Reviewing the weekend and hitting the reset button

I’m happy to report that I had a most excellent weekend – for those of you who are counting, it was Christmas weekend, but I’m an atheist and, as such, observed more the passing of the winter solstice.

Two of my friends are in town having joined me for “Christmas in Berlin”, as it were, but I’ve spent more time at the Turkish Islamic Bookstore than I’ve spent inside anything authentically Christian, unless you count Christmas markets where one drinks mulled wine and buys stuff that you wouldn’t normally ever buy unless slightly tipsy.

Despite my (and theirs) atheistic leanings, we did a holiday-esque do Saturday. In the morning PseudoWife and I went over to the Winterfeldtplatz Markt, a weekly farmers market – where we picked up most of what would become our dinner, including a 1.5 kg organic chicken, some Brussels sprouts, onions, bread, rolls, and a myriad of other food (not necessarily all for dinner).

The gift exchange was fun – my presents to them were either all about Berlin (soaps with Berlin motifs and a Brandenburg Tor cookie cutter) or ironic (a guide for foreigners to understanding America; they’re Americans). I received a queer mystery set in Istanbul and an autographed David Sedaris book.

Today we observed the second (or is it third?!) Christmas day by taking a long walk around the western reaches of Berlin followed by lunch at a Syrian Imbiss located on Winterfeldtplatz. We picked up some baklava that we ate after afternoon naps – all of us agreed that it was mighty strange baklava: it was peanut flavored!

Right now I’m hitting the reset button: my guests have left for 3 nights, visiting friends in Stuttgart whilst I remain at home. I must go to the office and work since I actually have a backlog of work to do! In my downtime I will do some chores around the house that I’m sure my guests would volunteer to do, but that I want to do in my own way, so I’m in a mad rush to complete them all before Thursday night, when they return.