Christmas fever

On Monday the Christmas markets opened and the weather played along accordingly.  It’s almost as though the cold was lying in wait and came rolling in as the markets began trading.  I’m now leaving the house buried under layers of weather-combatting garments so that not much of me is visible beneath hat, coat, snood, gloves… It takes forever to leave anywhere because getting ready to face the outside world is like a ceremonial robing.

The whole city seems to have turned Christmas-mad overnight.  The florists have all given themselves over almost entirely to Christmas-related flora.  I see people riding by with fir branches swaying in the baskets of their bikes.  The shop windows are all decked out with festive displays and even the little bakery where we take our breaks has put up a tree.  On Stargarder Strasse strings of twinkling lights zig-zag their way across the pavements from buildings to trees.

The temperature slips perilously close to zero and the air has a dank, clammy quality.  Often now the TV tower is either totally invisible or only hazily apparent through a murky gloom.  Small children go about looking like astronauts in their thickly-padded all-in-ones and the number of cyclists has definitely dwindled.
Thursday provided a temporary blip by dawning bright and springlike, in defiance of the dire predictions of the weather forecasters but Friday returned to wet and dreary normality.
Venturing out of doors brings anew the shock of cold.  By far the best place to be is a cosy candlelit bar or café, especially in the late afternoon when the daylight begins to give way to an atmospheric city twilight.  One can only feel for the homeless and for the refugees at the Oranienplatz camp for whom the creeping cold of another bitter Berlin night must be anything but atmospheric.

Christmas tree at the Christmas market in the Kulturbrauerei

One of the weirdest 'attractions' I've ever seen - great heavy medieval-looking coats suspended from poles that people huddle into whilst sitting on top of radiators - very cosy I'm sure, but very strange.

Another oddity - the gluhwein yurt