And so it was February already!

On Friday night we headed over to a Games night at Butzi friends place. The evening was fun, but we did play one very bad version of Cards against humanity in German… Which dragged on and really was more offensive than funny – not quite my game, but hey, learning something new! I also got to try “Berliner Luft” which translates to “Berlin Air” – a Mint-flavoured liquor. Eventually we got to codenames, which I felt rescued the night and was good fun. I even managed to introduce Werewords, which we played for two rounds before grabbing a train home around midnight.

Offensive German Cards against humanity

Berliner Luft!

Werewords to finish the night

Saturday we enjoyed some time outside in the sun while chatting to Amy via WhatsApp, and enjoying the early spring sun for a bit.

Yellow flowers in Spring

More yellow flowers

Pink flowers

More pink flowers

Purple pink flowers

Field of Flowers

Simon in flowers

Simon in the sun

Trees are springing to life again too

On the way home we stopped by the storage unit to bring some more order to it before catching up for dinner with Vincent and Diana. It was a fantastic night, we chatted away the whole evening over delicious pasta. New favourite Italian restaurant found – they even make truffle pasta in a cheese wheel!

Sunday morning I spent some time chatting to Gabe in Australia before heading out to the storage Unit once more. Yes, we spent a lot of time sorting everything! The sorting was interrupted when we headed out to to play Squash…  I managed to win the second game this time, but Manja got the third, winning  2:1 once more, but it was close this time!

The work week was busy, with either Manja or myself having an event each and every night. I started meeting some of our colleagues from our parent company whom we went to dinner with, and we had a Game night at work that week too.  We played plenty of Werewolf, which I absolutely loved hosting for!

By Friday it was Valentines day, and we were exhausted. We agreed that we would have a quite night in and I would just make a nice burger dinner for Manja… and we would clean up because we would have visitors on the weekend!

Burges and Bundy – what more could a woman ask for on Valentines?!?

On Saturday we picked Hagen and Henri up from the trainstation and headed to the Futurium – a permanent museum exhibition showing how technology might advance, and life might change. It is free and REALLY well done. I loved it! We still had some time left when we got out, so we grabbed some Burgers for lunch before heading to the Interactive Museum for technology, which had not significantly changed since I was a kid! I remembered many of the exhibits, and loved the trip down memory lane.

The entryway

A whirlwind of ideas

Future thoughts

more future thoughts

timeline of the digital revolution

You vote on your thoughts with armbands and those interactive up and down arrows – at almost every display

Marbe track robot moves the marbles

Interactive robot display

AR View of cities with various conditions

Can time find us?

Simon in a Halo

Artistic displays between displays on landscapes

View from the top

At the interactive museum seeing how 3d images work

Heat sensor fun

ZZZZZZAAAAAAAP!

In the evening we wanted to go bowling, but all the bowling alleys were already booked out. But! Simons game obsession to the rescue! We spent the evening playing Mysterium, which was such a hit that Hagen bought it for Henry the next day 😁. That’s what I call being a good influence 😇
We played two rounds, only interrupting for some Chinese take-away. In the process we discovered a REALLY good Chinese place. Will have to order there again!

On Sunday we had breakfast all together – Simons Poached eggs on avocado with Salmon – before I dropped Hagen and Henri off to the trainstation.

Simons special, coming up!

By the time I got back Manja had packed everything and cleaned up, and we were off to her Christmas present: A Wellness “weekend” away. We chose the Sunday and Monday because it would be less crowded and about half the price 😃
We grabbed a smart, drove down and settled in before hitting the Saunas. I have to say that there is something much more relaxing about a Sauna in Winter. We even headed outside to the lake, but I could only make myself dip in my legs – it was significantly too cold to jump in entirely.

Simon prepared to Sauna

Manja enjoying the view

View from the Room

We really only interrupted our relaxation time for some cake and eventually for dinner. When we headed over for a reasonably early dinner, we got upgraded to the premium spot! The service staff were fantastic and dinner was really nice too. We both chose the chefs selection, which was definitely the right choice!

View from the table

Fireplace next to table

Simon at the special table

Closer

Closer…

Cheers to the weekend!

Thorny table deco

Entre 1

Nice bite!

Entre 2

Mains

Desert selection

Chocolate truffle to finish!

Relaxed and happy we dropped into bed early, so that we could use the Spa area again in the morning before heading back home.

And so we did – we got up early and had a massive buffet breakfast.

A bit of Honey for breakfast

Some cakes

More normal breakfast

Jams and such

“Flower Pollen”

Happy Simon enjoying the view

Caaake!

Ready for a quick last sauna trip!

After which we hit the Saunas once more. We even braved the outside again although it was rather windy. Manja even put her legs into the water this time too, but as I put my bathrobe back on, it was picked up by a gust of wind…. and the room key, which was needed to get back into the sauna, dropped into the water.
We could see it, but the water was absolutely freezing. So I thought that I decided to head around the property to the front desk and explain what happened. Of course, Manja insisted we could reach the key… so convinced me to give it a try. Remember how I said it was too cold to go in past your legs? Turns out when you jump off the pier where there are no stairs, you get totally submerged in freezing water. But I got to the key and managed to get back out. I decided to go and dry off in the sauna to re-heat myself, but have to admit that I understand the appeal of it for the first time. I felt seriously energised for the next few hours!

When we got home we had one more task to do: Move into a smaller storage space.  All the sorting of the last few weeks had meant that we were organised enough to use less space.  We headed over and inspected a few, eventually settling on a long and narrow unit, where the shelves would fit perfectly along one wall and signed up for a year. We then spent the next 2 hours moving everything once more. By the time we got home it was late afternoon and we were feeling accomplished. I made us some mushroom carbonara pasta for dinner and we spent the evening updating the blog. At this point we were only up to August last year and had some maintenance to do!

The following weekend we had a game night at Katrin and Kilians, which we had to spontaneously cancel a few weeks earlier, and spent Sunday chatting with the family before doing a bit of a spring clean… Well we really just wanted to clean the windows, but it spiralled out of control and ended up with the scrubbing of the skirting boards. C’est la vie!

Saturday we headed out to do some shopping, but we couldn’t find what we wanted and ended up not buying anything. To make up for that dismal performance we headed over to an Asian place recommended by one of Manjas colleagues, which was like a build-it-yourself Japanese Curry place. You ordered by ticking the boxes of what you want in the curry, and you get a delicious curry containing only what you like. It was delicious and awesome, the place had a really great feel to it too.

Build your own Japanes fusion meal

Sooooo yummy!

After a day of recovery from New Years (and writing blogs!), it was already back to work for me.  It’s been a year, and I still enjoy working at my company 🙂

On Sunday we had to head back to Cottbus…  To spend some time with Hagen and play more Smash-Up!

Shuffle them cards

Manjas deadly hand!

The next weekend we spent Saturday morning sorting out storage for my stuff which will arrive soon, and dropping past Ikea for the first version of a Jewellery drawer which I promised Manja for her Bday last year. Version one is functional but with room for improvements 😁
In the evening were back to Butzi and Akis place for a games night.  I brought along Code Names which was a hit, and we also played the party game we played at Butzi birthday last year… but with less people it wasn’t that great.  Agreeing that we need to do this sort of thing more, we got home a bit past midnight and dropped into bed.

Sunday we did a bit of a New Years cleanup, where Manja and I finally had a chance to re-sort the kitchen which we had been meaning to do since we installed it 🙃
In the afternoon we decided to head over and start playing squash again, given that Manjas foot finally seemed up for it…. and I got THRASHED.  She beat me Three Nil! I really need to find a way to practice 😅

Another week passed and Friday night was date-and-explore-restaurants night.  We headed over to an Indian place which was near where Manja was meeting a friend earlier in the afternoon.  It was non-spectacular, but not terrible.

Saturday it was time for us to go to the Ball, but not before being first to wish Niko a happy birthday at midnight Adelaide time.  Turns out that the parents were looking after the kids and Niko and Anna were out with friends, so I wasn’t really first, but the thought counts!

The Ball we were heading to is the Vikings Rowing club (Wikinger Rudergemeinschaft) annual Winter Ball, and Mathias and Gabi had invited us to come along.  We did not quite have the perfect Attire, but we came along anyway, and we had a ball…  hah. But Seriously, it was a great night out.  When we arrived we said hi to Gabi and Mathias, as the guests arrived, initially skipping the photographer. Once everyone was in, Mathias, Gabi, Manja and I headed back a bit and had a photo or two taken.

When we headed back in it was already time to get seated and meet our table. Because Mathias and Gabi were officials for the club, they had to sit at the official table one over from us. The guy next to us recently started his own business, selling the experience of self-made whiskey to businesses at around €2500 upward per 30L barrel.  You get to do the whole thing end-to-end: from creating a flavour profile, regular testings and the end product 3-5 years later.
We soaked in the event, which had a fantastic atmosphere, brilliant Band (We need to learn to dance standard dances), great food and even a really cool lottery.  We spent a couple of songs on the dancefloor swaying along to the music anyway though 🤪.  Mathias was kind enough to take Manja out for a Dance properly too, she felt a bit overwhelmed but did really well!

One of the great things about the evening was a Raffle, which we spend a few euros on just to buy a ticket for Manja and Myself.  Manja drew both of them, and picked me a winner! Number 60.  Expecting to get a DVD player or wine decanter, we headed over to the table to check out what it was…  And it turned out to be an envelope, meaning we still had NO IDEA what we had won. Manja walked the raffle tables like a tiger, checking out peoples reactions as they checked out what they had won. It wasn’t too long before pickup time began and we raced over, the envelope revealing itself as being a three-course dinner for two! Score!!

As the evening drew to a close, Manja noticed someone walked away with a flower arrangement, including mini-vase. We quickly let Gabi know, who said that this was totally fine – people were welcome to pick some up… As we said our farewells, Gabi gifted us with a Wine-decanter which she had won but did not need, and even encouraged Manja to also take along a flower-vase. Loaded with nice things, we caught the U-bahn home, it must have looked hilarious to anyone watching: Two people in fine clothes taking their loot home on public transport 😂

It was a really fantastic night, and we were so happy to have been invited to it.

The Hosts

Holding a bag and drinks

The Ball room

With live band

Dinner menu

People Skillfully dancing

Me, skilfully eating

Such a delicious dinner

The raffle table

Winnings!

The only unclaimed prize

On Sunday I spent the morning making breakfast and then chatting to Niko for a couple of hours.  The afternoon had our scheduled re-match of squash…  Which I lost again, Three Nil.  I keep loosing but keep having fun with it 😁

The following Tuesday it was finally time for all my stuff to arrive.  I met the truck at the storage units at 11am and we unloaded everything, after which I did a basic sort: Creating piles of boxes with related content.

Manja and I had agreed that we would go through everything together on Sunday, by which time we should hopefully also have some shelves to keep things sorted.  As I was about to leave and head to work, I got a call from the removalists…  Turns out they had missed 4 boxes when they unpacked. That also explained why my numbering didn’t make sense 😂

They were at the next client, and had found said boxes mixed in.  Luckily they were not far away, so I took the tram there and headed back to the storage with 4 boxes by way of Uber.

That Saturday we decided to go shopping for a bit and see if we could find some more appropriate formalwear for both of us. We found some places we can go again when we have time and interest in buying things, but didn’t buy anything on the day. In the late afternoon we headed over to Ilkas place and spent the evening with her, chatting and making falafels. The first batch turned out to be a bit too watery to be baked, but when we fried the second set they turned out really well! We had a fantastic night but unfortunately had to head off eventually.

Hullo Hoomanz

Warm fire

Dinner table

Delivious

Candle-lit

Delicious drinks

Sunday we dropped past a neighbours place to get the shelves and transporting them to the storage unit.

How do you transport shelves without a car you ask? Great question! By over-loading the bike and walking it with two people: like a wheelbarrow, just difficult to steer!

We put them together and then cleaned up a bit, taking some things back to the flat to get washed. We had to do this because you can’t keep unprotected clothes in the units, just in case an infestation of some sort breaks out. So we had decided to take everything made of cloth out, wash it, vacuum seal it and bring it back. With that done the storage was ready to survive without us for a bit while we headed to Oslo the next weekend ☺️

Shelves built

Selblance of order

While Manja got to relax a bit the next day I headed to work, and upon returning we prepared for our upcoming trip to Wiesbaden to visit Doris.  We dropped into bed early, exhausted from the week and knowing we had an early flight the next day.

The flight to Doris was uneventful – it went as smoothly as a flight can. When we got to Frankfurt airport, though, we spent just over an hour getting our rental car….  We had booked online through a third-party provider at Dollar. They, in turn, have a partnership with Hertz. But, dollar customers are only serviced in Terminal 1, and we arrived at Terminal 2.  (we found this out only after waiting in line to pick up the car…).  The person at the counter did give us directions, but they were wrong, so we walked away from the shuttle bus for 5 minutes before giving up, turning around and finding a sign to guide us to the shuttle.  Once at Terminal 1 we followed the signs for rental car pickups, until we got to the Hertz parking bay….  Where we obviously couldn’t pick up the car, we had to go to the service desk first… We found the service desk, waited in line and finally got our car. Unfortunately all the small cars had already been rented out, so we got an upgrade, which was nice.  The only problem was that he upgrade was quite a bit larger and felt like driving a limousine! Much later we saw that it was long enough to not properly fit into a standard carpark. But for all of that the car was very modern and nice, especially while driving on the Autobahn 😀

We got to Doris’ place around Lunchtime, and Doris had prepared some food for us all – a nice beef goulash prepared by the local butcher. Given that we were there on the first non-holiday, Doris hadn’t had a chance to go shopping, so we went to the supermarket together, getting everything we’d need for the next few days.  With the shopping done Doris decided to give us a bit of a tour of Wiesbaden, and we stopped at a few sights, including the Russian Orthodox Church, which was really impressive. Toward evening we were supposed to meet up with Helga and Ditmar at a local wine bar, and we headed into the general direction by following googles instructions.  When we got there, there was no wine bar in sight, we were cruising up and down what appeared to be a construction site….  Manja spotted a local resident and asked for directions – turns out google had sent us down the back way, the entrance to the place was one street further along. So we arrived a few minutes late, but with a story.  We chatted throughout the evening over wine, a meat and cheese platter and eventually some pizza – the wine bar had a deal with a local pizza place to supply their patrons with food.  Unfortunately the wine Bar already closed around 6, so we decided to take our party to the local sports bar near Doris’s place. We spent another hour chatting over wine and non-alcoholic cocktails before calling it a night and heading back to Doris’ place where I setup her computer to connect to Nikos photo blogs.

Squirrel from the balcony!

Lunch and cheers to Niko and Anna

Cheers you two!

Yum yum!

View from the hillside church

The hillside church

Chatting the night away

Yummy Fingerfood

Enjoying the company

So much yum

And then Pizza!

Happy Simon

Dancing for some reason

The location

Pretty outside too

Doris and I at the Schlosspark terrasse

Bounchy squirrel!

Dancing Simon 1

Dancing Simon 2

Sunday morning we got to visit the Friedwald, which is like a cemetery/burial forest. The idea is that biodegradable urns are buried around a memorial tree shared by up to 12 people. Doris had decided on doing this for her own funeral but had only been able to purchase her spot from a map so far. Knowing this, we decided to check out her tree. I got to say that this is an excellent alternative to traditional cemeteries, and I loved how peaceful the whole place is.

Frozen plants

Manja on thin ice

Ice

Frozen stream

Walking into the Friedwald

Walking into the Friedwald

Friedwald

Leaves

Walking into the Friedwald

Walking into the Friedwald

Doris at her tree

Doris’ tree

Green moss

Taking a stroll

Totally peaceful

The Altar where the ceremonies are held

The Altar where the ceremonies are held

Some seating at the altar

Frozen stream

more frozen stream

Entry sign

Wood harvesting on the outside of the forest

We lost track of time a bit and had to rush back because we were meeting Manjas Aunt Jana and her family at Doris’ local greek restaurant. Jana lives about 30 minutes away, so Manja had arranged all this a couple of weeks before. The lunch was delicious and it was nice to connect the families a bit, I think everyone enjoyed it. After lunch Manja headed over to the Palace gardens with the family while Doris and I returned to the flat and prepared some coffee and cake.  When the group returned from their walk we chatted until after dark! Eventually they had to head off, and we spent the evening together over a glass or two of champagne, some guitar music and some final touches in the updates and setups of Doris’ tech equipment.

Seagulls at the lake

Carmen at the lake

Jana at the river

Coffee and cake

Italian Christmas cake

And Champagne!

Pretty glass

Our car for the trip was a little frozen

Low visibility behind

Flight back

Arriving home

On Monday Morning it was already time to head back. We had booked into an early flight because it was a workday and I would have to go to work making rare use of our flexible working arrangements. In the evening we were totally exhausted and dropped into bed.

Tuesday was already New Years Eve.  We spent the day lazing about the house before heading over to Katrins for the NYE celebration. She was having a party with Kilians family and a few friends, and we were welcome to come along even though Manja was coming down with a bit of a cold.  We had a delicious cheese fondue and Tiramisu before the clock struck 12 and fireworks exploded all around.  The flat has a great vantage point in terms of the view, and we were regaled with fireworks all over the Berlin skyline.  When that started to die down we even got some close-up fireworks as the gang went downstairs to set off a few of their own, some of which exploded at our eye level standing on the balcony 🙂

It wasn’t long before we had to head off to another engagement for the evening.  We decided to walk to the Alexanderplatz, soaking in the athosphere, smoke and fireworks all around.  By the time we got there, though, Manja was really not feeling well so we decided to head home instead.

New Years party dinner

Fondue setup

So Cheesy

So perfectly cheesy

With yummy drinks

A performance with a pyramid

Party Atmosphere

Walking home

Bin there done that

Rose petals or cracker shells?

View of the street

Happy New Year everyone! I finally made it to updating everything that happened in 2019.  We should be up to date soon 🤪

The next week was a bit more quiet for me. Manja had her company Christmas event on Tuesday while I got to chill and update my blog!
On Wednesday night we caught up a bit earlier to walk through the Rotes Rathaus Christmas Market, right in the center of town.  It was predictably crowded, but we enjoyed a nice walk in the crisp winter air.

Symbol of Berlin: The TV tower at Christmas

Thursday evening we headed to Katrin and Kilians place for a Christmas dinner. Katrin had selected a three-course-menu, which we all cooked together.  It was a delicious and creative mix of food.  Ilka and Jana joined us as well and we chatted the night away, reminiscing about the year and talking about plans for the future.

Dinner being prepared

Drinks being served

Working together

First course served

Looks great and tastes better

Fantastic Company

Main course

Delicious!

Dessert

On plate

Flowers

By Friday evening we just needed a break and decided to make pizza and watch Christmas movies for the evening 🥱😴

On Saturday we prepared for the Christmas trip to Cottbus (wrapping presents, packing) and went over to the Königliche Gartenakademie.  The plan was to head over to the Christmas Gardens at the Botanic Gardens, but it was bitterly cold and we were not quite prepared for it appropriately.  Rather than freeze we decided to head home and spend another evening watching Christmas movies 🙃

Oh Look, a cute squirrel

Nooo! It attacks!

Pretty flowers

Cake-break!

View from the table

The path outside

Pretty decorated

The whole garden center

Sunset down the road

Sunday, Manja headed over to Cottbus to spend time with her family. I still had to work Monday and this way Odin, the cat, would not be alone quite as long.  I made use of the free afternoon to finally get my Scrum Master Certificate from training I did in October.  Passed first go too, might have over-prepared on the day 😅

Monday night I did my last-minute Christmas shopping.  I knew exactly what I wanted to get Manja, but didn’t have a chance to actually buy it yet, so spent the whole evening at the Kudamm, mostly waiting in line for the cashiers 😂

On the morning of Christmas Eve I spent a few hours chatting to my family, coincidentally hitting the exact moment where they unwrapped my gift to them: The Annual Family Calendar. Right after I finished chatting, Butzi and Aki picked me up on their way to Cottbus. They dropped me right at the doorstep of Steffis place while entertaining me with conversation for the whole drive.  A more relaxed method of transport would not have been possible! I arrived dressed for Christmas – including a new jumper I obtained as a Gift for Manja.  She really wanted me to wear a Christmas sweater last year, but I refused, so I thought I’d make up for it this year by turning up in one… turned out to be a good idea, she really loved it 🙂

We set everything up for Coffee and Cake just in time for Hagen, Henri, Sophia and Manjas Grandparents to arrive. We feasted on too much cake before doing a big present opening moment, where gifts and wrapping paper were flying everywhere.  This resulted in an extended wrapping-paper-throwing battle between Henri and I 😁.

Serenity under the Christmas tree

Coffee and cake, final touches

Ready for guests!

Henri, being patient.

Gifts of Chocolate and cards!

Covered in Wrapping paper

Wrap-battle!

For dinner Steffi had organised a traditional Christmas dinner to be catered, as her kitchen would habe been way too small for a roast for 10 people.  Hagen, Henri and I went to pick it up.  The place was sending out orders like ours all night, and we arrived in our designated time-slot only to realise that we had left the order docket at home and Steffi had put her name down for the order.  A brief phone-chat later we were allowed to take along the food, which was ready to go in commercial bain-maries. Unfortunately they were filled with water to keep them hot, but not sealed at the top. This made them awkward and heavy to carry, and prone to spilling water in Hagens car.  We placed them in the boot strategically, dropping the back seat so that I could do my best to hold them. We proceeded to slowly drive the calmest possible route home, while I attended to spilling water with my (clean!) hanky.  We avoided hills, but got caught on a couple of cobblestone streets, and by the time we got back my hankies were soaked with hot water, though the car was mostly dry.  Success!
Dinner really was delicious, while we all ate too much there was still plenty left over. One of the gifts we got for Hagen was a card game called smash-up.  We familiarised ourselves with the rules and played a round before Hagen had to go home for the night and us making a plan to play more tomorrow.

Winner Winner Christmas Dinner!

Happy Simon is Happy!

We started early on Boxing Day, as I dropped Manja off to catch up with Anne – you may remember her from the wedding we went to last year.  While Manja and Anne went for a walk, I headed back and spent the morning watching fairytales with Steffi – the fairytales being a well established family tradition for Christmas 😁

Toward noon  I picked Manja up and we headed over to Hagens, where we went on a tour of his Cattle Yard. It was super interesting but also freezing cold! On our way back we picked up Kai and then played Smash-up the remainder of the day.  After an early dinner we dropped Kai off home and picked up our stuff, returning to Hagens place where we spent the evening chatting about Life, the Universe and everything.  We also patched the air mattress we would be sleeping on as it had sprung a leak…. Though apparently not perfectly successful as the next morning we awoke almost lying on the floor.

Cow

Calves

Dinner!

Yuuuum

After a nice breakfast we headed back to Steffis where we spent a couple of hours before going to Manjas Grandparents place for Coffee and Cake in the afternoon.  This is the day and place where most of the family gets together and people were arriving throughout the day, including Alex and his family from Remagen.  We had many conversations and ate too much once more, and I got to try out Henris Lego “Hidden Side” kit.  I came into the picture about half way through the building process and once done loaded the AR kit onto my phone.  I got to say, they did a good job at combining lego and AR, allowing you to hunt various ghosts in your actual kit.  Great fun! As the day drew to a close Kai was kind enough to drop us off at the Train station as we headed back home.

Omas Cactus collection

Christmas tree (not a cactus)

Gift to the grandparents: LED Torches for the garden.

The flight home from Costa Rica was a bit rough for me. Something I had eaten, probably the breakfast on the last day in Costa Rica, had given me food poisoning. I’ll spare you the details, but the plane trip home was hell and I spent the next few days in bed recovering and hardly being able to eat anything. C’est la vie!

A week later it was already December. I was feeling much better and so we took the train over to Cottbus to celebrate Manjas grandfathers birthday and spend the weekend with the family. Manjas mum picked us up from the train station and we headed over for lunch. It was a great afternoon chatting and catching up with everyone, and had fantastic food – the first I really enjoyed in over a week! I even had a coffee at the end.

After lunch we decided to visit the Christmas markets, which were really nice. One of the good things about the market in the smaller town, and that we were there a bit early, is that it wasn’t totally crowded and we had the chance to browse a bit.  One of the places I got stuck at sold Moonshine: Basically flavoured whiskey.  It was so delicious that Manjas mum decided to buy a bottle…  well a jar really, which was an awesome design.

Sugar-roasted Almonds. A Highlight at Christmas

Candied apple and Sugar-Roasted Almonds. Happy Simon at the Christmas tree!

Happy Simon at a nice market

View Down the street

First taste of moonshine. Was awesome, took some along!

Christmas Market with space to walk!

We headed back to have dinner and then spend the evening solving the “escape room in a box” which Manja and I got for Kai last year. While Kai and I had an awesome time solving it, Manja and her mum had a nice time watching us and chatting 😂.  The Moonshine probably did not help my problem solving skills, but we still managed to figure it out in time 🙂

Dinner table set with Christmas feel

Figuring it out!

Mooooooonshine 🥴

Tomorrow we will go and bake Christmas cookies at Hagens place and we had to bring the dough. So we braved the cold and mozied over to the supermarket to get some ingredients. A walk back and some mixing later we realised that we’d need more…. So I returned to the supermarket once more and bought another batch of ingredients for a chocolate dough! After another round of mixing we were ready for the next day.

On Sunday I spend the morning chatting to the family back in Adelaide, before heading to Hagens place to bake cookies. We got a production line going, with Hagen, Henri (his son), Kai and I stencilling out cookies while Manja placed them on trays and Steffi (Manjas mum) glazed and decorated.  A few hours later we had a couple of hundred Christmas cookies to split between us.  We ordered some pizza for lunch and chatted for a while before heading back home by train.

Cut them in chocolate

Mixed dough ready to go

Flatten it out

Cut them in mixed

Put them on the tray

Decorate and bake

Cookies for all!

Yum on a plate

Cleanup on Table 1 !

Roll, roll roll the dough…

Cut them out in shapes…

The next week was full of end of year work events for me, I headed to a projects end of year event on Wednesday night where the biggest project had a Christmas Dinner. It was great catching up with everyone in a less formal setting.  On Thursday we had planned our end of year event for the support team.  We initially thought about doing an underground tour, but given the cold and that we were not perfectly organised, we changed to an escape room last minute. I can’t say too much, but I quite enjoyed the space mission at Smart Room!

Friday Manja and I had our traditional Friday-night-date-night where we explore local eateries. This time we went to Zia Maria, a little pizzeria nearby, which was recommended to us.  It was really good! We chatted the night away and made our Christmas plans over dinner and while meandering back home through the Kiez.

Happy Simon looking forward to great pizza!

Frost had settled in

The fairy-tale fountain was packed up for winter

On Saturday we visited Falkensee – one of the suburbs we would consider moving to. We walked around for a couple of hours to see if we could imagine living there, wandering by a couple of places which are for sale.  After we roamed around for a few hours we briefly met up with Gaby and Mathias who live just around the corner from there, before going to spend the evening at a friends parents house: They were having a birthday party with a whole bunch of musician friends, just getting together and jamming the night away.  It was a spectacular evening – plenty of very skilled musicians there! I was definitely out of my league but still enjoyed the evening a lot.

Ready for the show

The Sax-Man!

On Sunday I finally had a chance to catch up with Glen and we chatted the morning away. It was so great catching up; it had pretty much been a year!  In the afternoon we took it easy, using the time to clean the flat a bit.

The following week I went bouldering while Manja had a team Christmas event. As we were in the same area, and we had some food after bouldering, I picked her up on the way home and got to meet some of her colleagues – a motley group of nice people.

Motley group of nice people

We used the remainder of the week to finalise the Christmas gift shopping 😁

Friday night Manja caught up with some friends at a local Christmas market, and I joined them a bit later in the evening.  The place was so crowded that you could barely move, so we adjourned and hit up a local wine bar instead.  The temperature was much better, everyone felt frozen from the markets, and the acoustics were much better too, we could suddenly hear each other properly without yelling 😬

dinner at the christmas market

On Saturday morning I briefly chatted to the family for Opas Birthday, before we caught up with Stefan and Stefanie for brunch. They are planning a trip to Costa Rica in January.  We shared our experiences and gave some advice about what worked for us.  In the afternoon we walked around the Kiez near the restaurant, finding a few more small bits for Christmas gifts and noticing that the Moonshine we bought in Cottbus comes from a local place here!

Odin, pretending to be a stock photo cat

Winter in the Volkspark

Beautiful frost

Beautiful frost

Presents ready! Oh, and Manjas pretty cat-socks 😂

Sunday morning I chatted to Johan and Stef for a bit.  Making an effort to catch up with OZ friends! It was great to catch up and chat about the year 🙂
A bit later Butzi dropped by to join us on a trip to Lübben for a Christmas Market at the “Museum Schloss Lübben”.  Butzi was kind enough to drive, so we chatted as we drove. The Markets were much smaller than we expected – we were through in under 10 minutes – so we decided to check out the Palace grounds for a bit. We found some beavers and followed a “heights trail” which was installed as a kids activity for the warmer months. It was cold so there were no kids and not every part of the path was sensible to do, so we skipped the part where we would have to climb over the icy river 😂.

On the way back we also noticed that the park had other kids activities, such as trampolines and a sensory playground with spinning optical illusions and various instruments. We spent some time playing with everything, including some slow-mo bouncing videos 😅

Finally we found ourselves in the labyrinth which we Aced – following the well-trodden path to the exit 😁. While it’s not ideal for winter, I have to say it is an awesome play area for kids in summer. This type of things is one of the things Germany really does well! By the time we drove home it was evening. I made us some dinner before we dropped into bed.

The Indoor markets

Nice tree

Classic Chandellier

Optical illusion skinny thing

Noise makers. We’d be a great band!

Bouncy Simon!