| Monday, June 11, 2012 6:00 AM

If State Homie John Key's looking a little shabby today then he could be forgiven. His trip back to God's Own was a stop, go affair.

Before leaving Berlin he was meant to visit a holocaust museum, poignant for this man whose Jewish mum fled Austria as the Nazis were taking hold in that part of the world.

But his British airline flight out of the German capital was cancelled, which meant Lufthansa had to come to the rescue but couldn't get his entourage straight to London, they had to drop into Munich where the plane sat on the tarmac for more than an hour.

In London the Air New Zealand flight waited patiently as the Key travelling machine was whisked around the tarmac. Finally the suits climbed on board much to the relief of their fellow passengers.

The Homie was still fizzing though from his lunch with Europe's most powerful woman, the matronly Angela Merkel, the woman who holds the economic future of The Continent in her handbag.

The Homie told an evocative story about this formerly divided city. Merkel had taken him on to the balcony of the Chancellery and pointed out where she used to live, on the eastern size of the now invisible wall.

She lamented that while growing up behind the iron curtain she could only look on with envy at the Bunderstag in the west, knowing that the chances of her walking along its expansive corridors was little more than a childhood dream. Now of course she occupies the Chancellor's office.

Touching down in Auckland, Berlin seemed a long way away which was where his luggage was, still somewhere in the northern hemisphere.

He was carrying a cardboard box though, in it was his wife Bronagh's hat that she bought to go with the designer outfit fit for a queen.

As for Bronagh, well she won't be wearing it for a while, she stayed on in the hellhole of Paris, settling her daughter into the student flat they'd found for her!

All the way back from the UK with Air New Zealand, this is Barry Soper.

Photo: Getty Images