I woke up late yesterday morning, after dreaming I was in the book Infinite Jest, but instead of tennis, we were playing baseball, and I was expertly catching infield fly balls that were actually slices of ham and bologna. I stumble disoriented to the kitchen, where I pour water slowly into the kettle for coffee,…

So this is how crazy Berlin is. I’m riding my bike through our neighborhood yesterday. It’s almost the coldest day of the year, which means practically nothing this year, but let’s say for the sake of argument it’s near freezing. Cold. But around the corner I hear a song, as played on a very lo-fi…

When the lightning lit up the sky last night, and the wind was howling over the rooftops, we were pretty clear it was a storm. But an Orkan? C’mon. Apparently so. Winds of up to 110 kmph (roughly 65 mph) in Berlin alone, worse elsewhere, 34 people dead, according to the Berliner Morgenpost. A two-ton…

I had no idea what New Years in Berlin was like. We were told there would be fireworks, and when the firework shops started opening, and we saw the fairly massive artillery in there, we began to have a clue. But only a clue. Where I grew up in Washington we had “Safe’n’Sane” fireworks —…

We’re off to Dresden for a few days, where we’ll huddle in a little apartment across the platz from the reconstructed Frauenkirche, sipping coffee with a friend from Prague and with luck figuring out how to roast our first goose. I’ve been torturing Aimee by playing Bing Crosby Christmas carols in front of our little…

I think that’s pronounced “Shorties.” I made Weihnacht Spritz cookies as we were decorating our stubby little tree, but they came out as shortbread. Maybe it’s the European butter. Tasty, but not spritz. Any theories?

Under our historic bridge, along the train tracks, the trees have lost their minds. It’s perfectly understandable. We had winter, it was two days long. Then a month of mild weather. Of course they’re going to shoot out buds, and even begin to blossom.