Nikita Teryoshin bought his first ever Christmas tree for his home in Berlin two years ago. It was a tall one, standing at about 1.7 metres high, and he didn’t really know what to do with it. “It was the first year that I have wanted to buy a Christmas tree,” he recalls, before pausing. “Because of the midlife crisis, I guess – I just thought, why not? It’s kind of nice, then I realised that you actually need a stand to put it in, and there’s actually a huge industry around these Christmas trees.”
After that year’s festivities, a friend of his, who had recently moved to the German capital from Moscow, came to visit. As the pair stepped outside one day, the friend was struck by the number of evergreen firs lining the streets, turning to Teryoshin and asking: “Why are there Christmas trees everywhere?”
It gave Teryoshin, who has lived in Berlin since 2017, pause. “For me, it was normal, and then I thought: ‘You’re right, it’s actually not that usual,’” he says. “So I started to look out for especially interesting situations and places where they end up.”
