Trams, Trains, Dark Days and Warm Cafés

This morning I had to run various errands before starting work, so I took the tram. (Usually I would walk or bike to anything even roughly in my neighborhood, but with all the back and forth and all the things I had to carry, it just made more sense to tram it.) It wasn't until I was done and heading to the office, after 10:30 – closer to 11:00, even – that the trams first started to be really crowded.

Yes, Berlin, the city where rush hour doesn't really hit until 11 a.m. My kinda city!

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Yesterday, I told you how it made my day to discover the existence of such a thing as a "Professor of Clinical Pig Medicine."

The day before, the thing that made my day was seeing an S-Bahn train driver honk and wave to a small child watching from the top of the train bridge at Prenzlauer Allee (which is for some reason a favorite train-watching spot of train-obsessed-small-children and their parents) just before the train passed under the bridge.

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Meanwhile, it seems winter arrived with the changing of the clocks, two and a half weeks ago already, colder weather hitting just as that all-at-once loss of an entire hour drove home how short the days have gotten already.

Don't hate me for saying this, fellow Berlin-residents, but there's a strange way in which I actually kind of like the arrival of this deepest dark. (NOT the endless rain that will soon join it, making me want to abandon this city permanently in favor of somewhere that actually understands what winter is... No, I just mean the darkness itself.)

All the shops and cafés light up so warmly, making you want to snuggle up inside them with a warm drink and a few friends. Even walking by outside somehow feels cozy.

Plus, this is the time of year to witness one of my favorite things about Germans: Their willingness – eagerness, even – to be outside even in freezing weather. Give a German a nice, fuzzy blanket (most cafés keep them on hand) and they're happy to sit out on the sidewalk with their coffee or mulled wine, chatting away as if hanging around outdoors in winter were a completely normal thing to do.

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By the by, my friend Hannah wrote quite a brilliant riff on "ways Germany is better in the dark" over here at The Local. My favorite bits:

"You can't see the disapproving looks that many Germans will shoot your way when crossing on red. This is a huge benefit to the gloomy part of the year - it can almost feel like being in a normal country."

And:

"Going to the shops in the dark in Germany can be terribly exciting, because the gloom outside makes it feel like they're open late, and not closing on the dot of 8pm."

And:

"Also on the menu are roasted chestnuts, which you can buy on the streets from little carts where they're cooked on charcoal. Buying a paper twist of them can make you feel like you're in a Dickens novel."

True!

Also, Glühwein. Also, mandatory slippers.