Spargel und Erdbeeren

On our first morning in Berlin, we held a family meeting to find out every person’s first choice for what they wanted to do here.  C.C. chose the Natural History Museum.  Alec wanted to go to Checkpoint Charlie.  For me it was a toss-up between the Winterfeldt Market and the Jewish Museum.  And Milo?  Legoland. 

We have been fairly successful thus far at avoiding a certain set of kids’ attractions that have the effect on me of making me feel like jumping out the window.  We have not been to Disney World, Sesame Place, or Sea World.  The kids love Chuck E. Cheese, but have only been there with Blanca.  I once got as far as the door, but had to turn back. But we said everyone would get his or her first choice here in Berlin, so on Thursday morning we bit the bullet and set off for Legoland.  There was no worry of me jumping out of a window because the Berlin Legoland is the first ever completely indoor Legoland.  Not only is it indoors, it is also completely belowground.  Why not compound the noise and chaos of hundreds of small children with a space that gets no natural light or fresh air?   I will say this—they did have a few massage chairs that you could stuff 2 euros into and get 10 minutes of vibration.  And I did see several weary parents and grandparents slumped over newspapers in the café.  It seemed like the kind of place that you could actually just let your kids go while you grabbed some shut eye or caught up on your reading.  But we did not.

We went on the dragon ride, through the “lego factory,” and viewed the miniature Berlin made out of Legos.  We sat through a show at the 4D theater—just like 3D, except there is also wind and rain.  That’s right—at the wet parts of the show you feel as though someone is shooting you with a water pistol.  Not my favorite.  But the kids loved it, and we remained true to our promise.

Hungry and needing to recover, we lunched at Vox, a nearby restaurant, where we learned that it is the very beginning of asparagus season here in Berlin.  Asparagus here means the thick, white variety, and it is surprisingly tender and flavorful.  Vox has an entire asparagus menu.  A plate comes with a healthy portion of the spears, along with perfectly cooked waxy boiled potatoes and, if you wish, a side of protein—salmon, scallops, ham.  Our waitress told us that everyone orders the asparagus now—it’s the first week of a 6 week season, and, after 10 months without it, folks are jonesing for it.  I ordered mine with an Italian ham similar to prosciutto, while Alec had his with lovely thin slices of a local truffled ham.  You choose either melted butter or hollandaise sauce to pour over your asparagus.  We got one of each but the hollandaise is really what you want.  We had clearly left the land of the Mediterannean diet.  I had a crisp Riesling to wash it down, and we sat outside.  The weather has been gorgeous—almost too hot given what we packed (jeans and long sleeve t-shirts) and , and bone dry.

We walked from there to the Reichstag, knowing we would likely not get in.  Our friends had told us to make a reservation in the restaurant in order to get up into Norman Foster’s dome, and we had tried, but it’s completely booked until after we leave.  If you come to Berlin, try to get a reservation to get in online, or book a table at the restaurant, which is open all day.  We walked through the Brandenburg Tor and down the Unter den Linden until we were all hot and tired and needed to go home.

Alec suggested I try to get a yoga class in, so I did—this one with some English—while he and the kids chilled at home.  Our lunch had been large, and late, but I knew we would get hungy again at some point, so I popped in to Knofi for some quality Turkish take-out to bring home. I also got some strawberries, which are in season, at the market.  We ate them straight out of the box. And so goes another day in Berlin.

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Doner Kebab, Fallen Leaves, the Wall

I woke up this morning thinking about laundry.  As we have traveled through Europe from one home exchange to another, I have been impressed by the variety and ingenuity of the various washing machines and clothes-drying contraptions I’ve come across.  The rack in our current home operates with a pulley system; you lower the rack to hang the clothes, then raise them to dry—in this way, it doesn’t take up valuable floor space.  A high ceiling is beneficial, but not absolutely necessary.

If it is true that switching from dryer machines to air drying clothes would lead to truly significant energy saving, why don’t we do it in the US?  Why is it that Europeans of a similar socioeconomic status, with smaller homes on average, typically dry clothes without machines?  Even at the low end of the SES spectrum in the US, people pay to dry their clothes at Laundromats rather than hang them to dry.  I suspect that there is a complex set of political, cultural, and patriarchal systems at work here. 

Dryers became popular following World War II, when women were being shepherded back into the home after having been urged into the work force while men went to war.  The on-site daycare and prepared meals for women to take home from the plant disappeared.  Many women enjoyed working outside the home and so, to entice them back in, advertisements pictured women standing in their kitchens, on the phone, the sparkling array of new and efficient appliances standing at attention behind them.  The image:  woman as manager of the home.  Many of them bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Many of them popped valium and drank martinis. 

At the same time, the combination of white flight, the new highway system, and cheap mortgages combined to create the American dream—at least for white Americans.  People moved from small, city apartments to large, suburban homes that had space for these appliances—and for large cars, swing sets in the backyards, TV rooms.    So for these and other reasons, the US has clothes dryers—and consumes more energy per capital than any other country.  There’s probably a paper in there somewhere.  But not today.

After my morning musings, I got up and took myself to a yoga class, a nice one hour morning stretch that my body needed.  It was in German, and the teacher did not even use the Sanskrit names for the poses, some of which I recognize, but no matter.

On my way home I noticed that Mustafa’s kebab house, around the corner from our apartment, had no line in front of it.  I had had my eye on Mustafa’s a little street kiosk, since we arrived.  Every time we passed, it had a line at least 30 people long out in front of it.  When I see a line like that in front of a food stand, I get curious.  It was 10:30 in the morning, and I had been up for a few hours, so I thought, “What the hell.  Time for a doner kebab.”  I ordered up a veggie kebab with everything—crunch lettuce, creamy hot sauce, warm pita.  I brought it home and tore into it.  Really good.

Berlin is not exactly a place you go to purely for food, but I am always determined to find my way to a good meal, a local specialty, a fabulous market.  Not being a huge fan of German food, my first plan was to focus on ethnic food.  And that may still turn out to be the right thing to do.  But then I read a few things, including a not-too long ago article in the New York Times, I thought maybe street food was the way to go.  Barcelona’s street food culture is practically nonexistent, and there are a lot of places where you have to be crazy or starving to eat street food, so I figured Berlin might be a good bet.  And Mustafa’s was terrific.  I printed out the NYT piece, plus some other street food pieces I found on line.  But the folks we met for a beer today were not impressed with any of the lists.  So it seems I’m back to square 1.  We’ve been eating just fine, but not much to write home about.

Once we got ourselves together—a process that takes a few hours—we walked to the Jewish Museum, a breathtaking building by Daniel Libeskind.  Apparently the building itself was such a success that people began to visit it two years before the museum was open.  It is incredibly thoughtful and provocative, with beautiful light-filled spaces like the glass courtyard that invite community, and oppressive spaces like the holocaut tower that evoke despair.  We spent nearly three hours there and saw only a fraction of what there is.  The building includes several spaces called Memory Voids, empty spaces meant to symbolize the loss of Jewish culture. One of the most powerful pieces is a work by Menashe Kadishman called Fallen Leaves; it is located in one of the voids. The installation consists of 10,000 faces cut out of heavy iron disks that cover a pathway leading into a dark tunnel.  You can walk on the path, and the faces shift under your feet and make a deep, clanking noise.  It is a heavy, disturbing piece dedicated to all of the innocent lives lost to war.  After walking the path, Milo said it made him feel sad.

Unbelievably, we ran into three of the kids’ teachers at the museum.  I’ll bet they were glad to see us!  (read with sarcasm). My mom used to feel like a minor celebrity just going to the grocery store.  All you need when you are running in to Shop Rite for milk in your sweatpants is to hear some 8 year old monster yelling, “Mrs. Servon!  Mrs. Servon!”  I witnessed many of these encounters firsthand growing up.  But Miss Lucia, Miss Angela, and Miss Rachel actually seemed happy to see C.C. and Milo.

From the museum, we took the Ubahn to Prenzlauer Berg.  When we came up from the metro we were immediately struck by the number of strollers sitting in front of the hip shops and restaurants lining the block.  Clearly we had made it to the cool neighborhood for young families.  We got some ice cream, and then took the kids to a playground in Kollwitz Platz.  I lay down on a wall near the playground and promptly fell asleep in the sun.  We popped into a fabulous kitchen store called Coledampf’s that our friend Deiter had told us about.  I love seeing what people use in their kitchens in other countries.    In Berlin?  Miniature cast iron pots with lids, very cool jars for canning, nice butter keepers, felted wool egg cozies—very cute, but they will not be coming home with me.

We had arranged to meet Deiter and his wife—Deiter spent three months at the research institute in Barcelona where Alec and I are based—at a local beer garden called Prater.  The day was gorgeous—apparently this kind of weather never comes to Berlin before late May—so it was perfect to sit outside at one of the many tables that at 5:30 were already filling up with the after work crowd.  The kids lodged themselves at the play place that was mobbed with other kids—why don’t we have more places like this in the US?—and the rest of us drank beer and ate sausages and pretzels.  I also had a nice carrot ginger soup topped with herbs and crunchy pumpkin seeds.

Deiter and his wife, a very pregnant Pauline (her due date is today)  walked us around the neighborhood, showing us the line between east and west, and the remnants of the wall (see our family photo in front of it, below).  What is truly amazing is that, at first, only a fragment of the wall remained intact.  And, frankly, it’s not that impressive.  Not very high, not very thick.  Tourists were underwhelmed.  So they are reconstructing a 150 meter stretch of the wall using original materials.  Somehow this seems bizarre, after all it took to get the damn thing down.  But there it is, going back up.

The kids wore their Barca shirts all day, as Barca is playing another El Classico as I write this.  Alec has gone across the street to a sports bar to watch.  But me?  I’m heading to bed.  I’m afraid I have to face Legoland in the morning.

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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.

* * *

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.

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Welcome to Berlin

It still amazes me that you can get on a plane in Barcelona and within two hours—the time it takes to fly from New York to Chicago—land in an entirely different place.  How is it that language, food, body type, architecture, personal space—you name it—change so much over such a relatively short distance?

We landed in Berlin a bit after noon yesterday, collected our luggage, and took a taxi to our home away from our home away from home, in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin.  Kreuzberg is large, and not exactly in the center; it feels sort of like Williamsburg, in Brooklyn. 

We are doing a home exchange with a woman and her three children—they live in a large, light apartment that is very comfortable and well-located.  The husband/father was here to give us the keys; it seems that they split a few years ago.  One of the interesting things about doing these home exchanges is that you don’t just feel as though you inhabit someone’s home; you also inhabit their life.  You know what kind of toothpaste they use, what music they listen to, where they keep the extra toilet paper.  You see the photos they hang on their walls, the kind of books they read. 

It’s hard not to fill in the blanks between the information you have on hand and construct a story about these people whose beds you are sleeping in.  The woman who lives here?  She is clearly going through something.  Something big.  There are several canvases propped about—my guess is that she made them—painted in a bright color (think fuschia and peacock blue) with sayings painted on them in glittery paint:  “I am free;” “Women can’t hear what men don’t say;” “And there are so many silences to be broken.”  You get the idea.  Her bedroom, which is done in pinks and reds, is full of hearts and has a large painting of the female symbol encrusted with plastic jewels hanging over it.  Her personal spaces have the energy of someone who is working… something… out.  I hope she gets through it.

Meanwhile, we were all hungry and exhausted by the time we got in and settled.  I actually felt like I had jet lag, even though we had not changed time zones. We wandered out just long enough to check out the main commercial strip nearby and get some mediocre Mexican food—we let the kids decide—before putting a movie on for the kids.  Alec and I both fell asleep on the couches, and scraped ourselves up to get them to bed and, not long after, get ourselves to bed.

We took our time getting ready and out this morning—the kids lobbied hard for a day in their pajamas, but it seemed too early in the trip for that.  We promised them that we would definitely do it one day this week.  As in most cities, many of Berlin’s museums are closed on Monday, so we opted for a boat tour.  The weather is gorgeous—apparently strangely so—and we took advantage of it by sitting up on top of the boat, where we nearly had to duck our heads as we passed under bridges.  Milo had fun full speed into a sign just before boarding and had given his noggin a real collision, so he spent much of the cruise with his head on Alec’s lap, holding an ice pop to it.  The lump, which was impressively large, has gone down considerably.

Alec also got to thinking that he felt like going to a seder, being that it was Passover after all.  We had done no research, we know no one in Berlin, and we don’t speak German, so it seemed like a stretch to me.  But I love Passover, so I went along with the idea.  Once again, Google saves the day.  Within minutes, Alec was on the phone with a woman who owns a restaurant and who was leading a seder that night.  She told Alec it was full but then, in a hushed voice, asked

“I gather that you are Jewish.” 

“Yes,” Alec answered.  Never mind his shiksa wife. 

“Well,” she said, “I can make space for you.” 

Alec confirmed with her that the address for the restaurant he had found online was where we should go. 

“No, no,” she said.  “My bistro is much too small.  And besides, it’s not a good idea to put the address on the internet. . .  you never know who might turn up.”

Sounded ominous, and I got equally quizzical looks when I tried to buy kosher wine to bring with us at a couple of local wine shops.

We took the Ubahn to the Sbahn and then walked a bit to arrive at a large school where the seder was being held.  Long tables covered in paper tablecloths, folding chairs, paper plates, and a cheery mob of elders, tired parents, traveling students and children.  We found seats at a table across from an older Israeli couple, and next to a group of traveling American students.  A history professor on a Fulbright from the University of Delaware rounded out our crew.

The chef—the woman with whom Alec spoke on the phone—was a young woman with her head mostly shaved except for what looked like peyes, the sidelocks often worn by Orthodox jewish men.  Two other women ran the seder, which was chaotic and warm.  And vegetarian, so no lamb bone.  C.C. and Milo gave no quarter when it came to searching for the afikomen; I don’t think the other children had ever encountered New Yorkers who had been trained by Naomi.  The prize was theirs.  They are accustomed to negotiating with their grandmother for big bucks, so I had to talk to them to make sure they would be happy with the jumprope and puzzle they received; they were.

We made our way home, under an enormous orange moon, with the history professor, who happened to live a few blocks from us.

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24 Hours with Jerry and Rhonda

Our good friends Jerry and Rhonda arrived in Barcelona yesterday morning—their children are singing in their high school choir, which is touring Italy, and so they came to spend some time with us in Barcelona before moving on to meet up with Isis and Rowan.  We had traded messages about the dates of their visit months ago, which I thought I had transferred to the paper calendar we keep just to keep track of our travel and the visits of friends and family.  But somehow, something went wrong.  Our faithful calendar told me they were coming April 11 – 15, but when they sent us their flight information stating what time they would be arriving on April 16, my stomach did a flip.   We, in the meantime, had purchased tickets to fly to Berlin on April 17, and we had arranged a home exchange with a family there (or, as it happens, here—I am writing this from Berlin).  So not only would we not be in Barcelona for most of our friends’ visit, they could not even stay in our apartment! I honestly don’t know how I got it wrong, but I did.  So much for the paper calendar—I think I need to invest in some sophisticated hotel booking software to keep this from happening again.  If you call to check on availability and get a recorded line, know that I’ll get back to you soon with room options and special deals at our sister property in Asbury Park, NJ.

So, it turned out that we had barely 24 hours to spend with our friends.  We did as much packing as we could on Friday.  I made my now customary welcome meal of tortilla, a salad, and some cheeses, and we booked a baby sitter for the evening.  After pumping everyone up with coffee and catching up around the dining room table, Alec went with Jerry and C.C. to check out the market and walk around Gracia while Rhonda and I drove to Sant Cugat to pick Milo up from a birthday party.  Then we all met up and walked from Gracia to Plaza Catalunya, stopping at Cerverceria Catalana for some sustenance on the way.  As we walked down Rambla Catalunya after our late lunch, we discovered that the rambla had become an Easter market in anticipation of semana santa.  Stall after stall sold beautiful, long palms wrapped in ribbons or twisted into intricate sculptures.  Others sold fresh bunches of fragrant herbs.  Even though we were about to leave town, I couldn’t help but buy one for 3 euros—bay, rosemary, thyme, sage—heavenly.  The kitchen smelled terrific when I went in to make my tea this morning.

We stopped home for a quick rest and then went to Cuines Santa Catarina for dinner; I had eaten lunch at the bar there with Lois, but we had gone early and the full menu had not been available.  The innovative menu is printed on paper placemats in the form of a matrix.  Along the top are categories of food, such as pasta, vegetables, meat, and fish.  Down the side are ways of cooking—charcoal grilled, oriental, mediterannean, etc.  The restaurant is located right in the Santa Catarina, and the food is very innovative.  It can make for a confusing array of dishes, but if you are open to it, it’s just fine.  I started with a lemon, ginger, mint,and cane juice before switching to red wine.  We had miso soup, garlic shrimp, roasted baby pig with tomato marmalade, falafel, a spicy tuna roll, strawberries with basil, and tiramisu.  Somehow it all worked and it was all delicious. 

We chose Cuines Santa Catarina partly because we could eat on the early side—8 pm—and because it would not take too long.  We had to get somewhere to watch El Clasico at 10 pm.  “El Clasico,” as I’ve written before, is the name for any soccer game in which Barca plays Real Madrid.  Last night, they met for the second time since we’ve been here (after a remarkable 5-0 first time whooping) and will play three more times in just over two weeks—an unprecedented series of meetings—as both teams compete for three championships. 

We thought it would be fun to give our friends the full Barca cultural experience, so Alec had asked some die hard fans where we should go to watch the game, and so after dinner we went to Poble Sec to the Ovella Negra (Black Sheep), a cavernous bar full to the gills with Barca fans watching two big screen TVs.  I felt spoiled after having watched so much soccer in the comfort of my living room.  We found a place to stand near the front, but we had to look up at such an angle that my neck got sore.  It was also clear that Jerry and Rhonda were pooped—they had not slept on their flight over, and we had had them going all day.  So at half time we zoomed home—there is no traffic in Barcelona when Barca is playing—and arrived just in time to see Messi’s penalty kick to make the score 1 – 0.  Albiol (Real Madrid) had earned a red card for wrestling Villa to the ground, and as a result Real Madrid played the remainder of the game with only 10 players.  So they needed to convert on their own penalty kick later in the game and did, to tie the game 1 – 1, the score it remained until the end.  Fortunately, there was not much at stake in last night’s game—Barca had already pretty much sewn up the La Liga competition, and Real Madrid needed more than a tie to have any chance of winning.

I groaned as I climbed into bed and looked at my clock, realizing that the alarm would ring only six hours later; travel days are tough enough when you are well-rested.

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