Older and Wiser?

Hey folks,
hope this post finds you all in great health and spirits. Here in Berlin, we're enjoying temperatures warmer than those in Rio and I'm lucky enough to have collected enough overtime at work to have had the majority of this week off. It was a great chance to recover from the stressful yet utterly fantastic combination of my parent's visit, my uncle's wedding and my 25th birthday. Celine was here for a short visit, which consisted mostly of wandering through my neighborhood and drinking tea on my terrasse. Next week, I've been tapped to take the four and five year olds on a week-long trip with Markus, my sometimes difficult colleague. I'm mostly excited, we've checked out the accommodations, and our intern Linda will be coming too (she's pretty cool) and I've got some pretty great stuff planned. My only worry is that Markus is going to somehow manage to botch the packing (because I'm not there this week) or somehow otherwise submarine my input. We'll see. I'll actually only be staying until Thursday evening because our negotiation hearing in court is on Friday. I'm hoping that we'll get the issue with our ridiculous landlord and his cohorts settled once and for all. Our lawyer is also of the opinion that we have nothing to negotiate, as we have done nothing wrong. Our demands--to put it frankly--our pretty basic. Our landlord needs to stop treating us like idiots, reduce our rent and preferably (my addition here) apologize for their ridiculous behavior.
We'll see...keep your fingers crossed for us.
My parents were here, like I mentioned--and I think things went swimmingly. No one got food poisioning or any other strange diseases, everyone tried new things, my parents got to meet Stephan, Stephan got to meet a big chunk of my family at Steve's wedding and we got to spend a lovely few days in an utterly charming Czech hamlet. I can only reccomend it. The people are friendly, the castles are imposing and beautiful, the landscape is breathtaking and the exchange rate is favorable for the dollar (places like that are getting few and far between these days). My only tip: do not drive through Poland. The roads are being renewed from the center of the country out to the boarders. This is unfortunate if you don't plan to drive through the center of the country. I thought the rental was going to bust an axle on some of those craters! Stephan narrowly escaped getting charged an exorbitant five euro for a sausage (polish sausage is good, but not that good), my sister got chased after for stiffing the bathroom watchman twenty euro cents and we got our windows forcibly washed by some cracked out guys with squeegees...while it was raining. A very colorful trip. I don't think any of the parties involved will forget it any time soon.
The rest of their visit was relatively uneventful--except that my Mum's bank card didn't want to work and the hotel reservations got botched somehow. It was a bit stressful...but rewarding.
However, all these events left me no time to plan my quarter-century birthday party. I managed to send some chaotic texts to a few friends, and Stephan did what he does best (shopping like he invented it) and when I came home from the kindergarten overnight (a preparatory measure for our trip next week) I had a fantastic birthday breakfast waiting for me--complete with my very own kiwi plant. A bunch of people came over in the evening for grilling and whatnot and it wound up being quite nice, despite the lack of planning. One of the coolest things I got, other than the kiwi plant of course, was a dvd box set of all the James Bond films with Sean Connery in them. I've already managed to watch From Russia With Love, and while I'm writing this, You Only Live Twice is running. I was ecstatic when I got them. All in all, I got to celebrate four times--once with my parents before they left, once with my kids at the overnight, once with Stephan and once with all my German friends. All in all, I can't complain.
The only bummer in recent weeks has been my bad spell with my bike. I bit it twice in as many weeks, hitting the exact same places on me and my bike. The last time was with substantial speed and I've gone through that from having nine speeds to having three...and because it's my own fault, there's no way it's going to be covered by my warantee, no matter how nice my bike guys are. So I'm hoping to get there either today or tomorrow and get things straightened out so I don't have to buy a transport pass for this month.

Anyway, I'm going to get started on dinner and whatnot. Hope everyone's doing well. Keep fighting the good fight.