Well, it happened. My big birthday came and went, with celebratory meals and a roadtrip, plus wonderful calls, delightful messages over text and What’sApp, and candles blown out on a slice of tiramisu. Since I’ve been stretching out my milestone celebrations ALL YEAR, the day itself was less of a production, as my heart is so full from all of the good fortune that this year has already brought. My a-ha moment upon reaching this milestone is a simple one: don’t sweat the small stuff, and focus on what’s most important. I hope to return to that basic ideal with serenity in this next decade and beyond, as even when little things go awry, they can be water under the bridge in no time by just letting go and shifting attention to the love present, and gratitude for family & friends.

There were ample opportunities to practice this in the past week– with a 3-hour journey of one train and three buses to get to the Forest Tower outside of Copenhagen, a Danish train that went out of operation en route to the airport leading to a missed flight, and on other days, Berlin buses that never came or changed routes while we were on them, unintentional mile-long walks home in the dark after public transit snafus, traffic jams getting to the autobahn, wild boars snorting at midnight in the woods (that one was Jonathan solo after a missed bus)… there have been plenty of mishaps! But in the end, we always made it home, and life went on as usual the next day. And there were memorable adventures along the way. The Forest Tower in Denmark was definitely worth the hassle of getting there– it was absolutely awe-inspiring and the breezy weather was perfection.

Our most recent trip into downtown Berlin was for our appointment to visit the Reichstag, an incredible structure just to the east of Brandenberg Gate that now houses the German parliament. You can see right into the parliament from the large round structure open to the public above, a bold symbol of the importance of an open democracy for the people. We had a great audio tour and views all around the city, including our first glimpse of the beautiful domed central synagogue which I hope to visit soon since my friend Joanna has introduced me to their cool female rabbi. And as an added bonus, we caught a spectacular sunset too.

As a sidenote, Julian has discovered his new favorite drink, which is essentially a shandy of lemonade and beer. We all drank a lot of beer while Noah was here. Since they don’t serve water in restaurants unless you pay extra for the luxury of lukewarm water in a bottle, and there seem to be neither water fountains nor refill stations for our water bottles in any public places, we have been routinely dehydrated, which has been all the more noticeable when we encounter an unplanned mile-long walk home from the last bus at night. The IKEA ice cube trays I ordered in our first week here have been the best purchase I have made thus far, as we all come home so parched!

Some days have been quiet as we settle into the rhythms of laundry (3 hours per cycle to wash and 2 hours to dry plus some extra time on the clothes line), the continued mysteries of grocery shopping (the items in the stores rotate randomly so we’re always trying something new) and figuring out how to operate our oven (replete with cute symbols that apparently vary across Europe as Google has not yielded clear answers as to what they mean), in addition to the ongoing confusion around the metric system. Speaking of the ordinary, there are two features of this house that I particularly enjoy: 1) our spiral staircase (although two flights up from the laundry to the bedrooms does burn the quads); and 2) our laundry chute, which is free of a dumbwaiter or any pulley– just a literal chute to toss our dirty items from the third floor directly into the laundry bin in the basement. Trés cool. We also joined the local gym, and in the “wellness area” (e.g.: co-ed naked sauna) which Julian and I inadvertently walked through while orienting ourselves to the facility, there was a scale that indicated the 10 pounds I’ve lost without trying in the past month. I guess all the lifestyle changes here with walking, biking and schvitzing in the heat have made an impact!

In other news, Noah has traveled back across the Atlantic and continental US with Jonathan in preparation for his college orientation this week & move-in next week. He is READY to begin his college experience, with all of his friends already a few weeks into their new college lives. I also caught my first Euro bug, and not the biting kind. A day plus with a fever in the heat was not fun, but fortunately short-lived. I gladly opened up the multi-symptom cold medicine we had packed and was glad not to have to leave the house. And I was happy that I packed masks to keep my germs to myself. Unfortunately, Jonathan has now brought the bug back to CA, but fortunately, it is not Covid!

While the four of us were together, we had a fun roadtrip– driving on the Autobahn was AWESOME albeit a bit confusing as the speed limits go in & out with every junction or exit– but being in our own air-conditioned car was a dream come true after all of the public transit madness. Our destination: Hamburg, to check out Miniature Wunderland, the largest model train exhibition in the world. It did not disappoint. There were over a dozen rooms with the most intricate dioramas of European wonders like the Swiss Alps and Rome, and sites in the US like Vegas, and a mash-up of the Grand Canyon & Bryce Canyon, all of which had little people, buildings and fully functional model trains both above ground and in tunnels below. There were Native American scenes underground in the canyons, but the most captivating part for us was a full room with an incredible model airport, complete with terminals, a flight board with all of the departures and arrivals, and planes taxiing to their gates or lining up to takeoff. It was absolutely mesmerizing– the boys spent a good hour completely gobsmacked by the Flughafen (airport), as it was basically all of their favorite childhood toys fully motorized and realistically depicted in a huge room with extraordinary detail.

We also partook in a virtual reality game that involved our being “shrunken” down to miniature size in order to interact with VR versions of the exhibits, which included driving one of the trains that felt like a rollercoaster, climbing cave walls (which felt so realistic that I hit the ground on all fours when I felt I was losing my balance!), and dancing with fictitious characters, all gamified as a competition in which we didn’t even realize we were playing. In the end, I won! This is particularly ironic since I am the least competitive person in our family. But it felt like a nice birthday bonus!

My birthday brunch in Hamburg was at a lovely outdoor cafe called Café Paris, where the boys were so happy to finally have an American-style breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon, and I was delighted by the Moroccan breakfast option, which was a fabulous concoction of french toast with a topping of roasted tomatoes, goat cheese crumbles and cilantro. Yum! We were seated at teeny tiny round cafe tables, which did not support the four large plates of food we ordered, and resulted in all of Julian’s maple syrup unceremoniously spilling all over his lap as his plate did an involuntary flip. Again, another opportunity to practice not sweating the small stuff– and Julian was incredibly resilient as he shrugged his shoulders and marched off to the restroom to clean up his shorts. He did an impressive job getting rid of the sticky stuff (thankfully on black polyester shorts), and the apologetic waiter insisted on preparing him a fresh plate of food. Birthday dinner back in Kleinmachnow also offered some comedy, with no spillage, but an Italian restaurant that only accepted German credit cards or cash. Since we had neither, I ended up sending money for the bill via PayPal to the waiter. The experience was bizarre and felt like a weird relic of the Eastern bloc. How ironic that an American multi-national company operating online was the tech solution.

This week, with all the hectic and unpredictable travel behind us for the moment, I’m settling into much smaller goals, like cleaning the house, figuring out the actual meaning of every button on our oven, and the requisite school-related Zooms (mostly for Julian’s school). Thankfully, the weather forecasts of +15 degrees above normal temperatures seem to be over, as a cool rain system has come into the area, and the house finally feels like something other than a sauna. I loved hearing from so many of you in the days around my birthday! I’m feeling 50 & FABULOUS!