A look back at the festive season

I’m always a little sad when the yuletide season is over and there’s still a lot of winter to come.  Christmas in Berlin is quite a magical time and there seems to be a collective Christmas clean as homes are spruced up (no pun intended) for the festivities:

 

It's beginning to look a bit like...Cairo! Middle Eastern carpets airing on a balcony in Dunckerstrasse.

Even building sites can’t escape the festive fever:

 

By the new year though, it’s time to de-decorate and that usually means dumping the tree unceremoniously into the street.  It would be called fly-tipping where I come from:

 

This Christmas we played host to Norbert the pug while his owners visited the UK.  He enjoyed a Christmas Day visit to Ernst Thälmann Park, but refused to be photographed, so his political sympathies probably aren't left-leaning:

 

He did, however, take the snowfall in his stride:

 

This was our hof on 29th December:

 

Hard to believe that just three days later, on New Year’s Day, we were sipping Buck’s Fizz in the sunshine:

As ever, Helmholtzplatz on New Year’s Eve was a mad-cap wonder to behold:

 

And a scene of utter devastation in the cold light of day:

 

Now it’s back to normal.  Resolutions have already been broken and the long wait for spring begins…