Game: Auf Weidersehen Berlin

 Berlin: The Wicked City, Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin By David Larkins with Mike Mason and Lynne Hardy, Chaosium 2019

I've mentioned this before, but the concept of doing full-fledged reviews carries with it the responsibility of actually playing the game. I talk about my recent arrivals with the light hand of first impressions and initial read-throughs, but full reviews demand a higher level of engagement.  The downside of this is that it may take weeks or months to get to a post-worthy review. This is hardly a good recipe for telling you about the new hotness.

But anyway, Berlin: The Wicked City.

Berlin was the capital of Germany in the twenties and thirties (the government was based out the town of Weimar briefly after WWI and that's where the name "Weimar Republic" came from). It was a vibrant, cultured, and often decadent city, with cabarets, art, a thriving literary scene, and a nascent movie industry. And sex. Lots of sex.

The book is recommended for mature readers, and leans hard into the city's cabarets and sex workers. A lot about sex workers. Even when talking about the various districts in Berlin, it drills down on what kind of sex workers are common there. Sort of like if you were writing about Las Vegas, but concentrating on strip clubs and escort services. It's a bit much, and while it adds depth to the setting, I never want to hear  people complaining about the Random Harlot Table in the DMG ever again.

The sourcebook section is incredibly detailed - we're a hundred years in the past in another country. And most people's knowledge of that era is primarily watching Cabaret on their iPad (which is not horrible, since the movie is based on the musical which is based on the book by an author who LIVED in Berlin during that era). So the first hurdle is getting people to understand what it is about Berlin they should consider when adventuring there.

And the authors have done their homework, and want you to know about it. Bios about everyone who hung out in Berlin in the 20s and 30s. Floorplans of famous buildings of the era. The adventures themselves are filled with name-checks and famous characters, such that I took the rare measure of asking the players not to look up everyone they encounter on the Wikipedia. 

The game rules? OK, we talked about the new system a while back. In general, they hold up well in play, and I like the fact that the staged nature of success makes it easier to narrate combat. In addition, the setting for the adventures makes for new players to slide into. Germany in the immediate post-war period had stricter gun control laws, so the idea of player characters packing heat is initially off the table (Gun laws were loosened later, but then only for "approved" people).

What about the adventure? Ah, there's the rub.

Well, I wasn't impressed. I ran the first of the three adventures, and after reading the second, thought about just going on to something else with my team. But after a vote, we pressed on, and had a good time of it. Of course, this requires a bit more detail and explanation, and with it a big SPOILER WARNING for those who are planning to get involved with this. So consider the SPOILER LIGHT lit and know that HERE BE SPOILERS.

My regular group on this was four players. A big-game hunter looking to book rich tourists to safaris in East Africa. A grizzled American reporter who came for the war and stayed for the beer. An albino heiress who lost her father and brothers in the war. An alienist who had an unpleasant encounter with Deep Ones when he was in the Kriegsmarine in the Baltic. You know, your typical grab-bag of Call of Cthulhu characters. They were all members of the Independent Order of the Owls, a club of paranormal researchers. This was one of the groups suggested by the book for creating a common theme among diverse heroes, and it gets good marks for giving the Keeper a place to start and unify the team.

The further good news is that the adventures swing away from the standard CoC plot ("You are summoned to a distant, unfamiliar place by someone who will be dead by the time you get there"). The bad news is that the players are often bystanders in their own adventure. They are roofied, magically teleported (a couple times) and in the case of the first adventure, have their fates determined by a single die roll at the beginning of the game. At the same time, there is a lot for the Keeper to do as well, in that you have to come up with encounters as the Brownshirts and their allies in authority close in on you (the Owls were raided at one point, and I had to make that up on the fly). Plus there are places where the text leaves you high and dry on basic reasoning about NPC behavior (Why DOES the Russian count choose to hire you?) and places where you have to make sure certain clues are delivered (make sure the amnesiac Grand Duchess mentions the Berlin Zoo to lead their players there later).

The adventures cover the rise and fall of postwar Berlin. The first adventure takes place among the physical and economic decimation following the end of the War and features the malevolent spirit of a mass murderer. The second occurs during the roaring 20's recovery and deals with a group seeking to incarnate an ancient goddess (and unfortunately succeeding). And the final adventure occurs during the authoritarian takeover of Germany, with the SA (Brownshirts) rising, and takes a tour through German cinema.  And through it all we have murdered prostitutes, dissolute, naked celebrities, and SS-supported brothels. 

How did our group fare? They lived, sorta. The American reporter sacrificed himself to defeat an elder god and was replaced with an exact duplicate. After the third adventure he joined the big game hunter and emigrated to Wisconsin. The alienist fled to Switzerland, and the heiress attempted to use the knowledge they gained to resurrect her dead husband. This last bit did not go well, and she went quietly mad and remained in Berlin until the Allied bombers arrived.

Berlin: The Wicked City, is an impressive sourcebook. The research is excellent, and by using period maps of the city, the maps are well-done. The handouts were well put together, and we discovered that even the newspaper typefaces of the time were politicized. Ultimately, though, this is a challenging product, not so much for the adult nature of it but because the adventure often denies players their agency, and requires the Keeper to thread some very narrow needles to keep the plot moving forward. 

More later,

The Plague Books: The Zimmermanns

The Zimmermann Telegram by Thomas Boghardt, Naval Institute Press, 2012
The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman, Macmillan Publishing, 1958, 1966 Edition

As I've mentioned, I have been taking advantage of my sequestered lifestyle to catch up on my reading. I have accumulated a large number of books that I've eventually intended to consume, and now, without a commute and with them at easy hand, I find the time to do so. Have some reviews.

Provenance: Two different books with the same name. Both these books come from the local Half-Price Books down in the valley (I think). The Tuchman version was purchased and consumed years ago, and is truly a used book - it lacks any marking of previous ownership, but the spine opens easily and the flyleaf cover is slightly ripped at the corners. Someone read this book and sold it, with a bundle of others, to the store. The Boghardt version is an overprint - they ran a larger print-run than they sold, so it went in a box with eleven of its others to a warehouse, then another warehouse, and lastly to the local HPB. This volume was the most recent purchase of mine before everything shut down, along with a copy of The Lost City of Z, which I am currently abandoning (30 pages in and I have no less than THREE different expeditions lost in the Amazon jungle. I fear if I continue the entire state of Rhode Island will be lost there.).

Review: When I was in high school, I always thought that the sinking of the Lusitania was why US entered into WWI. Years later I realized that the timeline didn't match up, the Lusitania, a British passenger ship (now admitted to be carrying munitions) was torpedoed by a German U-boat in May of 1915, but the US didn't enter into the war properly until early 1917. Later I learned that it was the resumption of unrestricted naval warfare in the Atlantic (which meant attacking neutral ships, including US ones). And then I found out about the Zimmermann Telegram, where the German government contacted Mexico with an offer of support if they would attack the US in the event that the US entered the war on the British side, offering them the lost territories in the American Southwest.

Americans love their inciting moments. Pearl Harbor. 9/11. The Maine in Havana harbor. It is the rallying point that we can get behind to take on enemies. We don't do so well when we have to creep up on a war, make a rational decision to commit. Was the War of 1812 really about American seamen being impressed onto British ships? Or was it about expansion in the Northwest Territories as the western War Hawks wanted? Or just opportunism because England was dealing with Napoleon? The Gulf of Tonkin turns out to be suspiciously wonky as a casus belli. So it makes sense that we fixate on the earlier sinking of the Lusitania or the Zimmerman telegram as the spark that unleashes the flames of war.

Maybe, maybe not. And I found Tuchman's book to be very strong in making that argument when I first read it. Hers is a popular history, a well-organized tale well-told. She tracks the writing and the intercept of the telegram through spies in foreign lands, Swedish back-channels, and recovered codebooks. The telegram drops on America like a bombshell and rallies us to take on the Hun.

Boghardt disagrees, and has the benefit of forty years of additional research in the area. He had access to the files in the German Foreign Office in Willhelmstrassen that Tuchman did not, and the ability to dig down beneath the mildly disingenuous interviews with the British spymasters to produce a more nuanced version of the events.

Boghardt's description of the German Foreign Office at Wilhelmstrasse is like a Teutonic version of The Office. Everyone has their own pet projects, their own fears, their own promotional goals. The Zimmermann telegram doesn't belong so much to Zimmermann as to his assistant, von Kemnitz, who Tuchman excludes from her 1966 edition as a shadowy figure lurking at the margins. From internal documents, the whole alliance with Mexico was von Kemnitz's favorite. Boghardt shows that the plan was swept up in other matters as an afterthought, since Zimmermann and the rest were more concerned about the upcoming announcement that Germany was going to return to unrestricted submarine warfare. THAT was what the Foreign Office was sure to bring the US in on the English side, and offering to support Mexico in case of war was just a side offer.

How the Brits got the telegram is another point of discrepancy. Tuchman relied on the stories of Captain William Reginald Hall, the director of British naval intelligence, and passed along the official line of Swedish roundabouts and captured code books. On review of the play, however, the Germans sent the infamous coded telegram through (then-neutral) American channels, and asked the American to just pass the word along to the German Embassy there (without looking at it, or breaking the code). Hall and the Brits were intercepting and reading the US diplomatic posts and had already broken the German code. British Naval Intelligence then had to figure out how to tell the Americans about the plot without revealing that they had been spying on their hopeful allies. And after the war, they reinforced the cover story in order to not reveal that they were STILL reading the American's diplomatic mail.

The announcement of the Telegram (leaked to the American Press) was not an immediate hammerblow to neutrality but was a major jolt to the system. The US was not blase about the telegram (and the examples Boghardt uses to show that it was no big deal were not effective), but it did not immediately turn the US to a war footing. Isolationist, rpo-neutral and pro-German factions in the government (there were more Germans in Milwaukee than in Berlin at the time) concentrated not on the news of the plot, but rather on where it came from. Many suspected it was a British scheme to pull the US into the war (and it was, but like the best plots, had its roots in reality). Congress argued for days on the matter, until Wilson stepped in and asked for the declaration of war before Congress adjourned.

Ultimately, the Zimmermann telegram was the final straw for Wilson. Portrayed by Boghardt as the last proponent of peaceful resolution in his own administration, the effrontery and outrageousness of the German offer was enough to move him off the fence. While unrestricted naval warfare was the cause on-paper, the Zimmermann Telegram, and how it was spun, ultimately moved him to action sooner as opposed to later.

And Mexico as a German ally? I think it more possible than either Boghardt or Tuchman consider. We had grabbed those huge chunks of Mexican land in 1848. In 1916, we physically invaded Mexico with Pershing's Punitive Expedition, not to mention grabbing Vera Cruz, their major port for a while in 1914. So yeah, regardless of the Mexican government's attitude (they were in the midst of a three-way civil war at the time), it was worth considering.

And while the plan of the Zimmermann telegram seems far-fetched, it matched up with successes from the German Foreign Office. They encouraged subjugated populations for form second, third, and fifth fronts to stretch their opponents' resources thin. Yes, the Zimmermann telegram backfired. But the Easter Rising in Belfast was a success (from the German  side, who capitalized on the resistance being crushed by the Brits. For the Irish themselves, not so much),. And after the telegram, Zimmermann pulled off one of the coups of the war in organizing Lenin's sealed train, sending the Communist leader back into Russia at a critical point. Neither Tuchman nor Boghardt mention this, as both narratives create the impression that after the telegram, Zimmermann entered into twilight.

Ultimately, both books have value. Tuchman's gives the once standard view, supported by traditional sources, while Borhardt's deals with a lot more detail into the whys and wherefores. Neither comes right out and claims the Telegram was the primary reason we went into war, but make good cases for it to be a strong influence on America's decision.

More later,

The Bubble, Revisited

Last time out I mentioned the Travel Bubble, this hermetically sealed chain of events which moves you through a series of intricate processes to deliver Traveler A to Place B with a minimum of impact on either the traveler or the outside world. And indeed the service industry at the far end of the portal seeks to sustain that process, such that our travelers, whether they be in Hamburg or Seattle, are operating is a swaddled wrapping and kept apart from the rest of the population.

However, you still are in another place, far from home, and things are different there.

We hit this on the Hamburg trip. There were some of us who had never been abroad, or never been the Germany before. And I had a number of "ah-hah" moments when I encountered something that I found out on one of my previous trips, and had forgotten to tell the others. So since we are sending a large swath of the company to Cologne for GamesCom in a few weeks, I thought it best to note a few of them here.

- First thing no one tells you - you turn the lights in your room with your room key. There's a slot above the light switch that the key fits into. You can put any card in there, but I find it is easier to use your room card. This is the first thing that many American travelers, weary from a 10 hour flight, trip over. As one of our group admitted later "My room is smarter than I am".

 - Tying the lights to your room card saves electricity, but the TV will be on when you come in. Go figure.

- Yes, you're going to be confused by the taps in the shower. Don't worry, it happens to everyone. No, there's no universal methodology. 

- Oh yeah, the first floor of a building is the Ground Floor. What Americans call the second floor is the First Floor. No, they didn't move the lobby in the time that it took you to go up to your room and back.

- And when traveling 9 time zones away from your home, don't do the math to figure out what time it is back home. Just don't. It will depress the hell out of you and just make you more tired.

- Germans find the American fascination with refrigeration amusing and a little bit creepy. If you want ice with your coke, you need to ask for it, and they might bring you a bowl, much like sugar. Want iced tea? Good luck with that. One of our number succeeded in his quest only by hitting a Starbucks, ordering a hot tea, and cooling it down with ice (provided in a separate cup).

- The German Hotel breakfast is a thing of beauty. Whereas American Continental Breakfasts are a table with coffee and donuts, on the REAL Continent it is a spread of hot sausages, eggs, cold meats, cheeses, breads, rolls, and other sundries. I have yet to find a hotel breakfast in Germany that did not have smoked salmon. For a business traveler, always have a good breakfast, because you don't know when lunch and dinner are going to happen.

- Germany also has great bread - heavy, stoneground bread. Bakeries are important features.

- Try to get some street food. Curry wurst is a big thing - a grilled sausage, chopped up, with a thick, mildly spicy curry sauce. Imagine pork and beans without the beans. Also worth hunting down: doner kebab - the Turkish version of the Greek gyro in the states.

- Yes, that's mayo that comes with your fries. Just deal with it, OK?

- And then there is dinner. Make time for it. The Germans have a reputation for efficiency, and that efficiency exists so you can get to dinner and spend four hours at it. Socialize.

- Finally, the Delta Airlines cabin may be cashless, but in general the Germans don't do credit or debit cards to the extent the Americans do. Bring Euros for the small meals, taxis, and sundries.

More later,

Farewell, Hamburg

So I have spent the past four days in Hamburg, Germany helping to present Guild Wars 2 to the European press. We have a new build that we have been springing on people here and abroad, showing one of our racial areas, our underwater adventures, and our dungeons (multiplayer instances).

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'd rather talk about the Bubble, and being a stranger in a strange land.

The Bubble I have mentioned before in these pages. It is the Travel Bubble which surround the modern voyager, at best a frictionless surface that carries the journeyer from one point to another as humane cargo with a minimum of fuss. The Later 20th has perfected the model, such that for the vast bulk of travel happens with very little fuss, and idea of jetting to Europe for two days of business presentation is not only feasible, but suitable.

Hence, I am in Germany with the ease that one could previously go to Ohio. The entire modernity of it all leaves me completely gob-smacked.

(It is not to say the entire process is not without perils - My luggage was delayed coming through Amsterdam while some of my fellows will never see their possessions again, due to a baggage handlers' strike in Paris. When the Bubble collapses, it collapses catastrophically. Still, it is hardly on the same level as having to fight mountain lions to reach your destination).

So, Hamburg. I would like to speak about the coolness of the museums and the bustle of life, but my time was not my own, and I am now being whisked back to the states having completed my mission. However, we have been staying at the Radisson Blu downtown, and extremely upscale operation in the Dag Hammarskjold Paza overlooking the Planten un Blomen, or rather, the botanical gardens. As a result, I have managed to slip out several times to walk the grounds and mix with the locals.

I pass like a mute ghost, smiling but saying little. My German is at the "Ein bier, bitte", level, which leaves me functionally illiterate and a possible danger to myself and others if left unsupervised. However, I am German by genetics, though heavier than most of the population (The locals I have encountered have been fit and have a huge number of bicycles). In effect, I blend, such that I often get hit up by American tourists, also speaking halting German and asking directions.

The weather here has blossomed into a beautiful summer, and the gardens are luscious and green. It is akin to Seattle on those few nice summer weekends when people visit and marvel at the innate beauty of the land, and say how nice it would be to live there, and us locals holding our sides to prevent ourselves from busting a gut in laughter. Hamburg has all the signs of a cold and bitter place in winter - very steeply pitched residential roofs to handle heavy snows, a populace that is stunned by the change of weather (a lot of long sleeves among those lounging on the grass and in the numerous lawn chairs in the area), and heavy and amazingly effective curtains in the hotel. On the last, I was surprised to discover that Hamburg was even further north than Seattle, and since I tend to wake with the sun, that meant a lightening sky at 4:00 AM.

My view, by the way, is southern into the city itself, overlooking the green expanse of the garden and the various surrounding government buildings and capturing a skyline of steeples, office buildings, loading AT-ATs, and wind turbines. Hamburg is mostly flat, which adds to the omnipresent nature of the bicycles as a chief mode of transportation. To that end, the local population are masters of utilitarian bike skills, and handle them with an ability that Americans have trouble matching (drive through crowds is always a challenge in the States, due to the nature of our sidewalks and pedestrians).

But most of my time has been in the Bubble - making presentations in a conference room at the hotel in the international language of Computer Games, English. Our handlers and contacts have been highly competent and friendly, and one has lived in Hamburg for many years (apparently, one is only a Hamburger if one is born here. Also, they don't think being a Hamburger is silly, though they think being from Vienna/Wien, and therefore being a Wiener, is hilarious). Short walks into town to see the Rathaus (City Hall) and the monuments. And a sense that everything moves without any problem right up until 8, when the city center rolls up its sidewalks even though there is another three hours of sunlight.

But Hamburg has been very pretty and very kind, even if I have engaged it only on the most superficial of levels. And now I re-enter the Travel Bubble and am whisked back to my daily life with an ease that would leave my grandfather scratching his head, as if I had suddenly mastered teleportation and blinked from continent to continent with ease.

More later

Twenty Years Ago

More later,

The Settlers 7

A long time ago (in blog time), I was involved with creating The Settlers: Rise of an Empire game with Blue Byte software. The game was also called The Settlers 6, and the series has been very successful in Europe (S6 won a writing award, among other awards - woo-hoo) but did not get as much traction in the US, which was a pity, since the sandbox-medieval-village-builder with military options was a cool design (oh, and it had a good story as well).

Time moves on, and now Settlers 7, or rather Settlers: Paths to a Kingdom has been announced. I didn't have anything to do with this one, but a friend sent me the link showing off the first advertisement for it. And it is really, really cool. I really like how the Settlers series is going back to its early, more cartoon-like roots in character design and animation, and the cinematic captures the major points of the game - the world-building, the upgrading of structures, the interesting characters, and the fact that combat is a component of the game, not the dominant activity.

I look forward to this release, and point it out to guys in the States, since games like this get buried in the latest FP shooter.

More later,

Convention Report - Gamescom

Ah, I suppose I should talk about Gamescom, before PAX arrives and swallows everything in my brain whole.

Gamescom was the first big European computer game convention of the season, set in scenic Cologne. Previous years were set up in Liepzig, and though the facility was reportedly nice, the surrounding support network (hotels, restaurants) could not handle the size of the convention.

And by size, I mean 245,000 attendees. Yeah, over a quarter of a million people, spread over four majors halls, each hall capable of swallowing GenCon whole and having room for Origins for desert. Add to that a "business hall" that was about two more GenCons in space, and you have a massive, massively multiperson convention.

And the booths were huge. The old TSR castle would be considered quaint and tidy in this atmosphere. Aeon had a three story backpiece displaying a poster with media quotes, and it was neither the largest nor the most expensive of the booths. Blizzard erected a pair of huge monoliths to corral its faithful, while Bethesda erected a shanty town for its upcoming Brink, to which they restricted attendance so effectively that most people did not even know they were there.

One challenge to conventions in Germany is the rating system, such that games that are non-E-for-Everybody cannot be shown to greater populace. Solutions tended to walled-off sections that created queues, which were great for showing that people were interested (Diablo III had ones supposedly lasting three hours), but hard for mobility elsewhere in the convention (both tying fans down with nothing to do while waiting and forming fandom clots in the otherwise broad halls). One PS3 provider managed to pull off both with a booth featuring inward-facing screens that could not be seen from outside, allowing people to publicly browse without worrying about showing the game outside the confines.

NCSoft's booth consisted of a stage, a lot of terminals running the game, a bunch of huge screens, and was a great success. The terminals were continually slammed throughout the convention, and we had out own fans promoting the game by playing it. Every hour or so we would do a presentation for Aion (and for Guild Wars, debuting the trailer to the world).

And it was packed. So much so we got a warning from the convention about clogging the halls. So packed we got a complaint from the Age of Conan folk about the noise. And mind you, they had a point here - the presentations were like soccer rallies, with call-and-respond cheers and a LOT of excitement.

And when we made our presentation we were, just briefly, rock stars. This is a weird position for writers, artists, marketers and business folk. We spoke about the game, answered a few questions, and threw out T-shirts to a ravenous crowd. We even had pretty young women shouting at us in the front row. Like I said, Rock Stars. It was a nice moment.

Cologne itself, a beautiful city dominated by its cathedral, was a great venue. While the hotel was dicey on the subject of elevators and connectivity, they did a great job hosting. In addition, our badges gave us a free pass on the rail system (Seattle please take note this for PAX). The food was excellent, though after three nights of excellent German food, we rebelled and ended up at an incredible asian/french fusion place in the shadow of the cathedral itself.

All in all, we did what we intended to do - unleashed news of GW2 on the world, talked to a lot of press, and waved the flag for ArenaNet. And even now, I am still badly time-shifted, but I have to call it all a success.

And next up - PAX.

More later,

While I've Been Out

I've been away from the Home Office on Grubb Street for the past few weeks, first for the marriage of my eldest niece in Pittsburgh, and leaving there directly for Cologne, Germany and Gamescom.

My presence in Germany was to help launch the initial trailer for the upcoming Guild Wars 2 game (said trailer can be found here. (Go ahead, go play it. I'll wait.It's really good). We launched about noon local time on Thursday, followed by about fifty bajillion hours of interviews which featured the game trailer and Uncle Jeff's Story Time, a great party, several great dinners, and a long flight back to Seattle, which allowed me to watch Frost/Nixon.

But before I left on the flight, we did take a picture of the ArenaNet team in Germany. Here's our gang of unusual suspects:

(L to R: Randy, Chris, Martin, Daniel, and your Humble Narrator. Note that Daniel and I started drinking before the toast).

Horribly exhausted, but satisfied, both by the work and by the beer. More later.

Rise of an Empire

We tend to be a bit parochial here in the States, even when it comes to such things as computer games, an international phenomena.

I have mentioned here before that I was working on a game with Blue Byte Software in Düsseldorf - Settlers: Rise of an Empire. My contribution has been story, continuity, and cut screen scripts, similar to my work with ArenaNet. The game has been released, and did quite well in Europe, but was much quieter on this side of the Atlantic (where there is a lot more attention to Assassin's Creed, also by parent company UbiSoft).

That's a pity, because I thought the concept was really cool, and I appreciate all the work by the brilliant team, including Benedikt Grindel, Andreas Suika, and Alex Brueggemann (who were my main contacts in a very long-distance work relationship).

But I was surprised to learn that we (meaning the game) had picked up no less than six awards for the German Developer Prize, including "Game of the Year", and, my fave "Best Cutscene Intros". That last one made me particularly happy, since I thought they turned out great (One friend, looking over my shoulder during the development, said he would BUY the game based on the cutscenes).


L to R: Benedikt, Pepe (graphics artist), Andreas, Alex, Ralf Wirsing (director of Ubisoft Germany) and presenter Arne Peters.

Congratulations to the team, and delighted to see that Settlers: Rise of an Empire has gotten its well-deserved props!

More later,

Polonium

Oh, here's a fun fact that I forgot to mention earlier - I'm not radioactive.

I'm sure that's a relief to many, but the question of why it would be important that I declare it is a story that I have been witholding from the blogosphere at large.

Back in early November, I was in Germany working with Blue Byte on their game - The Settlers: Rise of an Empire (which is looking real cool, by the way). Flew into Heathrow, smaller plane to Dusseldorf, and then back. Partial story of the trip is here. But about the same time as I was jetting about, former KBG agent Alexander Litvenenko was poisoned by a massive dose of Polonium-210

Time passes, as does Litvenenko. I'm back in Seattle and it is early December, and I get an urgent email from Blue Byte to contact them. The Brits had found trace amounts of PO-210 on four planes, including the one I was on for the Dusseldorf/Heathrow hop. There was no immediate danger, but everyone on board was encouraged to see their physician, just in case. Now.

Oh, joy.

So I call my GP, was told that things were kinda full, explained to them that there was an outside chance of my being radioactive, and was given an immediate appointment. There was a general determinance of my good health (no surprise - in the mean time, the LB and I had the great Thanksgiving disaster, which resulted in us walking four miles uphill in the snow) and a recommendation that I see the staff radiologist. He was in turn interested (I was his first Litvenenko-related case), ran a radiation counter/tricorder/studfinder over me, and declared me OK.

Mind you, Polonium-210 is a heavy particle that can be stopped by clothing or skin. The only prob is if it is injested (which is how Litvinenko got it - through a teapot). Since I didn't lick the pull-down seat tray on that flight, I was pretty sure I was good. Plus the fact that if I had pulled up even a mild dose, I would have showed some definite signs (like keeling over dead) in the month between by fateful flight and the warning.

I was concerned, though, and took it with some gallows humor. And my co-workers were amused. One of them said "The symptoms of Polonium poisoning are similar to those of being stabbed through a curtain." That made me laugh. Even in our darkest hour - Shakespeare humor!

So that's my brush with international espionage. Why didn't I mention it sooner? Well, two days BEFORE I got the call to check myself for radiation poisoning, I was talking to my Mom on the phone, and she was worried (as Moms worried) that the Brits were checking flights and since I was on a flight in Europe, I was at risk. And of course I said that there were a lot of flights in Europe, and it was unlikely I was affected.

And of course I was wrong, but I didn't want to then CALL her back and make her worry, so I resolved to mention it in person when I was back in Pgh this past month, when I could demonstrate I was in good health and ... well, not dead.

And I've been mum on the blog as well, but the sudden meme-tagging made me realize that I haven't shared THIS particular fact. But now I have. So there you have it.

How am I? Not Radioactive! Thank You!

More later,