1/22 Back to Manhattan via Munich. This airport is increasingly establishing itself as by far the best one when it comes to wheelchair logistics and associated friendliness. Which gives me an ever so slight feeling of relief I’ll be keeping my German passport in addition to the American one, after all. And then we sit in tiny economy seats for eight hours and fifteen minutes, and then, as we get driven home from the airport, as we pass thousands of windows, I realize for the first time that despite all the details, the lamps, the curtains in these apartments, I never see any person in them, no silhouette, ever. I’m sure I would if I looked a little longer and a little closer, but still.

1/21 Gothenburg. Unbelievable exhaustion. We’re old people, and the kids leave us in the dust. Yet they want so much from us.

1/20 Gothenburg. In the yard, we build the Snowstle of Snowdonia, with Snowhenge and a Nano Snowman in the middle.

1/19 Gothenburg. Played Terraforming Mars and Magic, spent a lot less time on the computers than usual.

1/18 Gothenburg. Having two more nights with the kids than usual, which we are all excited about. My son takes aim twice to run towards me and jump into my arms.

1/17 Beilngries. Getting better at withstanding the unbearable, admitting my own panic, which leaves me devastated after a few hours. The frightening realization that this will be part of our wedding, we’re knowingly inviting it.

1/16 Beilngries. Got drunk with my parents. Every second seems unbearable. Every second, my father thinks, is better than anything we ever had.

1/15 Copenhagen. Out of our window on the 11th floor our view goes over Kastrup airport, basically a construction site, dirty with snow that fell last night. A tiny phalanx of wind turbines offshore in the distance. When we got here from Orlando and Amsterdam yesterday, we were so worn out that we slept, basically without interruption, for fifteen hours.

In 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, I really wonder what the library of 12,000 books is for, and even more so, the collection of specimens of marine life. Describe, yes, but collect? Maybe this desire to collect comes from a time before it was possible to document photographically, or even genetically.

1/14 Orlando – Amsterdam. Flight attendants wearing aviator watches, doubly confusing. First, I don’t think any aviator watch ever did anything that a normal watch would not also have done, they were always only a reminiscence, an imitation of the form-follows-function of aircraft instruments. But second, there is now nothing, really, that sets the world of flight attendants apart from any other world, there is no distinct world of people who fly.

1/13 Devouring Hannah Ritchie about Climate Change as fast as I can. Perplexing how a deeply optimistic book such as this one gets even me to think what I should do personally, even though I have a very hard time believing that it matters.