We wander through the city with our friends from New York, who we sternly warned to bring warm clothes, because, you know, Berlin winters are cold.

Instead we get beautiful blue skies, sweatshirt weather.  Last week one of the newspapers carried a complaining headline: “Unsere Wetter hat einen Fieber.” (Our weather has a fever). And they’re not kidding. We walk under our Bösebrucke, where in the spring rows of trees burst into blossoms that would make Japan proud. I begin to point this out, and then notice that the trees are actually beginning to blossom today. The chestnut branches in our courtyard too, only recently denuded, are now beginning to swell at their ends with purpling buds.

Not that there’s any global climate issues.