little things

Five things that made my week a little sweeter:

drinks in kreuzberg with a new friend. 

rang in my 24th year with lord huron - an indie rock band with a decidedly metal-sounding name, according to my German parents.

the sweetest birthday breakfast that felt just like home.

wink.

this morning's airport breakfast because I'm on my way to AMSTERDAM.

seeya.

fine

sanssouci and potsdam

On a very gray Sunday a couple of weeks ago, we drove to Potsdam, a sort-of-suburb on the outskirts of Berlin. Potsdam is the capital of the German state of Brandenburg and is most famous (to Americans at least) for hosting the Potsdam Conference of 1945, where Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met to put a plan in place to clean up the mess that WWII made.

Aaaaand that's all I've got on the history front.

We spent a couple of hours walking around Frederick the Great's summer home, Sanssouci, which is best described as the Versailles of Germany. While the palace is incredible - vast, gorgeous, centuries-old, well-kept - I can't wait to see it (like so many other things here) in summertime.

I don't think I'll ever get used to the way gold is used here. Every single time I see it used in architecture, without fail, I have to stop myself from asking a million questions about the logistics behind where it came from, why it's used and, most importantly, how it has stayed there all these years. Pretty sure that pushes me right over the obnoxious American line.

See? Unreal.

little things

Five things that made my week a little sweeter:

someone told me this week that Germans don't smile that often, and I really haven't found that to be true.

this whiskey on ice was the perfect valentine's night-cap this year...

but these flowers were pretty nice too.

loved this guy guarding a wall in Mitte.

this chair told me it wants to come home to nashville.

along Friedrichstraße

I find myself on Friedrichstraße several times each week. The street was badly damaged in World War II and is an interesting mix of history (truly gorgeous architecture, Checkpoint Charlie) and modern-day commercialism (several H&Ms in a row and the reality that these days, Checkpoint Charlie isn't much more than a tourist trap.) A few shots of the more charming aspects of Freidrichstraße:

mantra

Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.

neighborhood crushes

Just adding Hackescher Markt and Prenzlauer Berg to the list.

lullabies

As an au pair, I spend endless hours making a fool of myself to get a laugh out of my charge, Tilda. Thank God she is the easiest to entertain, happiest six month old I have ever met. When things get a little rough though, the only option is to sing until the crying stops (don't worry, you'll never see it) and I quickly realized that most lyrics for traditional lullabies aren't part of my memory bank. After making up my own, awful lyrics for a few days, I decided to shift to something I knew a little more about. During one particularly brutal teething session, I ended up singing most of My Morning Jacket's Circuital, to which I shockingly know most of the lyrics.  Crowd favorites include "Wonderful," "Holdin' On To Black Metal," and "Outta My System."

Baby T and I crank the tunes most mornings. Yo La Tengo's newest, Neil Young's Harvest, anything Bon Iver and this masterpiece from the world's greatest Beatle have been on repeat: