Yesterday I decided to go for a walk around my block on account of it being 70 degrees out. I’d had the windows open all afternoon and could hear birds chirping and children playing and my neighbors talking and drinking beers and smoking cigarettes below. You know, that good springtime stuff. I reckoned it would be a crying shame to not get to experience any of that firsthand, so I went walking, thinking I’d spend a half hour out there.

Everyone had told me how—SORRY, for lack of a better word—magical spring is here in Berlin, but I didn’t really know it until now. I’d only ever spent falls and winters here, so imagine my surprise when this turned out to be absolutely true. Spring is every Berliner’s reward for bearing that long dark period between December and February, where towards the end of it you start to wonder if you have permanent brain damage. But yesterday it was so beautiful in Berlin that I wanted to cry. I have seen twelve springs in the Bay Area in Northern California, and I’m here to tell you that spring is somehow better here, and made all the better having just endured the extreme exact opposite of it.

I ended up walking nearly seven and a half miles, and stopping frequently to sit in the dozen or so parks I crossed through organically, including the Tiergarten, which is a Central Park-sized forest within Berlin, and which is only a fifteen minute walk from my doorstep.

This is what I looked like at the outset:

What a dope!

Everywhere I went, people were outside rollerskating or riding bicycles or hanging out in parks or drinking coffee outside cafes, and on and on, and it was obvious they were all in a real good mood. I was too! Here are the pictures I took along the way as the late afternoon turned to dusk:

Instead of turning back, I kept on going, figuring I’d get dinner by myself at TIBET HAUS, which is one of my favorite restaurants here. I sat at my usual table and ate twelve spring rolls and a massive plate of vegetable egg noodles for €11. Wow!

Outside I saw a stack of records I wish I could have taken, but I didn’t want to carry them, and also I don’t have a record player here (lol):

I hopped on the U-Bahn and rode five stops back to Schöneberg. Just before I got off at my stop, I turned to an American girl who had been talking to her friend and said it was nice to hear someone speak American English again. I walked four blocks home and went inside and made a Little Baby Night Coffee and took Dante out onto the balcony. It was 11 pm and still warm outside. Man! Berlin rules.