January
I pretty much stayed in Berlin. Brr!!
February
Back and forth on one day to Hamburg for a Fairlanguage inclusive language workshop we gave at Inditex.
March
Weekend trip to the Frankfurt area for the Democrats Abroad Germany Annual General Meeting, where I've been treasurer. Not even actually in Frankfurt, it took place in Ingelheim am Rhein, didn't take many photos to be honest.
April
Long weekend in Paris (flew there, came back by train!) with my friend Jens. It was mostly a work trip for him, and I took the opportunity to tag along.
Check out the full Paris album on Flickr. I just resubscribed for another year, as part of some digital clean-up. I've uploaded everything there!
The last time I was in Paris was in 2009, I'm having trouble finding stuff online digital proof that I was there. It was so long ago, I still blogged fairly regularly (if inanely and briefly) and used Flickr: March 14, 2009: Photographs from Paris
May
I started a new job at the Sovereign Tech Fund, so stayed put in Berlin!
June
Went to Leipzig for a day for work stuff, nothing really exciting to report.
July
Finally made my way back to London. My friends Garima and Pravesh had been living there since 2020, but were moving away soon so that's the kind of thing that helps motivate me to plan a trip. It was a lovely long weekend (bit rainy of course, being London), less regular tourist stuff and more just spending with friends, like Sarah and Dylan, Chris and Mike, and Shruti, Ravi, and their chickens.
I think the last time I was in London before July 2023 was for a silly 24-hour trip in September 2017 to go to the Tate Modern's Queer British Art exhibition, of all things.
August
For work, we had a couple days at an offsite at Coconat in Bad Belzig. That's about an hour by regional train and bus from Berlin in the surrounding state of Brandenburg.
It seems weird to write this in a post detailing all the cool places I went in 2023, but I do have a hard time actually taking time off and using it to go to new (to me) places. I've been talking about going to one of the Baltic countries for years, usually when it gets hot in Berlin, and I fantasize about somewhere with a more temperate climate an actual coastline. Finally, finally, I booked a trip and spent two weeks in August in Tallinn, Estonia. The first week was properly off work, and the second week I worked remotely. It probably deserves its own blog post, but the remote work wasn't quite as refreshing / change of scenery-inspiring as I had hoped. Nonetheless, it was great to go to a new country and city.
I also took the ferry from Tallinn for a day-trip to Helsinki. I love ferries! Sadly I somehow deleted most of the photos and only could cobble together a few of my first visit to Finland
I also took a one-night trip to Leipzig (by train) for SPRIND's summer event/party. Since they're the host organization for STF (work), it was interesting to see all the other projects they support and meet more of the people who work there.
September
My friends Tom and Stefi got married to Italy, in a beautiful seaside town called Castiglioncello. I always have to look up how to spell it, maybe that's why it's off the beaten path? Though there are plenty of hotels and places to stay, so I don't think it's a secret.
It's near where Stefi grew up, and absolutely gorgeous. I flew in and out of Pisa, stayed overnight there, and then took the train down to Castiglioncello.
October
Took a train trip down to Frankfurt, or technically Eschborn for a work conference called OSPOlogyLive hosted by SAP and the Linux Foundation. Eschborn is basically an enormous office park outside Frankfurt city limits. Maybe it's a tax thing?
November
I lived in San Francisco before l moved to Berlin, and the first few years after I left, there were lots of occasions to go back for work or friends. But basically with pandemic and a few other factors, the last time I was there before this year was September 2018, which seems just wild. But this time I got to go for almost two weeks, combining two work conferences with some other things, so the long flight was definitely worth it.
December
Stayed put in Berlin! In fact, in the last couple weeks, barely left the apartment.