In Berlin

I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but I wanted to write a quick post to say that we arrived in Berlin yesterday, and we are enjoying our much larger apartment in the center of Berlin. Before we left Paris we made sure to get to the Orsay Museum, since Mike and I like the impressionist painters. The boys and I were tired, so we did a relatively quick tour -- Andrew liked the self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. The museum is under construction so many of the paintings we had seen before were in storage.

I had to go up to Brussels for a quick one day trip to do an interview with an important former politician. He was the key person who got antidiscrimination policy started in the EU. That meant I missed our last day in Paris, but it was worth it. The weather was bad in Paris on Saturday so the boys spent most of the time at a science museum.

We flew out of Orly airport Sunday afternoon, which was quite the experience. Very poorly designed so that flights can be delayed when another flight is de-planing. In any case, we made it to Berlin and it was a nice day so we went and rented a row-boat in the nearby tiergarten and had dinner in the beer garden there. Mike did all of the rowing, but at least we had given him a father's day card earlier in the day, so it wasn't all bad.

Today started off chilly, and the boys went to a nearby playground while I did some grocery shopping. They walked around town later while I went to the Free University to get the key to my office and try out the U-Bahn (i.e., subway). All went smoothly and I cooked us a gourmet meal with all the meat and veggies that I bought. It's nice to have a real kitchen again.

Another reason we're glad to be in Berlin is that the German soccer announcers are WAAAY better than the French announcers. Now you don't have to watch the screen to see if a goal has been scored. The French announcers were so low-key you couldn't tell if anything exciting was happening. Then they didn't show any highlights afterwards. This has all changed. My theory is that the French team hasn't scored a goal in so long, the announcers have forgotten how to get excited!