it was too hot to get dressed or  leave the apartment. I kind of agreed.  It was like we were stuck in a snow storm, only it was a heat storm.  Monday it was mid 90's Tuesday it was 102 and Wednesday back down to mid 90's.  Marty had to start back on his morning(Seattle)/afternoon(Berlin) radio show but other than that the kids and I read and played games and slowly got over jet lag.
A lot like arriving at our Seattle house, coming back to our apartment in Zehlendorf felt just like coming home.  I compared our first few days this year compared with our first few days last year and it is a night and day difference.  Last year this time we were bright eyed and fascinated by everything new and pretty much overwhelmed by all the things we didn't know yet (would Benjamin get into JFK if not where would he go? Would Josie like school? Would we make friends? Would we like it here?.)  We dreamed of what the year might hold and had plenty of doubts about our whole decision to pack up the family and move.  Plus, at that point we didn't even know if Marty would be able to do the radio show from here.  This time it was a lot like coming home to your "boring life" after an awesome vacation.   Heat wave and all, it was really nice to be back in Berlin.