Amazing what you can squeeze into a tube of time when you are stuck with nowhere to go.

The three movies I watched? “True Grit” by the Coen Brothers, not their best but not bad, saved by a precocious teenage girl; “Millions”, the Danny Boyle movie about a boy who finds a bagful of pounds weeks before the currency switch to Euros (you can see the beginnings of “Slumdog Millionaire” here); and “Love & Other Drugs”, a movie I liked despite my skepticism that it’d be just another rom-com in the park for Anne Hathaway and Jake Glygenhaal. Throw in sex, drugs and disease and you’ve got a love story.

The TV drama was an adaption of a play, “A Song For Lunch”, starring no less than Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman as two former lovers who decide to meet for lunch after a 15-year break. Never a good idea. The script was exquisite, production tender, acting superb.

When we landed at Frankfurt airport, there was a lovely, smiling German girl waiting outside the aircraft asking for those who were transferring to Berlin.

Turned out there was a huge group from Bali on the flight and she had been assigned to ensure they caught their connecting flight and I was thus embraced within the group. I felt like I was back on the island of the Gods and in their sweet embrace as I willingly surrendered to waiting, queuing, and generally hanging out with the Balinese.

There’s something so calming about being with people who live on islands filled with temples and palm trees and beaches.

Gilda Sagrado from the Bali Tourism Board recognized me and immediately struck up an animated conversation. Never mind, this was 5am Singapore time and I hadn’t had any sleep but she fairly lit up my spirits.

When the taxi drops me off at the Scandic Berlin at Potsdamer Platz – a new hotel I am trying and I booked it online – my first thought was, this is like a giant Ikea store. I channeled Willy Wonka as in “SHY & The Giant Ikea Factory” as I checked in – everything is very clean and Scandinavian. What a strong sense of brand.

In the elevators are bird song. I think these are the same birds that have followed me from the Rembrandt Hotel in Bangkok where I was last week. These are migratory birds of a virtual sort.

In my room, more simple lines, whites and creams with the occasional splashes of blues, greens and oranges to tell me this is a hotel, not a hospital. Minibar is free, so is wifi – multi-devices, no less.

I am as happy as Willy in his Chocolate Factory until I open the curtains. My room on the first floor sits right on top of the hotel porch roof and the brightly lit hotel sign is right in my face. (pictured)

It brought me back to the early days in Hong Kong when I lived in Wanchai in a flat so tiny you couldn’t swing a cat but the thing that kept me going was these huge, flashing neon signs over the bars in Wanchai, which kept flickering into my bedroom.

They made me dream that there’d be bright lights waiting for me someday if I worked hard enough.

I just didn’t think it’d say Potsdamer Platz. Incidentally, across the hotel is the Pfizer building. In the movie “Love & Other Drugs”, Jake plays a drug sales rep who makes millions selling the little blue pill, “Viagra”, but decides to give it up for a girl with Parkinson’s Disease.

Ah, the stuff of Hollywood. Me, I’m stuck with my Scandinavian-tinged Potsdamer dreams for the next four nights.