Potsdam

Last week I went to Potsdam, a town near Berlin simply full to bursting with royal palaces, and a tour guide friend showed me and another friend around.
One 10eur ticket gets you a Tageskarte, a day ticket with access to most of the buildings scattered around the area.
We started with the Neue Palast, an imposing edifice that looks like it is made of bricks but is actually just painted to look like them:



The servant's quarters across the way were almost more impressive architecturally, funnily enough. Inside, they make you wear big felt slippers to protect the floors from your shoes. These are very fun to glide around in, if a bit slippy. We had to wear them in all the palaces. The first big room we entered was a shell grotto (mom you would have loved it). All the walls had shells cascading down them, the corners had sea monsters made out of shells, the marble floor was inlaid in shell shapes, and precious stones were laid into the wall in thick layers. It was pretty incredible. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside. There was a room with a Titian and a van Dyck among others but it was so poorly lit I could barely see them. Upstairs, we saw a huge marble ballroom with an inlaid floor.
Behind the palace a little ways, in the park, there is a small pavilion:

One of the Fredericks (I easily lost track of which was which) built it as a tribute to the friendship between him and his sister when she married and left his household. Teddy, are you paying attention? Hahaha.
Next we went to a much smaller palace for one of the princes. It was done in Italian style and had a lovely grape arbor round back, plus a cool sitting area built in such a way as to project one's voice to the house's porch. It was pretty neat. Inside, it was much more liveable and cozy than the larger palace. One guest room was decorated to look like the interior of a tent, which was a really cool effect.
We wandered the grounds and found the "Chinese" tea house:

decorated with laughably inaccurate golden figures, from which tourists apparently like to steal various appendages:

Along the way we also stopped at a small Roman-inspired building, with this cool flounder fountain outside:

Apparently one of the Fredericks was a bit chubby, and was nicknamed flounder. Instead of being offended, he embraced it. In fact, there were china sets in the small Italian palace with golden flounders on them!
Eventually we came to the Orangerie:

where we climbed to the top of the tower despite my companions' mild fears of heights. The climb involved a narrow spiral staircase which could only admit traffic flow in one direction, so there was a stoplight to tell you when people were coming down:

The view of the neighboring park and countryside was really something:

We also toured the interior--more impossibly ostentatious rooms and furniture.
Eventually we came to Sanssouci, perhaps the most famous of the palaces, built by Frederick the Great. The name means "without worries" in French, the principal language of Frederick, who apparently never cared much for German. His architect suggested that when the palace was finished, he would be able to live "sans souci." Frederick replied that as emperor, he could never live such. Apparently the phrase intrigued him, however, as he had it inscribed on the palace front, but with a comma between the two words. The comma is the exact center of the palace. To its left, under the word 'sans', were his living quarters, music room, and other sources of pleasure and distraction. To its right, under 'souci', his office, state rooms, and other things related to the business of being a leader. He is buried outside the palace, alongside his hunting dogs.
The palace:

and seen from the landscaped gardens in the park below:

Next we perused the picture gallery, the first building expressly for the display of art ever built in Europe. Many Renaissance masters were present. My favorite paintings were a van Dyck of Mary Magdalene in repentance and a lovely big Caravaggio. I think my tour guide friend was a bit astonished at how long his friend and I dwelt on the paintings!
We took a little break in downtown Potsdam and had some pastries and coffee. The town is adorable! It was much better restored than Berlin after the war.
Next we found ourselves at another palace, deceptively small from the outside, but with 100+ rooms, in English Tudor style. This is where the Potsdam conference happened at the end of WWII, and the portions open to the public are mostly devoted to that history. It was originally built as a family residence, however, and was really a charming building, if a bit incongruous.
Finally, we scooted across the park and just made the last tour at the marble palace, a smaller palace intended for royal children and their families. The highlights here were several beautiful and intricate parquet floors and a large secretary made to look like a mini palace with lots of secret drawers and compartments, as well as lovely views of the lake.
When we finished, it was 6ish and getting dark, and we wearily boarded the regional train for the crowded half hour ride back to Berlin.
All in all I'm glad I took the day off work to see it before the smaller palaces close for the winter!

Bis bald,
D.

Blauer Himmel

This morning I was shocked to see blue skies and fluffy white clouds through our bathroom skylight! The sky has been gray gray gray for ages now...and often sprinkling with rain. I took the opportunity to bike to work, and it was glorious. Now of course it's gray again, but I fancy I can see the sun just peeking through in the distance...fingers crossed for a pleasant bike home.
Sorry I haven't written in a while...things get busy! A post with some pictures from last week's Potsdam trip is forthcoming.
This week has been full of chill Berlin evenings...on Monday Eric and I strolled down the street to a nearby restaurant for a friend's performance piece. Our friend did the video projections, but the meat of the performance was his friend, a Latvian woman with a mop of curly red hair, clad in a black lace bodysock and little else, and singing Russian and Latvian folktunes. She was accompanied by an American cellist and Finnish pianist. Only in Berlin! She crawled on our tables and danced with strangers and was charming and funny and had a lovely voice. It was really something to behold. The afterparty, I hear, involved a hat fashion show, but I unfortunately did not attend.
Tuesday I went to my friend's apartment in Kreuzberg (Xberg) and found it to be quite awesome. He lives with 6 people in a co-op kinda situation and they have a lovely big kitchen/hangout area. he has painted a huge wall mural with a long quote from 'Ulysses.' I think maybe I want to paint a mural in my room now!
Speaking of interior decoration, Eric has festooned our hallway and it feels a lot less blank and cold now than it once did.
On Wednesday I went to a reading of a book about Berlin, written by a friend of a friend. It was funny and well-written and I am excited to get to the book (though currently I am deeply engrossed in my first reading of Pride and Prejudice). It was at a Russian-themed bar called Kaffee Bürger with great vintage signs and wallpaper. Liked the vibe there, and made a new friend. I struck up a conversation because she was carrying a Holga, yay lomo!
Saturday is Halloween...I am going to dress up, though the Germans supposedly do not celebrate much. I am sure we will find something crazy to do.
Bis bald,
D.

CD Supper Club

1 cut thumb
1 burned finger
1 cracked glass
1 snapped knife
and 5 bottles of wine later, the inaugural meal of CD supper club has been brought off successfully!
CD is for Celia & Diana as well as Casual Dining and Crazy Delicious and any number of other things :)
Our menu was:
Smoked salmon pinwheels (thanks for the recipe mom!)
Chicken stuffed with goat cheese and sundried tomatoes (thanks for the recipe aunty amy!)
Fruited coucous pilaf
Cucumber salad
Roasted eggplants & zucchini
Grilled red & yellow peppers
& Lemon cheesecake for dessert (Celia's mother's recipe)
We had posted an ad on Berlin craigslist and on toytown, a popular English-language forum here, and received 4 responses. 2 couldnät make the date but wanted to get on the mailing list, and two were in! To fill the extra spots, we invited friends like mad, and eventually we had 11 attendees: me and Celia, my two roomies, the two strangers, and 5 friends from various places, known of whom knew each other. It was shaping up to be a good night.
We shopped at the Turkish Market on Friday and at Kaufland on Saturday. Saturday evening, we met to make the cheesecake and cucumber salad, which had to marinate overnight.
On Sunday, we went out to brunch at a popular vegan place near Celia's. Brunch here is a bit different than at home. Most places, 'brunch' consists of a buffet, mostly cold (meats, cheeses, breads, spreads) but sometimes with eggs, etc. for one (usually quite low) price. I was resistant at first (I want me some eggs benedict when I go for brunch) but after Saturday's feast I am a definite convert. Mmm...bread, cheese, and tomato. I could live on that. Plus yogurt, muesli (I am ADDICTED to the stuff now, much prefer it to sugary granola), bean salad, lentil spread and something called 'griespudding' which is like rice pudding but with something much smaller than rice (couscous perhaps?). Afterwards, we went to the HUGE flea market at the Mauerpark cause I'd been wanting to check it out. I have to wonder why anyone shops at real stores here--there are so many awesome markets scattered around the city.
And then it was time to head back to Neukölln and get cookin! We set up my room as the dining room (it really has a lot of space!) with some plates and cutlery borrowed from Celia:

We set out the wine (an essential component):

And the salmon pinwheels:

And then we made the rest of the food, and people started arriving, and it was wonderful!
The strangers turned out to be: Rene, a Danish pilot, and Kate, an economics officer at the US embassy from New Jersey. 3 of our 'friends' didn't show, but everyone ate heartily and we still almost finished the food, not to mention all five bottles of wine. There was lots of laughter, the food was delicious (if I do say so myself), and everyone seemed to have a good time. Afterwards we were happy to find that not only did we break even on costs (phew!) we even made a couple euros each! That means we were essentially paid to cook and eat.
Eric helped out and made a playlist:

Action shot of people beginning to eat:

And everyone posing nicely:

My delicious plate of food (nom nom nom):

The amazing cheesecake!:

And the aftermath. I think we used every dish, cooking pot, and utensil in the kitchen (including the cleaver, which we used to serve the cheesecake, haha):


We had a dishwashing party to some Belle & Sebastian tunes and most of it was done pretty quick.
The past few days, the leftovers have been great: I had couscous and some eggplant smeared with goat cheese filling for lunch yesterday and scrambled eggs with eggplant, green onion, parsley, and cilantro for both dinner last night and breakfast this morning. I'm thinking the leftover cinnamon-cookie crust has got to go to a pie sometime this week.
And that was it! The first supper club. I think we will definitely do it again in future.
Bis bald,
D.

Freitag

Another fun and crazy Friday!
For lunch I finally resolved to try a place I had heard was the best burrito in Berlin (not saying much). It was actually decent! And there was spice! I reviewed it on Qype (see below), which is like the European Yelp. I'll definitely be going back there when I have burrito cravings.
After work I met Celia at the Turkish Market to buy ingredients for Sunday's supper club. I looove the Turkish Market. During my pricing trip on Tuesday, I picked up avocados and a big beautiful mango. Mmmm. Since we were there, we bought stuff to make dinner as well, deciding to finally sample the delicious-looking salmon at the fish stall. When we got home, we cooked a feast: salmon, mango salsa, guacamole, and a salad. yum yum.

I was feeling tired but Berlin never rests and there were things to do!!! First up was an art show at Stadtbad Wedding, a cool venue which used to be a Stadtbad, or public pool. We wandered around the changing rooms and showers upstairs, which had neat little installations in them, and checked out the pool, but we couldn't actually go in it :( Pictures to come. Next was a Simian Mobile Disco show that Eric was on the guest list for but we didn't have tickets to. We sidled up to the front of the line and said we were on the guest list, then they let us in to the counter where we paid as if we had waited on line. It was a good little trick and we got in just in time to see the main event. It was an AWESOME show. Finally, there was a WG party around the corner from our apartment which was way epic.
I'm excited for supper club tomorrow!
Bis bald,
D.

Qype: Dolores Gourmet Burritos in Berlin

Berlin - Eating & Drinking - Restaurants - Mexican - Eating & Drinking - Restaurants - American - Eating & Drinking - Restaurants - Southwestern - Eating & Drinking - Fastfood & Takeaway


So I think I've figured out why so many people hate on Dolores, claiming that only Germans would think it is Mexican food: to a certain segment of the US population, Chipotle is considered somewhat blasphemous. Such people only consider real California taquerias as actual Mexican food. Well, I happen to like Chipotle, and Dolores is a lot like it. Don't get me wrong--it can't hold a candle to my beloved California staple, La Bamba, or even your garden variety El Grullense. But dear lord--their habanero sauce actually has spice to it!!! That alone is enough to make me go back. With the dearth of any Mexican in Berlin, much less good Mexican, I will happily accept Dolores as a source to stave off my Mexican hunger pains.
Next time, I'm getting the lime rice instead of the Spanish rice (tasted a bit strange) and maybe skipping the whole euro(!!!) they charge for guacamole.

Check out my review of Dolores Gourmet Burritos - I am insizlane - on Qype

Berlin Illuminiert

For the past 10 days or so has been the Festival of Lights in Berlin, and on Monday I went to check it out. Basically the idea is a bunch of Berlin landmarks are lit up with colorful lights, projections, or patterns. A friend lent me a lovely fancy Canon, a roll of film, and a tripod and we set out to see the sights. We started at Alex and the Fernsehturm, which was quite boring--just colored lights shining on it. Next we walked down towards the Berliner Dom. Along the way we wandered through the atrium at the Radisson which had some smaller light installations and light-based artworks for sale. They were unremarkable. Then we rounded the corner, and there was a lovely swirly color pattern on the back side of the Berliner Dom. With spotlights crisscrossing the sky, and all of it reflected in the Spree river below, it was a really beautiful sight.

Then we went around the front, and it was even better: a bright and colorful pattern all over the overwrought baroque surface of the building. We stood around there waiting for the different patterns and shooting pictures for a while, keeping warm with frequent pulls of brandy from our respective flasks. After shooting our fill of the Dom we continued down Unter den Linden and my favorite light effect: each individual tree was lit with a different color, creating a rainbow effect down the whole avenue. It was magical. And so simple! Just two bright lights at the base of each tree, pointed upwards, with different colored gels on them.


We continued to the Brandenberg Gate, which was kinda boring, just different colors changing, but we shot it anyway. The best view of it was from inside the park heading away towards the Reichstag--the illuminated columns were framed perfectly in between the black tree silhouettes. The Reichstag was, inexplicably, not lit up, and the lighting on the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) was pretty boring, so we called it a night. But it was fun! I hadn't shot manually in years. The film's not developed yet, but I'm excited to see how it turns out.
Bis bald,
D.

PS. from saturday:

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.