Die Sonne scheint immer wieder

May was one of the most beautiful months I have ever experienced. Even though the winter here in Berlin was depressingly dark and wet and cold, early summer here makes any other bad weather more than worth it. The sun rises at 4:30 in the morning, doesn't set until 10 at night, and the entire day long it shines so brightly and warmly that everyone on the street cannot help but smile. During the winter, everyone on the street was always so serious and self-contained, I thought it was a cultural difference, but now I see it is more a difference of weather...as soon as the sun came out, everyone opened up and lightened up. Visibly. It was amazing to see so many people unfurling like so many spring flowers.
Besides the noticeable improvement of public mood, the weather has also elevated George's and my energy levels. We have seen so many interesting things in the past few weeks! Just this weekend, we went to the top of the Funkturm (the radio tower which is modeled after the Eiffel Tower), we finally saw the Beatte Uhse Museum, and we watched the first games of the Europa Meisterschaft at a Cafe in Savignyplatz. (For any soccer fans out there, the game between Croatia and Austria was so exciting to watch; I have never seen two teams play that hard for that long.) We also went out to dinner at a restaurant called the Unsichtbar. It is this culinary experience where you dine in total darkness, and eat food from a menu written in riddles. The waitstaff are all physically blind, and so more than equipped to serve in the dark. As guests we were totally dependent on our waitress to get to our table, to exit the restaurant, to find out where our plates and silverware were. But what fantastic food! And without sight, you really try to focus on the individual flavors in your food.
The only downside to this gorgeous weather is that it makes work impossible to do. It's the middle of the semester here, and both George and I have major projects coming up, but I definitely don't want to do any academic work except for maybe reading in the sun!