week 33 / 2026: out and about

“Take a walk through the city / turn right at Potsdamer Place / to see a girl on a motorbike / expression carved on her face…”

Greetings from downtown Kreuzberg, Berlin, where a run of incredibly hot days finally broke with rain in the early hours of this morning.

This week I’m on something close to a holiday, so it’s Minimum Viable Weeknotes. Apologies to those of you tuning in for the usual clippings and reading notes; normal service—such as it is!—will be resumed next week.

lookback

I travelled down here from Malmö on Wednesday, and this time out the Bahn-gods were merciful: a nice smooth trip, all connections made with ease and time to spare. The work-related reason for being here is to do some observation on BiberAmt, a sort of experiential engagement action themed around the challenges of urban cohabitation with beavers, which is part of the NATURESCAPES project. It’s being staged at Floating University, a very sui generis sort of project/intervention/site that sits in a rainwater retention basin built to help drain the long-defunct (and now basically re-common’d) Tempelhof airport.

I de-trained and headed down there immediately on arrival on Wednesday evening, not realising that a) the a solar eclipse was about to happen, and therefore b) half of the city’s population was headed for Tempelhof to watch and celebrate. The brain-fuzz of a long day on the rails combined with this pretty intense human traffic situation was pretty disorienting, to say the least.

Since then I’ve spent much of my evenings at Floating University, getting a feel for the action so I can write about it, but my days have mostly been my own. I spent one afternoon in the Neues Museum, soaking up the vibes from ancient artefacts, but I spent two afternoons just sitting in the shade with a large glass of cold German pils, thinking and scribbling and watching the world go by.

I travel back on Monday, and I have an essay due—overdue, in fact—so after these perfunctory weeknotes are done with, there’s plenty more typing to come. But the air is cool, the traffic is light, and life looks pretty good from where I’m sitting right now.

ticked off

• Eight hours on PROJECT LUDIC. (Story re-writes, copyediting, all that jazz.)
• Six hours on PROJECT CASTOR. (This is the BiberAmt stuff; I’m not clocking every hour on site, only the hours in discussion with my co-author-to-be and/or checking out the emprical materials coming out of the action.)
• Six hours of essaywork. (And more to come this afternoon!)
• Five hours of admyn. (Because rust never sleeps, as the man once put it.)
• Two hours of networking.
• Two hours of art practice. (I’ve really let this slip over the last few months, and need to get back on the horse.)
• One and a half hours on these here weeknotes.
• And ten hours of undirected writing and reading, because that’s how we roll round here.

I’m somewhat amused to note that, even on a week which is supposed to be at least partially a holiday, I’ve still managed to clock around forty hours of work-related activity. Then again, I have the strange (and at times dubious) privilege of having a much fuzzier line than a lot of folk between work and play…

Selah! All across Berlin, church bells are suddenly sounding—and I have things to write. Thanks for your attention, which is always appreciated, and will be better compensated next week! In the meantime, I hope all is well with you, wherever you may be.

This has been the Worldbuilding Agency weeknotes for Week 33 of 2026. Thanks for reading! If you've enjoyed them, it's free to subscribe. If you are already subscribed, please send to a friend!