Neither here nor there

This blog post is well overdue. I must admit I am a very lazy blogger. Partly because September was crazy busy with work and deadlines (involving quite a few all-nighters which left me absolutely shattered), and partly because - believe it or not - our latest trip went quite smoothly as far as accessibility is concerned. I was not addressed by weirdos / random admirers, there were no broken lifts and all the hotel rooms we stayed in were reasonably comfortable. When you are so used to thinking about everything that could go wrong, it is almost unbelievable when things go smoothly.

My SB loves German-speaking countries. Since I cannot speak German (yet), I was more inclined to travel to a country where I could communicate with the locals. After some brain-picking we finally found the perfect location: Alsace, a French region just across the German border. The right mix of German cleanliness and French cuisine. A place which is neither here nor there (sorry Bryson, for borrowing the title). We decided to go for the fly and drive option once again, since we knew it works and it is possibly the easiest way to travel if you are in a wheelchair (unless, of course, you are the owner of a private jet). Starting in Stuttgart, where we rented a car, we travelled to Freiburg, Colmar and Strasbourg to then close the circle in Stuttgart where we had a lovely wee reunion with a very good friend from university who now lives in Germany. Since we did not want to overdo it, we decided to stayed in each of these places for two nights, so we could take it easy and relax a little without having to rush on. However, while we were at it, we decided to stop in some more towns and picturesque villages along the way, including Mulhouse and Riquewihr.

As I said before, things went really smoothly this time. (Un)fortunately I don't have much to rant about except for cobbled streets and the occasional inaccessible toilet. Since I can finally be economical with words, I have decided to use photos to show you the highlights of our trip Are you ready?

Alsatian houses - they are scattered all around and kind of all look the same.

Snails in Munster. They look yummier than they actually were.

The largest cloche à fromage in the world. Great!

The picture above was taken in Strasbourg where my boyfriend and I treated ourselves to a cheese tasting session. It was definitely worth it! The toilets even had sound effects (mooing cows). Funnily enough, when we ordered coffee at the end of the meal we were told we couldn't have any milk because they didn't have any in the restaurant! 

A wheelchair-accessible post at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart

Perfectly accessible tramways in Strasbourg

Accessible trail to the Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle. The castle itself is actually NOT accessible.

Disabled lane?

If you take my place, take my disability, too. 

And these two! 2.5 years after our first picture we still have the same smile!

Breakfast in Berlin

My SB and I started travelling together when we finally started living in the same town, about a year and a half ago. Since then we have been unstoppable. In fact, we like travelling together so much that we make sure never to go on holiday without booking the next trip. This July we realised we didn't have any holidays planned. Nowhere to go in the summer. After a mild panic attack we decided to follow our gut feeling and visit Berlin. Before we knew it we had booked a (cheap, but very early) flight from Venice airport and a hotel in East Berlin. We were ready to go!

The night before leaving we packed a sweater each, thinking we might be cold at night "up north". As we landed in Berlin we realised we would never need them. It was so hot we could hardly breathe. We arrived so early we could have had breakfast in Berlin (or a bratwurst and a beer at the kiosk outside the airport), but we were too excited for breakfast. We decided to drop our bags in our hotel room and start exploring this wonderful city right away.

A Slippery Slope

Berlin is definitely a cyclist-friendly city. There are cycle lanes everywhere. As a result, the curbs are low and the pavements even. The only problem are cobblestones. While some cobblestone streets have a smoother lane in the middle, others can get very bumpy. The constant tremour is quite unpleasant and tiring (who would have ever thought that sitting could be so tiring, huh?). There's also another reason why I do not like cobblestones: the front wheels of my wheelchair are quite small and they often get stuck if the ground is too uneven, so I had to constantly look out for gaps and potholes and the process involved quite a lot of swearing. Some travellers in a wheelchair attach a larger front wheel to their wheelchair. This way the two small wheels do not touch the ground and you avoid getting stuck every couple of seconds. Personally I have never used the large wheel because I often get wheeled up the stairs. Although a third wheel is definitely helpful on smooth surfaces, it adds quite a bit of weight to the wheelchair. As a result, it is much more difficult to tilt or lift the wheelchair.

The Impatient Amplemann

I am sure you have all seen the cute little traffic light guy in Berlin. He looks quite relaxed and laid back, but actually he is always in a rush. Most traffic lights change from green to red so quickly that any walking person needs to speed up if they don't want to get run over, let alone someone on crutches or in a wheelchair. I have to say that we were very pleased, almost surprised, every time we managed to cross the road safely.

Trains and Buses

I was quite surprised to see that most S-bahn and U-bahn trains are accessible. All trains have a railway-car for bicycles, which is usually also the most accessible car for wheelchairs. Of course, before you get on a train you need to make sure that the station you are leaving from and the station you are going to both have lifts, if you do not want to risk getting stuck at the station (info on accessible stations is available on the internet or on S-bahn and U-bahn apps). New trains are almost at the same level as the platform, which makes it easy to get in and out of the train. In some cases, especially in older trains, the gap between the platform and the train is wider and a wheelchair user alone can hardly manage to get on and off the train safely. We encountered some problems on our way to Potsdam since the train was so much lower than the platform that we did not dare to get on it without help. Seeing as we had been waiting for that train for quite a while it we were clearly frustrated when we realised we would miss it. The next train was in half an hour - plenty of time to ask the staff for help. We were just told to wait. Once the train arrived we got to the railway-car for bicycles, the staff put a ramp on the platform and we got on the train without a problem. While I am usually very organised, when I am on holiday I like improvising so I usually don't mind asking random strangers for help. If you are not that kind of person make sure you plan things ahead and you'll get almost everywhere safely. Trains in Berlin do not have air-conditioning so be ready to sweat a lot in the summer. On a brighter note, almost every station has an accessible WC centre (I don't know exactly what that is, but it certainly sounds posh!).

An accessible S-bahn train

A lift takes to the toilet centre

Our Hotel Room

Here are some pictures of our hotel room in a Best Western Hotel in Spittal Markt, East Berlin. Perfectly accessible. It even had a handle to adjust the angle of the bathroom mirror, but unfortunately it did not work.

Aggiungi didascalia

The Hunger Games Salute

The first day we were in Berlin a random stranger walking past us gave me the three-finger salute. Personally, I have always associated this gesture with the Scout oath. After doing some research I found out it was a Hunger Games salute i.e. "a gesture of admiration and gratitude". I am still wondering why she felt the need to show admiration. Maybe because we were baldly walking in the streets despite the heat? Rule of thumb no.1: Wheelchair users are people too. Don't act weird around them.

The Speechless Lady

Although many underground stations have a lift and are therefore accessible and clearly marked on the city map, it sometimes happens that you get off at the wrong stop or that reaching the lift is not as easy as it looks. In these cases taking the stairs may be the easiest option. On our second day in Berlin, after climbing down a long flight of stairs, sweating like a pig with my hair glued to my forehead, I realised there was a lady standing at the bottom of the stairs looking at SB and me. She was obviously in distress. When I looked at her she asked me if I needed help. After I assured her I was fine, I just needed to wipe the sweat off my face to look slightly more normal, she sobbed and went:"Aw...You are both so...amazing! I really don't know what to say!" Rule of thumb no. 2: When in doubt, don't say anything. If you want to show support to someone in a wheelchair, here's one thing to remember: life is hard enough without your sobbing and pitiful looks. So smile and move on. We'll be ok.

The Clumsy Helper

On the third day of our trip we went to Potsdam. The Sansouci park is truly amazing. I really enjoyed all the flowers, lakes and hidden paths. Unfortunately, not all the trails are fully accessible. Some of them are paved with cobblestones, which means that it gets really bumpy, while others are covered in gravel, which means that your shoes get dirty even if you don't walk. Once again, stairs may turn out to be the quickest option to get from point A to point B. My SB is a really good driver and I trust him 100%, so I had no objections when he suggested we take the stairs at one point. As he tilted me backwards and was ready to roll me up the stairs, a worried-looking visitor came up to us and grabbed the lower part of my wheelchair without asking. He clearly wanted to help, but he was a bit too vehement and ended up pushing me backwards. My boyfriend lost his balance (and his cool!) and I was this close to hitting my head on the stony stairs. Rule of thumb no. 2: Before helping someone you think needs help ASK them if they actually need help. Then ask them WHAT THE BEST WAY to help them is and LISTEN closely to what they say. Helping people is a noble action indeed, but if you do what you think is right, you might be doing more harm than good!

My top five (wheelchair-friendly) experiences in Berlin:

1. The walks by the Spree river, where you can see a great mixture of old(-ish) and modern buildings. The atmosphere is extremely relaxed. People lie on the grass or in sunbeds, drink cocktails and strum on their guitars. You don't need a beach after all. Summer is a state of mind.

2. The Museum Insel will definitely surprise you for its impressive buildings. We did not manage to visit any museum this time, but even just walking around it's great.

3. Berlin's inner courtyards will take you to another world. There are so many of them and they come in so many different styles. Getting lost in them is a truly enjoyable experience! Also: the parks. Bumpy but absolutely perfect in this hot weather.

A much needed break in the Sans Souci park in Potsdam

4. The food. There are so many different restaurants to choose from in Berlin. In fact, I have never seen so many Vietnamese restaurants in one place. In four days we had Vietnamese food twice (and it was absolutely delicious!) and Turkish and Spanish food once. German food was not bad either and beer was cheaper than water (no kidding!).

Chicken salad and prawn crackers at a Vietnamese restaurant with a super refreshing mint tea.

Soup

Seaweed salad with salmon

Vietnamese chicken noodles

German-style tapas (i.e. mainly potato-based and not as good as they look)

5. The Food Department in the KaDeWe. The KaDeWe (Kaufhaus Des Westens) is a huge department store in West Berlin with lots and lots of famous brand shops and an amazing food department on the 6th floor where you can find anything: from cheese to meat, fish, wine, spirits, beer, chocolate. It goes without saying that it is very expensive, but even just looking at all the products is worth it. Make sure you go there after a big breakfast or lunch, otherwise you'll want to buy everything and end up spending way too much money!

I hope you've all had lunch by now :) Stay tuned for more travel posts in the next few months!

A fresh start (or Why I decided to keep my blog alive)

As some of you may know, I started a blog some years ago. The idea behind it was to have a space where I could talk about my everyday life as a wheelchair user. At the beginning I was absolutely enthusiastic and eager to talk about my experiences from a personal viewpoint. However, I soon realised that keeping a blog was anything but easy. A blogger needs ideas, time and - last but not least - a readership. If, on the one hand, I really wanted to write about my personal story, on the other hand I was way too shy to advertise my posts. Only the "lucky" few knew about my blog (thank you for sticking with me!). After a while I realised my writing had become a diary, much too personal to be of interest to anyone. Doubts and a constantly increasing workload made me give up on my original plan: to raise awareness about disability-related issues through my personal story. Now, over four years later, I feel I have more things to say. I have been lucky enough to be able to travel around Europe quite a bit. During my trips I realised that travelling in a wheelchair is often extremely complicated and frustrating (if you want to see as many things as you can and do almost everything an able-bodied person does, that is). It is also exhilarating. I am lucky enough to be able to laugh away my frustration/anger/disbelief/you name it with my SuperBoyfriend (hereinafter referred to as SB), who is a tireless adventurer, as well as my legs and my GPS whenever I roll around the world. Most of the stories I am about to tell would not have happened without him. The list of anecdotes is getting longer every day, so I thought it would be worth sharing some of the weirdest stories with you. Hope you enjoy it!

To read my first post on accessibility in Berlin click here.

Practice makes.

Here I am, two months after my last post.

Many things have happened, mainly positive ones. The best of them all was definitely a four-day interpreting marathon at an Italian oil&gas and nuclear facility. After almost two years of being dormant my interpreting persona was awakened. It seems it's still alive and quite fit. Not only was I quick and receptive, I was also very relaxed and communicative so things went better than expected. 

The interpreter's toolkit includes LOTS of pens, notepads, chocolate and deodorant

I had forgotten what the excitement before an interpreting assignment felt like. I was like a child on Christmas eve. Of course, once I was done I treated myself to chocolate cake and a good cup of coffee. They say that positive reinforcement is the key to improvement :)

On kids and shutting things out

Last autumn I took a course to become a volunteer at the children's hospital and since January I am officialy a volunteer. It's been a great experience so far and it's made me think about life, death, luck and fate on more than one occasion. One of the main pieces of advice we are given as junior volunteers is: "What happens in the hospital, stays in the hospital. Don't take any emotional burndens with you."

Easier said than done. 

Especially when you visit kids who are about to have an operation or are recovering from one and while all the other volunteers are trying to make them laugh, you can't stop thinking about your 7-year-old self, lying in a hospital bed with both legs in cast up to your hips. The pain. And the heat. And the urge to scratch - the worse feeling ever (I remember using felt-tip pens and getting quite a few caps stuck under the cast :). The sleepless nights before the operation...and after it. The sound of the stretcher coming to get you. The fear of not waking up after the operation. The fear of "not being clever anymore" (whatever that means) after you wake up. Your dad asking you Math questions to prove that your cognitive skills are intact (back then I could do Maths after surgery, now I need to take painkillers every time I see numbers). The pain and the heaviness in your legs. The crappy food. Your mom's sleepless nights and worried looks. Do these kids really need a stranger to tell them that life is a joke? I wonder.

Nope, not easy. 

Especially when you walk into the playroom and your see a familiar face: "Have we met before?", you ask.

"Yes, I am one of your students."

Silence. "Of course...How are you? I mean...do you know when you'll be out of here?" embarrassed fidgeting. Sometimes you are just at a loss for words.

"Not sure, probably next week."

"Ok, I'll give you all the material we have covered when you get back. Just let me know if there is anything I can help you with."

What happens in the hospital stays in the hospital. My arse.

No matter how hard I try, there are things I cannot shut out and move on. I am learning, though. Let's say I am developing my tough persona.

Had I learnt earlier, I might not have walked into an exam completely distraught and heartbroken. Had I shut him out, I might have passed...But as they say in Italian: "Con i se e con i ma la storia non si fa." (Literally: If and but don't make history).

To be honest, I only want to use my tough persona in exam conditions. In real life I'd much rather be the person who happily rolls out of the hospital with a paper flower in their hand. "I made it for you, Prof., see you in class."

It's ok to keep moving forward. It's ok to want more and to work hard to get it. However, sometimes all you need is realise how lucky you are to be healthy, happy, loved, relatively wealthly, relatively successful, young, wild and free. 

-

Pre-February madness reminder

It's good to see people you haven't seen in ages, even when they go: "You were so cute as a four-year- old. We used to play together all the time and I used to smell you. You still smell the same after all these years." Nice. Creepy, but nice.

Singing in a church is bad for you, especially if you still have a cold. It's been five weeks now. It's time to go in Granny mode and use a nice warm blanket.

There are dull times when all you do is apply for jobs and wait for something to happen, feeling useless and sad. Then, all of a sudden, the world takes up speed and before you know it you are on a rollercoaster again. Not good for a control freak like me, but good overall. The carousel never stops turning.

Whenever I interpret, I want more.

The more I do, the more I get done. If I can't prioritise when it comes to books*, I need to do it when it comes to competitions and my brilliant (?) future career. Feel free to kick me in the arse if you see me lazing around.

I am and will be surrounded by kids. Many of them are under 15, many more of them are over 30. I consider so-called men as weird specimen in a sociological study.

* Here is my brand new purchase: a present to myself :))))

Kaizen

This year, too, like every new year, I was tempted to make a list of resolutions. If you know me a bit, you know I like planning, I like making lists and I like crossing items off them (a habit I have kept from my uni years, when M. and I would split a task into a hundred mini-tasks so we would have more things to cross off).

New year resolutions are indeed a fine thing. However, as I get older the list gets longer and most years I get to day 365/6 (yes, this year has an extra day, we all know that by now) and realise that I have achieved/crossed off the list only one or two objectives. Luckily there are no psychologists among the readers of this blog (as far as I know), so we can pretend there's nothing wrong with me setting overly ambitious goals and only reaching 1.5% of them. Let's face it: our goals and objectives can change along the way, there's nothing wrong with that, if you ask me. What I do find disturbing is the tendency of giving up that is so typical of new year resolutions. We all kick off thinking we are going to always make the time for a healthy and relaxed breakfast, we are going to exercise every day, we'll only have chocolate every other day, we'll drink more water and only work 8 hours per day, we'll read for half an hour every evening, find the time to call a friend every night and see a friend every weekend, do the dishes after every meal, go to bed early...

Believe me, I have tried. I have tried so very hard to do all of this, but it's pointless. I know for a fact that I hardly ever have breakfast, and when I do it consists of a cup of coffee with milk (if there's any left in my perpetually empty fridge). I also know that I cannot possibly spend a day without chocolate (once I tried...until on the fourth day I thought my head was going to explode and the challenge was over). Same goes for working hours...and hell no, I cannot go to bed early! 

The point is that starting to do things knowing that you'll have to keep doing them all year long it's daunting. That is why this year I am going to follow the kaizen technique. As Meredith Grey once said (yes, I am sorry, I am still hooked): "Progress is made of small steps forward".

As for my wishes to you, gentle readers, here they go :)