Daisy blows four inner tubes, pauses as we visit the Stasi museum, but braves a magical tour through central Berlin, East and West

Today’s brief (as in, words) post needs just to capture two magical days in Berlin with old friends and Daisy’s rear inner tubing systems, with four (FOUR!) massive, monumentally explosive blowouts thanks to a stretched outer tyre, wrong and misrouted rim tape (my bad), and sheer wear and tear after nearly 2500 km.

Photos will tell the story, but lovely to hear from Sue in Oz (formerly of Australia’s embassy to the GDR) recalling our hilarious canoeing visit with David Storey (then Reuters Bonn) to the Spreewald 45 years ago.

And from Paul (formerly BBC Radio domestic DipCorr when I was same for World Service) observing that if I have concluded that it’s right to fight Russia at this point, that’s probably a position worth supporting.

Flattered, but not at all sure my opinion counts that much…

Strange that after all these years – 34 now nearly since the Wall opened – neither Jutta nor I had been to the Stasi museum at the East German secret police’s huge former headquarters off Frankfurter/ex-StalinAllee in East Berlin.

Now, with Barb, made good, visiting the unchanged former office of Stasi chief Erich Mielke and finding confirmed on a map of Stasi spying flats just in the Prenzlauer Berg part of old East Berlin a yellow dot for the one tasked with monitoring our old Reuters bureau on Schoenhauser Allee/corner Woerther Strasse.

The museum has examples of the listening bugs that peppered our Reuter flat walls, meaning so little privacy for Jutta and me in our very first months of marriage – I hope the Stasi agents enjoyed listening to the Lives of These Particular Others.

Visiting the Normannenstrasse was another reminder of what a total failure the East German state was as a concept and an enterprise.

Yes, with some good things, like long maternal leave and a serious equality of men and women.

But unsustainable, cruel, and built on lies. And lies, as history always ultimately confirms and as Putin (and Johnson and others) will find, have short legs.

Daisy had short legs too in Berlin, of a different kind with serious trouble at the back end. I won’t go into nerdy detail (rim tape plays a central role).

But dismantling and repeatedly repairing did give us an opportunity to enjoy the longest stretch of old Wall, with the famous painted Trabant blasting through, and now 34 years on looking curiously innocuous and small against all the new building just west of Ostbahnhof.

Tomorrow Thursday some more old friends, with a long ride there and back across the whole of Berlin sans luggage (will feel very weird), then on Friday it’s onwards to Magdeburg on the Elbe and the quaint old timberframe houses of Quedlinburg and Wernigerode.