Weekly small pleasures

Weekly small pleasures #24 – Holding onto summer

3 Comments

img_20160912_184244

Where did August go?

Well – we  were getting married! Most of August was consumed with wedding preparations. Organizing a wedding (not to mention the paperwork for the marriage) takes a lot more time than I would have expected.  We also snuck in a brief trip to the Canary islands, which I will definitely share some photos of at some point! My parents stayed with us in Berlin the week after the wedding, which made me think I should also share some photos of Berlin and Prague at some point.

img_20160829_231215

Anyway – now things are back to normal, and we have been lucky enough in Berlin to be having really hot September weather. September is often still sunny and nice, but this year we’ve even had really warm temperatures to go with it. This is a great pleasure, and I feel a bit sentimental about every sunny day knowing that the autumn temperatures will probably set in from this weekend (the forecasts for next week are 18-20 degrees Celsius). But, before they do, here were this Week’s Small Pleasures. Thanks to Mani at a New Life Wandering for hosting this blog event. It’s great that she and Thistles and Kiwis are regular posters! Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #23 – 2 in 1

4 Comments

IMG_20160717_230016

We’re now in the good part of summer where it’s warm enough to wear a skirt or shorts almost every day. It feels like summer is just beginning as time goes so quickly, so I was a bit disconcerted to realize that we’re heading into our last month of summer now that it’s almost August. We’ve had a lot of unsettling news lately, what with Brexit, various terror attacks across the world, and the attempted coup in Turkey. Crazy times. However, here are some of the good moments from the last two weeks for the Weekly Small Pleasures blog event. From small pleasures from far away in New Zealand, you can also check out Thistles and Kiwis! Continue reading →

Weekly Small Pleasures #22 – Summer in the city

5 Comments

Somehow the middle of the week is working out as a better time for me to publish these posts, so here is another Thursday-to-Thursday week’s worth of small pleasures. Thanks again to A New Life Wandering for hosting Weekly Small Pleasures. This week was one of those weeks where small pleasures were mixed with small annoyances and disappointments! Such is life. Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #21 – Summer days

2 Comments

IMG_20160702_190141

Well, June disappeared quickly, didn’t it! I have missed quite a few weeks of Weekly Small Pleasures, as there have been quite a few meetings and a lot of work this month. So one of this week’s small pleasures is getting the opportunity to participate in this blog event again this week 🙂 Thanks to Mani for being so diligent and keeping this blog event running all this time!

Here were this week’s small pleasures:

1.Summer weather. In South Africa I took sun for granted most of the time, but living through Berlin winters has taught me to appreciate every sliver of it. We’re having a lot of good, sunny weather this year. Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #20 – Cambridge in spring

3 Comments

As Mani from A New Life Wandering says: Share your happiness! I find that the small things that make us happy every day are easily forgotten. This blog event is simply about remembering and sharing those small things that made you happy during the week.

Technically this is two week’s worth of small pleasures as the last two weeks have been quite busy and sort of rolled into one! We took a weekend trip to Cambridge, then I had to prepare a work presentation and poster, and we had our work retreat. Here were some of the highlights of the last two weeks. Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #19 – there and back again

3 Comments

img_0003

It feels like it was a short week, as we just returned from our bike trip in the Alsace, France, on Tuesday morning and now we are off to Cambridge to visit a friend for the weekend. But here are this week’s small pleasures nonetheless. This week I tried to take note when little happenings (rather than things) made me happy, so they were not always things that could be photographed. Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #18 – Lilac and canola

Leave a comment

 

IMG_20160507_191550

We are headed off on another adventure in few minutes, but before we go I wanted to do a Weekly Small Pleasures blog post. Weekly Small pleasures is Mani’s blog event where you highlight the little things that made you happy this week. For her post and other people’s, head here. Here are mine:

It’s May.
What’s not to love about May in Berlin: it’s a month full of public holidays. 1 May is Worker’s day, but this year it was a Sunday and they didn’t give the Monday off, so we lost out on that one. Then there is “Himmelfahrt” (Ascension Thursday – date varies by year) and also “Pfingsten” (Pentecost – date varies by year), which seem to always fall in May too. So last Thursday instead of sitting in the office I was kayaking in Neu Venedig (New Venice), and this weekend is a long weekend and we’re headed off for a bike tour in the Alsace wine region of France! This promises to be quite an adventure (possibly an uncomfortable one, since we’re taking two night trains and sleeping on tatami mats in a Yurt one night, with a dry toilet and cold shower, oh the horror) – but I guess that’s what the wine is for. Unfortunately being away means this year we’ll miss the Carnival of Cultures.

IMG_20160506_000549
Drastic increase in temperatures.

It feels like not long ago I was wearing boots, a jacket, scarf and gloves, and now I’m in a T-shirt and need to carry sunglasses. This is how rapidly the temperatures can increase in Berlin! But I’m not complaining, I much prefer warm weather. Plus, I’m pretty sure my vitamin D levels must have been super low after the long grey season and now is a chance to soak up some sun and make some more! I feel more energetic already.

The trees have flowers.

I haven’t got over the novelty of flowers on all the trees yet. Yes, the little pieces of flowers blowing in the wind get into your eyes when you’re on the cycling lane – but everything is so beautiful!

Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #17 – Berlin and Brandenburg

2 Comments

Welcome to this week’s Weekly Small Pleasures, Mani’s blog event where you take note of the little things during the week that bring you happiness. After spending the whole week working inside a biosafety level 3 facility, the weekend was a good chance to get some sun and some time outdoors. We had great weather in Berlin this weekend, and spent Saturday walking around the city of Berlin and Sunday cycling in the surrounding countryside of Brandenburg.

Our first stop on Saturday morning was the Markthalle Neun in Kreuzberg, an indoor market where you can enjoy different foods such as English pies, Italian cheeses, German cakes, Spanish tapas as well as craft beers, coffee and ice-cream. a good coffee is always a pleasure. After that we took a long walk around Berlin. My favourite part was the pretty and charming area around the Nikolaiviertel. After a brief stop at home we headed off again to check out the blossoms at Bornholmer Strasse and continued walking by the railway tracks right up until Pankow.

On Sunday we went for a bike ride on the Panoramaweg, as it is Baumblütenfest time. We enjoyed cycling in the countryside through villages, orchards and countryside and trying the fruit wines along the way.

Other pleasures of the week were the fact that it’s getting light later now, the temperatures shot up, ending the cold spell of the week before, and we are having blue skies more regularly.

Check out A new life wandering blog to see what other people enjoyed this week.

Wishing everyone a good week ahead!

weekly-small-pleasures-badge

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #15 – Emerging from winter

3 Comments

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: Continue reading →