It’s December 29, which means there are only three (3) months left until the release of The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin! Since six months pre-release, I’ve been running a countdown. So far, I’ve shared a book teaser, some of my book research, and my playlist. (As a reminder, here’s a link that lists out what I’ll be sharing each month until release.) This month, I’m excited to share a bit from my Berlin research trip I took back in 2019.

I should first explain that I’ve lived in both Bavaria (Würzburg) and Austria (Feldbach, not too far from Graz). However, I never made it to Berlin in my time there! I’d been working on The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin since 2013, but it didn’t quite come together to take another Germany trip until 2019. Luckily this was before covid, so I will always treasure the moments from this lovely trip before the world changed so drastically.

Before

I had definitely done my share of armchair research before the trip, including reading books and watching films set during the early 1930s in Berlin. Along with these, I used old maps and guide books to decide on some of the sights I wanted to see.

During

While in Berlin, I used my trip notebook (which included my planning and brainstorming notes) to make diary entries of what I actually did and saw each day, along with bits and pieces of some of the highlights like these.

After

The final result offers a tiny peek into the setting I was researching. I shared the following post just after the trip: A Dash of Weimar Republic. Hope some of the pictures I took give you a bit of the flavor you’ll find in the book!