Hallo aus Berlin!

quark and currywurst

a food log, since the last two days have been amazing eating days....

yesterday began with a big margarita glass of vanilla quark (like a thick yogurt)topped with a hearty portion of raisins, walnuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, and more. and with a MilchKaffee (milked coffee, served in a dishlike cup) to drink. a lovely cool breeze with leaves falling on my head... amazing. dinner last night was equally memorable. Jeylan made a salad and chicken dish, and with a brisk post-rain wind, we ate out on her 6th story balcony as the sun set.

today's eating involved getting ready to say good-bye to deutschland- a chocolate mousse-filled croissant and the shot of coffee, and i say a shot, because coffee (besides the milchkaffee bowls) is served in very small portions (about 5 sips). i tried a currywurst today since i haven't yet. it is a popular "Imbiss" food item (served from a grab-and-go type stand). they are a sausage/hot dog type dish, topped with curry powder and drenched in ketchup. the name isn't attractive, but i found it surprisingly tasty. though german's like their sausage and bread, they are health consious when it comes to ice cream. i love that it is very common to see people walking around with ice cream in hand. however, ice cream is sold by the scoop. therefore, many people just get one little scoop, and so it is completely acceptable to have icecream on a more regular basis as you are just having a little bit. jeylan and i had amazing ice cream at a chain ice cream shop called "Australian". I was skeptical, but it was definately the best Kugel (scoop) i've had so far in Berlin, probably because is made on the premises. Jeylan's apple tasted just like an apple!

Yesterday I first went to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Park. I'd passed the stop every day to school and was always curious to visit the park, though i hadn't. To my dismay, there was no park, just a bust of Mendelssohn surrounded by overgrown grass.

Nearby is the Musical Instruments Museum, which is affilliated with the Berlin Philharmonie. The museum began with very old stringed instruments and harpsichord-style keyboards from the 16th and 17th centuries. I loved it! I also caught have of a free concert given in a small auditorium within the museum (one reason i went yesterday)- it was two classical guitarists and a viola de gamba player- and the compositions were there own.

Today I did a lot of walking! I began by finding the Carillon (very huge belled instrument many stories high... Duke has one in the tower of the Chapel, that I love hearing in the early evenings at school) in time to hear it play at 12 noon. Then I strolled for quite some time in the Tiergarten. Next I went to a newly trendy, quiant area of Berlin called Hackescher Markt. I found and sat inside a very old Protestant church (SophienKirche) built in 1712. Very lovely and pleasant. An old, shaded cemetary with 18th century graves accompanied the church. In that same area of town, I found the oldest Jewish Cemetary in Berlin, where Moses Mendelssohn's grave is. It was another reminder of the horrors of the Jewish history that ended with the Holocaust. Over 10,000 Jews were buried in the tiny cemetary beginning in the 1700s, and the stones were all destroyed in the war, and nothing remains of any stones today; onely a solitary stone is in the cemetary, and it is the replica of Moses Mendelssohn's.

Ended the afternoon by quickly visiting the Pergamon Museum- it has the Pergamon alter, which is a huge alter of Pergamon, an ancient Greek settlement. The museum also contains incredible remains of ancient societies dating back to 2000 BC.

posted by Jayne @ 3:00 PM