Temperatures dropped drastically in Berlin in September, making even the non-summer we had this year seem like a pleasant warm time. A lot of people started getting colds, including an office-mate, and I subsequently caught the cold from him. Just as i thought I was getting over it, it suddenly turned into a head cold and a cough – argh. So i did not do much last week until Sunday when my husband dragged me outside for a walk because the weather had suddenly improved drastically and it was too good a day not to miss. At any rate, here are this week’s small pleasures, because if you look hard you can usually find some.

Festival of lights: This ran from last week until Sunday and sadly I got sick so I missed most of it. It’s lucky we went to see a few of the places in the first weekend even though it was so cold, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen anything at all – I got sick last Monday. My favourite this year was a new edition to the route: Babelplatz. I love colours and the buildings looked beautiful in the splash of colours that the lights gave them.

Fighting away the cold: It’s awful being sick, but when you start to recover that’s a good feeling. Maybe it’s just the contrast in how you feel compared to how you feel when you’re really ill. I get terrible coughs following colds (probably because I have a touch of asthma) and on Saturday I felt really, really bad, but all the medications my husband bought seemed to help, as on Sunday I felt much better and was even able to go for a walk. I’m still not 100% though and have the usual hacking cough and full head. It’s been at a similar level for a few days, so I’m really looking forward to that feeling of being healthy again. Today is day 9 and the week before that started I had a different cold (a milder one).

Germans are crazy about thyme as a remedy for coughs and throats so I have given the thyme capsules a try. Maybe it helped a bit, it’s hard to tell as whatever you take for a cold it seems to take the same amount of time to go away.

Chicken soup from husband

German cold remedies

Game of thrones: After hearing people recommend it for years, we finally started watching Game of Thrones and are enjoying the storyline. Like almost everyone mentioned there’s a bit too many gratuitous nudity scenes (mostly women) and I’m a bit fed up with those popping up, but the plot is very good and it keeps us watching to see what happens next in the seven kingdoms.

Picture credit: https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/Game-of-Thrones-summary

Our plants: Although it’s already autumn and was very cold for one or two weeks, my sunflowers and basil are somehow still surviving (the basil has moved inside now)

Golden October: The weather has been fantastic this week, and the leaves are turning gold. Here’s some of the photos I took on an autumn walk.

Thanks to Mani at A New Life Wandering for the weekly small pleasures blog event – check out her post and Thistles and Kiwis too.