The First Schitzel

. . .  Something I forgot to mention about the professor we met last night.  She lives in Takoma Park, MD, where Alec and I lived during our last sabbatical.  And she goes to the same yoga studio where I practiced—Willow Street Yoga, an anusara studio run by the inimitable Suzy Miller.  If you are ever in the DC area, I suggest you give it a try.  Two of Suzy’s four children—Kate and Joe—teach in the studio, and Joe is also a fabulous masseuse, from whom I got monthly massages when I was pregnant with Milo.  The professor woman also studied with the Millers, and has been massaged by Joe.  So if you have been following all of this carefully enough, you will realize that I was at a seder last night with a woman I had never met, a couple of decades older than me, in a country both of us happen to be visiting.  And the same man has seen both of us naked.  Now I call that a small world.

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One day a few months ago, as I was driving the kids home from school, C.C. called from the back seat:

“Hey, Mom!  I found out about this place called Berlin where they have the world’s biggest dinosaur skeleton.  Do you think we can go see it?”

Of course, she had no idea what or where “this place called Berlin” was.  But here we are.  And today we set off to see that dinosaur skeleton, a brachiosaurus.  Housed at the natural history museum, it is indeed very large.  In fact, its skull is so high above you that they’ve made a replica of it so that you can see it up close.  We spent close to an hour in the dinosaur hall alone, even though there are only 5 or 6 skeletons there.  C.C. was in heaven.

We had a late lunch nearby at Das Speisezimmer, a restaurant known for using fresh, local ingredients that’s run by a TV chef—Sarah Weiner.  C.C. loved her weiner schnitzel; fortunately for Milo they whipped up some pasta with red sauce.  Alec and I both had a fabulous, piping hot basil soup.  I had a dish of thinly sliced potatoes topped with diced and sautéed eggplant, red pepper and squash, while Alec had something that seemed like wild boar stew with spaetzle on the side.  I had forgot ten how delicious good spaetzle are.

We walked and wandered for awhile, stopping in a park where Milo joined some boys playing soccer and C.C. met some local dogs, popping in and out of shops until the kids were too tired to walk anymore.  Alec and I attempted to watch Wings of Desire, the Wim Wenders film set in Berlin, but the version we rented had no English subtitles, so we turned it off and watched The Flower of My Secret, the Almodovar film I had rented from iTunes, instead.