Christmas in Berlin: Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we got up early to go to Ikea in the morning to buy some furniture for my apartment which would be my Christmas presents. After getting the things I wanted, most important of which was a duvet we grabbed a quick lunch in the cafeteria. For anyone who has eaten at Ikea before you'll know how nice the meatballs are, for anyone who has not been I'd recommend going just for that.

After hauling everything back to the apartment we relaxed for a couple of hours. In Germany the tradition is to have a large meal and open your presents on the evening of the 24th, then get drunk and head to a midnight mass. Christmas Day is then spent recovering and doing very little. Well, we did half of that. So around 7ish we opened our presents. I'd had the idea of buying my family gifts related to Berlin, so I bought my Mum a photography book of Berlin and my Dad a couple of history books about the Berlin Wall. I had planned to buy my sister a couple of the films we'd seen at Berlinale but unfortunately none of them are available on DVD, and I have still yet to buy her a present. This I felt especially bad about as the present she'd bought for me was perfect. It's Banky's 'Wall and Piece' a collection of photographs of his work and stories and writings by him:


I was genuinely surprised and happy when I opened it. I'm usually very particular about what I'd like for Christmas so although I appreciate what I get, it's generally not all that much of a surprise, so this made a nice change to that and the book is not sat in pride of place on one of my shelves.