Ein Fahrrad und die Küche

Samstag war der Tag der deutschen Einheit: the day of German unity. This means everything was closed. It also means giant wooden puppets (die Riesen) made their way through the city and apparently all the Berliners get all wide-eyed and squeal like little girls but I didn't actually witness this with my own eyes, unfortunately.
Since it was raining and cold, what I did do was continue my 80s movie education with The Naked Gun and The Goonies (with teeny-tiny Sean Astin!) and eat German-style brunch (essentially cold cuts and bread).
More importantly, I got a bike!!! It's a burgundy kinda color. I'll take a picture and post it later. Even though it's starting to get cold, I think I'm going to bike a lot. It gives a much better idea of the city than taking the train everywhere. Now I'm a real Berliner :)
Yesterday I had more adventures at the grocery store. Usually they're closed on Sundays (annoying) but since Saturday was a holiday they were open...and everyone and their grandmother knew it. The place was a madhouse. It was like the apocalypse or something. Continuing my "weird grocery store discoveries" series, I found that they sell pre-packaged bagels (complete with spreads and toppings), hot dogs and hamburgers (complete with buns), and something called a "Mexican burger" (I don't even want to know) in their meat section. Also, they sell mustard in tubs so large they have handles. Mmmm...
I made it through the fray intact and spent most of the rest of the day in the kitchen. First I attempted hollandaise for the first time unsupervised. I didn't let it thicken quite enough, but it was still delicious on top of a couple toasted english muffins, some ham, and two fried eggs (poached was too much effort). Incidentally I recently found out that "english" muffins were invented in New York. As were, apparently, hot dogs and ice cream cones. These claims, however, are unsubstantiated.
Then I tried out a recipe for banana-chocolate chunk muffins with oats and walnuts and all kinds of goodness. I had heard that they don't sell baking soda here, and indeed they don't. All they have is "backpulver," which is baking powder, in tiny little packets, not boxes as in the states. Making a typical Diana move I decided that I would just add backpulver for both the baking powder and baking soda required by the recipe and see what happened. Miraculously this seems to have worked because the muffins turned out delicious! I'll post a picture later.
One song from the day's soundtrack:

Soon after the muffins were all done a friend came over for dinner and we made penne pasta with mushrooms, onions, peas and tomato sauce. And ate several muffins each. Hahaha.
When he went home I headed down the street to the apartment of my flatmate's brother. When several people share a flat here, it is called a WG (vay-gay). WG stands for Wohngemeinschaft, which means "living community." This particular apartment is on Karl Marx Straße and is known as WG KMX. There, in the big red living room, we drank tea while a couple members of the group played guitar. Occasionally we all added impromptu percussion/vocals. This was one of the songs we sang:

The band, Camera Obscura, is playing in Berlin this Thursday! If all goes well I'm getting tickets tomorrow.
Today I went for a run in the sunshine. Tonight I am seeing the Leningrad Cowboys...more on them tomorrow.
Bis bald,
D.