Ryans a sick boy! Sunday 17th Oct

I woke up this morning to Ryan, who in fact now looked a lot like Eddie Murphy in the Nutty Professor!

I rang the travel insurance hot line today to see whether i should take Ryan to the Hospital or a medical centre. They said take him straight to Emergency. If they just give him a script, then we don´t have to pay anything upfront, just have to keep receipts and will get the money back when we return to Australia. If they admit him to Hospital then the insurance money will pay the hospital direct!

So to the hospital we went. Luckily we are staying only 2 tram stops away. After struggling to speak German with the reception lady in Emergency we finally where in the waiting room to see an doctor. all i was thinking was that surely if someone is smart enough to be a doctor then they would have to be smart enough to speak English! We waited about 2 hours, it is nice to see Australia isn´t the only country with emergency waiting room times! But yay!!! The doctor spoke fluent English!

The Verdict, one of two things. He either just has a really bad infection of the glands, or something more serious The Mumps.... which he was vaccinated for as a child? We are hoping it is just a bad infection. He prescribed an antibiotic and diclofenac as a pain killer\anti inflammatory and Bed rest for the next few days. Now we had the task of finding a Pharmacy that is open. Its a Sunday here, they don´t have one attached to the hospital and there are only a few in Berlin that are open!

We head back to the hostel to find out from reception the best place for us to go. It is across town of course and so we need to catch about 3 trains there. We get to the train station and try to buy a ticket! The machine is not working, after missing 2 trains trying to figure it out, we hop on the next train that comes and decide to try at the next station we get off at before changing trains! Bad idea, undercover ticket inspectors, didn´t give a rats bum that the machine wasn´t working, nor did they care that we just came from hospital and where going to get medication for Ryan´s throat which they could clearly see was inflammed. 40€ each the penalty, but i will not be paying it. While Ryan is sleeping tomorrow I will go to the train office and speak to someone there. We left this morning at 9.30 and we finally arrived back from all this at 3.30! What a shit day! Lets hope the antibiotics work so we can head to the Netherlands First thing Tuesday morning!