Purging & Preserving

Since we moved back from Germany, we have been clearing out a lot of our belongings. Not seeing most of our possessions for an entire year really gave us the mental distance that we needed to purge a lot of unnecessary items. Each week, I have been trying to sell or donate at least one item, even if it's just a shirt or a book. We still have a lot of stuff, but now much more of it is things we use or love.

Some of the most difficult things for me to get rid of are items with memories attached. After we got back and unpacked the storage unit, I was finally able to recycle my college notes and materials that weren't relevant to my current work. There were a few gems, though, that I wanted to preserve even if I didn't keep a physical copy. So I have been slowly scanning the pages of old essays, notes, and materials that I think we may want to look at again.

By far my favorite of these are page from my Field Biology class at Cornell. I took this course with Charlie Smith my first semester in Ithaca, and (even though it was a difficult course) it's still one of my favorites. First, because it's where I learned about GIS and, second, because I learned so much about the natural world. Almost twelve years later, I don't remember a lot of the scientific names or species identification that we had to memorize (excepting the more fabulous names, such as Liriodendron tulipifera, the tulip tree, or the fact that the new branches of black birch taste like root beer), but the pages from our weekly species identification expeditions bring back such wonderful memories...

Many days we would all troop outside and use the two hour class for an extended nature walk. Our instructor would stop and talk about a particular tree or bird or insect, and we would look in our field guides and take notes about useful ways to remember a particular species. (Still with me today: Ash trees often can be identified by their paddle-shaped seeds, which we remembered with the phrase, "paddle your ash".)

When possible, I would pick a leaf or branch, label it with my waterproof field pen, and press the leaf between the pages of my field guide. By the end of the class, I had a study guide of the trees on our campus, which today I appreciate as much for its beauty as for its utility.

Checking In, 7 Months Later

Back in November, I posted a list of things we were missing from the US and things we wanted to do before we left Germany. Now that we've been back 7 months (!), I thought I'd look back through the lists...

Things we were looking forward to in the US:

• Inexpensive, high-quality steak. -- Yep, we definitely missed this! Thanks, Mom  & Dad F, for grilling some steak for us when we got back!

• Tacos, sharp cheddar, and good salsa. -- Our first homemade tacos were 100x better than the best we managed in Germany. Though now we eat them with a lot more fresh ingredients, like chopped onions, peppers, and lettuce.

• Maple syrup and brown sugar available at the grocery store. -- Lots of baking has been happening, and I've already gone through 4 bags of brown sugar and 2 jugs of maple syrup.

• French toast, pancakes, scrambled eggs...eating at Parker's Maple Barn and Soundbites. -- We ate a Parker's for my birthday weekend, we've made it to Soundbites several times, and gotten fried chicken with waffles at M3!

• Our stinky hound! -- She turns 10 this month and is slowing down some, but overall she is very happy and healthy. We have been enjoying taking her on lots of walks!

hiking together in NH, just like old times

• Getting reacquainted with my kitchen gear and all my other clothes. -- Oh, bread machine, slow cooker, and kitchen scale, how I missed thee! But for every kitchen gadget I did miss, there is one that I didn't miss at all...and those have been donated or given away in a house-cleaning extravaganza.
• Having a cell phone with a camera and being able to text family on the go. -- 'Inbox 100% full' is a common message on my phone these days, and it's nice to be able to look up restaurant recommendations or directions on the go.
• Seeing family and friends who we have only seen online for too long! -- We see J's family frequently, I got to see my parents and Em in January when I picked up the Granny Mobile, and I made it down to see Beth and Chris in March. We are slowly making the rounds!
• Being able to effortlessly speak with shop owners, administrators, and pretty much everyone without having to compose each sentence in my head beforehand. (Though I will miss this, too!) -- Extra thankful for this during tax season, though it took several months to clear our accounts with the German electric company and our German bank, so I didn't have to go cold turkey. I also took a German class in the spring, but it's just not the same!
• Having a car! Oh, how I have missed the freedom of having a car! (And, yet, oh how I will miss the fabulous trains and public transport in Germany!).  -- Mom road tripped from TX to MA with me to bring the Granny Mobile back to Boston. Sadly, the green truck drove its last mile on my second day back to work, so we're now a 1-car family. When sitting in summer beachgoer traffic this summer, we have sorely missed being able to kick back with a book in a train. But it is also glorious to be able to pack up the car and go!

3000+ miles of non-stop catching up :)

RIP faithful green friend

Things we wanted to do in Germany before we left:

• Go shopping for gifts at all of Cologne's Christmas markets. -- Done! I have a long list of the best of/worst of the Cologne markets, which you can read about here.
• Visit a Christmas market in a small, charming village (Bad Munstereifel? Monschau? Münster? We shall see...). -- We made it to markets in Hattingen and Marburg, and they were one of our favorite things to do in the fall and winter!
• Eat schnitzel at Oma Kleinmann's. -- check.
• Eat saurbraten (J's favorite) at a Kölsch pub. -- double-check. I undertook a culinary adventure to replicate this recipe on the hottest day in July. Recipe and post coming soon!
• See Radical Face at the Kulturkirche in mid-November. -- So much fun! I get very nostalgic every time I hear 'Welcome Home' now.
• Cheer on FC Koeln at another soccer match. -- We actually didn't make this happen. Instead, a quick trip to London happened.
• Attend mass at the Dom. -- This was a very neat experience! There's a lot of pomp and circumstance. Highly recommended for anyone visiting Cologne on a Sunday!
• A quick, 3-day trip to London, staying at a super posh hotel using our free Hyatt nights. -- Done, and post forthcoming!
• Experiment with more interesting ingredients from the market. -- I think this happened...probably. I don't remember any specific weird veggies or fruits, but I loaded up on Kaki and other favorites before we left. So much so that, when Sam and I departed for good, I had an entire bag filled with snacks and beer and things that were too good to throw away!

a last family photo on our back porch in Cologne

[Long, rambling] side note: Our departure from Germany was quite a production! J took a separate flight out of Amsterdam on Iceland Air, while Sam and I took a train to Paris the next day to catch a flight to JFK, where we rented a car and drive up to Boston. (Pets can't go through Iceland and other island nations without getting quarantined, and we were trying to save money, hence the abominably complicated travel plans!) J and I spent most of Dec 13th doing our favorite things in Cologne, before he left the next day.

saying 'bye for now' to the Dom

top row: walking along the Rhine and enjoying Koeln's Altstadt
bottom row: enjoying the Christmas markets (ice skating and hot chocolate, respectively)

soaking up our lovely neighborhood, Nippes, one last time

on his way to Boston, via Amsterdam and Iceland.
the next time we saw each other was 3 days later in NH!

J, along with his mandolin, backpack, and two bags weighing precisely 20kg (thank goodness for luggage scales!) hopped on a train to Amsterdam in the afternoon on Dec 13th. Then I went home and started packing my bags. At about 4pm, I realized that there was no way everything was going to fit so I threw away some things (bye-bye, tennis shoes) and speed-packed a box to mail. I had the box ready by 4:45 and the post office closed at 5, so I ran several blocks carrying the 15kg box to the post office...in the rain. The rest of the day was spent packing and cleaning. The next day, I gathered everything together, did last minute clean up, put the cat in the carrier, and trudged (in the rain) to the UBahn station near our house with about 15 minutes to spare before my train to Paris left. Aaand when I got to the UBahn station, I realized that I had grossly misjudged the timing of the trains on a Sunday morning (every 10 minutes), which caused poor Samson and I to miss our train to Paris by 3 minutes. So I had to go to the Thalys counter (side note to the side note: the woman who helped me was French, but spoke excellent German as well as perfect English with a Cockney accent!), buy new train tickets, and wait 4 hours for the next train. Sam was not amused, though the ladies in the restroom thought it was hilarious to see a cat wheeled into a stall with me. I spent the time reading and killing time in the Hbf.

there's a small cat in that carrier, being very quiet and definitely not appreciating
that she's getting her picture at a UNESCO World heritage site

The rest of me and Sam's trip was also pretty eventful. We caught our train to Paris and it was uneventful except that I sort of spewed beer all over the place (I couldn't leave behind our last Rochefort 10!) and I ended up not in my assigned seat. But we got to the airport with plenty of time, which was good. I had been stressing about the baggage weights, which were very strict on this budget airline -- you got one 20kg checked bag (every additional kilo was 10 Euros or you could check a second bag for 100 Euros) and one carry-on bag (not counting the cat, since I paid 75 Euros to take her in the cabin) that must weigh under 10 kilos. I got my checked bag down to 23 kg and was planning to just pay the 30 Euros, but I had two big carry on bags (plus the cat) and both of them were waaaay over 10 kg since they contained J's camera and lenses and my computer. As I stood in line, I watched the attendants carefully count and weigh everyone's bags. But God took mercy on us, and the very nice man who helped us didn't bat an eye at my 23 kg bag and he pretended that he didn't see my excessive carry-ons...and we made it through the baggage gauntlet!

The flight was very empty, so Sammy and I got a whole row to ourselves. When we landed in New York, it was midnight and raining, but we got our little rental car and headed out. The rain turned to snow once we got into CT and we were making terrible time--no one else was on the road, but I couldn't see the asphalt. I had planned to stop at a Motel 6 just outside Hartford, but I passed the exit with no sign of the hotel. Fortunately, 30 minutes later I saw a sign for another Motel 6! Sam and I stopped at about 4am, slogged through 8" of snow to get to our room, and slept til about 10 before getting back on the road. The plowing teams must have worked the entire night, because the roads were completely clear by the time we headed out of the motel. We made it to NH just in time to avoid a late fee on the rental car, and Leslie, Kristy, and Nora met us at the airport rental return. Silly Nora didn't remember me at first, but I finally got a couple tail wags. And I could finally relax--we had made it!

Sam was such a trooper--she was dragged all the way from Cologne to Paris to New York, got rained on, and then had to ride in the car. She was in her carrier for 30 hours! I gave her relax treats and water throughout the trip, but I am still amazed at how good she was. She didn't struggle when I carried her through the Paris metal detector, and she didn't make a mess in her carrier. There were so many little blessings along the way that made our adventure of a return trip possible!

And now she is sitting contentedly beside me on our couch in Somerville, a real world traveler with a German cat passport!

Word of the Week: Gottesdienst

[[I just realized that I hadn't hit 'Publish' on this post, even though I wrote it 3 months ago when we were still in Germany! There will be a few more like this to follow, too.]]

I've been going to church at Luthurkirche in Nippes since the early summer. It's only a 5 minute walk from our house, it's not catholic (a bit of a rarity in Cologne), and the services are good, so it's been really nice to go whenever we're in town. The building is brick gothic in style, much like the churches we saw in northern German (post and pictures coming soon!) with the ceilings stuccoed and painted.

it's hard to see in the picture, but the apse is painted with beautiful light blue stars

The services--Gottesdienst--are in German, so sometimes I'll catch 70% of the sermon and sometimes only about 10%, depending on the speaker and topic. My favorite part, though, is the singing--hearing the organ echo off the walls, and singing some of my favorite hymns in German is a lovely way to start my Sunday. And it's yet another thing that makes me feel like I'm in Germany, even if I spend most of a week working in the apartment! I borrowed a hymnal the other week, and I've been making copies of my favorite hymns so I don't forget them.

Morning has Broken, auf Deutsch  - one of my favorites

I also like the church because they regularly host concerts and events, called Kulturkirche. Most of the events are secular, but they never bring in death metal bands or anything, so it turns into a really neat venue. We recently went to a Radical Face concert there, and it was so fun! The acoustics are great and, because we're in Germany, there was a bar with beer. Drinking beer in church felt a bit funny, but I guess they wouldn't get a very good turn out if it was a dry concert :)

clockwise from left: the lighting effects, the sound guy and bar, and drinking beer in a pew

I haven't posted as much recently since we're busy working, getting ready to move, and soaking up as much as we can before we leave. The Christmas markets kicked off today, so I'm sure I'll be sharing about them soon!

Adventures with Interesting Vegetables

Whenever I visit the market in Wilhelmsplatz, I try to look for interesting seasonal vegetables and fruits. So far, we have tried:

Kohlrabi

surprisingly sweet and crunchy

it was better raw than cooked

Daikon

A giant radish, which I originally thought was a parsnip...but wasn't.

source

Celeriac

aka, the brain vegetable

Physallis

which tastes like kiwi, starfruit, and watermelon

and comes in translucent, crinkly packages

Tiny plums (Zwetschgen)

Chestnuts

(more on this cooking adventure later)

and of course

Johannisbeeren

twice over!

Plus various cheeses, flours (spelt, rye), and alcoholic beverages (port, vodka, calvados, various rums). It's been a blast! I'm hoping to work in a few more before we're back in familiar food territory :)

Goats in the Gürtel

Cologne is surrounded by a ring of parks called Die Grüngürtel (the green belt), which is lovely for afternoon walks. Over the weekend, we headed to the southernmost part (the Stadtwald, or city forest) to enjoy the fall leaves and to visit one of my favorite places in the Gürtel:  The Lindenthaler Tierpark

source

The park has been around since the early 1900s, at first filled only with tame Damhirsche (fallow deer), but now also with a bunch of goats, fowl (ducks, swans, turkeys, geese, chickens, and guineas), cows, and donkeys. This time we met some baby burros...

the ears!

I just can't get over those ears!

Some chickens...

we loved the contrast between the big, fluffy Brahmas and the long-legged Kraienköppe!

Of course goats...

And last, but not least, Highland cows...

feeding cows by hand is slimy, but fun :)

Entry to the park is free and a box of animal food is only 50 cents, so it's the perfect place to stop by on a weekend. There are always little kids running around, an icecream cone in one hand and goat food in the other. That and ears like this never fail to make me smile!

Word of the Week: spachteln

As in, to spackle or fill in a hole. Such as the hole in our bathroom wall.

The apartment directly above us is undergoing a complete renovation, including ripping out all the flooring and walls and replacing all the pipes. They needed to make a hole in our wall to do something to the water pipes for the apartment above, so we've been living with a hole in the bathroom wall for the past few weeks. Finally, they began to spachteln and it's so nice not to feel like there is a huge peep hole into our most private room!

Oh, they also accidentally made a hole in the living room ceiling while drilling into the above apartment's floor, so that's being (slowly) fixed, too. I sadly did not get a photo of the chaos of plaster that rained down, but I'm sure you can imagine. I'm looking forward to having a clean, orderly apartment again soon!

Nippes, Lately

new box + warm heaters = happy cat

We have mostly been hanging around Cologne for the past few weeks, recovering from trips and vacations and catching up on work. Even though we aren't traveling, I try to capture small parts of our days that remind me that it's not just the same ol', same ol'. It's been quite chilly here, between 50 and 60F, so we have turned our heaters on low and pulled out our jackets. Even if it's 90 and humid in Boston, it feels like fall in Cologne! Here are a few shots from the past few weeks...

clockwise from top-left: a pre-war building in Nippes,
Moriz & Oskar (resident Pappageien at the botanic gardens),
fresh, tart wine grapes from a neighbor's garden,
clevery defaced campaign sign (from 'together successful ' to 'alone/a few rich'),
signs of Oktoberfest reach our local department stores, and
a sunset from our rear window

Exploring New Ingredients

The open-air market around the corner from our house is such a fun place to discover new fruits and vegetables in each season. Many fruits, veggies, and grains that are 'gourmet' and uncommon in the US are very common here, so I have been trying out new ingredients that would otherwise be too expensive. Lots of lovely fruits and veggies come in from Italy and Turkey, including beautiful figs that arrived in the markets a couple weeks ago. Goat cheese is quite cheap, so I have been enjoying decadent fig, goat cheese, and honey snacks!

But today I'm not writing about figs. Instead, I want to talk about Johannisbeeren, one of my summer fruit discoveries. I have never seen these berries in the US, but here they are a common garnish and ingredient. The berries are a very pretty bright red, and slightly translucent. They taste tart, but not sour. I have been snacking on them since late July, but this week I finally decided to check out some recipes.

tiny, sweet  Erdbeeren + tart Johanissbeeren

While searching for recipes, I also looked up the English name for these berries. It turns out that they are currants! I have tried dried currants from the Turkish grocery store around the corner, but they pretty much taste like raisins. I vaguely remember tasting fresh currants in my agroforestry class at Cornell in 2006, but I have never seen them in a US grocery store.

I found a bunch of interesting recipes using fresh Johannisbeeren, but I decided to first try out the simplest: Rote Grütze, a traditional North German fruit 'pudding.'

Rote Grütze means 'red grits.' My reading indicates that it was made with just grits and fruit juice in the past. Modern recipes vary in the number of ingredients and difficulty, but they no longer include grits and the base recipe always includes at least two types of whole berries, fruit juice (or wine), and a thickener. The recipe I tried is a really easy: there are only 4 ingredients, and it takes maybe 20 minutes active cooking time, plus an hour for the pudding to cool.

Rote Grütze
400 grams/~3.5 cups (total) at least 2 types of red berries (currants, raspberries, sour cherries, strawberries)
400 ml/1.5 cups fruit juice (apple, cherry, grape, cranberry, whatever you like!)
8 teaspoons corn starch or semolina
~1/4 cup sugar, more or less to taste

1.   Wash the berries. In a medium-sized pot, cook them over medium heat for about 3 minutes. Then add the juice and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Taste it and add more sugar if you like it sweeter.
2.   Lightly mash the fruit with a spoon. Mix the cornstarch with a bit of water to make a thick slurry, then slowly add the slurry to the pot while stirring.
3.   Cook for another 3-5 minutes, til the mixture thickens a bit. Remove the pot from the heat. Pour the mixture into 4 serving bowls or a jello mold, and let it come to room temperature before placing it in the fridge for an hour to solidify. It will have the consistency of thick preserves.
4.   Serve the traditional way, with milk or vanilla sauce, or try it with chocolate cake or on your morning yogurt!

Some recipes include a vanilla bean or a splash of red wine, cherry liqueur, or rum, which I might try next time. The berry season is just about over, so I made a half recipe and used currants and strawberries. I served it with 5 ingredient chocolate cake and vanilla sauce -- it is cool and not too sweet, which makes it a perfectly refreshing summer dessert!

Look for another Johannisbeere recipe coming soon!

The Best Playground

The park near our house has the best playground for little kids. There's a water spigot that flows into a series of wooden troughs down into the sand. Every time I walk by, there's at least one toddler having a blast. On warmer days, there will be a good 15 bikes with attached baby seats parked on the sidewalk as moms from the neighborhood bike to the park to let their kids get messy. It's right next to a big grassy area, so a lot of families make an afternoon out of it, with a picnic, games, and fun at the playground. Kids love to put sand in the troughs and make sand pits and canals, and moms love that they can easily wash off their sandy kids in the spigot. Walking by always makes me smile!

Words of the Week: Sie and du

Every German class J and I have taken in the US (including in-person classes, podcasts, online classes, etc), heavily emphasize that Germans are very formal. In the German language, there are 2 ways to address someone in the first person, formally or informally (much like in Spanish and probably other romance languages). You have the formal "Sie," where you refer to someone as Mr./Ms. Lastname (Herr/Frau Nachname), and the informal "du, "where you refer to someone by their first name (Vorname).

All of our US-based German classes and resources told us ad nauseum that one should always use the Sie form except when speaking to relatives or very close friends. For example:

• You're talking to a coworker that you know well. What form should you use? Sie!
• You're talking to the person behind the counter at a shop. What form should you use? Sie!
• You're talking to your neighbor of 5 years. What form should you use? Sie!

Seems easy enough: just address everyone except family with the formal "Sie" and you're all set. However, here are the situations in which I have heard people use the informal address or been asked to use the informal address:

• With anyone remotely of the same age unless it's at the bank or immigration office.
• With coworkers.
• With neighbors.
• With the barista at Starbucks.
• With the hired catsitter.

All of these scenarios would, according to our US classes, require the use of "Sie" without exception. But in all of these cases, "du" has been used almost exclusively.

For example: Our apartment building hosted a cookout in the garden behind the building this evening, and everyone addressed each other (including me) with the informal "du." It was totally fine and expected for me to address people I had never spoken to before by their first names and "du," including people a good 40 years older than me. I had anticipated using the formal form of address, so it was a huge surprise!

For this reason, figuring out when to use the formal (Sie) versus informal (du) form of address is a source of endless confusion for me. I know it's safer to use "Sie" than to appear rude, but, at the same time, using Sie in the wrong situation makes one sound standoffish and stuffy. My current strategy is to wait for the other person to introduce him/herself. If the person says their last name, I do the same and address them with the Sie form and call them Herr/Frau Lastname. If the person gives their first name, I give mine as well and address them with the du form. It's not a foolproof method, but it's the best I can do. Sometimes if I'm really not sure, I'll just ask.

But a few situations don't work with my method: With the catsitter, I used "Sie" initially and then we mutually agreed to start using "du" and our first names. The landlord and I call each other by our first names, but continue to use the formal "Sie" in conversation. And at church, one refers to fellow churchgoers and the pastor as well as God and Jesus using "du."

So confusing! And I am not the only one who feels this way. Turns out even native speakers have the same difficulty (here, here, and here).

The US courses and materials paint the issue so much more black-and-white than it really is. I wonder if perhaps many US courses use outdated materials from a time when Germans were a bit (okay, a lot) more formal...Or maybe Köln is just a more informal city than other places in Germany?...Or maybe the curriculum authors figure it's better to train students to automatically use Sie in order to avoid being rude? Who knows...it may be one of those things that I never 100% figure out. And maybe some day before we move I can sit down with a native speaker and perhaps tease out the proper usage a bit more!

Nippes, How I Love Thee

We're back! Four countries, 1500+ kilometers, and 2 weeks later, we're back home and (attempting to) get back in the 'every day' groove. This includes mundane things like grocery shopping, catching up on TV shows on the couch, snuggling the cat, and taking walks around the neighborhood--things I have missed while we were away! While my mom and sister were visiting, we stayed for three nights at our apartment, and I wanted to not only show them the main sights in Cologne, but also our neighborhood, Nippes. It has been home for the past 8 (!) months, and we have grown to love it.

I'll admit that the name, Nippes (pronounced 'nip-pez'), definitely made me giggle the first few times I heard it. But once I got over the name and we settled into our apartment, I began exploring and discovering what a fun neighborhood it is. Here are the reasons that I love Nippes...

1. The daily market

Every day (except Sunday) from 8am-12:30pm, a big outdoor market takes place in Wilhelmsplatz, just around the corner from our house. There are vegetable and fruit stands, clothing stalls, cheese and meat wagons, and everything in between. It was a bit smaller in winter, but now that the weather is warm the market has been growing and growing! It's a great place to get inexpensive produce, flowers, cloth for crafts, as well as household goods.

There's also a monthly flea market in the square, which is a lot of fun. I usually grab a curry wurst or reibekuchen to munch while browsing the stalls. In addition to professional vendors (including one guy who sells only lederhosen!), there are always at least a couple very enterprising kids with their old barbies and books spread out on blankets. So far I have resisted their cuteness and haven't come home with any used toys :)

2. Music, classes, and events

the view from our balcony
the white building on the right is the music school!

Nippes and the City of Cologne have really wonderful cultural programs, too. There's the music school just behind our apartment, and there's also another building complex just up the road where you can catch a concert or comedy act every Thursday at 4pm or grab a beer and snack at the outdoor cafe. Community classes are held at both locations, too.

There's nothing like hearing the strains of choir practice drift through our windows in the evenings or listening to piano (or tuba! or clarinet! or sax!) practice while working on my laptop on the balcony. I'm going to miss this happy apartment when we move!

3. Parades and Festivals

Nippes is the official kick off location of Karneval every January, and there's also a special local Karneval parade with the Nippeser Bürgerwehr and other local groups.

Nippes also organizes an annual street festival in May, called the Nippeser Bürgerfest (Bürger as in the German word for citizens, not as in a hamburger festival). They close off a huge section of the main street, Neusser Straße and set up 2 stages, tons of food carts, and games.

4. Luthurkirche und Kulturkirche

Just a 5 minute walk from our apartment, you'll find Lutherkirche Nippes. Cologne is a catholic city, so I feel pretty fortunate to have a protestant church so close! Services are auf Deutsch, so I get to practice my listening comprehension -- sometimes I'll catch 80% of a sermon, sometimes only 10%. It's always interesting, though, and I really enjoy singing familiar hymns (and new hymns) in German with the organ playing accompaniment.

The church is also the home of Kulturkirche (culture church), hosting entertainers, events, and town meetings. It's one of the few buildings that survived the intense bombings in WW2, and the inside is still painted with beautiful pastel patterns of flowers and stars. Old fruit trees (including a huge fig!) stand outside the church and shade the grounds where they hold festivals and events.

5. The Zoo & Botanic Gardens

The Cologne Zoo and the Botanic Garden are both located in Nippes, about a 30 minute walk to the east of our apartment. When I need a pick-me-up, the Botanic Gardens are one of the best places to go. Currently, they're working on refurbishing the beautiful old greenhouse (called the Wintergarten-Palast) that was destroyed in WW2.

6. The atmostphere

Nippes is filled with cafes, family bars with patios, fun little local gift shops, and pretty much anything you need to live and enjoy the European lifestyle. (I know I sound like an advertisement, but I really do love our neighborhood!) We also have a nice park just up the street from our apartment, and the Grüngürtel (green belt) is only a 15 minute walk. We love to take a blanket and beers to the park to relax and read in the shade. Even on week nights, the parks are always filled with families and friends having cook outs.

I'll be back to posting more regularly now that we're home, including some parts of our trip to Italy with my mom and sister. More soon!