Here are some pictures I took this morning, just so you believe me about the snow.
Here is the road outside our house. We didn't clear the footpath first thing, so the local government does it for you and sends you a bill!

A park across the road from our place looking very white.

Kasi the cat doesn't enjoy snow.

SNOW!!!

Yes, as you may have guessed from the title, it's been snowing here! Yesterday a couple of cm settled, but most was melted by the end of the day, a bit more fell overnight and it's just started snowing again. The news had stories of 30cm in a few hours in parts of Germany, so we got off pretty lightly here. I was going to go to Berlin and see a couple of museums today, but inside seems much more comfortable and warm at the moment. My flatmates don't seem to have the same opinions on snow as me - they are planning on going jogging this afternoon... Snow is better than rain, they say, and I guess they have a point. They did point out that if I don't go outside in the snow, I may get in trouble with my boss over winter.

In other news, I made a pavlova yesterday. I blame the gas oven (all the number have come off the knobs), so it definitely wasn't the prettiest pav ever made. I just filled in the holes with whipped cream, so my flatmates didn't know any better and were suitably impressed. Katharina complained that there were no strawberries on top, like there were in the picture with the recipe, and the kiwifruit actually came from Italy.  I didn't manage to get a picture before the vultures, I mean flatmates, descended on it, so you'll have to be happy with photographic evidence of the remains.

Thanks for reading, and writing, I love hearing about what's up back home.

Adam

Hi

Yesterday I finally manage to organise myself onto a sightseeing tour of Berlin. An Australian at the institute recommended this particular walking tour, and I'd been intending to do it for ages.

 Although the day was very average, a lot of people turned up for it (30, maybe), so there was no doubt we were

 tourists! To counteract this a little bit, I didn't take any photos. They would have all looked grey anyway. It was a pretty whirlwind tour so we didn't stop at any of the sights. The great tour guide, Kristin

, just pointed them out, and told us the stories about them. Hopefully I 

remember some of them, so I can retell them if you visit.

The pictures here are from the Belvedere castle which is just 5 minutes walk from my flat. The top one is the view from the top. To the left is on the way there, more autumn leaves, I'm afraid. At the bottom is another photo from the top of the castle, looking down at the water reservoir. Last time I visited (and forgot my camera), this was full of water and there were very cool reflections going on. They probably empty it for winter, I'm guessing.

In other news, I've been working pretty hard, had a time course experiment to do on Monday - I had to take and analyse a sample every 4h for 24, so I didn't get much sleep (2h between 2am and 6am) . I started work at 8.30am Monday, and finished at about 3.30pm Tuesday (when I started falling asleep in a statistics lecture, I'm not so sure this was completely due to the sleep deprivation). It wasn't actually too bad, and I got all the samples I need for a while.

Hope you are all well.

Adam

The last 2 weeks

Sorry, I forgot to post an update last weekend, so here are some selected highlights of the last 2 weeks.

Last Thursday I got on the bus to come home and heard someone wish someone else a good weekend. Luckily I asked someone why they said that, and then I found out that Friday was a holiday! It was something to do with Martin Luther (not King) nailing a list on a church door, and for some reason it was a holiday in Potsdam but not in Berlin. So everyone from Potsdam goes shopping in Berlin on this day. I took the chance to visit the NZ embassy and do a special vote. I don't think they get many visitors because they talked to me for about an hour! On the topic of the election, I hear that Helen's reign is over. It wasn't really a surprise, as it's exactly what all the polls had been saying, and to avoid offending anyone, I will not comment any further on this topic. 

On a completely different topic, I went ice skating last weekend in Berlin at an outdoor (but artificial) rink. I expressed my surprise it was outdoors, and the Germans sounded equally suprised that indoor rinks exist. My muscles were quite sore after that but I'm still going back tomorrow again with the same people. On that Sunday, I noticed that it was getting quite foggy as we left the ice skating rink. And it has stayed foggy since then. I actually haven't seen the sun for a week now, people say this is quite standard, it's definitely a little depressing, though.

I've also joined a (very) social uni ultimate frisbee team. Ultimate frisbee seems to be a cross between netball and american football, but played with a frisbee. It's a lot of fun, and really hard work too. I also had trouble walking the day after our first practice. Everybody speaks German, so I just make sure I'm never at the front of the line and it's all good. The team talks about tactics etc are kind of lost on me, though. I think I am picking up a bit of German now, sometimes I can guess what topic people are talking about. German lessons at the institute start on Monday so that'll be good.

Hope all of you are well.

Adam