new year beginnings with family and friends

Tags

2016, Berlin, Germany, Hamburg, New Year, photography, photos, snow, travel, writing

The new year started with a bang for me – actually several and very loud ones at that. My friends took me to the Grosser Bunkerberg (Large Air Raid Shelter Hill), one of the highest points in Berlin, to look at the fireworks. Sadly it was too foggy to see much but the sound was incredible, loud banging and explosions going off for a good hour or so, the occasional rocket that made it high enough to break through the fog and smoke to illuminate the sky in an array of colours. We stood and listened and sipped bubbly. As the cold crept up our legs we decided it was time to make our way home and clambered down the hill in the fog to be welcomed to the streets of Berlin with loud bangs all around us.

Now, after a few wonderful days in Berlin filled with flea markets, a fantastic play in the Deutsches Theater and lots of time spent with good friends over cups of tea and glasses of wine, I am in Hamburg. I am watching the snow fall outside and enjoying a few hours of quite before my cute niece and nephew demand playtime again. And while I watch the snow paint the world white I think I may indulge in a hot bath, the perfect contrast to the cold day outdoors.

However first I will finish my cup of tea and write  a few lines – after all this lovely break away from normality will be over soon and I need to get quite a lot done before my course starts up again. But for now I am truly enjoying my start into 2016 and only hope that the year will keep all that it seems to be promising.

 

of fridges and christmas trees

Tags

Advent, advents kranz, christmas, christmas tree, first christmas gift, fridge, german christmas stollen, holidays, miscellaneous, random, seasonal, snow, winter

I love Christmas, it’s my favourite time of year. And although I am dieing to listen to Christmas carols, cut into my German Christmas Stollen and get the mulled wine bubbling I always wait till the 1st of December.

But because my christmassy anticipation is too much to bear I decided to order my Christmas tree yesterday, making my heart do some “drummer boy” impersonation. Of course I will now have to wait till the week before the big day to put it up and decorate it with all my favourite decorations, I just hope I don’t combust is a blaze of holly, ivy and mistletoe.

However it’s nearly time to light the first candle on my “Advents Kranz” (well this year I don’t have a wreath but a pretty row of candles to light the way up to Christmas) which will fill the need for piney goodness for a few weeks.

And knowing tomorrow I’ll be putting up decorations around the house while listening to crooners corning Christmas carols makes me all giddy with excitement. I even get to open up the first door on my Marzipan Advents-kalandar, a daily treat to count down the days.

And somehow I even feel as if I just got my first Christmas gift, a new fridge was delivered and installed yesterday night, a wish granted and a clean new home for cookie dough waiting to be baked.

So tomorrow I will spend the day at home, decorating, baking, singing and dancing my very own “jingle bells rock”. I can’t wait and all I need now for a perfect Christmas is snow and a kiss under some mistletoe. And neither are looking great at the moment, even Paddy Power has pushed the odds for a white Christmas up to 4/1 and I really don’t want to know the prediction for meeting a man is. However with the temperatures dropping I live in hope, for snow at the very least.

I used fresh green and a little bit of sparkle to decorate my “Advents Tray”