Well, Baden Wuttemberg or whatever was nice, especially the trip to Metzingen where I bought a leather duffel bag for less than half its recommended retail price - my shopping aversion does not extend to medieval Swabian towns refitted as outlet malls during a euro crash, though luckily my blossoming, ever-expanding female form prevented me from buying any more clothes, which I need like a hole in my head. The damage was limited to that fucking beautiful bag and some baby clothes.
But the trip to Germany negatively convinced me of one thing: I really think we should move to Berlin, which I consciously decided to skip this year in favour of checking out the south. I love Berlin, and nowhere else is Berlin. Certainly not the south. I think we'd be as ill-suited to life in Swabia and Bavaria as we are, fundamentally, to life in Australia, for reasons that overlap a bit in terms of provincialism. A big part of the problem with Australia is feeling like I've fallen off the face of the planet and I suspect that part of me believes Berlin and cities like it is the face of the planet. Berlin's special aptitudes, of course, being that we can afford it, people aren't eating each other there much, it's a crossroad and theatre of all sorts of staggering and awful recent history, excellent green spaces and nature reserves in the surrounds, and that it's extra fucking awesome. Also the playgrounds there, from memory, are really good, though I was high almost all of the time I test-ran them.
Anyhoo, we'll probably make a return trip to Germany next year with the infant and think about it a little harder. One stickler is that the weather in southern Germany is a fuck sight better than the weather in Berlin and I suspect that is something I'll have to nurse the F-word, not to mention myself through - him through the idea of all that cold, me through the idea of all that dark. For now I'm in Paris, and not really noticing since I actually have to work today, and since I'm also mentally preoccupied with finding the perfect pram/bassinet for under $500.
But the trip to Germany negatively convinced me of one thing: I really think we should move to Berlin, which I consciously decided to skip this year in favour of checking out the south. I love Berlin, and nowhere else is Berlin. Certainly not the south. I think we'd be as ill-suited to life in Swabia and Bavaria as we are, fundamentally, to life in Australia, for reasons that overlap a bit in terms of provincialism. A big part of the problem with Australia is feeling like I've fallen off the face of the planet and I suspect that part of me believes Berlin and cities like it is the face of the planet. Berlin's special aptitudes, of course, being that we can afford it, people aren't eating each other there much, it's a crossroad and theatre of all sorts of staggering and awful recent history, excellent green spaces and nature reserves in the surrounds, and that it's extra fucking awesome. Also the playgrounds there, from memory, are really good, though I was high almost all of the time I test-ran them.
Anyhoo, we'll probably make a return trip to Germany next year with the infant and think about it a little harder. One stickler is that the weather in southern Germany is a fuck sight better than the weather in Berlin and I suspect that is something I'll have to nurse the F-word, not to mention myself through - him through the idea of all that cold, me through the idea of all that dark. For now I'm in Paris, and not really noticing since I actually have to work today, and since I'm also mentally preoccupied with finding the perfect pram/bassinet for under $500.
