The morning after the Championships before

Monday in our Team Hotel was a weird experience, and no doubt it was the same in the other one too. By the time we went to breakfast at 8am, some rooms used as offices or other Championship facilities had already been cleared and returned to their normal state. At lunchtime, this was even more obvious, especially as the security guards had even started to disappear from the doors; and by the evening, 'ordinary people' were checking into the hotel. Some athletes had left over the last few days anyway, once their events were over, either because they needed or wanted to get home or because they had other competitions to go on to; but the main bulk of the athletes left during Monday. As the athletes disappeared, so did the facilities provided by the Championship organisers - which is why there has been a delay in updating the blog since Monday morning - the athletes' internet lounge which I'd been using disappeared sometime after 9am on Monday. And it was not just facilities that disappeared but also the security guards, police, photographers, and autograph hunters that either gathered or were posted outside all the doors. Both Team Hotels and certain parts of the Stadium were secure areas. The chaplaincy team were fortunate and also extremely grateful that the organisers had granted us such a wide accreditation - there were very few relevant places that we could not go to. However, there were occasions when I felt very sorry for the more well-known athletes who were faced with the hassle of autograph hunters and photographers every time they got off a shuttle bus. I obviously had to walk through them too but at least they weren't in the slightest bit interested in me so I had a fairly free passage each time. The freedom that having security guards and police outside the hotels was greatly appreciated by athletes. It also meant that startling things happened occasionally, such as the evening when I walked through an exuberant gathering of Jamaicans and others in one of the public areas and realised later that I'd wandered through Usain Bolt's birthday party! All humans need personal space occasionally and it's hard for sportspeople to get this sometimes whilst on the competition circuit.

Although the Championships had finished, chaplains were still around if needed, although we had a much freer space ourselves. In the morning I went to meet a lady in the former eastern half of Berlin who my husband and I had stayed with in 1989 before the Berlin Wall finally came down totally. It was a moving experience to hear her stories of the last almost 20 years since full reunification, and to enjoy a visit to her church knowing that I was able to do so without being watched, which would have been the situation last time we visited. In the afternoon, I revisited some of the famous sites to see how they'd changed in the same period, as well as going to the Jewish memorial which is new since the last time I was in Berlin. In the evening, the remaining chaplains got together for a meal before we all left the following morning.