Hip hip hurr--

Have had no time since the results came out to write about how I felt, each night for the past several days having been filled with two social meetings each. I've started to feel very tired today from meeting too many people and sleeping too little and planning too much - and also from my cup of tea this morning at breakfast jumping on me and depriving me of my tea. It seems I've become addicted to coffeine in black tea. I feel like a limp piece of cloth when I haven't had my tea for breakfast.
SUNDAY sunday... Lutz, who was visiting from Paris, had followed the electoral campaign with enthusiasm and horror, and repeated the whole weekend over that Royal could still win. I kept telling him to forget it as I saw how she made mistake after mistake and destroyed all her credibility. But right before I left the flat at 7pm Sunday evening, after having checked the news on line - super high participation, DOMS voting rather more left wing than usual - I was suddenly packed by an irrational glimpse of hope. Perhaps it wasn't all lost. Perhaps power wouldn't be given to the one who was so thirsty for it.
I travelled over to P'Berg to get the results live in an overly full location. It was once again a shock to realise I don't know any French people. It was the first time in a while I would step in a place without any known faces around - except a friend of Annika's, Aline, whom I'd met earlier in the week, and was there too, resigned and dull. Lutz was late, my stomach was turned upside down, I couldn't take the waiting anymore. 20 seconds. I called him up. 10 seconds. 3.2.1. And I exploded in rude words on the phone and hung up. Constantin and Caro who had shown up earlier than Lutz were outside but of no support - they hadn't followed the campaign more than most educated Germans. L arrived and we went across the street to eat and dampen the frustration. Lutz and I hung around afterwards for a while to get some of the speeches and the images of the frantic excited journalists busying around the Fresh Presidential Hand stuck out the car window.
I had an emotional shut down. L and I parted to each go to our further social commitments.