We survived another (new) year + what's ahead for 2026

Whistles while sliding tip jar forward ....

My son took this photo of Prague’s Old Town from the middle of the Charles Bridge during a trip he and his dad made a few days after Christmas. The city is about four hours by train from Berlin with Czech Railways’ RailJet service. Not a bad way to close out the holiday break.

So, despite all my bitching and moaning about New Year’s Eve in my last post, it was relatively calm over by us.

I think we have the weather to thank for that, rather than any human-led effort. There was quite a lot of rain between 1 and 3 a.m., which seemed to have put a damper on things.

While we did have to deal with people setting off firecrackers in our hof all night, that’s nothing compared to last year when it sounded like people we setting off bombs on the roof.

There was significantly less garbage all over the park to clean up the next morning, which was nice.

That’s not to say I was completely wrong about the outcome. There were still an unacceptable number of injuries and property damage. But, by Berlin…