Berlin.

My sister moved to Berlin in the beginning of February. Her husband works as a diplomat and they will be staying in the capital of Germany for the next three to four years. Which means Berlin will most likely become very familiar to me as well in the coming years. I traveled with my mother and the main point of our trip was to see my sister (whom I last saw in September and my mom in October), but we did have time for some sightseeing and yarn shopping as well.

Even if the cherry trees and magnolias were in full bloom we didn't have the best luck with weather on this trip. My sister said that a few weeks before our visit it had been sunny and warm enough to wear just a t-shirt, but during our stay it was gray, windy and it even snowed a couple of times! So woolen sweaters and a winter coat were a necessity. Luckily Berlin is filled with cool cafes to pop into everytime the cold became too much to bear. One of my favorites was the No Fire No Glory on Rykestrasse 45 in the hip area of Prenzlauer Berg. Probably the best coffee I got during the whole trip.

I visited two yarn stores on this trip. I would have liked to visit more, but the distances between places in Berlin are long and going from one place to another might easily take you a half an hour by metro, so I decided that two woud be enough. First I visited Fadeninsel on Oranienstrasse 23 in the Kreuzberg district. I bought some cashmire wool as well as Lang Donegal that was on sale (for about half the price I would pay per skein here in Finland, so you don't walk past an offer like that!) which is already on my needles.

On the following day we went to Wollen Berlin (Gärtnerst. 32 in Friedrichshain) on our way to see the East Side Gallery. So many different yarny goodies to choose from! In the end I ended up picking up some Rosy green wool organic merino wool, Lotus Yarns' Tibetan cloud fingering (this will be my first time knitting with yak wool!) and gorgeous green Hey Mama Wolf yarn, which is local to Berlin.

We did some sightseeing as well. My favorite thing about visiting new cities is just wander through the streets and look at architecture, parks, people and so on, but we did see some of the historical sights as well. My favorite was actually the Egyptian exhibition in Neues museum, not only because of all the exquisite things on show but also because the building itself was absolutely beautiful and the modern style of exhibition was in my opinion just perfect.

We'll be going back to Berlin during the summer, so I hope to see more of the city and all it has to offer then. Definitely worth going back!