A Dublin Weekend

So, we are just back from our whirlwind weekend in Dublin. I have to say that it was quite weird to be back, especially since we were really only there for a day and a half. It was like my brain was in Berlin but my body was in Dublin - very unsettling. We arrived on Saturday evening and basically went more or less straight from the airport to our friend Daithi's 40th birthday party (the main reason for our visit).

It was held upstairs at the Teacher's Club on Parnell Square in a lovely restored Georgian room with high ceilings and chandeliers. The room was packed with all Daithi's friends and family, lots of tasty sandwiches and even a couple of musicians in the corner that played all night. It was great to see everyone there.

Another part of the entertainment was this very funny questionnaire that Daithi's wife Bridget made up. The theme of it was 'So you think you know Daithi Doolan?' and consisted of questions all about his life, from where he went to secondary school to when he left Ireland for London, to what his favourite joke is, which by the way he made up himself (How do you spot a kinky chicken? He's into studs and feathers (?!)). Needless to say that his mother and his auntie won the competition, though I think that Eric might have helped them with that joke.

And let us not forget the cake! Daithi's wife Bridget got a delicious Black Forest gateaux big enough for 60 people and 40 candles. Daithi, of course, with the pair of lungs that he has had no problems blowing them out!

It was also great to see our friends' kids, whom we miss seeing over here. Above is a photo of Baby Peter, Dee and Richie's little one (with Richie and Michael) who has grown alot in the six weeks we have been gone. He is just plain gorgeous, with a smile for every person he sees.

And there is probably no introduction needed for this pair - Siofra and Paddy. We went to see them on Sunday morning and boy, were they excited! (So were we of course). I wish we could have brought them back to Berlin with us, though I think Bridget might have had something to say about that.

Then we went on to my Mum's house where we had lunch. It was really nice to see her and to spend so time with her. Her garden looks amazing at the moment, though you can't really see it from this photo. Talk about green fingers! (It may have been sunny but it was bitter, which is why I am all bundled up).

And lastly, this is a photo of her dog Kanu (named after a former Arsenal striker) which I just had to post. Check it out! He's not the smartest dog on the block but when I said 'Cheese!' for the photo, he actually gave me a grin! Freaky.

Do we do anything other than eat?

Re: the title of the blog - I was just voicing what I know you all must be thinking. And the answer is 'yes, of course!!!' but not that you can tell from reading this blog. And just to add to the food fanatic image, here is another foodie post. Monday just gone was another bank holiday here in Germany and we kindly let our friend Joydeep come over and cook for us!

Above is pic of Joydeep doing just that. Joydeep was originally our neighbour (he has moved out since) and we befriended him over chats about German cake and the Democratic nomination race in the US. He is currently finishing off a PhD in Philosophy and is a Professor in Indian philosophy in waiting. And he is also a foodie, just like us.

We were very excited (as above photo of Eric shows) as Joydeep spent the afternoon cooking us a delicious vegetarian Indian meal, using lentils, tomatoes and the spices in the first photo. It was accompanied by a delicious fried cabbage dish with roasted peanuts and served with rice and cucumber raita. Mmmmm!

Below are the boys getting stuck in - very serious work!

And lastly we had a warm Indian dessert made with milk, vermicelli, raisins, and cardamom pods. Oh, and two slices of cake from the bakery down the road, but to be honest they could have just as well have been decoration as they hardly got a forkful taken from them - the Indian dessert was that good! It was like a really fragrant version of a rice pudding, but with vermicelli. So that was that - not bad going for a bank holiday eh? Non-foodie post on the way - I promise!

Karneval!

This weekend in Berlin was Karneval der Kulturen weekend! This is an annual event in Kreuzberg area of the city, which usually coincides with one of the bank holiday weekends. We had been hearing about this weekend since we got to the city six weeks ago. Nearly everyone we have met has said to us 'you can't miss the Karneval', so we were really looking forward to it.

It's basically a 3-day knees-up to herald in the summer, with a parade and music and food. Whole streets are shut off and everyone comes out to celebrate the arrival of the blessed sunshine. It's all very tribal and lots of fun. We decided to head down on Saturday with our new friend Kanako. Kanako is in our language class and is from Osaka, Japan. She has very good English so we communicate in a strange mixture of English and German, or Germlish as you might call it.

We arrived at about noon to Blucherplatz where all the stalls were and it was already very packed. There were people as far as the eye could see. I think we spent a good two hours wandering around and we didn't even see the half of it. The festival is about celebrating all the different cultures in Berlin so in the square there were vendors selling food from as farflung places as the Sudan to Sweden. There were lots of street performers - breakdancers, bellydancers etc. - and vendors selling all kinds of clothes and knick-knacks. Unfortunately the battery to our camera died so all these pics are courtesy of Kanako's camera.

Here is a pic of Kanako and Eric with their new sunglasses that they bought from the grumpiest man in the world (honestly, it was like he wanted to keep all his sunglasses for himself). Anyway, the glasses were super cheap 5 euros, you can't go wrong! Eric says this is his home-boy pose.

Part of the concourse was an organic market where all the stalls gave free samples of organic goods. We basically had our lunch here - we got lentil stew with rice, chocolates, coffee, cake. All for free! This is a very happy Eric testing an organic beer. I have figured out that Eric's favourite four-letter word in the whole wide world is 'F-R-E-E' - check out that grin!

And lastly this is a very nice picture of the two of us that Kanako kindly took. We were there for nearly four hours and left nicely tired and full. Viva la Karneval!

Market Mania

One of the things we like best about Berlin so far are the open air markets. It's here the small producers come out to show off their wares, and where you can enjoy a grocery shopping experience outside of the usual supermarket confines. To me it feels very continental and there's something about the buzz of seeing all the lovely fruit and veg set out and the vendors passionately extolling the virtues of their homemade bread, cake, cheese, or what have you, that is just plain fun.

Our favourites so far have been the market in Winterfeldplatz. This is located in the Schoneburg/Tiergarten area of the city in a small square, and surrounded by lots of little cafes to rest up after buying the weekly shop.

Another favourite is our local market in Kollwitzplatz, literally five minutes from our apartment. This little market is completely organic, with all the products from clothes to bread being 100% organic. One of the vendors has THE best waffles ever - made with buckwheat flour and served hot with cinnamon sugar, or Nutella if you are feeling decadent.

Last in this selection, but definitely not least, is the Turkish market in Kreuzberg. This buzzy area is known for its Turkish population, first- and second-generation and the market has that Middle-Eastern feel. You can get dried pulses, couscous, rice to Turkish sweets to freshly made flatbreads, olives galore and big bundles of fresh mint or coriander.

We actually bought most from this fella here. The market covers a range of Middle-Eastern food. This man's stall was called simply 'Die Greche', or 'The Greek'. He had an amazing range of olives and seafood to hummus, baba-ganoush and sundried tomatoes. He was quite the character and ended up giving us as many free samples as stuff we ended up buying. Delicious!

And of course, after all that walking around, looking at things and sampling, we needed a little something to keep us going. In my case, a type of fried Spanakopita (pastry filled with spinach and feta), which was very good though quite filling. Check out that grease on the paper!

Tourists in Berlin (Part 1)

I have been meaning to put this post up for about a week now so sorry for the delay. One of the days last week myself and Eric decided to do a bit of sight-seeing around Berlin and to see some other areas around the city. So we hopped on the very efficient U-bahn down to the Schoeneberg/Tiergarten area of town, which is in the former West Berlin.
Our first stop was the Winterfeldt Markt in Winterfeldplatz, a huge outdoor food market that runs twice a week (more on markets here in Berlin later). Then we went walked down Ku'damm, basically the main high street in Berlin, and popped into KaDeWe, known for being Europe's biggest department store. And yes, it was bloody enormous and I would have to say very impressive. They are famed for their sixth floor which is basically a huge delicatessan, where, you can imagine, we spent our time saying 'wow, look at those fish', 'wow, look at those cakes!' You would swear we had never seen food before!

And just so you don't think all we do is look at food in Berlin, here are some photos of other places we went on to see afterwards. Above is the Kaiser Wilheim memorial church which is a major landmark in Berlin. It was built by Kaiser Wilheim II in 1891 but was bombed in WWII. It is now a museum with some impressive photos of Berlin in the late 19th century.
A new church was built right beside it, which we popped into for a couple of minutes. This too was also impressive. It is made using mainly stained glass bricks and is really beautiful inside (see photo).

After that we decided to make a trip to the aquarium, which was nearby. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be. I thought that some of the tanks were too small, particularly for the sharks and the electric eel. They really didn't have that much room at all to swim. I actually found it a bit distressing to look at them. I hope that they will expand it some day as I think it is just too cruel for the poor creatures.

The smaller animals looked fine and happy however, such as the reptiles (see above) and the jellyfish (below). (Doesn't the lizard above look like a mini dinosaur?)

Movie Night

Eric and I went to our local cinema the other night - Das Film Cafe. It is a small, funky cafe just around the corner from us that has muted lighting and comfy vintage furniture. It sells organic coffee, tea, cake and breakfasts (all with film-related titles like 'The Director's Cut' breakfast and 'Leading lady' breakfast). They have a range of film magazines to look at and dvds to borrow. AND, they also show films every night of the week in their basement cinema. Luckily for us, on Monday and Wednesday nights, they also show the film of the week in English or the original version. So this week we decided to toddle along to see what it was like.

I have to say the whole experience encapsulated Berlin for me. We arrived at about 8 o'clock (film to start at 8.20pm). It was 4 euros in, or 6 euros with a drink (Eric got a Beck's and I got an organic lemonade). At about 8.15pm the guy behind the counter said 'Okay, let's go down!' and the seven of us that had gathered by then followed him downstairs in an orderly line (hiliarious!).

We had never seen the cinema before so we had no idea what it was going to be like. To be honest, I thought it was going to be a scabby little room with a blank wall and some plastic chairs. Luckily I was wrong. It turns out that it's a plush little proper cinema, with comfy tiered cinema seats (seating about 20). Yay for us! So we happily settled in to watch the film -
In the Valley of Elah.

I just wanted to write a brief note on this film because I really thought it was excellent. It is from the guy who wrote and directed Crash and Letters from Iwo Jima. It won't be spoiling it to say that is about young soldiers coming back from Iraq. I thought it was a brilliant study of the impact of war on people and it's knock-on effect in society. It was both tender and stark, and just very human. Tommy Lee Jones was also excellent. Go see this film if you can!

So that was it! Our first experience at Das Film Cafe. No adverts, not a peep from any of the other people (no talking on mobiles or eating offensive-smelling liquid cheese), digital film, and great sound quality. In two words - film bliss!

Detox

One of my goals in coming to Berlin was to start being healthy. I have to say that I generally am quite healthy but the few weeks before we left Ireland I ended up mainlining coffee, eating junk and drinking more than my usual (measly) two bottles of beer a week. And I could really feel it. On my last two days I was basically fending off the mother-of-all migraines with copious amount of drugs and having a dermatitis breakout.

To be honest it was probably more the stress of it all than anything else. The weird thing is (and I don't know if any of you are like this) the more stressed I am and the more crap I feel, the more I feel like eating chocolate and drinking wine. Worst of all I end up feeling like I NEED the double espresso just to get going in the morning.

Anyway, I think it all added up and by the time I got here I was ready to start being nicer to myself. That was after two weeks of guzzling the best German beer and attacking every slice of wonderful German cake and morsel of mare's milk chocolate I could get my hands on of course. So last week myself and Eric decided to cut the crap out - meaning lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of water, no alcohol, no caffeine, no sugar and for some reason no carbs (we are not anti-carb people - it just seemed like the right thing to do).

Now I think that I am quite a strong person, with a lot of stamina, but boy was this hard! (Eric was much hardier than me.) I had terrible headaches for the first couple of days and felt really sick and lethargic. Then the crazed hunger set in where all I could think about was food. Regardless of where I was or what I was doing my thought process would go like this: 'Toast. Banana on toast. Banana on toast with peanut butter. Banana on toast with peanut butter and honey.' Like some crazy mantra! Eric got used to the blank, ain't-nobody-home look that would cloud over my eyes.

Anyway, suffice to say that it lasted four days! In fairness to us, it coincided with our first social outings here in Berlin - dinner with our neighbour upstairs and dinner out with Shaun, Dee's brother. If we had stayed friendless, I think we might have lasted longer! I have to say though that we are both feeling much better after our little detox. And we haven't gone wild since then, only re-introducing carbs (hail the almighty carb!), and some cake and beer, but still eating lots of fruits and veg. A balance which is suiting me much better!