Blogging in darkness

Whoa, sorry for the blogging break! I can’t even blame it on being busy, because I haven’t. Well, this week has actually been somewhat active (I held a presentation on the Berlin blockade for my German course and made a day trip to Leipzig, among others), but otherwise I’ve been busy procrastinating, tops. Some sort of autumn coma going on here.

The clocks were turned backwards on the last weekend in October, due to shifting to standard time, which to me means that the sun sets an hour earlier. I have to say I’ve been quite dismayed and disheartened by the early and profound darkness. Finland is so extreme with its lightning (it’s all the time light during summer and dark during winter), but in Germany it actually gets dark in the evenings during summer, so I somehow assumed that darkness during winter would also keep to a moderate level. Boy was I wrong! In addition to the standard time, things are worsened by the time zones, something I hadn’t thought about at all: when the sun sets around 5 PM in Finland, the time is only 4 PM in Germany. Ok, the sun sets around 3.30 PM in Helsinki and at 4 PM here, so the day is still longer here and basically I shouldn’t have anything to complain about. But nevertheless it just somehow feels a lot... darker here. I guess it’s due to the lack of snow and decent street lightning or something?

Well, luckily I assume that the worst part is soon over, and with a sigh of relief I’ll have to conclude that it has lasted only a short time. Even November has been nice and gentle to me, to some point: it’s been quite warm, the trees have still kept on to their beautiful leaves, it hasn’t been terribly rainy, and even when it has rained, I’ve managed to enjoy the melancholic beauty of wet streets and leaves in yellow street lightning. Only during the last two weeks or so has the novembery November been depressingly present, and now the temperature is already dropping fast. Next Wednesday it should be snowing, so I have really high hopes that winter’ll be here soon and replace the darkness with a lovely blue light! :)

Now that I think about it, it’s crazy how the weather has changed in two weeks! Now it’s maybe –3–4°C, and exactly two weeks ago it was +17°C (!!). Of course, it was exceptionally warm then, but still! That Sunday I made a day trip to Potsdam by bike and it was absolutely fabulous. It was my first visit in Potsdam, but unfortunately I still can’t tell you much about the city as it was so dark that I didn’t see much :D And Potsdam certainly hasn’t invested in city maps, so most of the time I had absolutely no clue where I was. I guess that trip was more about the journey than the destination :)

I would have liked to see the Sanssouci palace and park, but as said, it was pitch-dark, so I had to give up on that idea. Well, the main reason I wanted to see them in the first place was the name, so I guess I’m not that passionate about the whole thing :) But I wonder how French names for places always are so sympathetic? Sans souci means “without a worry” – sounds quite stress-free to me :) Then there’s Monbijou Park, where the former Monbijou Palace used to exist: mon bijou means “my jewel” or “my piece of jewellery” – how romantic ♥ The third example that comes to my mind is the park Mon Repos in Vyborg, Russia. (Apparently there is also a palace by the same name in Germany!) Mon repos translates into “my rest”. I guess the normal association would be a place where one relaxes during holidays or something, but for some reason I find that the name has a beautiful and sad tone to it: it makes me think of someone’s last residence before death – the final, yet peaceful rest on earth.

In this melancholic feel I end this post and drag myself to bed for the final rest of this week. Good night, sleep tight.