141 days to go

So there I was, Sorting Stuff Out (pilates was cancelled, there was an hour until Glee and that’s not long enough to watch the Top Gear Bolivia special) when what should I come across, but my Marlene Bar 2007 badge. I was thrilled, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Wendy and I had only recently been speculating on what, in addition to moustaches, we could bring to the top of the mountain, and here it was.

For those who don’t attend the annual International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin, and I am informed by the organiser that there were fewer Brits this year than normal, so that must be some of you, the Marlene Bar is the hub of all conference activity for three days.

Containing a lovely indoor pond, which, for health and safety reasons is covered over for the duration, the bar includes, at any time of the day or night, at least three lawyers, four bankers, 67 agents and a scattering of development executives, representing, if nothing else, a considerable proportion of tax payers’ wealth.

Described by one enterprising chap as ‘Glastonbury in suits’, the sheer strength of will required to attend ‘the Berlin conference’ and live to drag your expenses back to the office is an example to us mountain climbers.

Even more relevantly, the Kilimanjaro book says that mild altitude sickness is rather like operating with a hangover. As someone who has looked down at her watch and realised that she was going to have to put down the gin because morning had come and it was time to go to a panel on sale and leaseback, I am seeing close to a decade of Berlin as the equivalent of around 20 million lunges.

The good news for our party of adventurers is that Wendy has attended Berlin on several occasions and is also adept in the black art of thinking quite deeply about yield compression without having slept for three days and subsisting on green apples from the decorative displays.

It MUST count as training. They hand out commemorative badges to the bar, fer crying out loud.


What have we learned:
Don’t drink the clear spirits, you will confuse them with water next to your bed in the morning

Boot update:
Genius idea for next year’s conference