We finally found it. The apartment to show on House Hunters International. The place we might really call a home after move after move. The apartment we could love in Berlin.
The problem?
There was a gap of a week from when we had to be out of the last place, and into the new one. Shit.
Luckily, we found an affordable short term lease that was even convenient to move between the 2 places - sold!...or leased, rather. Here is the apartment tour #7 of our short term in Neukölln.
Before I wax too poetic about Berlin (because we've had some pretty unbelievably good weekends of late), it's important to look at our recent trip to the States and our favorite corner - Seattle.
Food & Drink
Oh, food. It's not that we don't eat well in Germany. It's that we eat different. Mexican food, beef steaks, Mexican food, hamburgers, spiciness, BBQ, and Mexican food - we missed you.
Fiesta Foods is a Mexican grocery store in Eastern Washington. It is amazing. Tortillas are made in house, Mexican food is served fresh, jalapenos, pinatas, & avocados are stacked to the ceiling and things like Catholic prayer candles are on sale.
Tortillas
Authentic taqueria
Jalapenos at Fiesta Foods
Parents put on some impressive meals
Candy Cane bread
My mum & I have Christmas tradition of making candy cane bread. While it wasn't Christmas, we decided we'd make up for lost time and do Christmas in February. Christmas only counts when you're together right?
Pabst Blue Ribbon - the hipsteriest of American beers
Dicks' burgers
Magic bag of Dicks
Dick's Burgers is well respected in Seattle, and just got surprise nation wide recognition with an Esquire survey.
The company serves an extremely basic Americana menu of burgers, fries,
and shakes. That's it. What's more impressive, the company offers
college scholarships for it's employees and is invested in the
community. Who wants some Dicks? (yes, part of the pleasure is saying
the name)
Costco Dog
Costco is a place where you can buy mass amounts of goods like some
of the less savory retailers (W something), but Costco holds a place in
our hearts for being local (Kirkland, WA native baby!). In addition,
they offer hot dogs and a soda (with refill) for $1.50. This has been
the price since 1985. God bless Costco.
Smokin Pete's BBQ
We love Smokin Pete's BBQ so much we would marry it. Ok, so we didn't marry it, but they did cater our wedding.
While the Northwest isn't known for it's BBQ and we're no experts,
there is no doubt in our mind that their pulled pork, po' boys, and hot
links have a place in heaven.
Friends
What to say - except that we missed them...a lot.
skillz
St. Paddy's party!
Family
Porters
My mum quilts!
Porter-Ball-Mendenhalls
Ball Cousins dye eggs
Calahan cousin
Porters lace up for some bowling!
America
Land of the free, home of the brave...it felt good to be back in the Ole US of A.
Cowboy Boots
Classroom full of Americans
Ian's dad is an elementary school teacher and we were the special exhibit of expat sideshow freaks.
SAM's Hammering Man
Seattle Art Museum is one of my favorite spots in the city and "The hammering Man" out front is an identifiable part of downtown. I loved it when someone put a ball & chain on him. The artist did not.
SHS recycled gym floor
My old high school, Snohomish High School, is old. Like 1938 old. I know, pretty impressive for the Wild West of the United States. The school has been extensively remolded, but I was pleased to see they took pains to preserve the history, using the old gym floors to side the walls of a new building. That's my mum's office right there!
Ian Yakima memory tour!
Ian's Elementary
Ian's old House
Ian's UW German Building - Denny Hall
Ebe's memory lane:
My room has changed, but my horse and trophies still abound
I never even knew how to say Berlin properly till I visited Ian's class of adorable pre-schoolers.
"Where do you live? BEAR-lin!"
Bears pop up all over the place here. After the formation of the constitution of Berlin, the bear became the
animal of coats of arms and seals. The state coat of arms depicted, in a
silver (white) shield, a red armed and red tongued, upright, grunting
bear. A while back, the city had artists decorate a horde of them and painted bears can be found throughout the city. But I didn't realize the city had actual bears living in Mitte. Behold...
Berlin Bear
Bärenzwinger
Beautiful Berlin Day
Märkisches Museum
After hearing about it's existence from a friend, we stumbled across the Bärenzwinger (Bear Pit) today on a bike ride. It is a beautiful setting with leafy trees and Märkisches Museum in the background. But the real attraction is the bears. Two European brown bears, Schnute (aged 30) and Maxi live in a small, but scenic enclosure here. Schnute holds the title of reigning Statdbärin (city bear). We watched in fascination as one of the bears moseyed by a leftover Christmas tree and the other snoozed in the spring sunlight.
The site was established in 1939, another sign of connection between the city and the animal that has adorned the city seal since 1280. It is located within the oldest section of Berlin near the Nikolaiviertel - the original settlement of Berlin. The remains of the
medieval city wall can be seen next to the nearby museum.
Apparently there are grumbles about the bear's health and safety as the enclosure is small and largely unmonitored. This is understandable, but I couldn't help but stare at these two majestic creatures within the city's historical center. We weren't the only ones. On this quiet Saturday there were at least 15 other people silently taking in the bears. Some took pictures and talked quietly with each other, but mostly we all just gazed in wonder. I loved seeing the bears. I have loved reading about the Bärenzwinger's history since we got home. Obviously, I am no longer impartial. Go see for yourself and give Schnute and Maxi a wave for us.
You know, considering all German months are masculine (der
Dezember, der Januar, der Februar...), April sure is a bitch. It's a common saying here in Germany (and
Berlin in particular) that April has no idea what it wants. One minute the sun is shining and you’re
singing praises to the gods, and the next moment you're freezing your
balls off. Such was Ebe's and my
experience just this past Saturday...
After having gained renewed vigor in our German lives after
our trip back to the States, Ebe and I promised one another to take full
advantage of everything Berlin has to offer and not stay stuck in our apartment
playing with the animals while embarking on another TV series marathon. With this is mind, we headed down all 111stairs of our apartment shortly after noon (of course we had to sneak in a few
episodes of Ru Paul’s Drag Race before we took off, but the sun was going to
stay around all day right?).
We decided to head to Görlitzer Park and try our hand at Schwarzlicht-Minigolf. It was a beautiful sunny day as we got off
the U1 and walked through Kreuzberg enjoying the graffiti and people lining the
streets. Ah ,one of those days you just
love being in Berlin. “Geez, I wish I
brought my sweatshirt instead of this jacket, “ I told my equally jacketed
wife. O ye of little faith..
Having not yet eaten lunch, we grabbed a cheap bite at
Restaurant Rissani (which is a post in of itself) and waddled, stuffed as honey
badgers, into the mysterious and graffiti covered building of the
Schwarzlicht-Minigolf.
Now we had heard many a story of this magical playland of
blacklight minigolf, but it was damn time we discovered it ourselves! Now if you haven’t had the pleasure of
queuing up with the lovely people of Berlin, consider yourself ONE LUCKY
BASTARD!!! Now, I don’t know what it is
about Berliners, whether they still think they need to shove and push and fight
and bite (ok, maybe a tad worse than it is) to the front for their food ration
card, or if they just see the weakness in our passive-aggressive Seattle eyes, but
there really is no such thing as a line in Berlin. Such was the case here. All in all we made it to the front in a
relatively short time to find out that we needed reservations in order to get
in that day… Scheiße, verdammte Touristen!!! Oh well, we found 10 Euros on the floor and
made our speedy getaway.
As we meandered our way back outside and through the park we
noticed a few dark clouds making their way towards us. One thing is for sure here in Berlin, the
clouds travel fast. Before we knew it they were overhead making us glad we
brought our heavy jackets. Despite the malicious
look of the clouds, I convinced Ebe to take a longer route to public transportation
across the Oberbaumbrücke when
the proverbial shit hit the fan (or just started snowing).
Gusts of wind lashed at us as we forced our way across the
bridge into Friedrichshain not daring to pay the musicians playing for drinking
money hiding behind one of the brick columns.
Snow started drifting across the intersection as we picked up our pace
trying to catch the M10 back up north to escape April’s indecisive fury. Just in time we made it to the M10 with
fellow survivors, laughing and mocking the poor souls who were unable to make
it into the tram’s warm confines. Little
did they know that they would have to wait a whole four minutes before the next
tram’s arrival! Hahahaha, poor
bastards! See you in hell!!!
Stop after stop our brave and true M10 tram picked up
survivors until we were shoulder to shoulder toasting the courageous driver,
who hath saved our lives! The closer we
came to our transfer, the harder April tried to show us the truth of the
aforementioned saying.
Ebe and I paid our respects to the driver and wished our
fellow travelers luck as we pushed the green and red button to open the tram
doors. Out into the cold with about 10
others we tried to find our U-Bahnhof.
Even though it was right across the street from where we left the tram,
three of our fellow passengers fell to April’s wrath, only to be discovered 10
minutes later when the sun came out.
Okay, okay. So maybe
the story did get a little convoluted towards the end, but the weather was
really shitty. The sun was shining. Then it started to snow. It snowed a little harder. Then we got home to our U-Bahnhof, the sun
was shining again. I mean, what the fuck
April? What DO you want?
We decided to head to Görlitzer Park and try our hand at Schwarzlicht-Minigolf. It was a beautiful sunny day as we got off
the U1 and walked through Kreuzberg enjoying the graffiti and people lining the
streets. Ah ,one of those days you just
love being in Berlin. “Geez, I wish I
brought my sweatshirt instead of this jacket, “ I told my equally jacketed
wife. O ye of little faith..
