Die (Aus)Wahl von Keks

As has been widely pointed out, the recent German election was a bit on the dry side. (Barely related side story: I hung out (briefly) with Roger Cohen at the reception following a foreign policy panel discussion I attended this week (making him my second New York Times columnist sighting in Berlin! He was next to me in the buffet line and asked me what I did for a living. I think I was the only non-politics person in the room (if you don't count that silly bachelor's degree or my brief stint saving children) and he seemed rather amused to talk about something besides the boring election). In any case, there was an election going on here. I suppose it wasn't all that different from elections at home, except that we didn't get phone calls during dinner from Bill Clinton (or Merkel for that matter) and because we don't have a television we were't subject to nonstop political ads (though I hear they are not so pervasive here). There were a lot of posters up around town for the various parties. Mostly they serve to illustrate that German politicians do not use stylists (or it would seem, professional photographers). One poster in particular illustrates the ability of the German people to take some things more lightly than Americans. This poster displays the cleavage of Chancellor Angela Merkel and another politician from her CDU party, claiming: we have more to offer. While I can't say that I find this poster particularly convincing, remember what a fuss they made about Michelle Obama showing her arms?! (In the end, she lost.)


For the most part, I leave the German politicking to mein Mann, but I did see fit to make one (fairly neutral) contribution to the election. We went to a little election party to watch the results come in (Germany only has one time zone (and only tiny scandals) so you can actually find out the results and then go have dinner!). I brought along some election-themed cookies - the different sprinkles represent the colors associated with the four main parties. Freakily enough, most of the red (red being the color of the SPD, which lost badly) cookies turned out really poorly (weird holes in the centers and melting around the edges) and yellow (of the co-winning FDP) turned out perfectly. Hmmmmmmmmmm....

Julia auf Deutsch

Julia Child and I go back a long way. I haven't cooked my way through any of her books (or anyone else's for that matter, though I sometimes wish I had that kind of patience and didn't always feel the need to make something with whatever I think I need to use up in my fridge), but she was on my Sesame Street-Mr. Rogers rotation, and I continued to watch her shows long after Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers had faded from my television screen. Thanks to a roommate/friend who worked at the American History Museum, I was able to visit her kitchen before the exhibit opened in DC and I got to hold her balloon whisk. It's true: I have photographic proof and a witness.

I moped around for weeks because I was sure "Julie & Julia" wouldn't be playing in Germany -- nobody in Europe has any idea who she is. Of course, they are familiar with Meryl Streep so, to my delight, the movie is showing in Berlin after all. I moved here with my DVD of "The French Chef" in tow (naturally) so mein Mann had already been persuaded of her charms and did not even need to be begged or bribed to come along. So there we were last week, sitting in the theater and waiting for the movie to start when it occurred to me I hadn't double checked that the movie was in English (for reasons I have yet to fathom, most movies here are shown dubbed and only a few theaters show the original version). I had stupidly assumed the film would be in English because who would want to hear a dubbed version of Meryl Streep's spot-on imitation of Julia's voice? A small handful of Germans who have no idea what Julia sounded like anyway (or Meryl Streep for that matter because these people always go to see the dubbed version) that's who. I panicked. For about 2 seconds I thought maybe I could sit through it in German...the story is the same right? And it would be good German practice, no? Much to the bewilderment and irritation of mein Mann I announced that I had to leave. He could stay, but I could simply not bring myself to see Julia in German. Much to my satisfaction, after we finally saw Julie & Julia this week in the lovely English language, mein Mann pronounced that we could never have seen it auf Deutsch. Ha!


In other news, I have a new bike so last weekend we took it out to the country for a spin. It was one of the last (sigh) really nice days of the year and it was a lovely bike ride other than the fact that it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to long for someone who had only ridden a bike once in the last two decades or so. I am now fully recovered, though, and can say that it was totally worth it because along the way we discovered countless plum trees (the sort my family calls Italian prune plums, but I understand are also known as damsons and in these parts, Zwetschen), as well as an apple orchard at the Cloister in Chorin (actually we knew this was there, having stumbled upon it last year - you may recall my adventures in making 100 or so tiny jars of jam?). The bike was even less fun to ride with saddle bags full of fruit, but the apple cake I made last Sunday and the particularly delicious plum jam I made yesterday (plum chutney, brandied apple butter, and a sour cream apple pie to come) have a way of helping me forget that part

Moin Moin Meppen Meppen

When I first heard of Meppen (mein Mann's hometown) my only thought was that it sounded like the name of a particularly zany muppet, but over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to explore (or at least drive by) it's many charms....um....the New Jersey Nightclub, for example...and Jumpy's American Pizza (I am fairly sure nobody from Jumpy on down has ever been anywhere in the vicinity of America (or Italy for that matter)), and the Hotel Pöker (sounds like Puker) come to mind. OK, so I have at times struggled to really see Meppen's charming side, although the natural setting is quite nice and behind the family home there are some work horses - the really giant ones with lots of hair/fur in the winter that I really like, along with many duck couples that hang out on the main square....I really do try to like Meppen.

We went up to Meppen this month to collect a load of furniture for our new apartment and managed to squeeze in a few day trips so mein Mann could show me Emsland (the region where Meppen is situated). When we met, mein Mann told me he was from "the Iowa of Germany." Perhaps: there's a lot of farmland -- very pretty in the German way (all very precisely groomed, nary a grain out of Ordnung and to my own personal horror and dismay: not a single farmstand).

First, he showed me a bunch of piles of rocks aka megalithic graves (apparently his ancestors were very strong):

Also, a lovely mill (what's not to like about a place that has Mills listed at the top (I kid you not) of their list of tourist attractions?):


And a few nice Schlosses and (after sneaking sans passport across the Dutch border, where, by the way, we immediately encountered an adorable farm stand) to see a very nice fort.

Along with rocks and mills,

Along with rocks and mills, Emsland is also known for Schnapps production. I was particularly taken with this bottle of Hasetaler Korn, which promises a "guarantee of origin" and actually lists the names of the farmers whose wheat was used in the Schnapps' production along with the specific location of the farm!

Abflächen

Sorry for that little pause ... ten days in Campania, a move across town, another move (down from Meppen) and a lack of internet in the new apartment (evil landlord + German phone company bureaucracy=bad combination).

Anyway, all I can say is Amalfi Coast Aschmalif Coast. Ok, I haven't been there and it is supposed to be nice, but I am pretty sure that Cilento is all that without the nonsense (tourists, high prices...). We flew to Naples and immediately headed south to Cilento (stopping to visit the Greek ruins at Paestum and watch the sun set behind Capri from Agropoli). We hiked from village to village (with help from a few buses) ... We ate produce that was actually ripe (peaches with flavor being a rare item and infamous flavorless Dutch tomatoes being all too common in Berlin), were repeatedly pushed to gluttony by the Italian mamas at the hotels/agriturismi/guesthouses we visited, got sunburned despite having rented a beach umbrella, ate as much gelato and espresso as we could manage, spoke a lot of fake Italian (ie Spanish with an Italian-ish accent and a few Italian words thrown in for authenticity (plus the all too frequent Portuguese or Catalan word), got a lot of strange looks from the locals because we were (gasp) walking, enjoyed a lot of local plonk (mein Mann's new favorite English word) and fresh-as-can-be buffalo mozzarella, (one of us) got bitten by every mosquito in Campania (but not on the eye!), witnessed the (modern) city of Pompeii's Pompeii Idol-ish contest in the main piazza (oddly, nobody but us found the whole thing hysterical), romped around Naples eating our weight in pizza, fried zucchini blossoms, sfoggliatelle, and seafood, and (gasp) witnessed a women get hit by a car in the marketplace near our hotel (luckily it was right in front of a hospital).

And for your viewing pleasure, two of my favorite shots...
I was really into these trucks selling watermelon that we saw all over Cilento:
When trying to find a bus schedule in one small village (to get to another village across the valley that we could literally see from our hotel room), we were directed to something like a town hall -- they, like everyone else we asked) couldn't understand why we would want to go there or for the life of them tell us how to get there. While not very helpful, they were quite nice, and I particularly appreciated the bags of zucchini blossoms on the official's desk:

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....