We just finished up our first 7 days on The Emerald Isle, and unbelievably we haven’t seen a drop of rain yet. Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our friends JM & Talia – who visited us in Berlin and then traveled with us through Ireland until this morning when they flew back to NY.
We arrived in Dublin on Monday evening, spent the day in the city on Tuesday, then rented a car and made our way south and west starting Wednesday. We stopped at the impressive Powerscourt Gardens and an ancient monastic ‘city’ at Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains, stayed overnight in Kilkenny (right next to the Smithwick’s brewery!), and then made our way further west to the Dingle Peninsula (with a stop at the Rock of Cashel) on Thursday. We took a leisurely driving tour of the Peninsula on Friday, and spent the evening at a pub listening to ‘trad’ Irish music and getting some travel advice from a very nice (and very drunk) local fisherman. On Saturday we drove up to Galway, with stops at the Loop Head Lighthouse and cliffs (taller than the Cliffs of Moher, and no bus tours!) and The Burren. Meg and I are in Galway and environs for the next two days before we travel to Northern Ireland and then back to Dublin. We’ll send another postcard next week!

After seven months of only seeing each other via weekly Skype calls, I finally got to see my parents in person – in Berlin! They were here for ten days, and we had such a blast showing them the city that Josh and I now call home. Between arriving at Tegel on the 10th and taking a train to Amsterdam on the 20th, I think they saw just about every major site in Berlin, including some that we haven’t even been to yet ourselves! We took them to Potsdam to see Sanssouci and Schloss Cecilienhof (lunch at the Meierei near Cecilienhof was awesome!); Dad really enjoyed seeing the Chinese Tea House that played host to Josh’s air tea photo on our honeymoon. We went to the Winterfeldtmarkt in Schöneberg, visited the Botanischer Garten (Rebers can’t go to a city without seeing the garden), and spent almost a whole day wandering in and out of the shops, Markthalle, and cafes on Bergmannstraße. I was even able to direct mom to a wool shop and dad to a wine shop across the street from each other near our old sublet: a confluence of perfection for each of them, I think! I was truly delighted when mom told me, “I can see why you like it so much here, and I think we’ll have to come back!” Mission to get parents to fall in love with Deutschland: accomplished.

**Quick note from Josh: You’ve probably noticed that the site looks a bit different. I took some time a few months ago to do a bit of redesign and overhaul of the code. You should notice things load a bit faster and cleaner, plus we love the thumbnails as stamps and the infinite scrolling (scroll down on the main page and try it!). Enjoy!**

Wow. Though we were in Cologne for Karneval (Carnival/Mardi Gras/Etc) four years ago, we were only in town for a day or two and didn’t really experience much of Kölner Karneval. This year, we took the train down and arrived in the city on Saturday – the height of party time. The city goes absolutely nuts – drinking, singing (and more singing), crazy costumes- generally fighting off the cold and grey any way possible. Karneval time in the Rhineland is a little like Halloween in the States in that people get dressed up and there’s a lot of candy given out (though here it’s at 3-hour long parades where you have sweets thrown at you by old men dressed up as Napoleonic soldiers).

We danced and drank at a Brauhaus Saturday night (in costume, naturally – Meg was a man, I was a woman – don’t ask); Sunday we met up with some old friends for a parade in Sürth, where I grew up (I was a clown, Meg was some sort of rat princess); Monday is “Rosenmontag” (Rose Monday/Shrove Monday) and is the biggest day of German Karneval- we went to the big parade in the nearby town of Bonn, former capital of West Germany (I was burned out, Meg was a tree); Tuesday we actually got to be in a parade- we were part of the last float in a neighborhood parade in the “Südstadt” of Cologne (I was some sort of Elizabethan Viking, Meg was a tree again).

As they say in Kölsch (a dialect spoken only around Cologne) – “Alaaf!“

A couple weeks ago we decided to quit the negative-fifteen-degree frigidity of Berlin for sunny, significantly warmer Barcelona! Barcelona is in the northeast of Spain – an area known as Catalunya (Catalonia) – and the Catalunyans have a fierce pride for their region (the title of this post is a popular refrain throughout Catalunya).
We took a walking tour through the old (read: really old) city and Jewish Quarter, and visited the Barcelona History Museum, the highlight of which is an extensive Roman ruin excavation well below street-level, including textile dyeing rooms, public baths, a wine factory, and a fishery. A second walking tour took us through the Barcelona of Gaudí: Palau Güell, Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, the Sagrada Familia (the gigantic cathedral that Gaudí started in 1883 when he was 31, and won’t be complete for at least another 25 years), and sprawling, terraced Park Güell. We took a day to visit Montserrat, a multi-peaked mountain an hour north of the city: home to a Benedictine monastery and hiking trails that wind around the peaks to various shrines, chapels, hermitages, and breathtaking views. On our last two days, Barcelona celebrated the feast day of Saint Eulalia, with light shows throughout the city at night, parades of Gigantes (massive, hollow costumed figures with papier maché heads), and contests for the best-executed castell, a human tower traditional to Catalan festivals. Topped off with an FC Barcelona/Valencia CF football game at a local bar and amazing tapas and wine, this was a much-needed break from dreary midwinter!

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!