Euro­pean adventures

What a whirl­wind the last month has been.  I am sor­ry to have been so qui­et, but it’s been a mad­house here.

This is eas­i­ly explained.  I’ve been so focused on get­ting myself a real life — as opposed to a life spent watch­ing Avery grow up, as sweet as that has been — that I did­n’t com­plete­ly under­stand how the seeds of my ideas would sprout.  It all start­ed with bell­ring­ing, of course, and being new Tow­er Sec­re­tary has been a lot of fun.  Part of my new job has been to set up a blog for us to report on our out­ings, spe­cial ser­vices, record­ings and par­ties.  It’s all a bla­tant attempt to keep our four teenage ringers inter­est­ed.  They bring so much laugh­ter and ener­gy to the atmos­phere at Sat­ur­day practices!

Then there is my train­ing for social work with Home-Start, the social work vol­un­teer project.  Every Thurs­day finds me spend­ing all day in a rather bleak office build­ing in a near­by vil­lage, sit­ting in a cir­cle with about 15 oth­er vol­un­teers, lis­ten­ing to hour after hour of intense lec­tures and exer­cis­es on the most depress­ing sit­u­a­tions fac­ing fam­i­lies in our bor­ough.  Spe­cial­ists come in to teach us about encoun­ter­ing mul­ti­ple births, birth defects, every sort of abuse you can imag­ine, alco­hol and drug, emo­tion­al and sex­u­al, and last week, post-natal (or post-par­tum as we say in Amer­i­ca) depres­sion.  We brain­storm, take notes, gath­er in groups and share our reac­tions to pos­si­ble scenarios.

Some­day in April, I will final­ly be ready to turn up at my des­ig­nat­ed clients’ fam­i­ly home, to do what­ev­er is required of me.  “We make it clear that you are not babysit­ters, or house­clean­ers,” our train­ers repeat.  But then they smile.  “And yet a lot of times you’ll find that just to pitch in and do a load of laun­dry is what an exhaust­ed mum needs, while she feeds her twins, or you’ll take a baby to the park so the mum has a moment to sit down and play dol­l’s hous­es with her tod­dler.  Some­times you will just sit and lis­ten, while she talks, or cries.”

And I’ve had a spate of writ­ing assign­ments!  Soon there will be a new issue of the bril­liant Vin­tage Mag­a­zine out of New York, and it will con­tain a piece by me about the joys and won­ders of the AGA stove.

I’ve been hard at work writ­ing for a new web­site, Hand­Picked Nation, the brain­child of Staci Strauss and Craig McCord, two artists who used to show in my Tribeca Gallery.   They are pas­sion­ate about food — and very fun­ny — and it’s excit­ing to con­tribute.  Last­ly, I’ve been hired to con­tribute a piece to my beloved EXTREME­LY spe­cial­ist mag­a­zine, “The Ring­ing World.”

I’ve been busi­ly cook­ing, of course.  In this blus­tery, winter/spring grey­ness that is Lon­don in Feb­ru­ary and March, I’d be per­fect­ly hap­py eat­ing noth­ing but meat­balls and mashed pota­toes every night, but I do real­ize it’s my job to pro­vide some health­i­er, more var­ied fare as well.  Hence, my newest offering.

Super­Food Salad

(serves 2)

1 bunch small beets

3 tbsps olive oil

fresh black pepper

1 avo­ca­do, sliced and driz­zled with lemon juice

2 arti­chokes, trimmed down to the heart, sliced very thin, driz­zled with lemon juice

4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

hand­ful small toma­toes, quartered

hand­ful rock­et leaves

dress­ing (option­al): 1/3 cup olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, 1 tbsp Dijon mus­tard, 1 tbsp pre­pared horse­rad­ish, 1 tbsp mayonnaise

Cut the scrubbed, unpeeled beets in quar­ters and driz­zle with olive oil, then sprin­kle with fresh black pep­per and toss till beets are coat­ed with oil.  Roast at 425F/220C for 30 min­utes.  Cool while you pre­pare the rest of the salad.

On indi­vid­ual plates, arrange the oth­er ingre­di­ents and driz­zle with dress­ing if want­ed (this sal­ad is per­fect­ly good with­out).  Arranged the beets on top and serve with a bit of baguette.

****************

As if this weren’t all enough to keep me busy, we’ve had end­less din­ner guests to enter­tain us.  Friends from Amer­i­ca, friends from Lon­don, friends from Cam­bridge, friends from Mexico…

AND I spent Mon­day of this week in… Paris!  Well, I say I spent the day there.  It would be fair­er to say I spent the day in the train, with a brief inter­lude in the City of Lights.  A pow­er fail­ure AND a track fire great­ly delayed my arrival there, but it was all worth it to see Lin­da Mee­han, my beloved singing teacher from high school.  I haven’t seen her for 22 years!  But noth­ing had changed.  Her beau­ti­ful, gen­tle smile and voice were just the same.

We talked non­stop over an enor­mous plat­ter of pates, ril­lettes, hams and salamis.  Then we head­ed off to see the Eif­fel Tow­er, shiv­er­ing in the blowy ear­ly-spring weath­er.  Walk­ing back toward the train sta­tion — I had only three hours with them! — we encoun­tered some of Avery’s favorite street art.

A brief shop­ping trip down the aching­ly tempt­ing Rue Cler yield­ed cheeses from La Fro­magerie Cler, duck liv­er pate from a del­i­catessen filled with every deli­cious pre­pared food you could pos­si­bly want.  What a street.  What a city.

The jour­ney back to Lon­don that evening almost, but not quite, spoiled the fun of the day.  Eight hours!  Eight hours that was meant to be two!  Hun­gry babies cried, nico­tine-deprived would-be smok­ers fumed, train con­duc­tors fend­ed off fran­tic ques­tion­ing with remark­able calm.  I stood in the cor­ri­dor and chat­ted with fel­low pas­sen­gers, my col­lo­qui­al French explod­ing with new vocab­u­lary every minute!  And I met a love­ly Swiss girl as my seat­mate, so at least I made a new friend.  But when the taxi pulled up at home at 3 a.m., I felt as if I’ve been put through a mincer.

Trav­el!  Peo­ple say it is broad­en­ing.  Cer­tain­ly it is an adven­ture, and an exhaust­ing invest­ment in the mem­o­ries that have to last us a life­time.  This was our expe­ri­ence on our recent trip to Berlin, with­out a doubt.

The three of us swept up Avery’s chum Daisy and head­ed off one Sun­day evening, to vis­it a city none of us has ever seen.  I can’t remem­ber the time that was the case.  Nor­mal­ly one of us knows what’s going on!  But it was new to all of us.

It was a jour­ney more than a hol­i­day, with Berlin’s des­per­ate, lone­ly, trag­ic char­ac­ter larg­er than life on the world stage.  It is real­ly an unsu­al atmos­phere: a city root­ed in the past, but not in the way of any place I have been before.  Berlin is root­ed in a sad, shame­ful past that every­one is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly memo­ri­al­iz­ing on every street cor­ner, and also try­ing to for­get, to put away in a draw­er and move on with the future.

At the same time, there is a youth­ful buoy­an­cy to the cul­ture, a joy in cul­tur­al expres­sion that rais­es graf­fi­ti to an art form.

I’m not sure I would have rec­og­nized that with­out our two teenagers to appre­ci­ate it, and record it with their cameras.

We decid­ed to rent an apart­ment rather than stay in a hotel, as is our habit ever since we went to Venice sev­er­al years ago and I was in a fever of frus­tra­tion at not being able to cook.  Hav­ing to fig­ure out where to shop for ingre­di­ents, how to express what and how many of some­thing you want in a lan­guage you’re not flu­ent in, gets you right under the tourist expe­ri­ence and gives you a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Berliner.

We arrived late at night and stood shiv­er­ing out­side our apart­ment build­ing, wait­ing for the own­er to bring the key.  “Let’s go explor­ing, girls,” I said.  “John can wait for the key”  So we saun­tered down the street in the for­mer East Berlin neigh­bour­hood of Mitte, pass­ing seedy shops and dusty sushi bars, peer­ing into dark­ened phar­ma­cies and “lebens­mit­te­len,” which are the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of con­ve­nience stores.

We popped into one shop, shab­by and piled high with shelves full of box­es and jars in a lan­guage we could not under­stand.  In the increas­ing­ly Star­bucks-ized mod­ern world, I love find­ing myself in a place that is tru­ly of its own cul­ture.  We picked up the essen­tials: a loaf of white bread I would nev­er nor­mal­ly buy in Lon­don or Amer­i­ca, but it was “brot”, it was Ger­man, it was local.  It had to be good.  I felt just the same about a pack­age of what looked like Kraft Amer­i­can cheese, not some­thing I would ordi­nar­i­ly suc­cumb to, but it was “Kase” which sound­ed exot­ic, so into the bas­ket it went.  A box of “Eier,” eggs, a pack­age of “Speck,” a Ger­man bacony sort of meat, and a car­ton of what I could trans­late as “super high in Vit­a­min C orange juice,” and I could project tomorrow’s break­fast.  The girls, of course, bought Ger­man chocolate.

Our break­fast next day exceed­ed all our greedy expec­ta­tions.  There is noth­ing like a Euro­pean egg, its yolk a bright improb­a­ble orange, its flavour incom­pa­ra­bly rich.  And the “Speck”!  Glossy with a per­fect fat­ti­ness, salty and crisp.  The bread and cheese glowed with preser­v­a­tives and roman­ti­cism.  We were shored up for our day of tourism.

Our first adven­ture was a spon­ta­neous vis­it to the Berlin­is­che Galerie.  What a sub­lime col­lec­tion of mod­ern art, so much of it polit­i­cal, trag­ic, as so much of every­thing is in Berlin.

From there we found our­selves in the Jew­ish Muse­um, whose instal­la­tions by Daniel Lieb­skind were over­whelm­ing­ly sad, hope­less, trag­ic.  Here is a detail from the Holo­caust Tow­er: end­less con­crete walls, freez­ing cold, almost no light.  A place with­out hope.

This was a lad­der whose low­est rung was just, tan­ta­liz­ing­ly, too high for the tallest human being to reach.  It stretched up into total dark­ness in the ceiling.

There was an instal­la­tion of cast-iron faces, 10,000 of them, each an expres­sion of loss and hor­ror, some tiny like a baby’s.

We were over­whelmed, emo­tion­al, tired and hun­gry.  Just the sort of state in which peo­ple make impul­sive deci­sions like pop­ping in for lunch at the near­by Yez­da’s Din­er.

I do not know who Yez­da is, so I can­not blame her for what was a ter­ri­ble meal.  “How can food be this shiny and hard?” Avery won­dered rhetor­i­cal­ly as she poked at the cheese­burg­er she and Daisy had each ordered.

We escaped into the street and walked along feel­ing we’d swal­lowed a tire, and prompt­ly came upon this gem, Soup Kul­tur.  Oh, I want to go back to Berlin right now, just remem­ber­ing the menu in the win­dow.   Creamy toma­to soup, leek and “Kartof­feln,” pota­to soup, and best of all, “Rosi’s Häh­nchen Peni­cillin,” which at first puz­zled us and made me doubt my abil­i­ty to read menu German.

Sud­den­ly I remem­bered the clichéd New York expres­sion that chick­en soup is Jew­ish peni­cillin.  “Häh­nchen,” chick­en.  Please promise me that if you go to Berlin, you will vis­it “Soup Kul­tur” and report back.

We did not let our scary lunch scare us.  We wan­dered past Check­point Char­lie, which was an anti­cli­max.  It was impos­si­ble to believe in the his­tor­i­cal stand­offs that took place here.

The girls posed by the wall, again, stripped of its menace.

We vis­it­ed a muse­um that housed the Stasi papers, and stopped to take in the bronze plates in the ground that indi­cat­ed where the wall had stood.

From there we walked, end­less­ly, to the Bran­den­burg Gate which stopped us all in our tracks with its majesty.

And onto our tour of the Bun­destag, the Ger­man Par­lia­ment, with its Russ­ian graf­fi­ti inside, uncov­ered as evi­dence of the lib­er­at­ing Russ­ian sol­diers’ pres­ence in 1945.

Oh, the dome of that Par­lia­ment!  Sure­ly one would make more intel­li­gent deci­sions in such an atmosphere.

After  that exhaust­ing day, we dropped into a super­mar­ket on our way home and, leav­ing the girls to peruse the shelves of for­eign tooth­paste and sham­poo, I bought ingre­di­ents for spaghet­ti car­bonara, tak­ing advan­tage of a pos­i­tive SLAB of “Speck” which lent its smoky mag­ic to the sauce, along with the grat­ed “Kaiserkase,” a hard Ger­man cheese sim­i­lar to Gruyere.

The next day we made our way across town, pass­ing the incred­i­ble Berlin Cathe­dral which sim­ply did not look real, and dropped int­to the fas­ci­nat­ing time cap­sule that is the DDR Muse­um.  We all agreed to have lunch first at the well-reviewed muse­um cafe, so as not to be dis­tract­ed in the muse­um by hunger pangs.  It is true: we were no longer hun­gry.  But not in a good way.

We decid­ed each to order some­thing dif­fer­ent, so as to have a vari­ety of things to try.  It was not a suc­cess.  Four dif­fer­ent types of “Fleisch,” meat, in var­i­ous unpleas­ant sauces.  “At least my dish is list­ed on the menu as being Erik Honecker’s favourite,” John said, lead­ing us all to have a new the­o­ry of why the Berlin wall fell.  Honeck­er was too hun­gry to object.  The best thing we had at lunch was Vita-Cola, East Ger­many’s 1957 answer to Pep­si and Coke.  You can order it in reg­u­lar flavour, or “black” (they taste exact­ly the same).

Is it pos­si­ble to feel nos­tal­gic for some­thing you’ve nev­er had?  Wurst!  Real Ger­man Wurst and sauer­kraut, from a street cart.  We passed so many of these carts, and also lit­tle huts adver­tis­ing var­i­ous types of true Ger­man wurst, includ­ing “Cur­ry­wurst,” the notion of which obsessed me the whole of our hol­i­day.  What could it be?  A hot dog in a cur­ry sauce?  A wurst made from a pig raised on cur­ry pow­der?  The girls hus­tled me past all such carts, hav­ing a youth­ful dis­dain for weird-sound­ing food.  But the thought of what could have been haunts me now we’re home.

On a long walk through the East Berlin neigh­bor­hood of Mitte, the girls found end­less dis­plays of the city’s famous graf­fi­ti art to photograph.

(Won­der­ful­ly, this graf­fi­ti says, “This is not a pho­to opportunity.”)

I, hap­pi­ly, found Bio Com­pa­ny.

This store was like a mini-Whole Foods, a pos­i­tive mec­ca for organ­ic pro­duce, meat, cheeses and the inim­itable dis­play of cured meats that only Ger­many can pro­duce.  I bought more than I actu­al­ly need­ed because the atmos­phere was so beguil­ing.  I tried out my Ger­man on the dairy stock­ing lady because I sim­ply could­n’t stay silent.  “I LOVE your shop!”  She looked at me in total bewil­der­ment and then hand­ed me a con­tain­er of sheep­’s milk yogurt, and then anoth­er in a dif­fer­ent fla­vor.  I was puz­zled, until I real­ized that Ger­man for yogurt is “Schaf.”  She must have thought I was some bizarre Amer­i­can cul­tured-milk fanat­ic.  “I LOVE your Schaf!”

I bought a pot of “Auberginen Pastete,” egg­plant pate, which proved to be gor­geous, gar­licky and salty with chunks of egg­plant.  I bought a pack­age of “Lieblings-Puffer,” a sort of pota­to pan­cakes described on the label as “thick and crispy.”  I fig­ured out what “Rinde” meant (beef) and picked up four gor­geous fil­lets, a head of gar­lic, a pile of mush­rooms and a quan­ti­ty of thick Ger­man cream.  I had to be dragged out of the shop kick­ing and scream­ing.   That night I cooked hap­pi­ly in our tiny Ikea kitchen, pro­duc­ing a deli­cious­ly savory, creamy mush­room sauce for our steaks.  The pota­to pancakes?

Well, I was ham­pered by not being able to read the instruc­tions, which it turned out involved fry­ing in a quan­ti­ty of an oil I did not have.  They were a bit pecu­liar, just baked, but we were hap­py any­way, chew­ing and chat­ting and lis­ten­ing to the night­ly news and pick­ing up the odd word or two.

In the morn­ing, on our last day, John took us to an absolute find, the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall.  Here artists from all over the world have been asked to con­tribute paint­ings and poems to this long, long frag­ment of the Wall, stretch­ing as far as the eye could see.

Final­ly we made our way back across town to our final lunch in Berlin. Oy vey.

This cafe was actu­al­ly a des­ti­na­tion, writ­ten up in the Ger­man Elle mag­a­zine I perused in a vin­tage cloth­ing store while Avery and Daisy tried on every gar­ment in the place.  It was also fea­tured in the cute “Wall­pa­per” guide to Berlin we’d brought along, as being the “best baked pota­to restau­rant in Berlin.”  “Sure­ly it is the ONLY baked pota­to restau­rant in Berlin,” John said.  In any case, we made our way to Bix­els, a charm­ing black-board-lined room fur­nished with a giant com­mu­ni­ty farm­house table and redo­lent of the crunchy, brown, salty smell of baked pota­toes.  What could go wrong?

 We three ladies ordered the truf­fle oil/goat/cheese/spinach/yogurt ver­sion.  John went for the Argen­tine beef/carrot/apple/yogurt ver­sion.  “Unusu­al,” I vol­un­teered cheer­ful­ly.  And COLD, as it turned out. We chewed in silence for a time, try­ing des­per­ate­ly to think of some­thing pos­i­tive to say.  Final­ly the girls swept aside their top­pings and brought up tiny frag­ments of still-warm pota­to, gasp­ing for air from under the weight of cold yogurt.

Walk­ing back to the apart­ment, we passed Viet­namese restau­rants, Thai restau­rants, end­less sushi restau­rants.  I felt regret­ful that I had suc­cumbed to my desire to eat only Ger­man food while we were in Berlin.  Maybe eth­nic food is the way to go?  Or Rosi’s Penicillin.

We were exhaust­ed.  Berlin had shown us many things, had stretched our imag­i­na­tion, had shown us a glimpse into the past and the present fused together.

It was time to go home.  At the air­port I suc­cumbed to a vac­u­um-packed trio of “cur­ry­wursts” which I put in my hand­bag.  In the flur­ry of unpack­ing at home, I left them there, in my bag, overnight.  In the morn­ing I thought, “Food poi­son­ing from an unre­frig­er­at­ed air­port snack would be such an igno­min­ious way to die,” and pitched them in the rubbish.

We’ve recov­ered from our trip and set­tled into real life.  For me this means Home-Start train­ing in the morn­ing.  Deep breath.  I’m ready.