It turns out the ‘Roman Winter’ is pretty similar to ‘German Summer’ at least in terms of light and colour. Andy and I, whose eyes have become small and molelike in desperate adaptation to our natural cloudy Berlin habitat, were confused and overwhelmed by this bright shiny glowfullness.Nonetheless, we decided to brave the outside world in an attempt to stockpile Vit.D and of course see the sites.Mother, who has seen and done it all, went to a museum. We spent a fairly decent amount of time just wandering around, poking our heads into museums and glancing at the sights. Rome (made up) Fact 1: The trees are super odd little things, which are probably so twisted and warped because of the pure weight of birds continuously alighting, departing in swarms, and returning to roost. Here’s Andy in front of some ruins. Note the extra birds scattered on top of the building. Possibly it is only in ruins because of the excessive bird usage. Not a bird: Some more ruins, with magical ‘Godzilla’ tree in the …

Christmas at the institute rather generously involves ‘free holidays’ on Christmas Eve, Day and Boxing day, as well as New Year’s Eve and Day. Last year I hung around work on the days in between, being semi productive but feeling like a bit of a Chump for being one of only about 10 people remaining in the whole building. This year, we took one look at the calender, realised we could get about 16 days freedom by taking just five days official holiday, and hit the road! With my sidekick (Mother) and faithful gadget man (Andy the Android) in tow, I flew to Rome… … The Eternal City. We quizzed our Italian friends on what to do, and more importantly what to eat in the country. The list was long: Sfogliatelle, Gelati, Cannoli (things which you’d better believe are turing up in a later postings)… and of course Pizza, pasta, foccacia, seafood…All things we should try.But not in Rome. Don’t Eat the Pizza In Rome! I’m sorry, we caved pretty early on. We flew in …

Monday morning in Paris was, rather surprisingly, the day in which I turned a quarter of a century old. To celebrate this grand and unpredicted aging, I lay in bed for half the morning while Andy fed me nibbles of macaron. Which I suspect is how all birthdays happen if you live in Paris. We played ‘guess the flavour’, and discovered that Andy, who may have just been letting me win because I was birthday girl, was incapable of differentiating between ‘wasabi’ and ‘lychee-rose’. We eventually rolled out of the apartment, stopped for a brief moment of posing with the grandness of our foyer, and headed into the world… Where, as birthday girl, I was allowed to have second breakfasts. Which was so filled with sugary almondness that I felt a strange desire to climb some mountains…. … the closest option for doing so in Paris seems to be Montmatre… We headed up to Sacre Coeur past a bunch of men who seemed insistent on tying things around our wrists. They blocked both the entrances …

I’m not feeling particularly into the writing today, so it’s mostly just photos. Plus, this post consists mostly of pictures of the tower from various angles.  You have been warned. So on the Sunday morning of our great Parisian adventure, we gorged on macarons, which you may or may not have already heard about.  Later on, we rolled on over to the tower- after realising that we’d been remiss in missing many-a photo posing opportunity. Look! Andy is the tower! And now I am! Amazing! Tall Andy is Tall. And my favourite photo of me plus tower that I had to beg Andy to take: We headed over to some sort of Modern Art Museumy thing which was not the Pompidou Centre. It was truly beautiful and breathtaking and … and then Andy mentioned that in the whole mural, only one woman was present. There she is. Madame Curie: Which made me a bit sad, even though we can blame ‘history’ and all. They also had dresses by ‘Alaia’ which I want so so badly. …

We spent the last couple of hours of our museum days in Paris eyeing off the modern art at the Centre Pompidou. As you can see, the Centre itself is something kind of artsy. Walking up, you pass by these beautiful old-school apartments and are suddenly hit with this crazy controversial pipe-covered structure that from the back looks not entirely finished… .. You walk into a huge ‘warehouse’ and waste many minutes gazing around, feeling a little lost, before wasting many more eyeing the price tag of all the fancy artsy things in the gift shop.. .. the cat seems to know what the haps are, so you continue your journey up the escalators to the galleries and museums… …which, if you’re the kind of boy or girl who always wanted to go to the moon, feels a little bit like some sort of space journey… Unfortunately, the museum pass doesn’t cover the gallery exhibitions, but there’s more than enough to keep you interested in the permanent exhibitions. Plus did I mention that the view …

It’s been a bit quiet on the writing front from my end for a while…but mostly because lots o’ things been goin’ down.. and some things coming up… My mother flew in last Friday night, and on Saturday morning bright and early I woke up with the worst case of ‘food poisoning’ I’ve had.. which I only worked out was not food poisoning when I managed to pass it on to Andy. Adding to that that the year is rapidly running out, we just had our work Christmas party (which involved writing and performing a science-based Christmas song (more on that later)), and we’re all getting ready now to fly south with the sparrows. And meanwhile… Winter is crawling slowly forward. Some of the first frosty leaves of the season: And at the same time, the last autumn leaves… One morning, the air was filled with a fine mist of water that had partially or completely frozen, and so caught the sunlight like glitter. Hard to translate into a photograph, but you can see a …

This year we bought our very own very first christmas tree. It’s the first real Christmas tree that Andy and I have had together- but also the first ‘European style’ tree that I’ve had. Usually at home we took a potplant, or a branch from a gum tree or something else ridiculously and beautifully Aussie.     This is a Storybook Tree.   After heading to the market and carefully choosing our baby, then having to lug her home, we took to decorating. I’ve been learning to knit- which explains the decorations…  but I also wanted it to be slightly more ‘homemade’ instead of just decorated with hundreds of cheap baubles from NanuNana. What do you think??

Our second and third day in Paris were museum days. Note to self and all fellow travelers- BUY THE MUSEUM CARD before you go to any museums if you want to see more than two or three museums. It’s worth the cost if you make it to three, and it lets you skip the line- which is priceless if you’re only in the city for a couple of days. Last time I was in Paris, it was the middle of winter, and all the Europeans were at school/working/hiding from the snow. So there were lines, but nothing ridiculous. This time it was not only a German, but also a French long weekend. I wanted to take Andy to the D’Orsay, which has a whole lot of Impressionist, post-impressionist and generally beautiful art that I fell in love with a little bit last time. But the line was H-UUUGE…So we headed across the park, to the Orangerie, where the line was much, much shorter, but also moving much, much slower. Andy wandered off to get food …