Germany, Germany, and cat

Germany past: On Saturday I went to the Christmas market in Düsseldorf with a friend of mine, finally, after years of wanting to go. We had a very good time and I got most of my Christmas shopping done. Click the photo to see some of the photos I took (which was my camera's first real outing, and, besides the noise in some high ISO photos, I think it did pretty well).

Germany future: We have the concert tickets and train tickets to go see The Decemberists in Berlin on February 14. (Damn cheap train tickets, by the way, only a few euros more than the ticket I bought to Dusseldorf.) Unfortunately the 14th is a Wednesday, and I don't want to take too many days off, so we're only going from Tues-Thurs, and with the 6 1/2 hour train journey, we're only really in Berlin one day. But still, it'll be nice to get away for a few days and see the band there before they come here about a week later.

(Decemberists side-note: The Crane Wife has finally grown on me. I'm not sure yet if I feel it's actually better than Picaresque, but I am happy with it. So, very excited to see these songs played live, especially The Island, and hopefully Shankill Butchers and Sons and Daughters and the unreleased Culling of the Fold.)

Cat: During Christmas week, we'll be catsitting. This is a good thing, we like cats. After being at some houses this year where there are cats, we did discuss getting one, despite the fact that I'm allergic. We've put it on hold for now, but maybe in a couple of years we could get one. In the meantime though we get to borrow one for a week, from some friends who live in Utrecht who couldn't find anyone else to watch their cat while they were gone for the holidays. He really needs to be around people, so it's better for him to come live with us (he is quite ok with strange places, apparently) than for someone to just drop in to feed him. And we're happy to have the visitor. I miss having pets, so I'm really looking forward to having an animal around, though if he is yowling at us at 6 am, I may regret the whole thing. And he does yowl more than meow, at a high volume. He also likes to sit on your shoulder (your very own, 10 pound, constantly warm winter wrap).