written by Justin
We’ve been a bit quiet on our McClarKinnon posts as it has been a busy and hectic summer.
Life update — we moved! After 20 months in Prenzlauer Berg, we moved to a flat in the neighborhood of Nollendorfkiez. The move puts us more central in Berlin, gives us a larger apartment, and is a new part of the city that we don’t know well.
We moved on Monday with the help of renting a van from a rent-by-the-km rental company with cars all over the city (think ZipCar). We realized that since COVID started, we’ve purchased a lot more stuff. It’s hard to believe that we used to move country-to-country with a cat and a dog in a mid-sized car. Our pandemic additions of office chairs, several blankets, yoga accessories (I haven’t once used the cork yoga blocks I bought at the start of the third wave), two new/nice dog beds, a slow cooker, and a popcorn maker probably take up more space than everything we moved with from the US to the EU.
After getting the keys to the new place, we unloaded boxes and then heading back to our old apartment to get Tessa and do a final clean. We climbed aboard the subway with Tessa, her dog bed, and a backpack of our cleaning supplies to settle into our new home.
We’ve been slowly getting settled and determining where things go. Our new flat has a lot more space but far less storage than our last apartment. This has led us to invest in a bit of furniture and additional items to help us settle. We survived two trips to IKEA, two visits to a home improvement store, and one excursion to an electronics store!
Our neighborhood is on the west side of Berlin, which is new to us. Our lives have been mainly on the east side of the city. We are so excited to explore new neighborhoods, parks, and coffee shops.
I’ve already gone on runs that have taken me into Tiergarten, and I’ve gotten very lost in one of my favorite parks — Park am Gleisdreieck.
Since we are across the city, we have more restaurants (and a whole new delivery sector) to enjoy too; we’ve found Thai food that does a great Khao Soi — a hard-to-find Northern Thai soup — and is just two blocks away from our flat.
Tessa settled in and got comfortable pretty quickly. She has to go up one flight of stairs and is navigating it successfully. On Saturday, she made a GREAT friend at the local farmer’s market cheese cart guy who scraped up all of his extra cheese and rinds into a bag to feed her. Even as he did that, he kept cutting additional cheese for her (and us) to try.
We miss and love you all. And when you’re feeling up to traveling, our apartment is a legit two bedroom, and we’d love to host you and explore Schönberg with you!
