city

Today I donned a mask and dragged Christopher downtown in the hope of seeing some interesting Christmas lights, and didn't have a lot of luck. No Christmas markets this year, but I thought I'd heard that there was at least a big tree at the main station. There isn't. We moved swiftly on to the catholic campus ministry at the university, which has some kind of supposedly-cool light installation in its back garden. We could see the lights, but the gate was locked, apparently open "only in good weather" (guys. it's winter.). Then we walked towards the Münsterhof, which was supposed to have an interesting nativity scene - and it does, but the bigger Christmas market it should have been a part of got cancelled, so the interesting nativity scene is one lonely half-sized market stall in the middle of a big open plaza. Did I mention that it was raining? 

For all this failure on the interesting-lights front, the shops were still bustling with people doing their last few days of pre-Christmas shopping. We bought sushi and dumplings to take home for dinner and called it a night. 

Aaand that means the Christmas song of the day is...??? I had to break down and scroll through the songs on my phone, and what jumped out at me was

Rise Up, Shepherd, And Follow- Elizabeth Mitchell and Amy Helm

There's a disconnect between the simple urgency expressed here - leave your sheep and leave your rams! rise up, shepherds, and follow! and our inability to, like, stop consuming long enough to let a pandemic die down. Something about camels and needles...

The Bahnhofstrasse oracle's word for the day was heiss (hot), which only added to the incongruity of the whole situation. On the right here you can see the back end of one of the new Flexity trams. I haven't ridden in one yet but I love the look.