Happy New Year.

In the Liechtenstein Alps, summer 2007.

I have a feeling that 2010 will be a great year. Change is in the midst... for the better, I think. 2009 was a great year with many ups and downs but I have a feeling that the kinks have been sorted out. I've made some private resolutions but have decided not to publicize considering I am a horrible resolution keeper. Until today I had actually forgotten about a HUGE list that I made last year of things I would like to achieve in 2009. I think that it is somewhere in our apartment in Berlin so it should be fun going through the details when we get back.

Last night we had a super quiet evening with some friends. It was exactly what we needed. Thanks Jill and Brian for having us over and entertaining us all evening! We even managed to get out and see some piddly fireworks at City Hall. Tonight we're going to see Sherlock Holmes... and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.

It's been a great few weeks in Toronto so far... thanks Heather for having a lovely dinner party and inviting us along. And thanks Heidi and Etienne for inviting us over to your place for a new years eve drop in. It's been great seeing old friends again plus we've been meeting more and more lovely people in this city. I have to say that it'll be hard to go back to Berlin and leave all these friends behind.

For the rest of the day we are doing nothing but relaxing... couch my friend, where have you been.

Happy first day of the year!

The weekend.

Oh brother. Bureaucratic stuff is dragging me down. I shouldn't complain too much though... I'm sure that there are people out there that have it way worse than I do. My latest experience is with private health insurance. I swear that I'll never do it again as it is almost impossible to get them to pay for anything. Ugh.

On the other hand we had a lovely weekend here in Berlin. It was rainy and super cold but we ended up getting our social activities on.

I saw a Herlinde Koelbl photo exhibit with a friend at Martin Gropius Bau.

We went to an Egyptian-themed show at Basso including a crazy/messy burial performance. I had a conversation that got me into watching 21 Jump Street again. And... I ran into an old co-worker of mine from Toronto. Who knew. Us Toronto folk are all over this Berlin connection.

Saturday I didn't set one foot outside. It drove me a little crazy but I got some quality relaxing done.

Last night we saw Julie & Julia. It made me want to cook... and cook and cook. Afterwards we enjoyed an amazing dinner at Felix Austria in Kreuzberg. The food was amazing, very Austrian, and not over the top expensive. Go there if you have the chance. The atmosphere was sweet and old school. We were just sad that we didn't have any room left to split a Kaiserschmarmm.

Happy monday.

....bbbbbbirthday out.

So here's the report from my surprise birthday event for m. We had a pretty relaxing day lying around in Tiergarten and Volkspark Friedrichshain. I've been meaning to do this all summer and can't believe how hard it has been to schedule it in. Jeesh. We accidentally found public tennis courts and will now have to dust off the tennis outfits I made for us last summer. We had originally thought that the public ping pong tables of Berlin were the equivalent of the public tennis courts of Toronto... and that it would be impossible for us to play tennis unless we bought an expensive club membership.

For lunch I took M. to one of our favourite Austrian restaurants in the city, Sarah Wiener. One of the things that I really love about this place is the beautiful room that the restaurant is housed in inside of the Hamburger Bahnhof. It's a place that makes you want to order a coffee, sit back, and read for hours... and in the middle of the day it's pretty peaceful.

In the evening I surprised M. by taking him to the Freiluftkino Friedrichshain to see Alle Anderen. It's a Geman movie so I was a little nervous thinking that I wasn't going to understand everything but to my surprise I kept up. More German films it is! It was pretty fun and well worth seeing. We need to be taking advantage of these Freiluftkinos for the rest of the summer... Berlin has so many, it's incredible.

That was pretty much it... all in all it was a really nice day.

It's been a couple of crazy movie weeks for us. Yesterday we went to see Inglorious Basterds, which was really funny but also includes a little of that Quentin Tarantino gore that everyone loves. In the past couple of years I've really started to respect Brad Pitt as an actor. He's been pretty versatile in his rolls.

We decided to go out for dinner after getting our movie tickets to waste some time before the film started... I wanted to go for Japanese food as always but M. ended up taking me here instead. All I can say is that it the evening was a true north american experience. When we came out of the movies it even smelled like an evening at home in late summer... reminded me of cottage country. How? I don't know.

Tonight I'm going to try and bake this yummy pie.

Happy Sunday.