Penguins on Jupiter

Sudden stillness

Today is the first day of the winter semester at my university and we are celebrating it by taking the day off! Yes, it’s Dies Academicus - we’ll go to classes tomorrow - a la Scarlett O’Hara. Today we’ll just have some free bubbly in the main building..

Yesterday I finally got around to buying a warm winter hat. I think my ears were about to fall off from the cold. Luckily I was hanging out in Mauer Park with friends from Tel Aviv and we all bought cute hats. Today I’m hoping to get my hands warmer with a new pair of gloves. Fingers crossed, literally ;)

I’m also busy comparing prices from different mobile providers as I’m scheming to purchase the new iPhone 4S - בשעה טובה.

Pie in the sky

I’m visiting Tel Aviv this week. I arrived friday evening and Guy, the world’s cutest nephew, came to pick me up from the airport with my parents. I missed him muchly. He was staying with us for the weekend and then again on Sunday (weekends are fri-sat in Israel) so I had some quality time with him. In a word - FUN. In three words - cute and funny.

Saturday I also met up with my great friends Alex, Roie, baby Bar, Zohar and Dina. Bar is very cute and tiny. We ended up playing Dominion for hours as I just brought them the seaside extension. Ooo and we had Sabich for dinner which I really missed having in Berlin and was yummy.

Today I dropped by my old work place for a surprise visit. I really love the people I worked with and it was so great to see them again. They are the most talented peeps I know and they do the coolest smartest things. But more than that they are my very good friends and I miss their company daily. I think I’ll drop by again this week - I just love spending time with them..

I also had a late night dinner with Vered. It was great catching up and we started planning her visit to Berlin which I’m really happy about. Dinner was so amazing as we went to my favorite sushi place which I totally missed. I just hope one day they’ll have sushi this good in Berlin.

Tel Aviv is hot and humid as expected. It’s also just an awesome city and still feels like home. I even got to see the tents protest with my very eyes. There was a bunch of tents on Nordau Blvd and a group of people was sitting together listening to an economics lecture of some sort. I guess it’s not quite over yet.

* I think I’m becoming a bit of a foodie since I moved to Berlin. Oh well…

Silver margins

My bff is getting married in a week and I’m, in a word, emotional.

What was I busy with lately? Well, for starters Paris really threw me off my beat. Granted I was doing a fair amount of thinking about Kin but I was also just daydreaming a lot! I’m completely in love with Paris and it’s very easy for me to get lost in my head when I’m there.

Coming back to Berlin was great. I was worried about an energy melt down after my Paris high but there was none of that. It was just coming back to a new and existing home. I was instantly busy with moving all my things to my new apartment (I got a delivery from Tel Aviv) and Noam’s my hero for helping out last minute. I went to the Torstraßen Festival with Tim. It was nice to feel like I could still do my favorite things as in Tel Aviv, and make new friends while I’m at it. But I also really missed Alex and Roie throughout. Seeing The Raw Men Empire was a bit of a closure as the previous, and first, time I saw them was the day I got my acceptance letter to Humboldt.

I kept going with errands, getting local health insurance and matriculating at HU. I fixed up my MacBook so my dad could use it and the list goes on.. I’m currently in debate with myself regarding sports for the next year. I’m not sure if I wanna get a gym subscription or register with an ashtanga yoga studio. My guts says go for yoga but I’m kinda liking the idea of running in a warm gym with a sauna for winter time. I decided to leave this decision until I’m back from Tel Aviv.

It seems like everything about moving to a new country is dual. I’m excited about all the new people and possibilities and miss everything I know and love. So it’s all good - I’m happy to be here and I’m happy I’m visiting Tel Aviv tomorrow. 

Things that are new #4

In Germany they use a comma as a decimal point and a decimal point to parse large numbers (thousands and higher). I have a feeling this will be a bit confusing once school starts..

So 1.001 is one thousand and one and 1,001 is one and one thousandth. 

Pretty and poetic #Ghostbusters #Pacman

via lacarpa

Rearview imagination

Pheww.. I’m back from 2 packed days in Disneyland Paris. I’ve learned the following:

1. Disneyland Paris is not only awesome, it’s awesomer! They’ve got 2 parks now and the new rides are cool and add to the experience. 

2. Going to Disneyland Paris with kids is very different from going as kids or just going. I was constantly preoccupied with my cousin’s kids’ first time experience. So I missed a couple of rides and forgot to get my picture with Wall-E etc. but all in all it was pretty to cool to help bestow Disney magic on them..

3. Growing old sucks:

3a. I’ve never had motion sickness as a child. No more spinning for me please!

3b. I’ve never been so emotional. I got all teary from just hearing a certain disney song or seeing the princesses dance with their princes. I felt quite silly about it.

3c. I used to enjoy junk food, which is all they have. That’s all gone now and I kinda wished for the park to magically brew an espresso for me - didn’t happen. ( for the record, Starbucks = junk food).

I now feel like re-watching all the Disney catalog, which I just might do as I’ve them all on my HD..

Artemis feedback

I recently returned from a farm house in Normandy where I spent a week with my relatives. The daily routine included 3 fantastic meals, jogging or walking through the countryside, ping pong and relaxing in the hammock. We mostly had great weather so we also got to spend time collecting blackberries (real ones!) and making jam, to visit the local zoo and the kids got to ride ponies a plenty.

Good times.

Beyond thoughts of the moon

I’m back in Paris with my family. Last couple of days were a bit chilly and I’ve been carrying a low amplitude migrane to boot. 

Yesterday I took my cousin’s kids to Jardins du Luxembourg and we all got to be silly and have fun together. After Yael picked them up I spent some time window-shopping in Boulevard Saint-Michel. I also finished watching the west wing again. It’s still awesome.

I had a late morning at home today and then took the bus to the Louvre hoping for short lines. The lines were short but the weather was nice and my migrane didn’t want to go to a museum so I skipped it and strolled through Jardin des Tuileries. Oh, and there’s an apple store in the Carrousel du Louvre so I had a quick meet and great with the new macbookair 13”. 

My feet carried me on to Boulevard Saint-Germain and I’ve been strolling around the 6eme quarter again. I just stopped for coffe on Rue de Buci.

Things that are new #3

In French ‘manchot’ is a penguin and ‘pingouin’ isn’t.

Sun rays wander over a resting sock

Finally, beautiful weather as befitting a beautiful city! I’ve a feeling it’s all a big murphy scandal since I carried my umbrella, sweater, scarf and coat for no reason - but I prefer it this way than the other way around. Hurray to the sun!

I’ve been flipping day and night around and back every few days. So to ensure I wouldn’t sleep in and miss my flight I decided to stay up all night - which is why I’m happy I have an HD full of West Wing episodes to keep me amused at all times. Of course I slept like a log on the short 1.5 hours flight, but that was hardly enough for me. Not having a map of Paris with me I managed to “feel” my way home based on old memories. Being sleepy didn’t stop me and I went out armed with Karen and Edu’s recommendations for interesting areas and sweet spots in the city. I’ve been here many time before but I decided to restrain myself from revisiting old favorites and focus on discovering unknown streets and areas. 

I was walking the 3eme and 4eme quarters when it finally struck me that not only are most of the stores closed, but also quite a few of the streets. I assumed stores were closed simply due to the vacances but it was more than that. Suddenly, as I came out of a small boulangerie, I saw hundreds of people marching down the street slowly, chanting Christian hymns in French. I started following them around, as others were joining them, mesmerized by the ritual. At some point I asked someone out it and apparently August 15th marked the Assumption of Mary, a Catholic holiday. While he wasn’t surprised by the closed stores due to the vacation, he did mention that this year there’s an unusually big crowd marching. I followed them all the way to Bastille and then decided to walk along the Seine to the Latin quarter. As soon as I was far away enough, and the chanting subsided, I started hearing them from a new direction. There were quite a few of these parades. The biggest I saw lead to Notre-Dame cathedral. I was just walking from crossroad to crossroad picking up on the chanting and following them to see more and more groups of people marching. 

Since I walked all the way to Notre-Dame I decided to visit a holy place, the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. I’ve been coming here time and again for two decades now and for the first time something was different. It looked the same but as I automatically went to the sci-fi shelves and then to philosophy, poetry, politics, autobiographies and so, I kept feeling confused. For some reason they decided to rearrange the store and I got to explore it like it was my first time there.. A couple of hours later I was ready to buy about four PKD books. Whenever I find a new book of his I haven’t read I buy it and they had a whole shelf of them, so I was trying to restrict myself. But then I remembered that I just left 3/4 of my library back home in Tel Aviv because of weight issues. And who knows how many times I will have to relocate in the next few years. Then and there I decided that this is it - I’m going to switch to ebooks. I returned all the lovely scented books to the shelf slowly and existed the store in a hurry. Who knows if I’ll ever buy another book there again..

I kept walking about the Latin quarter for the rest of the evening. My favorite comic books store has either closed down or relocated. Paris felt like home away from home. So much has changed and so much remains exactly the same. 

And that was just Monday in brief.. More to come in my next posts..