Sonnenschein
Spring definitely arrived in Berlin this month. The days have already gotten so much longer and it has been sunny more often than not, which is a nice change of pace from winter, which is just gray all day, everyday. Here's the example I like to give to summarize winter in this part of Germany: when my mother visited us for 3 weeks in December 2018, she only saw the sun twice - once in Bavaria and once in Poland.
Our apartment is situated such that we can watch the sunrise from our bedroom and the sunset from our balcony. This won't be ideal in June when sunrise happens before 5am, but right now it's nice to wake up in a sunbeam. Similarly, we'll need to buy an umbrella for the balcony so that we can actually enjoy being out there on the hottest, sunniest days of the year, but right now I love being drenched in afternoon sunlight each day. And so does our black cat, Nyshka. There's a spot on the carpet that she sleeps in for a few hours every afternoon while the sun streams in through the balcony door.
Issue #14 of this newsletter was all about our balcony and how I hoped we would keep using it outside of the summer months. I can't say I enjoyed it much this winter, but now that the sun is back, we've been out there quite a bit. E has been taking work calls on the balcony and we had coffee and cake out there to celebrate International Women's Day earlier this month.
So far, Eben and Laura are the only friends who have really gotten to enjoy the balcony with us, but I hope we'll have a few more people over later in the spring. I'm imagining having folks over for dinner every week in May and early June while we wait for the baby to arrive. That might be too much social time for E's tastes, but I'd love to get some socializing in before we have an infant. We'll see what happens.