APOLOGIES FOR LACK OF DAILY BERLIN CALENDAR POSTS

A weekly Berlin Calendar Page again instead

My dearest father lies in a coma after a massive stroke - it’s been 13 days since he failed to wake up in the morning during my parents' stay in Berlin. Each day is a struggle for all of us but especially to my Mum - herself incapacitated - who sees her mate and her partner at his most vulnerable he has ever been.

We are swaying between hope and despair: hope he would wake up again and despair at what awaits us in case he should.

Please forgive my very irregular presence here and on my other channels - obviously, the priorities have shifted entirely. And spare a thought for a man who should have become a professional, academic historian but became a working guy, family father and a true amateur history buff instead.

How happy he was when we visited Otto Bismarck’s old estate in Warcino (Varzin) and simply “crashed the party” by entering what is a Polish forester school today without asking for a permission first!

After we had roamed the estate for a while, discovering the famous Bismarck dogs’ graves by an accident and marvelling at the beauty of the place even 80 years after the Bismarcks had left it for ever, a forester working at the school approached us and instead of kicking us out, offered to show us the family graves we had been unable to locate. The spark in my father’s eyes that day - it will remain one of my most precious treasures.