For the past three weekends, I had been going to the mountains, enjoying the prolonged spells of good weather while it lasted. In early September, I ended up visiting a city I had already seen in 2011, but it wasn’t Zermatt as I would have expected: instead, I went to Berlin for the inaugural Lollapalooza in Europe. There, too, the weather largely held up.
Brandenburg Gate
The Walled City
Four weeks out. My impending departure is beginning to weigh on me. It’s been an unreal — incredible — five months, but curiously, the one place I’ve hardly visited is Germany. After several flurries of interest, a trip to Berlin finally materialized over Thanksgiving weekend.

