it’s cold, wet and dark, and mould is sneaking into a few corners, despite our bleach-infused efforts to tame it. i don’t like to whine about the weather, but i can feel it chilling my bones and damping my enthusiasm… i’m dreaming of warm sunny days, and keeping the image of these blue skies in my head as a way to make it through this cruel january.

more photos from the holga, here.

we live in a middle-eastern neighborhood, a small island of strange accents, shisha bars and small turkish shops. and since their food is cheap and tasty, we like to indulge in it every once in a while. i can say that by now, we’ve tried and learnt more about middle-eastern specialities than we have german ones… so why not write a sort of glossary about them?

first up (cheese will always come first), halloumi!

we quite like halloumi. traditional from cyprus, it’s a cheese made with goat and sheep’s milk. it feels like mozarella, but saltier, and since it is usually fried or grilled, it reminds us a bit of the slovenian fried cheese. all the falafel shops seem to have a variation of the halloumi salad above, usually with some mint in them. yum! :)

yesterday we walked on clouds…

… it was awesome! :)

have you seen the movie “the downfall“? (if you’ve seen one of those movies on youtube with hitler screaming at everyone, you’ve seen a bit of it at least.)

if you’ve seen the whole movie though, you might remember the scene where hitler and albert speer, his architect, look wistfully over a mockup of germania, the “new berlin”, future capital of the world.

their plan was to build two huge avenues, forming two axis that crossed the city, a huge domed people’s hall, and a big arch of triumph – much much larger than the one in paris. but because they didn’t know if the sandy ground of berlin could withstand such heavy things, they decided to test it first, by building a large concrete structure: the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body). it is one of the few traces of hitler’s megalomanic germania in today’s berlin.

the massive structure was to function as a feasibility study for further constructions: if it were to sink less than 6 cm, the soil would be deemed sound enough for big buildings.

it sank 18 cm in three years.

not that it mattered in the end. as the war raged on in berlin, plans were quickly scraped.

the city wanted blow it to smithereens, but was afraid of the effects on the nearby buildings… and so to this day, the heavy cylinder remains, on the corner of dudenstraße and general-pape-straße. it is now an historical monument. from the observation deck next to it, you can pretty much see the whole city, and imagine the huge axis of avenues, with its triumphal arch that never was.

today in class, we translated the expression “she sees life in pink”, which some people didn’t know. perhaps mrs. piaf wasn’t all that special outside of europe, eh? :)

2011 was good year, for the most part. it was the year we took a good look at our health and decided to change things. we ate different, we moved more. we also moved to a new country in april, starting a new adventure. we’ve seen old friends and made new ones. and we’ve tried lots of new things.

but the year ended in a more sour note, with both this never-ending crisis and sickness affecting our families in a cruel way. as for 2012, i only wish to have the strength to make this a good year, no matter what life throws at us.

i was thinking about this yesterday, while watching the pyrotechnic pitched battle taking place in front of the brandenburg tor. we were a bit far to see the actual city fireworks, but the display that surrounded us was equally dramatic and much more nerve-wracking. here’s what it looked like, straight from the boy’s phone (starts a bit before midnight):

happy new year!

german classes, christmas markets and mittens warmed up by cups of glühwein, lunch concerts at the philarmonie, baking, christmas parties, daytrips outside berlin… it feels good to be busy, always on the run, but right now i wish life would slow down a little bit, just enough for me to process it all.