Illustration: André Liegl

Welcome to the city of science. As we are such, let us not get entangled with the „feast of love“ too much this year. Yes, holiday season is coming and the usual suspects of entertainment are coming along with it. Christmas markets are everywhere. Put on some decently warm clothes, leave your car where it is and catch a bus into town. The elephant in this room is the inner city market around the Schloss. Other smaller, cuter market pop-ups can be found around the city. For more on that please check last year’s December edition of this magazine (on www.p-stadtkultur.de/pdf-archiv) or check Christmas markets and other fun things to do in December on our alltime favourite website Partyamt.de.

In this year’s double edition for December and January we would like to concentrate on the latter, as it always falls a little short in this column. Why? Well, mainly because your humble columnist has too much fun describing weird German family habits around the family Christmas gathering. The one that is usually ending with at least having Mom in tears, Dad really mad, brothers an sisters in a good fight and only children being happy with too much stuff. „Enough!“ I say, the first month of the new year is just as important and fun as the last month of the old year. People around the world use the occasion to make promises to themselves to improve their lives, which obviously are forgotten by the next edition of this magazine in February.

For those more sincere and willing to change, a nice opportunity has opened up at Alexanderstraße, where a small group of English speaking yoga enthusiasts have created a Thursday evening meet-up for Yoga. With fun Yoga teacher Debora from Frankfurt (originally from Argentina) they meet at number 27 next to „Thildas“ Ice-Cream Parlor (sadly closed for the winter) to exercise a Yoga technique based on famous Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s teachings. They invite you to contact them. Infos can be found in the shop window of the above mentioned address or at www.deboragrossoniyoga.com.

If Yoga is not your thing, try – also on Alexanderstraße – the latest addition of Darmstadt’s club scene: 806qm („806 square meters“) at the inner city University Campus.

This is it for this year, but be sure to read here next time about how to concentrate when the sun comes out and you have a job to do.

Yours, P.