I am currently working in Berlin, a city I am quite familiar with in a production of the NOVOFLOT OPER to premier on the 24th of September. We are still in this gloomy sort of weather pattern that has persisted since the beginning of August. It has been cold enough to freeze some of the tomatoes in my greenhouse which is saying something. At any rate some thoughts about working and traveling on the subway here. One sees many people riding bikes and it is prudent to know where the bike lanes on the sidewalks are as could be quite dangerous. I have barely missed being hit by a rider because I am not used to being in this city. The view is quite nice at times as many of the riders are slim young ladies determinedly riding to work. One view that is not so nice is the subway entrances often peopled with drunks, panhandlers, or groups of people of indeterminate origins congregating and blocking at times access causing some detouring to get down below to a waiting train. There is one gentleman at the station on Alexanderplatz lolling around with a beer bottle in hand the whole day and into the night acting as a kind of official greeter. I have yet to figure out his function but he seems to know quite a few of the other beery individuals and then there is the smokers getting their last kick in before descending into the denizens of the Ubahn deep leaving a blue wreath of fog to get through before finally reaching relative air security.