Happy Groundhog Day!

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, a holiday that I think only Americans & Canadians have ever heard of, but which actually (according to the wiki) has German roots. We watched the movie last night over at KMX and I made this recipe for mushroom and artichoke pasta. Yum!
I leave tonight for a week in England so I probably won't update til I'm back.
Bis bald,
D.

Weinachten

Loooong overdue post on Christmas!
The day after the fam departed for Christmas at home in Brooklyn, my friend Danielle, who I've known since I was 9, arrived to spend Christmas with me!
We went out to explore the city, and the Holocaust Memorial was beautiful in the fading afternoon light, covered in icy rivulets and frost:



We also baked some gingerbread cookies using my collection of Berlin cookie cutters: the Brandenburg Gate, the TV tower, and the Ampelmänner--the little men in the walk and don't walk lights at crosswalks. Plus a star shape for good measure.

We decorated them with icing, too!

On Christmas Eve we attempted to go ride the ferris wheel at the Alexa Christmas market, but it was closed! As was Weinachtszeit in front of the Rote Rathaus. I had heard that in Germany, and Europe in general I think, Christmas Eve is more the holiday than Christmas Day--that's when presents are opened and a large family meal consumed--but somehow I hadn't made the connection that that would mean everything was shut down. Ah well. We grabbed some Chinese food instead, haha. The weather was shite, anyway...the TV tower was shrouded in mist at midday:

And then it was CHRISTMAS!
We got up early and prepared the turkeys and stuffing and got them into the oven. I had never roasted a turkey before, but luckily Dani had some experience, and between us we managed to do ok! (despite the somewhat lacking pan situation and not-well-calibrated oven in my kitchen)
We fixed some mimosas and gathered round the tiny tree with my roomie Josh to open some prezzies. Josh had never heard of a mimosa before, and neither had his dad and brother when they arrived--guess they don't make them in Australia!

We spent the rest of the morning cooking and soon our guests arrived for a feast of epic proportions!!!

That's two small roast turkeys, stuffing, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, brussel sprouts, peas, cranberry sauce, and gravy.
The turkeys and veg were easy enough to get, and my mother brought me canned Ocean Spray cranberry sauce and Stovetop stuffing mix from the States for a taste of home. I couldn't find a baster or an aluminum pan, but I found a meat thermometer and improvised the rest with lots of foil and a ladle.
And of course I wore my hideous thrift store Christmas vest. Woot!

Dessert was even more epic...I baked two batches of muffins (chocolate and banana-chocolate-chunk) and the gingerbread cookies, we had mince pies and krumkaage (norwegain cookies) brought to me by my mother, and the piece de resistance, a christmas pudding from KaDeWe (brit tradition via my father), soaked in brandy, set on fire, and served with homemade brandy butter. Mmmm.
Then of course we also had piles of various chocolates including the liquor-infused ones hung on the tree. Yum!
All in all...I was able to recreate some of my family traditions, other families were able to come together, and I think everyone had fun.


Next up: New Year's Eve. And maybe then I'll finally be up to speed!
Bis bald,
D.

noch eine Wochenende

Another weekend come and gone. How the time does fly!
Exciting news: I finally joined a gym! I kinda hurt my ankle, and I haven't been able to run for a week or so. Plus it was so dern cold last week, and it's only going to get worse, and I didn't want the weather to be an excuse for not exercising! So I joined a gym that is literally a block from the apartment. It felt really good to get back to weightlifting on Thursday morning.
On Friday was something I had been looking forward to all week: dinner at a Thai place in our neighborhood that does a 3eur buffet once a week! Eric and I and Eric's friend Christian went over there and it was really good. There was a nice minced pork dish that I really liked, but both Eric and Christian thought it was uncomfortably spicy! It didn't taste the least bit spicy to me. Hahaha.
Then we went to a place near Postdamer Platz to see a music performance Eric had heard about: the male half of Swedish duo The Knife. I like them so I thought the solo show would be cool. The venue was a neat gallery with an installation in one room. The performance space was a tiny room lined with black garbage bags. Turns out the music was basically just an incredibly loud wall of noise punctuated by various grating noises. It hurt my ears, so I went into the other room, from which I could hear it just as well but without the discomfort. It was...interesting. Josh and I headed home afterwards without bothering to stay for the second musical act.
On Saturday I did a full-body weights circuit at the gym which was fun. In the afternoon, Josh's brother Joel was putting on a protest at the Schlossplatz to decry the building of a fake Prussian castle on what is now a lovely open lawn. The slogan was "Schloss mit Lustig" or "Cancel the Castle," and they had a bouncy castle inflated on the lawn and Burger King crowns with the Schloss mit Lustig logo on them. They partnered with a group that puts on parties whose schtick is that they hand out free thrift store jackets with their logo stamped on them at events. It was cold and rainy, so I took full advantage of this and donned both a neat black blazer (under my coat) and a rain jacket with a hood (over my coat). With those and my crown I was probably quite a sight bouncing on the castle. The sun soon came out and I biked home much happier and warmer.
Later that evening was the 'soli-party', the solidarity party for the protest. It was at Betahaus, a cafe where Josh and Joel work, and the castle was set up in the courtyard. I manned the door for a while, and we had a whole bag full of nifty letter and number stamps that a friend found in an abandoned building to stamp the hands of people who paid. Not many people actually showed up, so I ended up making all sorts of words and stamping them all over myself and everyone else.
Around 5:30am we finally gave up--there were only five of us left and the DJ had gone. At this point in the evening we bestowed stamps upon ourselves that read: WiNNerS YeS! Despite a shower, that is still very much visible on my arm. Eric, Francisco, and I, the survivors, promised Joel to be back at Betahaus at 2pm to clean up, and then headed to another party on Kottbusser Damm and danced our little feetsies off. When that shut down around 8 or 9, we went to a bar and had a round of beers. There was some sketchy clientele in that place. Finally, we went out for breakfast. All the families and old people at the breakfast place, not to mention the waitresses, were scandalized by our messy, stamped, crowned appearances. We were made to sit outside on rain-dampened patio furniture, but at least we got to eat. When we finally walked through the door at noon, Josh was just on his way out to go clean. We promised to be there at 2, sat down to listen to some comedy, and the next thing I knew I was waking up at 4. We were no longer needed for cleaning.
Eric wanted to go for a run (crazy man) so I biked along with him to check out the Soviet Memorial at Treptower Park. It was massive and impressive and beautiful in the golden almost-sunset light. Behind the memorial, there's a lovely lake. It was a really pleasant trip.
In the evening I had a friend to dinner and cooked pork chops with roasted potatoes and brussel sprouts. My roommates can't believe I told them I didn't think I was a good cook when I moved in, but the truth is that I just never really tried, or had much opportunity to try. All I do is follow recipes, I don't know if that makes me a good cook. But I am really getting to enjoy cooking, and so having recently read about the Sunday Night Dinners in Queens, I got to thinking that maybe I would want to try doing something like that. My friend Celia likes food and cooking as much as I do, so we are starting our own small supper club here in Berlin! The first dinner is this coming Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes :)
Bis bald,
D.

Drei Tagen

Mittwoch, Donnerstag, Freitag.
Wednesday, I realized, was the one-month-iversary of my arrival in Berlin!
The day was uneventful, but I felt like the Tuesday night roast was a good celebration :) in the evening, I made a meal that Eric called "very North America": mashed potatoes, peas, and chicken. I had the chicken with Kaufland's version of barbeque sauce. It was...interesting. The sauces here are not up to snuff. And nothing has enough spice. There are tons of Asian restaurants, and even some Mexican ones, but they all tone down the spice for German taste. I haven't tried a Mexican place here yet. I'm kind of scared. But my burrito cravings are coming to the point where I must answer them...
Thursday was a great day. A friend of mine is a photographer and she has a show coming up in November. The show is about women who are outside the norm in terms of what it means to be beautiful. She wanted to photograph me for it, and Thursday morning was our shoot! It was really fun. I accepted copies of the photos in lieu of cash payment, so I'll post some here when I get them.
I was running late, so for lunch I just grabbed a couple quick brötchen at Alexanderplatz. Sandwich fan that I am, I love the little bread rolls stuffed with things that are sold at all the train stations. They often contain surprises; for instance I got what I thought was ham and lettuce and it also included some delightful sour cabbage. They also sell melt-in-your-mouth brie sandwiches...mmm.
That evening was the Camera Obscura concert! I biked over the Oberbaumbrücke to the venue, Postbahnhof am Ostbahnhof. Once there, I met with some friends and got a poster for only 3eur. Usually posters are 15-20USD at concerts in the States so I was very pleased with this:

The show was awesome. The band members are so cool. Two of my friends were freaking out and dancing like madmen, it was great. I managed to take a couple blurry photos:


The only thing is it was really short. They played maybe an hour set, then came back for a half hour-ish encore. This is a trend I have noticed at Berlin concerts. But I guess I don't end up with sore feet and checking my watch like I have at some American marathon-concerts, so it works out. Plus I then had time to go out after and meet a friend of a friend called Udo. We met up near Friedrichstraße and he happened to be hanging out with a bunch of Stanford kids from the Stanford-in-Berlin program this quarter. That made me feel old, old, old. But one of them was a rookie on the rugby team last year, so it was nice to see her again and catch up.
Udo and I were too old and tired to go with the kiddies to a club afterwards, so we headed home. I found a hubcap along the way! It's a pretty good one from Opel and looks good on my wall:

Speaking of my wall, my room is getting more and more my own...with the hubcap, Camera Obscura poster, Major Lazer poster I stole off the street, and my makeshift curtains it is starting to feel more homey.

Yesterday I biked over to the Turkish market, finally! It was great. Tons of fresh produce, all cheap. A stand or two with good cheeses (drool). One stand with delicious looking hummus! Fresh breads and sweets, and some stands with prepared foods. I only regret having eaten before I went, but on Tuesday I won't make the same mistake.
I picked up zucchini, carrots, dill, and green onions to make dinner. Our friend Galka was coming over and she's vegetarian, so I made a zucchini-kimchi quiche with a brown rice crust:

and roasted carrots with dill:

Eric made a salad and we had a great meal. Galka brought the scotch. Eric insisted on drinking rosé though:

And then I passed out at midnight. On a Friday. Haha I'm so cool. But really one of the great things about Berlin is there's a party somewhere every night. So there's no pressure to go out on Friday and Saturday just cause it's the weekend. I'm going out tomorrow though ;)
We got our internet hookup yesterday as well. Skype me, people!
Bis bald,
D.

PS. TUBE CHEESE:

They also sell caviar in tubes. Apparently Germans put it on top of hard-boiled eggs. Eggs on eggs!

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.

Abendsessen & Sonnenuntergang

Last night I also made my first dinner in the apartment. I've only done limited grocery shopping, but I cobbled together a grilled panini on a baguette, with goat cheese Babybels (!!! a new discovery), sliced tomato, fresh basil (I bought a plant for my windowsill) and thin ham, plus a salad with mixed greens, tomato, kidney beans and chickpeas dressed with olive oil and balsamic. I sat on the balcony to eat and it was very relaxing. Below, my sandwich:

And the sunset views from the roof:


Bis bald,
D.