It’s been blistering cold since we arrived in Germany on Wednesday, and to make matters worse, the hours of actual daylight are so short while the nights are long. That makes it a bit more difficult for us when it comes to seeing everything we want to see with the limited light hours, and even harder to see the signs, which are obviously all in German. We were looking at the times for sunrise and sunset, and really, we only have the hours from 8am to about 4pm – that’s only eight hours  of natural light! So much to see with so little light.

It reminded me of Ed and how he used to do karate in the Sunset district of San Francisco. Because my parents wouldn’t let him take the car unless he were going to work and back, he had to take the bus to karate every time he went. In the fall and winter, when Daylight Savings Time would end, sometimes, he’d actually stop going to karate altogether for the season because our mother would nag him so much about “going out in the dark.” It sounds absolutely stupid, especially considering that the Sunset was literally right across the park from our house, but I suppose it was one of the many absurdities that my house had to deal with.

At least Ed via Bart gets to enjoy Christmas markets here in Hamburg and Berlin amidst all the Christmas lights in the dark.