Verschiedene Flitterwochen

After the nuptials, I slept for about a week solid, getting up only to eat leftover wedding cake and make various concoctions out of our leftover wild boar. Thus rejuvenated, I hightailed it to Prague to honeymoon with Laura. (Don't fret, mein Mann and I had a post-civil ceremony honeymoon in Ukraine and next week will find us on Honeymoon II (aka our summer vacation), walking across Cilento in southern Campania.). Back to Prague: it's not my favorite city, but it does seem to have made nice progress since I was there a few years ago. Or maybe it's just that we didn't do any of the touristy stuff, but wandered from here to there, sat in plazas, beer gardens and breweries. The food is still sort of monotonous ("pork with more pork" as our guidebook put it), which is fine for a few days, but the coffee still dreadful, which is not fine for a few days. We really did eat a lot more hearty porky food than you can tell from these photos, but they were some of our favorite/most interesting finds: (clockwise from the top) pickled sausages (not quite as bad as it sounds), potato pancakes with a coleslaw of sorts (by request), and little open-face sandwiches with various toppings for breakfast.

In other news we went to a seriously interesting concert by the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, which plays instruments made entirely from vegetables. I didn't come away wanting to buy the CD, but it is fairly clever and extremely hysterical.

Die Hochzeit in der Rückspiegel

After so many months of walking forwards towards our wedding, it's hard to believe today is the one-month anniversary. I've never been one to go in for the Best-Day-of-my-Life, fairytale, cupcake-dressed nonsense and while I have a lot of good days behind me and I hope there are lots more to come, it's hard to imagine being able to recapture the shear joy I felt for every second of our wedding (though I'm up for giving it a try).

Here are some highlights from our more-perfect-than-we-dared-to-believe-was-possible wedding weekend:
Rehearsal Dinner (aka Polterabend) chili, cornbread, and beer for 90 of our guests (there was more than one occasion when I questioned my sanity on inviting all of our numerous guests to this event, but...while we hadn't expected so very many to attend, we were really glad to have more time to spend together and that everyone didn't have to cram their celebration into a few short hours. Anyway, more-the-merrier is sort of our entertaining style. Despite my moments of panic, the chili was a big success (note the thumbs up) and our amazing guests acted as schleppers, bartenders, waitstaff, and dishwashers.
And as a rule, a bonfire always makes a good party better. Especially with s'mores. Poltering wasn't my favorite part of the wedding (by far), but it was an interesting cultural experience (leave it to the Germans to turn cleaning into a party game). Full disclosure: the Germans are way into playing games at weddings and most of them were a lot more fun.



Saturday aka Wedding Day was spent running around like chickens with our heads cut off: serving breakfast and lunch, cleaning the kitchen, setting things up and then resetting them up when a torrential downpour seemed certain, arranging flowers in vases, bouquets, and bouts, etc. There was a brief, if very palpable, period when I didn't think anything would work out, when having a wedding seemed like the worst idea I'd ever had and I considered just taking the nap I hadn't been able to take all week ... but it all came together and I wouldn't trade a second of it.
We wed as the rain fell on the barn and then recessed out to I was Made for Loving You by Kiss, which our upstairs neighbors play ALL THE TIME so we have had no choice, but to make it our theme song. The sun came out and shone a few strong rays at us (it was eerily good timing) and then retreated back to a drizzle. I was pushed here and there and made to pose with nearest and dearest while trying to drink the delicious cava we (literally) carried back from Mitte Meer (ok, fine, I pulled it in my shopping cart, but mein Mann really did carry several cases on his back. And we dined (!) - please note our most handsome wedding guest, shown in the photo here - wild boar (which, fear not, lives on (in a manner of speaking) in our freezer).
Not to mention the buffet, whose deliciousness isn't really captured here (you have no idea what amazing Knödel can do for an already perfect buffet). This may not make sense, so just know that I mean it in the humblest and most complementary way: the caterer's food was just what and how I would have cooked if I had had any extra time and energy. It was (for me, anyway) perfect. I can't claim to be able to pull off such a cake, however. And let me just tell you - it tasted about a million times better than it looked/s. Our DJ was a little odd, but we were determined to dance and I will say that he was obedient: he played all the songs I asked for (even if he did play my Shakira song when I happened to be outside and give me slight attitude for requesting that he NOT play YMCA or heavy metal. I know what you are thinking about Shakira, but you are wrong.). I did struggle with my inner Bridezilla who really wanted to confiscate his mini disco ball (I am pretty sure that I do not come across as a mini disco ball kind of girl). East German DJs aside, it was a joyous night. It's such a powerful feeling to have so many of the people you love (and who love you) all in one spot - be it singing along to Fools Rush In, lifting a glass of Emsland Schnapps to honor the people who couldn't be with us, or dancing to some German dance hit from the 80s ... it was, to say the least, a memorable weekend/night.

It was so much fun to have (almost) all my nearest in Berlin. I almost love Berlin with so many of my favorite people in a 5-block radius. Except for the crazy people that come to visit in November (snowstorm with thunder anyone?) or February (gale-force winds!), most visitors come in the warmer months, giving them the very silly allusion that Berlin is some kind of eternal Spring paradise. So this time, it was a bit gratifying to see Berlin act up: chilly rain in what is supposed to be the nicest month, surly copy shop workers refusing to print from (gasp!) a disk or emailed file on (the horror!) labels, average food (not that you don't get average meals in other towns, but with the exception of the restaurant at the Deutsche Oper and the old standby that is Schwarzwaldstuben, the other restaurants I took my guests to were intensely embarrassing flops (why can't they make a decent, interesting salad in this town that isn't drowning in bad vinaigrette (to put it politely)?) People commented on the oddness of the pillows, the strange fact of life that makes a Berlin-Brandenburg train ticket cost 26 Euros for one passenger or five, and why are the sidewalks as/more uneven than some developing nations?

Of course, I am/was the main whiner, and most people had only glowing things to say about Berlin, but in the spirit of celebrating the oddness that is here, I present you with some very odd (to me at least) snack foods I have recently discovered (but not (yet) sampled):

Horse milk products at the organic market! I ate horse meat in Italy (and admired the horses baby food) and would sample this if I could find it. Alas, thus far I've only seen the advertisement. I do love that their new line is: "a delicious cow milk alternative!" But why is there also a goat on the packaging?

We (for the next 6 weeks anyway) live near the worst video store on the planet. On the rare occasions they have anything we might want to watch, it's always checked out. They have about 20 DVDs in their collection, most of which seem to be porn or extreme-violence-for-the-sake-of-extreme-violence movies. They do, however, have very interesting snacks. I recently observed doner kebab- and El Gaucho-flavored chips. Flavoring cheap potato chips like a cheap greasy meaty sandwich is intriguing. Or something. And what does El Gaucho taste like, do you think? Sweaty Argentine cowboy?

Stay tuned for a much less cranky, perhaps even fluffy wedding post....

Das Leben nach der Hochzeit

If not the words, I lack the images to describe the perfection of our wedding last weekend. Instead of trying, I'll leave you with a few images of my post-wedding life:

1. The last bit of leftover wedding cake. It may not look like much here, but I am fairly certain that a more delicious or more beautiful wedding cake has never been seen (the layers alternated chocolate and hazelnut and were accompanied by a big bowl of fresh strawberries).

2. This being the third celebration of this marriage, I can tell you that a wedding is a great way to fill your apartment with flowers. In a mad dash through the wholesale flower market that resembled Supermarket Sweep more than wedding preparations, we grabbed peonies for the bouquets, pale pink roses for the boutonnieres, and sweet williams (amusingly called bearded carnations auf Deutsch) for the tables. Down with overpriced florists!

3. Wrapping paper and shipping boxes are very convenient for those of us with a pending move....(Note the wedding dress rumpled in the background.)
4. What to do with more leftover wild boar than will fit in my (increasingly annoying) micro Euro-fridge?

A post-wedding Sunday night leftover party is a must (no matter how tired you are, you can probably still manage to snack and open presents), pulled boar BBQ sandwiches (bonus points for using up the end of the rhubarbbq sauce and some of the leftover rolls), and tonight's menu features boar ragu with tagliatelle (sorry, I forgot to take the picture until I was half finished).

As I type, a man across the street is cleaning a squiggly purple line off the yellow building facing ours. Later he'll paint over the remaining traces of the squiggle with more yellow paint. I know because I've seen him do this many times. Berlin has a lot of graffiti (at least where we reside), but I generally think the graffiti says less about art than what my then-toddler-aged sister accomplished when she walked through our small apartment dragging a marker along the wall as she went (ability to draw a straightish line, statement of independence, etc.). I know the Berlin Wall is known for its decor, but today we are mostly inundated with scrawled initials or statements such as, "vegan" (believe what you will about this movement, writing the word on a wall doesn't strike me as a much of statement, let alone a compelling argument). But lately, someone has been defacing property more to my taste: dog stencils! Of course, if they really wanted to impress me they would stencil terriers up and down my block, but still ... I find them quite endearing.

And while I am singing the praises of my neighborhood (not mine for all that much longer - we've just decided to move across town in the summer), I share with you the window display of a former electrician's office down the street from us. Last Fall there was a medieval scene with knights and horses and (to my wedding-minded) delight, a pig turning (this being the electric bit) on a spit! Until recently, Easter was theme: daffodils, Easter baskets, and a slowly twirling Easter bunny. Now I am entertained by a cowboy-and-indian scene (the Germans can't get enough of this theme...it's rather odd). The powwow to the right of the picture spins! The typical-in-these-parts cheap lace window curtain (usually framing tacky nicknacks like miniature fake flowers or ceramic hedgehogs) really accentuates the wild scene, no?

Finally, this is what happens when you are too stressed, running on too little sleep, and have one of those awful flat stovetops where you're supposed to be able to figure out which knob works which burner before you make your coffee. Oh how I yearn for my little Manhattan gas stove (among other Manhattan delights (human, culinary (anyone want to bring me a pack of those date bars you can buy at any NYC deli counter for (what was once) $1????) and otherwise....).

Der Spreewald: Mehr als Gurken

We didn't get around to canoeing in the Spreewald last year, but Spring has overtaken Berlin in full force and we couldn't waste any time. As noted in the link above, the Spreewald is a forest-wetland preserve about an hour south of Berlin. Some of the current residents are descendants of the Sorbs/Wends, the Slavic tribes that originally settled the area and all the signs are in Deutsch and Wendish, houses are built in the traditional style, etc. I had heard that the Spreewald made for a nice day trip, but I had no idea how charming it was. The Spreewald is sort of Germany's take on Venice in that much of the area is made up of small channels, which are lined with adorable houses and hay stacks (I have a weak spot for nice haystacks) and the occasional restaurant. The Spreewald is also known for its pickles (which you can buy at most any grocery store in Germany) and let me just say that being able to canoe along on a perfect spring day and buy pickles right from our boat pretty much made the trip for me. The Spreewald is one of those places that has a lot of tourists, but is still quite charming. Most people tour the wetlands on a Kahn (punt) -- the cute boats pictured here -- which is powered by a sort-of Spreewaldish gondolero. One does feel somewhat virtuous paddling by them (and more entitled to the double-picnic day (breakfast and lunch), which we concluded with a typical Spreewald dinner of boiled potatoes, quark and linseed oil (better than it sounds) and some sort of local take on blood sausage with sauerkraut.

ps. Seven weeks to go and I've finally had a wedding nightmare. What does it say about me if I dreamed not that I lost my dress or that it rained or some other Perfect Day-ruining catastrophe, but that I forgot to make the chili for the rehearsal dinner. I realized the oversight the morning of so there was still plenty of time, but I was distressed that the flavors wouldn't have time to meld properly.

Die Deutsche Küche schlägt wieder zu!

It's not that I have anything against German cooking, it's just that I never get around to making it. Or I make something that is American to me (stew or roast chicken) but tastes German to mein Mann. But, this week I did a tasting for a potential new client that wants seasonal German food (why they think I am the person to make German food is beyond me, but...) and so I had no choice but to cook auf Deutsch. The potential client hails from the region of Hessen (you may be familiar with the Frankfurt airport). In my somewhat limited experience, Hesseners are all crazy for Grünesauce (Green Sauce), which is an herb sauce made from a blend of seven fresh herbs (don't even think of substituting something else or leaving one out!): borage, chervil, parsley, cress, chives, sorrel and salad burnet. The herbs are minced and combined with a bit of vinegar and mustard, a few hard-boiled egg yolks, and some minced onions, which are all mixed into something white (I used creme fraiche, but you can apparently also use mayonnaise, yogurt, sour cream, or quark). (Full disclosure: I'm fairly certain that this is one of those recipes for which there are as many versions are there are cooks - the herbs seem to be a set deal, but you can add minced pickle or capers, etc.) I've most commonly seen Grünesauce served with boiled potatoes or brisket (a more sophisticated version of that mayo-mustard mixture that my family always ate with our brisket), but I think you could serve it with most any meat or fish or veggie for that manner. But then again, I'm a heretical American and can never seem to think (or cook) inside the German box. With that spirit in mind, I decided to make deviled eggs with a Grünesauce filling. I trekked down to Frischeparadies (another one of these stores that is supposedly "the best" and where you can "find anything," which, in my experience mostly translates to fancy jarred sauces and overpriced mixed greens (though they do have (crazy expensive teeny jars of) vanilla extract), which is the only place I've been able to find all seven Grünesauce herbs. The herbs come in a very chic wrapping complete with a recipe for Grünesauce.
Alas, I couldn't take a picture of my finished eggs, but I can tell you that they were a big hit...which, in connection with a delicious (if I do say so myself) apple tart (such is seasonal cooking in Berlin at the beginning of April) and a few other delights, have resulted in a potential new client/job situation......details to come if it all works out...