Today was a hot Berlin August day, and my friend Mary and I had a date to go get ice cream. Hooray, right? (One of the things made oh-so-easy since Mary moved into our neighborhood, yippee!) We were headed to Berlin Homemade Ice Cream in Schöneberg, where they have truly delicious ice cream (sorbet for me) as well as a sense of humor - their web address is the German for "lick me," and when you say "lick me" in German it is slightly obscene, the equivalent of "bite me" in good 'ol American English. Anyway, as we approached the ice cream shop, the normally quiet street was parked in with big vans, and we realized they must be filming something -- something I see fairly regularly on my street in Berlin. So we got our ice cream, and since the street felt very claustophobic with all the production vans, we walked into the neighboring park (Kleistpark). As we rounded the corner, Mary gasped: at the front of an old courthouse building facing the park they were flying four or five giant red Nazi flags with swastikas on them. It was shocking, and also totally surreal. This is something you do NOT see in Germany. Public display of Nazi flags is completely illegal except for historical purposes, so it was clear that this was for whatever they were filming, but still. It made us a bit uneasy.
We had started our little neighborhood walk discussing the fairly heavy topic of the recent Burkini ban in France, the images of a French police officer requiring a Burkini-clad woman to take off some of her clothes at a beach in Nice, and the general permanent historical state of women being told what to wear (bikinis were once considered indecent, after all). To be confronted with another symbol of oppression directly afterwards made it feel all the more weighty. I wanted to take a photo but was then yelled at by a guard: "verboten!" To me this just added to the perverseness - I understand why they don't want people taking pictures (it's forbidden imageryl) - but having a man yell at me for taking a picture in a public place just felt like more oppression by the patriarchy. Yes, I'm being dramatic. But if I were the film crew/city, I would've closed off the whole park for the duration of the filming, it seems simpler and more effective than hiring camera police. I actually did sneak a photo from a distance but I will use my good judgement and not post it -- you will just have to trust me on this one. And now I feel the need to end on a cheery note. Getting ice cream with friends is fun! I will go back and take pictures on a non-Nazi day and update the post so that Berlin looks friendly and beautiful.
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While spending a week visiting my most adorable little niece this spring, I was introduced to the concept of "baby tv," wherein the adults all sit around and stare at the baby, because it's just so entertaining, and did I mention that she's ridiculously cute?
Back in Berlin, it's summer, and we're actually home instead of travelling, which means time on the balcony and wide-open windows to try to beat the heat. You know what else I have discovered is entertaining? Eavesdropping on your neighbors! No, I swear, I mean this in the least creepy way possible, hence my attempt at re-branding this activity as "neighbor radio." Spotify can't compete. Last Saturday morning, we were sitting at the kitchen counter with coffee in hand, the windows wide open trying to catch a breeze, and what we ended up catching was the loud, amusing, hungover chatter of our neighbors, who were rehashing their antics from the night before. "But that's only because he wanted sex from you." And "Man, I've said it before, but it's not a good idea to get wasted the night before leaving on vacation." Ha. Apparently there was a taxi waiting for them rather impatiently downstairs. Charming, right? This Saturday morning, on the balcony, I was listening to the opera-singing of one of our cul-de-sac neighbors. In our little street canyon the acoustics are such that I couldn't really tell which building the singing was coming from, but it was lovely, and strong. Also charming, right? (An aside - I have met more opera singers in Berlin than anywhere else I've lived, though it's still only a handful. The internet tells me that Berlin is behind only Moscow and Vienna in terms of cities with the most opera performances, and I believe it.) There is also an excellent piano player on our street, whose recitals I quite enjoy. Or maybe it is just someone playing a recording? Now I'm not sure. There is also the 10-year old in our building whose piano and recorder exercises we hear...not quite so excellent, but endearing. Lately I spend a lot of time thinking about my relationship to city life in Berlin. I have always enjoyed living here, but nonetheless have always felt slightly mismatched -- a feeling largely fueled by the fact that the most dominant cultural understanding of Berlin is as a city loved for its techno music and all-night party scene, which is totally not my world. But these little moments lived in close proximity with my neighbors -- this is when I think, Berlin is something special. So on these lazy summer mornings, I am trying my best to soak it all in. On Friday evening Hannes and I bicycled to the slightly far-flung neighborhood of Wedding to watch an outdoor movie. A little after midnight, we were on our bikes again, headed home. The air was pleasantly cool after a sticky scorcher of a day, the streets quiet, and I thought to myself -- I love this. Truly, these biking-through-Berlin-in the-summer-dark moments count as my favorite city moments of the whole year. They bring out my most romantic city-girl self (which is usually overshadowed by my tree-hugger nature-girl self, despite living in the city). I feel energized and awake, which is not my usual late-night status. I feel Parisian because I'm wearing a skirt and on a bicycle. The city itself is prettier in the low lighting, everything slightly fuzzy and glowing. And more often than not, we are biking through the Tiergarten, or by the Brandenburg Gate, just because it's on our way home, no big deal. In these moments, the city is beautiful, and it is mine.
Okay...you guys all know what a wedding is like. If you want even more, there are pictures of the church, the civil ceremony, and the pre-wedding hike and beer tour.
Our wedding was really a whole wedding week -- at a minimum, a solid four days. This was relatively crazy but also AWESOME, at least for us. It grew out of a desire to make sure our international guests were well taken care of and to give our families a bit more time to get to know each other, knowing that the wedding day itself would fly by. There are also pictures of the party, the civil ceremony, and the pre-wedding hike and beer tour.
In Germany, you have to go to city hall to get married no matter what (well, I suppose only if you want the marriage to be legally recognized). I find the idea of city hall weddings very romantic, so yay! We had ours in the community where Hannes grew up, in the garden behind the town hall. This happened on Friday, the day before the "big" wedding, and we tried to keep it relatively low key, with guests mostly limited to family.
Hannes is from a rural area with lots of small farms, where you can find quite a few pick-your-own flower fields by the side of the road. Very quickly I got it in my head that I wanted to pick my own wedding bouquet, but in the end, others (rightly) convinced me this was probably too much craziness for the "big day." Instead, I did it for the civil ceremony and turned it into a mini flower-picking photo shoot with my girl cousins. See, more weddings, more fun! Since the the civil ceremony was also a fairly relaxed affair, it was also our chance to take some group photos. Also fun! Afterwards, we went back to Hannes' mom's garden for coffee and cake (and champagne, naturally). Can I convince you guys that a pre-wedding brewery tour is a traditional thing in Germany? Okay, it is totally not, but it was part of our pre-wedding program just the same. Ulmer Beer is a family-run brewery in the northern Black Forest, and also happened to be the beer that was served at our wedding. I love a good brewery tour, and this one was made extra amusing by the fact that so many of us on the tour were chemists, so there were some interesting cross-cultural and -linguistic exchanges about fermentation and pH and I don't remember what else. Also, like any good brewery tour, it ended with a lot of sampling of the wares, before then heading over to the adjoining beer garden for more wares, and food to go with it.
On the Wednesday before the wedding, we organized a hike in the Black Forest -- and not just any hike, an alcoholic one. An *officially* alcoholic one - we were on a Schnapsbrunnenweg, a hiking trail through vineyards and orchards with stops at "distilleries" every few kilometers. This is a big fruit-growing region, and the local farmers make small amounts of spirits (in German, Schnaps) from their excess fruit. The farmers then make their Schnaps available to thirsty hikers passing through.
"Hike" is probably a stretch here - I put on my hiking boots because that's what I do, but it was totally doable in jeans, and even a stroller came along (though it sometimes had to be carried). There ended up being about 30 of us doing the hike together, which meant that we got nowhere fast - but the views were lovely and the company was great! The full hiking route has at least 5 Schnaps stops, but our leisurely pace meant we made it to all of one (some speedsters made it to two). However, I've done a different section of this trail before and I can tell you that even if you start out fast, it means you drink more Schnaps, and then your pace slows considerably. So this is a hike for the bon vivant, not the mountaineer. :) The start and end point for the hike was a traditional restaurant in the town of Sasbachwalden, with a great garden looking out onto the surrounding vineyards. Our guests then got to experience an extreme version of German restaurant service -- we arrived, with a reservation, at 7 pm, and the last people got served their food at 10 pm. So yeah, this is not America. (In fairness, waiting that long for your food is also crazy by German standards.) But there was plenty of beer and I think everyone stayed happy. Phew! I was in Paris on the weekend of November 13th. That would be the weekend where attacks in restaurants, a concert hall, and outside a stadium killed 130 people. The plan was for the weekend to be a reunion of Hannes' close friends from Madrid, where we would experience Parislike the Parisians and stuff ourselves full of red wine and baguettes. Indeed, we achieved all this, but the mood was not exactly what we had imagined it would be.
Everyone was arriving separately. I had already been in town for a couple of days for work, and met up with Margaux, our friend and host and one of Hannes' roommates from his Madrid days, at a local neighborhood bar after work. We then went around the corner to her family's place so I could deposit my suitcase and get settled. Hannes arrived shortly afterward from Berlin, and Raúl arrived next from Madrid. By this time, we were getting the first reports that something awful was happening. So we sat in the living room with a table full of wine and cheese and bread, with the television on. Our first thoughts were ones of chance and avoided fates. Margaux had wanted to take us that evening to Le Carillon, the bar across from Le Petit Cambodge, both places where people sitting outside on the sidewalk terraces were gunned down. If we had decided to meet there instead of at the house to leave our luggage, maybe we would've been there during the attacks. Or if everyone's flights had been just an hour earlier, maybe we would've been there during the attacks. But even though this was true, this thinking was all too abstract for it to really feel real. Next our brains started adding foreshadowing to the evening. My French colleagues had been joking earlier in the week about how the train to the airport was not so reliable because of too-frequent bomb threats. Margaux had been telling me that her grandmother, who lives most of the year in Paris with them, was in Tunisia (where she's from), and that her family had been trying to convince her to come back to Paris, where it was safer. Everyone went to bed late, shocked, but okay. Margaux's family and friends were safe, although they had friends of friends who were among the victims. On Saturday afternoon we left the house and walked around the neighborhood for an hour. Although it was quiet, it was not empty; bakeries, groceries and cafés were open. But then Margaux's mom called to say they had closed the big department stores downtown, and everything else started closing as well. Back at the house, we looked at old pictures and played charade-adjacent games. Perversely, I was reminded of snow days as a kid - with terrorism, like weather, a force far beyond my control. Even more perversely, there was a hint of the fun of snow days that afternoon as well - we were together, and we were trying to make the best of it. But by evening, we all had a serious case of cabin fever. I realized that the need to leave the house was as much about feeling human as about the need to get groceries, etc...there's only so long you can sit in front of the TV with the news on. So we went out to a neighborhood restaurant, joined by a couple of other friends. It felt warm, and friendly, and good to be out. At one point a police car with flashing blue lights whizzed by, and everybody held their breath for a single, silent moment. But the moment passed, and conversations resumed. Our waiter told us that on a normal Saturday night, people would've been dancing on the tables by the time we left around 11 pm. We guessed that nobody in Paris was dancing on that night. On Sunday afternoon we went to the locations of some of the shootings, where people were laying candles and flowers. It was very quiet. Quite a few people had brought their children. Yet I felt uncomfortable, like a voyeur, and I was irrationally annoyed any time someone took a picture with their smart phone. A little later on, it was early evening, and we were sitting in a cafe drinking tea. All of a sudden a woman, and then a small stream of people rushed inside, saying that something was going on, people were running in the street. The waitstaff pulled down the metal shutters in front of the windows, shut off the lights and music, and everyone sat on the floor in the back of the café, in the dark. Outwardly everybody was calm and rational but inwardly...it was scary shit. Eventually people got in touch with the police, who told us it was a false alarm and that everyone could go home. Which we did, freaked out, but trying not to show it. A few other things stand out in my mind from these tense days in Paris. That, despite the circumstances, we had an endless supply of fresh baguettes, croissants, and Paris' best ice cream, in addition to the copious amounts of wine and cheese that filled the pantry. That everyone we interacted with was so genuinely friendly - the opposite of how I experienced Paris as a 20-year-old, when I found the Parisians cold. This, I suspect, had a lot to do with Margaux and her sister Lauranne, whom I had already dubbed the nicest French people I'd ever met when they came to Berlin; I suspect their warmth is contagious. I was also impressed by the no-nonsense awesomeness of Margaux and Lauranne's mom, who refused to tolerate any panic, and who also, in the course of the weekend, picked up a 10-lb, reportedly 800-year-old cobblestone from a construction site at the Île Saint-Louis and decided it would make the perfect wedding present for Hannes and me. This (stolen) piece of French history took a few extra days to make it back to Berlin with us, since it was deemed not acceptable for cabin baggage, and the checked suitcase didn't arrive with our plane...we weren't sure if this had to do with the cobblestone, or whether it was just run-of-the-mill airport chaos. I was in Washington, D.C. on 9/11. My sister was in Boston during the Boston Marathon bombing. It feels like it's becoming a mark of our generation that most of us have lived through something like this. I would like to believe that going about our daily lives as usual really is a win against the terrorists, rather than just a consequence of not knowing what else to do, because: life goes on. In Part I I covered German food and outdoor eating favorites. Here is another smattering of my opinions on food in Berlin. Outdoor Weekly Markets My neighborhood market is on Saturday mornings at Winterfeldplatz, and I have to say it’s pretty great. Here you can find my very favorite Berliner Maultaschen at Barbaras Küche. You can order them to eat right away at a standing table, or you can buy Maultaschen to prepare at home. The market also full of other edible goodies, and while the selection is often changing, one favorite is an incredible espresso + tiramusu stand. I haven’t made it to many other neighborhood markets...mine is so good, I’m not really motivated, plus let’s be honest - getting out of bed on Saturday morning is not my strong point, so it’s easier to stay close to home. The Turkish market at Maybachufer (Tuesdays and Fridays) is supposed to be especially worth a visit. But really, there are markets all over Berlin, if you walk around long enough you are likely to stumble upon one. Cafes with Wifi Just kidding. This isn't really a thing in Germany. Your best bet if you want wifi on the go is in museums - many of them have free wifi. I've also seen signs for free wifi in DM markets (a nice CVS/Walgreens type chain), you could try there too if you end up walking by one. Hipster food events Street Food Thursday, Markthalle IX. Actually, this renovated market hall is beautiful and yummy and worth a visit during normal opening hours, or for their “regular” Saturday market. On Thursday afternoons and evenings, the place is on overdrive and full of hip “street food” vendors, selling yummy and creative if overpriced creations. Get there early or prepare to spend a lot of time waiting in line. Same goes for their equally popular “breakfast market”offered one Sunday per month. Bite Club. An outdoor venue with a great location hosts a food truck extravaganza every other week in summer. Also expect it to be crowded. Miscellaneous restaurant and food recommendations
Manouche. Ridiculously cute French crepe place in a nice neighborhood. Go early to avoid waiting forever for your food. Adana Grill Haus. Delicious Turkish grilled meats and sides. Berlin has a large population with Turkish heritage, so places like this feel more “Berlin” to me than the places serving southern German food. This one is a particularly delicious one, in a non-fancy setting. Anne Blume. People (okay, especially women) love this brunch-and-cake place in Prenzlauer Berg, with its ridiculously cute tiers of edible goodies. If you need a little break from the frenzy of the big city, combine a trip to Anne Blume (you probably want to make a reservation if you want weekend brunch) with a walk around the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, it’s cute – and known for being filled with parents with double-wide strollers. If it’s a Thursday or Saturday, you can check out the market at Kollwitzplatz. On a Sunday, check out the furniture-heavy flea market at Arkonaplatz - it's nice and calm as far as flea markets go (and also full of cool stuff), though you're unlikely to find an awesome bargain. Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe). This famous department store has a ridiculously huge food section on the top floor, including quite a few counters where you can pretty much get anything you could possibly think of to eat. If you want to feel fancy, go to KaDeWe for oysters and champagne (which of course is not cheap). At first, I found the food section of KaDeWe to be ridiculously decadent, and I would come out questioning the morals of capitalism. Seriously – who needs a section of jam that’s practically as big as the entire (admittedly small) grocery store I normally go to? But I have come to appreciate the opulence a bit. KaDeWe is where I could order a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving, and it was the best roast turkey I’ve ever eaten, ever - though I can give myself some credit as the cook ;). In any case, KaDeWe is a foodie destination, and I grudgingly admit that it deserves this reputation. Knofi – Choose from a huge selection of mediterranean dips and salads in a super cozy deli-style atmosphere. Great for vegetarians. Locations on Oranienstrasse and Bergmanstrasse in Kreuzberg. |