Allergies Abroad

I've been fortunate enough to never have to deal with allergies abroad. The only time I've ever traveled in Spring was Italy in Spring Break of junior year, and I got home just in time. Well, it's all changing now. And with a vengeance. Normally I have a week or two of sneezing and itching before the bad stuff like asthma sets in. Not this time. We spent all day Saturday wandering the streets of Cologne - I was loving the fresh springtime air and the warm breeze on bare shoulders (btw, my friend In told me that in Korea its acceptable to wear extremely short shorts and skirts, but people frown on bare shoulders or too much revealed chest. Interesting as in Europe, people tend to get conservative about the legs first (see Spain). Anyway, after Cologne we had a party, and towards the end of the party I was NOT feeling good. I went pretty much directly home and tried to go directly to bed (I should mention that I had 12 hours of sleep the night before!)

Well, I couldn't sleep at all. I was miserable. No matter what position I laid in, I just felt asthmatic and congested and terrible. Finally, after trying to sleep for four hours, I got up and scoured my pathetic medicine cabinet, such as it is. Scottish sore throat drops... Spanish flu powder... American Ibuprofen... I took the flu powder since it said it was effective against light to moderate pain (always a sleeping plus) and congestion. I stayed up another half hour chatting with friends, drinking water, and eating chocolate. I started to feel sleepy and relaxed so I tried going to sleep again. It worked great! I slept happily through to 1 and felt fine. Which was really good, since it was Sunday and no chance of seeing a doctor or going into a pharmacy.

I'm confused! I've had nights that bad before, but not very often, and not like this. As far as I remember, there was that one night after I spent the whole day playing with Ragweed (one of the worse nights of my life), and then there are usually a few less than pleasant sleeps in the epicenter of the allergy season. I can't imagine what set me off that badly! Since then it's been rainy, and I've been okay. Sunday and Monday I was sneezing but no asthma and I didn't even take any medicine. This morning I'm /very/ sneezy, but I found my small supply of Benedril so I just took one of those and hopefully I'll be fine today too. I'm not looking forward to figuring out the medical system here, (even though I have shiny Europe wide insurance), but the way things are going I'm sure its inevitable!