Haben Sie Wien schon bei Nacht gesehen?

We had a lovely time in Wien. It was a touch too cold, but that only helped us appreciate the museums and stellar cafes. Why doesn't Berlin have cafes like these? Why doesn't Berlin shovel the sidewalks like they seem to have done in Vienna? Sigh. (On the other hand, why does everyone smoke so much there? Way worse than Berlin.) I spent lots of time wandering while mein Mann was saving the world. Vienna (or at least the Innere Stadt) is full of so many beautiful buildings (lots of cute old ladies in fur coats and good hats, too!), even in the cold it was lots of fun just to walk and look. A few noteworthy bits: I loved the Dorotheum, an old auction house where you can wander around and admire the very cool things that are coming up to auction - jewelry, furniture, old weapons, you name it. The tiny sandwiches at Trezniewski were a lot of fun. The apple strudel at Demel was great (although, in my humble opinion, such good strudel should be served warm. And the surly waitress wouldn't bring me any Schlagobers (aka: whipped cream): hmmph). Tafelspitz is basically brisket served in beef broth, but in Vienna they do it up. First one eats the deliciously flavorful broth with the veggies. Second, you are to spread the marrow (you get a marrow bone in the broth) on toasted bread, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and eat it with your fingers. Finally, you get to the meat, which is served with bread sauce, horseradish, applesauce, fried potatoes, creamed spinach, and creamed cabbage (way better than it sounds). The whole thing was spread out on the table in a secession of beautiful copper pots. The Austrian cheese selection at Meierei was good if not life-changing, but it was served with some of the best bread I've had in ages (Looking back, that bread may have been the best thing I ate in Vienna) and it was fun to sit by the water and watch the people (and dogs pass by). I tried twice to visit the Secession. I semi-succeeded on my second attempt, but the floor with Klimpt's Beethoven Frieze was closed due to the opening of a new exhibit, which consisted of a lump of concrete, a book of squiggles, and a pile of 20,000 ugly posters. I did, however, see this cool older lady with polka dot hair.The art in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is world class, but the building itself is so amazing, I kept wanting to leave the galleries to admire the entry hall and amazing dome. I only wish I'd had a chance to visit more cafes and eat more cakes. In hindsight, I was a bit too focused on strudel...though I suppose there are worse things to obsess over.

Now, another response to another mystery reader! I'm very sad to hear of your brownie woes. You should most definitely try again because brownies are pretty easy to master and (especially in Berlin) people can't seem to get enough of them. (For work, I make brownies more often than any dessert.) As I wasn't in your kitchen, I can't say for sure what went wrong, but if you didn't forget any ingredients it sounds like you might have underbaked them? (Underbaked brownies are not-so-secretly one of my favorite things - in high school, we would half-bake a pan of brownies and dump ice cream into the warm pan. yum.) I can see, however, that you might actually want to cut squares and serve them to civilized people. For brownies, the flour you use shouldn't make a huge difference, but I use 550 for most dessert-baking and 1050 when I make bread. I seem to get better results when I don't use a cheap brand (such as Ja!), although I tend toward the Bio, so I haven't experimented enough to say if this is real and I don't think Ja!-type flour would ruin brownies either. I admit to running out of one or the other from time to time, though, and substituting without too much catastrophe. In terms of substituting the German granulated brown sugar for white sugar, that shouldn't have made a huge difference either. Try again and bake them until a toothpick or the point of a knife comes out fairly clean with just a few crumbs clinging to it. Or send the pan my way....I have a new freezer (!) so I can even add ice cream now!

Valentinstagschenken aus einem Karton

Lest you think I had forgotten, heart-shaped food is still my favorite part of Valentine's Day. I managed to score a box of avocados while working my latest random job: making finger food for a Dutch fruit-importing company during the recent Fruit Logistica trade show. (Oddly enough, they did not want any fruit in the finger food???) If you've ever been to a big trade show, you're familiar with the stands that the presenters set up to show case their wares. The Dutch fruit importers build a little kitchen of sorts (no stove or oven...) in the back of their stand. This was basically a box without a top in the middle of a giant room without any windows. I spent three days in said box constantly shooing the hostesses (these girls in tiny dresses who make espressos and giggle at the offensive comments made by fruit (or other) business men are a way-outdated trend that needs to be retired) out of my way. Anyway, Dutch fruit importers pay really well, as it turns out, so it was well worth it, though I wasn't too sad when the job ended and I could come out of the box. Anyway, by the time I had a chance to make the rounds, most of the fruit that was up for grabs had been distributed (they do sell fruit here, but it's so much more fun to score things for free), but I did manage to snag a bunch of American pears (the American pear people had a poster of Obama in their stand and I saw one group of fruit people taking their picture with it...heehee) and a box of avocados, which we enjoyed in a variety of preparations (I've discovered that the big Turkish grocery store near us sells very decent, almost Sonoran-style flour torillas (who knew?) so quesadillas and burritos were on the menu). The most picturesque, however, was our Valentine's Day breakfast: heart-shaped avocado on a roll pretending to be a bagel with cream cheese and lox.

Now we're are off to Vienna for a long weekend. Alas, mein Mann, has to work for two of those days, but I intend to devote my attention to the strudel, Tafelspitz, schnitzel, and other delights (maybe a museum or two, as well)!

Eingeschneit

Berlin always has winter (sometimes even in summer), but this is the first year we've had significant snow. I really enjoy the snow - I think I have a Pavlovian reaction and associate it with the excitement of a day off school. Snow spices things up a bit - it's like a decoration for the chilly weather. I chose to go to college in central Maine, so don't get me wrong: I like snow. But things are getting out of hand here: we have a healthy amount of snow on the ground (and it is snow again as I type, but nobody here shovels the sidewalks and only the most central of streets are plowed. Temperatures haven't gone above freezing and the sun hasn't even peaked through the clouds in the two weeks we've been back so the snow is just accumulating, lingering on the sidewalks, tripping old ladies and making a short walk to the grocery store feel like a long jog on the beach. I have personally witnessed how different locales with varying climates handle snow successfully, from snow-panicky DC to unphasable central Maine: I know snow can be dealt with! (On a semi-related note, in Barcelona they literally hosed the city down every night.) With snow (and not a single ray of sunshine, I might add) forecast on and off for the next ten days, I fear that the situation is getting a little out of control. Do I need to invest in a nice pair of waders?

There is one thing that almost makes up for this barbarity (I know, I touched on this last year, too, but I'm trying not to be 100% negative): small children are now pulled everywhere on toboggans (some of them have little seats to strap in toddlers)! It's really the cutest thing ever and so delightfully old Europe, don't you think? (I do have to add that the picture to the left where there is obviously a bit of sunshine, is from last year. We have had no sunshine at all in 2010.) Check out these toboggans locked up in front of an elementary school (where you would normally find bikes). Is that not charming?! The other day I saw two guys pick up a huge package from the post office and take it home on their toboggan! If only someone would pull me around town....

Wunsch abgeleistet

We actually walked by a cab with this sign on top just before we left for our American holiday.

It was great to be home. Even the things that drive me crazy about the US feel comfortingly familiar. My three-year anniversary in Berlin is fast-approaching (when did this happen?!), which means I've lived outside the US for about 4 years now. I am certainly used to Berlin at this point and it is also home, but it still lacks the familiarity of the US.

To answer my mystery reader's question, (side note: why do people keep trying to sell things in the comment section here? I think I have about 13 regular readers...) considering that I didn't speak any German upon moving here (words like Bier and Bratwurst and Radio aside), I have learned a lot of German. It was actually easier to learn than I had been led to expect: the whole deal with putting the verb at the end of the sentence is really not such a big thing to master. I tend to be quick to gain comprehension in foreign languages (although my sample size is pretty small) and I can follow most any conversation (unless it's very technical), watch movies without subtitles, talk on the phone, etc. I can also mostly always say what I need to say in social situations, as well as more formal settings like the doctor or the bank, but I struggle a lot with expressing complex or subtle concepts and I'm still not at the point where I really feel like my personality gets across 100%. In case you're wondering, yes this is frustrating if you are trying to market your small business auf Deutsch. Of course more immersion would do wonders, but I work alone most of the time and mein Mann and I have only in the last few months really started speaking German together at home. If I had a Euro for every person who told me/us that we should have spoken German together from the start, I could buy something of consequence, but they were wrong (and I'm not a good consumer anyway (except at the grocery store)). Of course I wish my German were better today, but I didn't move to the Fatherland to learn German, I moved here to get to know a German and 2.5 weddings (to the same person, of course...) later, I think I did OK. So that was probably way more on learning German that you, mysterious reader, wanted, but there you have it...

Anyway, it was great to be stateside: the food (dungenness crab, broccoli rabe (why in this land of Italy-worshippers and bitter green-eaters, do they not sell this here?), eggnog, multiple Mexican meals, late-night dumplings in Chinatown, olive oil-poached squid, early birthday cake), the people who care about food, the in-house cookbook library, the over-the-top Christmas decorations, having most of my favorite people in one timezone, the tangible New York Times, top sheets, blue skies, snow in Central Park, 2xTerriers....

Beschäftigt in der Küche

It has been a while - but 'tis the season and I've been busy in the kitchen....

As proof/justification for my lack of writing, I offer a few images:

Thanksgiving pies waiting to be picked up (I can accept the fact that I had to import pie pans (though you do have to pity a culture that doesn't even know about, let alone appreciate (worship?) pie), but the fact that I was forced to house them in pizza boxes (which work OK for pumpkin, but are seriously too shallow for a proper apple) because this supposedly cosmopolitan city doesn't have a single store selling baking supplies (a la New York Cake Supplies). You must be able to order them from somewhere, but still....

Christmas Linzer Cookies (particularly delicious delicious with my foraged plum jam). Thanks to Martha Stewart for the Christmas tree cut-out idea (and the recipe, which I highly recommend as the dough is surprisingly workable and the finished product even better than I had expected: after sampling a single cookie, one customer immediately ordered a kilo.)

And a marshmallow snowman awaiting his perch atop a chocolate cupcake. This guy and his cohorts were sold at a Christmas Bazaar at an international school here (part of my attempt to teach myself marketing/self-promotion). I really can't tell you how defenseless small children are in the face of these guys. I felt almost guilty. (Again, I have to give some credit to Martha (the woman (or her staff) does have good ideas), but not all that much as hers look a lot more like birds than snowmen. And I couldn't get behind the beret look...).


Finally, on a totally unrelated note, a shot from the cemetery down the street. While I'm not a cemetery person, I have to admit the Germans do this better than we do. Each plot is almost a little garden with loved ones regularly tending to the plants, making cemeteries feel less desolate, which I think is a nice thing. Who wants to spend eternity in desolate sterility? One of the cemeteries in my old neighborhood had an actual and frequented playground within its walls. And a different cemetery in my new neighborhood (where the brothers Grimm are supposedly buried) includes a cafe. But, of course they are still German cemeteries so the plots are neatly arranged (no wild flowers growing into the neighbor's plot now!). And in this photo, you can see that the various people who come to tend to the mini gardens keep their personal watering cans on-site and they are all Germanically locked up so that nobody can steal them!

Berlin: eine angsteinflößende Stadt

Not a new expat sentiment, but holidays outside of the US (or wherever it is you call home) are not the easiest of times. Especially holidays that are totally ignored (or worse, incorrectly celebrated) by the rest of world. I will say that my neighborhood threw a pumpkin/squash festival (in German Kürbis is the word for both). It was fairly tame and not all that pumpkin- or squash-focused, although they were selling over-priced pumpkins and squash. My absolute favorite part was the kids running around in giant plastic bubbles. Alas, I didn't have my camera with me, but of course somebody else documented this bizarre activity at some other festival. I guess they are sort of pumpkin-shaped?

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday (after my birthday, which Germany has also yet to do justice to). So this year, I decided to take matters into my own hands and we threw a Halloween party (costumes mandatory). I have to say, I was really pleasantly shocked that almost all of our guests wore costumes (maybe the Germans take "mandatory" literally?). We had cowboys and indians, pirates and angels, Cruella DeVille, Karate Kids, James Bond, and some generally creepy-looking Krauts. And, to our great surprise, we even had a group of trick-or-treaters! They say Halloween is taking off here (and if you were a German kid, isn't it the holiday you'd want to copy?) - the costume store down the street had a line out the door for three days solid. Still, living in an apartment (as opposed to a freestanding house with a welcoming front porch light) a ways from the areas of Berlin known for high numbers of expats, we were were not prepared. We lamely offered them our bowl of unwrapped candy (gummy rats, bats, and cats) from our party buffet (it seemed like a safer choice than finger pretzels or lychee eyeballs). I think the American paranoia regarding tainted candy hasn't made it here yet and they seemed pretty excited that some fairly unimpressive costumes merits free candy.

ps. For those keeping count, my New York Times columnists in Berlin sightings count is up to three!

Himmel und Erde (mit Bäume)

We are still working our way through those Jüterbog apples (the pears having been mostly dealt with thanks to Susan's vanilla pear jam recipe and a somewhat disappointing pear & chocolate torte). If I were in possession of a freezer, I'd no doubt freeze a bunch of applesauce for applesauce cake and muffins in the coming months, but as I am not and the pantry is jam-packed (no pun intended! Could this be where this phrase comes from?!) with jars of jam already.... I decided to take advantage of the sale on Blutwurst (blood sausage) and have another go at traditional German food (which as previously mentioned, I seldom cook or even eat strange as it may sound, but I have important work to do here, like converting mein Mann to pimento cheese, which I made today for lunch).

Himmel und Erde or "Heaven and Earth" is, according to Wikipedia, a typical west German dish with a bunch of regional variations. Basically, it's mashed potatoes with applesauce or cooked apples mixed in. In some parts of Germany, potatoes are called Erdäpfel (earth apples) and thus the source of the dish's name: Heaven (from the tree apples) and Earth (from the earth apples). I associate it with Blutwurst (perhaps because the recipe in my mother-in-law's German cookbook says to serve them together), but after a bit of internet research, it turns out that this combination is the Cologner/Dusseldorfer way, whereas other towns pair it with regular old Bratwurst or the German equivalent of fried bologna. I'm sure other porky things have been known to make an appearance. Caramelized onions are a common topping.

Himmel and Erde was, if I do say so myself, delicious (if not particularly photogenic - sorry). I was a bit worried about the combination of cooked apples and potatoes ... it seemed a bit like a baby food experiment gone wrong, but it was creamy and tangy and we ate it all. I've had the good fortune of living in several blood sausage-loving countries so far and today's version is giving Spain a run for its money. I think if you ordered Himmel und Erde at a restaurant, you would be hard pressed to find anything green on your plate, but while I can put away blood sausage with the best of them, I do like a bit of veg to round out my plate. So the version of Himmel und Erde typical of my apartment has trees (Bäume), which seems like an obvious addition to heaven and earth if you ask me....