Today is my 26th birthday, and I know I’m getting older because I actually lost count of years and tried to convince my mother the other day that I was still 24. I started semi-celebrating my birthday 10 days ago with a brownie and cake baking night with my gay best friend and Bavarian roommate. We invited 8 people and 2 showed up, so needless to say we ate alot of cake and brownies. My first birthday gift came 5 days early, an electrical piano I bought from me to me. Its the most expensive thing I own, and also the most beautiful, so I just needed a good excuse to buy it for myself.

The next birthday celebration was a day tour to Njala Country, a saga trail in southern Iceland tracing the life and times of Gunnar and Njall. We visited the hypothetical site of Njall’s burning, an excavated farm house found with traces of fire and whey milk that supposedly was used to try and put out the fire. After getting soggy shoes on a wet, windy day in the countryside, I had a series of birthday cocktails at the new student bar Studentakjallarinn with another February birthday friend.

Three days before my birthday, me and my cousin arrived to my best friend Ursula’s house in Boston to celebrate another night in Harvard Square. Random friends from Germany, New York, Berkeley, and Boston joined, as well as some strangers, and I ended up with only one person I knew at a frat house with people smoking cigars in a fireside room the size of a gymnasium. Two days before my birthday, we cuddled up inside Ursula’s living room watching all the red carpet pre-Oscars action and finally the Academy awards. After 10 hours of watching tv and $50 worth of take out chinese, it had become all white outside with snow.

On my birthday eve, I met up with a friend from Boston at the Boston Brew Works restaurant, accross from Fenway Park. We ate poutine and wings with blueberry beer, and then watched Imagine Dragons at the House of Blues. I thought we were going to see blues, but after Atlas Genius opened, I realized we were not at a blues concert.

imagine dragons at HoB Boston

The day of my birthday started with a work session in the Harvard Business school, where me and Sara pretended to be studious alongside a bunch of real business graduates. I was asked to collect my own birthday gift package from Ursula from Fedex, and did so a bit rushed, getting a little lost, but finally did so, only to realize it was a St. Patricks day leprechaun hat meant for Ursula. But Sara got me roses, which made up for missing fedex packages, and Ursula’s mom gave me a 3D map of Iceland, which was an unexpected cherry on the top.

We had sushi and wine for lunch, and then the most amazing dinner at Legal Sea food. It had been organized through a friend of a friend of a friend, and included cocktails, champagne, wine, all the seafood and shellfish you could dream of, surf and turf mains, and finally a happy birthday song to present the icecream dessert.

Sara and Ursula at Legal Sea Food

By the time my birthday was over, I barely had any time to take it all in before boarding a 7 am plane to LA. Now the birthday fun will continue with 3 other friends I have in California also celebrating their February birthdays…