I’ve lived in cities my entire adult life; Manhattan, Los Angeles and now Cologne, and in each one of them my dwelling was blessed with a view filled with green.  It wasn’t as if I went to the central rental office in midtown (fill in the city) and was allotted an apartment, I did select the places I've  lived in but there is an undeniable element of what some people call "good housing karma" that has followed me wherever I’ve gone. 

I’ve just returned from a two-month stay in America, that after having moved to Cologne a little over six months ago, so this recent trip was something of a whopper in terms of time away from my new home and family. 

As I write this it is approaching 9:30 at night and His Holiness is sound asleep and his Mother has retired early following a particularly difficult day and I’m looking out into a pink-blue sky through densely greened limbs alive with birdsong on a late spring night.  The double doors to the outside are thrown wide open and I have a blanket on my lap that keeps me just warm enough.

How beautiful it all is, how fortunate I am to be here tonight in this room, with those I love near to me and the world just far enough away, sheltered as I am by the deep green filter beyond my perch.   There is no urban hum here in Koln; oh I can here the odd loud car now and then in the distance but it is nothing like the rumble of Manhattan at rest. 

There is an infinite list of differences between the city I am living in today and those I have lived in before but none of them really matter.  Having just returned from two months spent between New York and Boston I am greatly relieved to be home. 

On Sunday night, having just returned and unable to spend much time indoors, the three of us wandered into the square just at the end of our block.  There is an old church there surrounded by buildings that survived the War, elegant remainders, unusual and ponderous in this city that is ancient in its origins but needed to be almost entirely rebuilt after the War, and not too well unfortunately. 

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