Illness and broken laptops

We didn’t say too much but both of us were pretty crook during our time in Germany.
Rachel had the same chest infection as Erika and had it since Hawaii so after 2 weeks of coughing and wheezing we finally gave up and went to a German doctor. I was 2 days into the same thing by then so we seriously stocked up on good antibiotics and pretty much what ever we wanted.
The doctor was nice enough, but pretty much just asked us what we thought we needed it and then wrote out the prescription.
He was quick to tell Rachel that the antibiotics would “ruin the anti-baby” pill.
Then he did a deal on the consultation and chat fee and we paid 30 Euro for both of us. Judging by the nurses reaction we either got a great deal or he scammed us big time, I have no idea which.
Then we went to the Apotheke (chemist) but they didn’t have all the drugs we ordered so we had to wait until the next day. The bill for our stash was another 116 Euro.
Anyway after a few days of that washed down liberally with the local Rhine Valley Chablis and Riesling we were feeling fantastic again!

In the meantime I also broke the screen of my laptop. Hence the lack of updates!
The easiest way to describe my frustration is if you get a piece of paper and stick it to your screen covering all but 20% of the left hand side. Then try and work. You are typing away with nothing happening because an alert message has come up on screen but you can’t see it. Trying to scroll down a page is an especially character building exercise.
Well finally today I was able to do something about it. Quotes in Amsterdam to get it fixed ranged from 800 to 1000 Euro with a wait of a week and a decent replacement laptop with the operating system I needed was starting at 1500 Euro.

So to Rachel’s horror I bought a 20 inch monitor instead for 200 Euro instead and while it works great I will concede it’s pretty big and may not travel well.
Just using the computer now is quite an exercise and sitting in a café using their free wireless LAN is a less attractive option unless I bring the monitor and associated cords with me.