Our traditional Berlin Weekend

My husband's cousin is almost the same age as my husband. He lives in Berlin, and the guys have started a "tradition" to visit him once a year. He is married to beautiful H from Japan.

 A speedy journey to our capitol! The train rode at 125 m/h. The further east, the more snow was on the ground. This weekend was milder most of the time, the snow was melting.

 We were picked up by our cousin and wife and we had lunch in a typical old Berlin pub. Then, we walked to the hotel and dropped our luggage. We had tea with our cousin and then walked to the Xmas market on the "Gendarmenmarkt", a very beautiful square in 1800 style.

It is a very famous market, you even have to pay 1,35$ to get in. There are many  shops with food and drinks, and a sweet hot wine, often with a big sip of rum in it, is a very popular drink on these markets. "Gluehwein trinken" has become a kind of party.

 I was very fond of a shop for shawls and scarves and especially admired the self-grown shawl of the seller who looked very oriental indeed. The shawls were quite expensive, one was there to die for, but it was 73$.

 There was a little craft shop of a jeweller and I saw ceramics, candles, porcellaine, German fairy story glass ornaments for the Xmas tree -- close to kitsch -- and tea shops, spice shops, and so on.

Brushes of all kinds, very nice to look at.
It was incredibly crowded, no place to sit and rest, and the boys had one Gluehwein after another.

 We moved on to a café with a tower made of scrap metal, a piece of art. It was nice to sit for a change!
Then we "travelled" through Berlin once more to reach the place where we wanted to have dinner together.  We did not ride a car the whole day, but walked or took suburban trains or busses.

We had a great meal in the restaurant "Highway 66" -- very tasty and abundant. I was careful not to eat too fat and took a vegetarian noodle dish with extra jalapenos plus fresh mint tea. What a treat! One more drink in another place. I was knocked out when we reached our hotel!

Next morning, we had brunch together and then took a taxi to a remote museum for German expressionist art. There was an exhibition of Erich Heckel, a painter who had been banned by the Nazis as "entartet" -- degenerate art. He was a member of the artists' group "Die Bruecke" -- "The Bridge". A great afternoon!
Then we got on the train back to Hamburg. I had taken a strip of the reptile quilt along and did some stitching during the ride.

A weekend in our capitol

"Wedding" is a Berlin quarter, not what it means in English, but a good place for a party anyway. We were in Moabit, the jail place, not in Wedding. J's cousin H celebrated his birthday on Sunday. He invited us for brunch in a traditional looking Berlin pub. It is decorated with old advertisment panels all over.





After eating and drinking, we sat together, chatting; some of our friends had met again after 20 years. Some had brought their kids, too, and the host's wife H started doing origami for them. I took out my embroidery.




A walk around one of Berlin's flea markets followed. The weather was not too pleasant, but dry which made this walk fun! It is a high quality flea market, no rumble, and the traders know the value of their stuff. The times are over when you could make a bargain because the sellers did not know what they had found in the attics.
There were African masks -- no idea how authentic they are, I don't know about African antiques. And there were very good kilims and woven rugs from Turkey, vintage bethcloths in abundance and oriental jewelry. Statues in whimsical combination, I could not take pictures of all what I'd have liked to show you, because we had appointed to meet again after half an hour which was way too short for this market. I purchased an indonesian print cloth in yellow and ochre, sarong size, for 14 $.

Berlin -- we'll be there

Will this be our new hometown?
At least we'll visit the place to celebrate the birthday of J's cousin.
But there may be more happening. J will have an interview about a possible job. Yesterday, there was a letter in our mailbox, 2 months after he sent out an application for a Hamburg furniture shop. The letter read: "Could you imagine to work in Berlin?" He would be leading the shop, not just be a seller, or -- as he wrote in his application -- do the complaints service. J asked me: "Can you imagine to go to Berlin?"

Oh, wow. He can.
It is much too early to think about it. But it is so tempting! This international, mentally open city is so different from our home. So much more spirit, art, intelligence. Interesting people.
Yes, we can imagine to live there. Both of us have relatives and friends in Berlin. My f-i-l was born there, but his Mom left it with her kids, just before a bomb pulverized the house.

All my life I've had a very loose connection to schoolmates and colleagues; it was only self-chosen relationships that mattered. Very often I had the feeling of not communicating at all. And most of my close friends were foreigners, English, Turkish, Tibetans, Japanese.
Am I living in the wrong country? And could Berlin be a step into the right direction?

A weekend in Berlin

Brandenburg Landscape on the way to Berlin
A dull and grey day in Berlin: Our arrival by bus. We went to see my husband's cousin and his Japanese wife and my husband's closest friends.
View down to the river Havel near Spandau
From East Berlin to Potsdam Square, still reminding of the time when this street was Stalinallee

Berlin is so exiting because you can still read a lot of its history. In Hamburg, all the traces of the past have been eliminated. In Berlin, there is so much they just can't cope too soon.
We slept in our cousin's beautiful 1900 flat under high ceilings with Art Nouveau plaster decoration.
Breakfast "outdoors" -- in a foil tent with a gas heater outside a crowded café. Taking breakfast in a café on sundays is so popular that you hardly find a free seat.
A visit on the flea market, bought a coffee mug for $0,80. There was an artist offering his prints: Very interesting! A short goodbye -- and we're on the way back home.