Nine Days Immersed in Relativity (in Berlin and War-torn Kyiv)

Sarah Mackay, a brilliant yet introspective physicist, takes a break from her Master's in Beijing, and arrives in Berlin for a nine-day seminar series in February 2022. This was her first opportunity to return to Europe, where she had hoped to spend nine days in Berlin and nine days with her family in  Edinburgh.As she delves into the mathematical elegance of spacetime and gravitational warping, Sarah grapples with her own emotional turbulence.Together with her friends and mentors, she visits the historical locations where Einstein's theories were shaped, and attends lectures that deepen her understanding of the universe's fabric, but are interrupted by the breakout of war in Ukraine.However, things take a drastic turn when the war breaks out in Ukraine and she makes the brave decision to accompany her close friend and former colleague at CERN, Tomasz Nowak to help rescue his family.What she hadn't reckoned on was being stuck in a basement with shells falling all around her… Her thoughts on relativity on the grandest scale help her to get through the ordeal.