The Holidays Won

The more I shuttle back and forth between Berlin and Bavaria, the more those two worlds—once so completely separate they might as well have been different planets—bleed into each other. Friends, landscape, the texture of existing somewhere: it used to feel like switching channels entirely. Now it just feels like moving through the same continuous life. Which is mostly good. It’s good to spend a few days at home.

The peaceful family Christmas didn’t survive contact with reality for long. I spent the better part of the last week ricocheting between parties, catching up with old friends, ogling AC/DC Wolfi at the Melo, trying to quench some unquenchable thirst that kept coming back, not dehydrating, attempting not to fall face-first asleep at my grandmother’s post-Christmas dinner, and getting through a series of situations I can only describe as porn-grade extreme. All of which was exhausting enough that tomorrow I’m taking Becca into Munich to go shopping. I want to see the first German Apple Store with my own eyes. And I desperately need a new Nintendo DS game for the train ride back to Berlin—that journey is genuinely interminable when you’re running on fumes.

Belated Merry Christmas, by the way.