I had the brilliant idea to try and recap 2024 somehow, maybe on a month-by-month basis, only to discover that I’d already had the same basic idea a year ago. Last January I put together a travel and photo update blog post for 2023, this year I’m not as organized with the photos, though I do hope I’ll get around to sorting and uploading those.
I’m also going to mention a few work-related things, mostly as they relate to travel, but I’m planning (hoping?) on writing a somewhat separate post for that, so more details on that to come. Let me know if I mention anything here you’d like to hear more about.
January
My friend Jens celebrated his birthday party out at a farm house (maybe more like a manor?) in the middle of nowhere Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It’s a really nice idea of bringing together friends and family and having a bit of a weekend adventure.
Germany was out protesting the leaked plans by the fascist and far-right AfD to expel immigrants and people of color. For more background, see Correctiv’s reporting. I started writing some blog posts about why this wouldn’t be enough, but never finished or published them. Sadly I was basically right, and with national elections coming in February 2025, things are not looking good.
February
I’m really glad I had the chance to visit my parents while they were in Taipei for the winter. I hadn’t spent much time with them since we got together as a family in August 2022 in Pennsylvania. The weather was unseasonably good, like almost Berlin summer temperatures. I did a few touristy things on my own, including a trip to Kaohsiung for the first time and picking out a few Atlas Obscura recommendations to check out like this mural neighborhood in there.
Also met my dad’s cousin who has a restaurant in the Burmese area of Zhonghe in Taipei, creatively known as “Little Burma.”
March
Sometime this month, a new Chinese noodle shop opened in my neighborhood. Not sure why spicy noodles are trending in Berlin (the thick ones I ascribe to the “Wen Cheng” copycat phenomenon), but N Noodles & Tea are quite good, so I’ve been on a bit of quest to make sure they get lots of business and stay open.
Not sure why the Instagram photos aren't embedding, so click: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4V2g1asqZa/
It was also a U.S. presidential election year, so I voted in the Democrats Abroad presidential primary, at the voting center not too far from the above noodle place. It’s one of the few occasions I get to vote in-person as a U.S. citizen living abroad, so I made sure to do it. Thanks to the Berlin Democrats Abroad for organizing it!
April
It’s weird how whole months can go by without anything jumping out as memorable. I do have photographic evidence that I went back to my old neighborhood in the other part of Kreuzberg to look at the opening of the experimental “bike highway” segment under the subway tracks… and also looked at the renaming of a street in honor of Audre Lorde.
May
I was lucky enough to have a talk accepted to the g0v summit in Taipei, so my coworker Paul and I went to Taiwan to present and meet with some folks. On one of the days when I had a break, I took the Maokong gondola up into the mountains. It was very windy and a bit scary, but beautiful views! We also took a day trip to Keelung with a new friend Katie, whom we met at the conference.
In the spirit of saying yes to more things, just a week or so after returning to Berlin from Taipei, I re-packed my overnight bags and visited my friends Garima and Pravesh in Brussels. I guess it was a month for returning to places I’d already been in the year, but the nice part was getting to visit friends and meet Garima and Pravesh’s new daughter Katya! Of course, hanging out with Berlin friends with Tom and Stefi in Brussels was also very fun (this was coordinated of course, not random).
June
Mostly stayed in Berlin, spent a few days at a work off-site in Fürstenburg (in Brandenburg) at Verstehbahnhof, a community/hacker space located in the train station.
Went to the Progressive Governance Summit (by DPZ) and got to see Olaf Scholz speak in person in English with Lea Ypi. The things I do just for fun…
July
I went to New York for work, worked remotely for an extra week. It was really nice of my friends Hendrik and Moises to let me stay in their apartment while they were out of town. I got to see my both sisters and my nephews, but the timing was a bit messy (my fault) so it wasn’t as much as I had hoped it would be. In one of those strokes of luck, my friend Harris also was in town and we got to see Cats: The Jellicle Ball at the Perelman Performing Arts Center together. It was amazing!
I didn't do anything to celebrate my 41st birthday this year, I think I just took the day off and went to a museum, and treated myself to the annual membership to public museums (a subset of them, rant some other time) in Berlin. I've tried to use it a few times, especially the Neue Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof.
August
I tried out the colonnade “bar” on Berlin’s Museum Island. It looks pretty cool in pictures, but the aperol spritz is served premixed out of a single-serving bottle into a plastic cup. Points for location but negative points for ambiance, I guess.
Oh, I also got to see Ronny Chieng perform in Berlin with friends Aileen and Justin who were visiting from Essen. Ronny clearly had not spent much time in Berlin nor escaped his handlers… kept comparing Berlin (which is a bit grungy and dirty) to Singapore (?!).
Bit the bullet and paid over 200 Euros to take a language exam to have a piece of paper that certifies my level of German language skills. Part of the many bureaucratic hoops to jump through to apply for German citizenship. Spoiler: I passed, but the results didn’t arrive until late October.
September
This is the month of three pretty significant trips all by train! After flying quite a bit in the first half the year, I really wanted to avoid train travel. Of course, I also procrastinated on vacation planning with the excuse of wanting to avoid peak travel season, so once school was back in session, I finally got my act together and took the train to Krakow for a week.
The second train adventure was when I went to Vienna for work (Open Source Summit Europe). It was right after the unseasonable storms and major flooding, but the trip out there went fairly smoothly, just some dystopian scenes out the window of flooded fields and roads. The way back was not so smooth, but I got home in the end.
Last but not least, I took the train to Munich for the Democrats Abroad Oktoberfest event. I’ve had to reduce my volunteering with Democrats Abroad as my day job has gotten busier, so this event felt like a chance to see everyone I know and like while I was more active there. Here’s to the next generation of activists and volunteers!
October
It was a relatively Berlin-centric time of year, and after a busy September, good to be home for a while. I have photographic evidence that I didn’t miss the Festival of Lights this time! It’s a bit kitschy but there were so many people out to look at the projections on major buildings, so I guess Berliners like it.
November
I went to an election night event, and am glad I didn’t spend it at home doomscrolling. But not much I want to say about the U.S. presidential election, we’re seeing the real effects now (screams internally).
I took a few comp days this month, but mostly spent it hanging out in Berlin, going to museums and getting in touch with some friends I hadn’t seen in months (years…). I'm trying to be a bit more intentional about making plans to see people! This is also when I took one of my favorite selfies of the year in an empty museum gallery.
December
Not quite as busy as Decembers past, where it felt like I was at a Christmas market every week, this was still a fairly festive end of the year. My friends Dan and Kristian threw a get-together celebrating turning in their Masters thesis and birthday respectively, which then turned seamlessly into a night out a SchwuZ.
I liked spending the last few weeks of the year just huddled up at home, cooking a bit, reading lots of fiction (way overshooting my Goodreads goal this year), and basically just nesting.