It’s been a while since I participated in Mani’s Weekly Small Pleasures blog event, I guess to be honest this year has been dominated by work so far and January/Feburary in Berlin are pretty grey and not so much goes on in Berlin. Not only that, but often it was hard to squeeze in time to blog, so when I had time I updated mostly on special trips I’d taken, for example to the Harz mountains for cross country skiing or to a meeting in Switzerland. Anyway, in the beginning of this year my small pleasures mostly included making it to the weekend, getting to catch up on an hour of sleep or so and having a nice meal at a restaurant now and then, as well as some visits to the farm in Czech where we catch up with the family and pets. Maybe I’ll do a Janurary/Feburary update some time, but for now here were this week’s small pleasures:

It’s been a long grey winter, but spring is coming. The snowdrops and crocuses are normally the flowers that are the first to poke their heads above the ground and there have also been daffodils popping up in flowerbeds around Berlin.

Catching up with a good friend for breakfast and enjoying a sunny Saturday. We hadn’t seen each other for a while since life was hectic for both of us the last months and our schedules never matched up, so it was really nice to catch up on all the news (and also to enjoy a yummy breakfast and some nice sunny weather in Berlin).  I also caught up with another good friend this week for dinner who I hadn’t seen for a while.

Chinese hot pot. We hadn’t planned anything special for Friday night, but were meeting a friend to pick up some concert tickets and ended up at a Chinese restaurant where we had shared a hot pot between the three of us. It was the first hot pot for both my friend and I, and we really enjoyed it. You order various vegetables and meat, dumplings or fish or meat balls and cook it in a pot of broth with seasonings such as garlic, chilli and spring onions, and eat it in a bowl (in our case with a delicious peanut sauce). It was so good and a really enjoyable evening, I would definitely recommend trying Chinese hot pot!

Making an Easter egg tree. One of the traditions in Germany (and some other European countries) is to decorate a tree,shrub or some twigs with hanging Easter eggs. This year I made my own – you can read more about it here.

My wedding shoes arrived in the post. Slowly but surely, more things are getting organized.

And in case last weekend counts, we enjoyed a relaxing time in Czech, and did a bit more wedding planning including visiting our reception venue near Chrudim. J’s sister also organized a facial for me, which was really super relaxing. Basically you lie there and have various delicious-smelling creams applied to your face and then washed off. It should give the skin a good clean!

Concert at Berlin Philharmonie. It was my first time at this concert theatre, which I’d already heard has great acoustics. A friend of ours was playing violin in the orchestra there, which was accompanied by singing. I enjoyed the first half more while J enjoyed the second half more. Overall a nice way to end the weekend.

Have a nice week everybody!