It’s kind of hard to believe that just last weekend we were wandering around the streets of Vienna, perusing Weihnachtsmarkten, sipping coffee in cafes, and meandering streets that have been trod by over 800 years of Hapsburg royalty. After flying in on Thursday morning, we followed a walking tour around the city, taking us from the Staatsoper, past Hotel Sacher (home of the famous sacher torte!) and up to St Stephen’s cathedral, through a bunch of fancy shopping streets utterly decked out in glittering Christmas lights, and right into the heart of the Hofburg palace. We spent Friday and Saturday seeing some more specific sights, including breakfast at the Naschmarkt; a fantastic Magritte exhibit at the Albertina gallery, housed in one wing of the sprawling Hofburg palace; dinner at a Heurigen (wine garden) on the outskirts of town; a tour of the Silberkammer (Silver Collection), Sisi (a.k.a Empress Elizabeth) Museum, and Kaiserappartements at the Hofburg Palace; and one of three weekly screenings of The Third Man at a tiny theater near our hotel. On Saturday night we secured standing-room tickets for Daphne at the Opera – it was kind of a boring story, but the sets were crazy and the building itself is absolutely gorgeous: a fine way to end our stay in this beautiful city!

There hasn’t been much going on recently except work, and spending our weekends biking through the city, finding yummy spots for Sunday brunch, and generally exploring our new neighborhood. We live in an area called Kreuzberg, which means “mountain of the cross”, named for a small but very steep hill in Viktoriapark – the highest point in Berlin! – topped by a cast iron monument dedicated to the Befreiungskriege (“liberation battles”) from the Napoleonic Wars: the monument has a cross on top, hence, mountain of the cross. Viktoriapark is simply beautiful in the fall, with cascades of yellow leaves swirling through the sunlight. Between our flat and the park is a series of streets lined with shops and cafes…we pick a new place to eat every Sunday for brunch! Two weeks ago we took a leisurely Sunday afternoon bike ride along the canal just north of our flat; the week before that, we spent a chilly evening meandering along Unter Den Linden to see the annual Festival of Lights – the Brandenburger Tör, Humbolt University, Berliner Dom, and TV tower were all lit up in fantastic, changing colors – before cozying up in Comedy Club Kookaburra for a late-night Comedy Sportz show (Comedy Sportz being the improv troup of which Noah is a veteran, and Josh one of their newest members!).

Dobre den! (That’s about all the Czech I can properly pronounce! It means “hello”.) We spent last weekend in the lovely, if tourist-crowded, Prague – an easy five-hour train ride directly from Berlin. The four quarters of the old city offered just about enough to keep us occupied for four days: on Friday we meandered through the New and Old Towns to see St Wenceslas Square, the Municipal Building (gorgeous Art Nouveau architecture), the Old Town Square and the Charles Bridge. Rainy, cold Saturday saw us through the Castle and Little Quarters, where we visited the Castle and St Vitus Cathedral (all while dodging huge tour groups), and had dinner at a fantastic monastery brewery (pork steaks with goat cheese plus potatoes plus micro-brew equals YUM). The Jewish Museum – in the Jewish quarter of the Old Town, naturally – was open on Sunday; the old cemetery was astounding with generations of gravestones, jumbled and skewed and half-buried as new layers have been added. When the sun came out in the late afternoon we headed up the hill above the river to the park with the Prague Metronome to take some fantastic photos of the city and enjoy a drink in the beer garden overlooking the river. We took things a bit slow on Monday, attempting to ride the funicular up Petřín hill to the Eiffel-like Lookout Tower (sadly, the funicular was closed) before visiting the final two synagogues of the Jewish Museum and then catching a train home. Strangely, it was a relief to be back in Germany, where we can both at least pronounce the language!