living in Germany

Autumn biking in Naturpark Barnim

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We enjoyed a long, warm and golden autumn this year, but finally the rain came, followed by strong winds, and now the trees are bare again. It made me sad to see them at first, knowing that it would be many months before we would see them coming alive again. Once the leaves had fallen, the temperatures dropped rapidly, and we have even had some light snow already. Before we get too far into deep, dark winter, I wanted to share some photos of our glorious autumn season. To start with, here are some photos from a bike ride we did in Naturpark Barnim, a big nature area in Brandenburg near Berlin. We started at Karow and followed lovely cycle paths all the way to Eberswalde. Brandenburg is really the perfect place for cycling. Continue reading →

The legend of Drachenfels (Dragon Rock)

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This weekend we went to visit family who live near Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany, which encompasses the plains of the river Rhine and the Mittelgebirge (small mountains/central uplands) which stretch towards Belgium, where they continue as the Ardennes. The lands on one side of the Rhine were colonized by Romans (the Cologne/Bonn side), whereas the other side was left to the local tribes after the Romans suffered a heavy defeat. Southeast of Bonn near the Rhine are the Siebengeberge, hills of ancient volcanic origin, formed by magma rising up beneath the surface and then cooling and becoming solid. Now as I’ve mentioned before, the usual practice in Europe is: if there’s a hill put a castle of top of it (it makes for a good lookout/defensive position), and indeed, you will find several castles and monuments on top of the many hills in the area. The rock of the area was also quarried, since the nearby Rhine made it convenient to transport the rocks, and used  to build the massive Cologne cathedral, amongst other things. Continue reading →

Festival of Lights 2015, Berlin

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Every year in Berlin, just after the first golden phase of autumn with sunny days and blue skies starts changing into mistier weather with bitingly cold nights, the Festival of Lights comes along to illuminate the city. Traditionally we always ride our bikes around the city to check out some of the illuminated landmarks; every year I forget how cold it was the year before! But it’s worth it as this way you can ride easily from one spot to another. We took a route starting at Alexanderplatz and rode to the Dom, Gendarmenmarkt, Potsdamerplatz, Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg gate) and finally to the Siegersaule (Victory column). Here are some photos. Continue reading →

Watersports and beaches at Müggelsee

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Berlin is in a region of many lakes, and is fortunate to have lakes both within the city as well as in the surrounding countryside of Brandenburg. Today we visited Müggelsee again, a big lake in the south-east of Berlin, in the Treptow-Köpenick district, surrounded by the suburbs of Freidrichshagen, Rahnsdorf, Köpenick and Muggelheim. It is so lovely there that I thought I would share some photographs. Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #8 – Summer thunderstorms

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It was quite a nice week. This summer is much more like my first summer here than last year, with lots of “Gewitter” (thunderstorms) in the evening, bringing heavy downpours of rain. I like summer rain, when it’s been hot and humid, and suddenly with a crash of thunder and a flash of  lightning, the clouds open and drench the earth with water. Since it’s not cold, it’s nice to open the windows and let the cool breeze waft through the apartment, inhale the smell of rain on earth, and listen to the rain pouring down.

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I also enjoyed an impromptu dinner J prepared. I was tired and had come home from German class, and he put together some feta, olives and cherry tomatoes on a plate, which we ate with sesame and rye crackers and a bottle of cider. It’s such a simple meal but somehow so delicious. We ate the same once for breakfast after visiting one of the Turkish supermarkets here and buying a big can of mixed olives and a large pack of good white cheese. When I visited Turkey they served white cheese, olives, tomatoes and cucumber for breakfast, so we did the same.

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On Thursday some friends came around for dinner, and J made one of my favourite Czech dishes, meat and knedlicky (bread dumplings) with a dill sauce. I’ll post the recipe for this some time (and a photo), as it’s a good one. This time he cooked the meat (beef) in the pressure cooker his mom gave him for Christmas, and it turned out lovely and tender. For dessert I made a lemon fridge tart, which required some experimentation with German jelly. In South Africa the jelly includes sugar but here it doesn’t, so I just premixed the packet contents with the amount of sugar suggested on the packet and then used the amount of one packet of the German one (plus sugar), hoping that it’d be a similar quantity to one packet of South African jelly powder. The dessert set nicely, so it worked out.

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In the weekend we went to Czech to visit J’s family on the farm. The weather was great and the plums, apricots and peaches were in season, so we were picking them and eating them directly off the trees. We went swimming at the lake, walked the dogs, spent time outside in the garden and just enjoyed a relaxing weekend, as it’s always nice to see everyone again. For breakfast on Sunday his mom made an amazing savoury “cake”, which consisted of layers of bread, cheese, peppers, ham and salami, sandwiched together and covered with cream cheese. You serve it by cutting a slice and eating it with a knife and fork. I’ll definitely have to try making one of these one day!

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To share the good moments in your week, join the Small Weekly pleasures blog event over at A New Life Wandering. Have a good week!

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The IKEA experience

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There is no IKEA in South Africa. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of IKEA before coming to Europe, which most people here find unbelievable, considering it’s the largest furniture store chain in the world.
So for us South Africans coming to Europe, a trip to IKEA is an outing in itself.

Basically the central concept of IKEA (a Swedish chain) is build-it-yourself furniture and a shop that is laid out like a sightseeing tour of rooms, followed by an area selling household items and then a warehouse selling the boxes of furniture. Here is the general IKEA experience: Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #7 – Summer flowers

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Two weekends ago we took a trip to the Baltic coast, and last week we were in Spain for four days. Apart from these great weekend trips, it has been all work work work. But in the weekend, although I also had to go to work for a bit, we had the opportunity to go for a walk in the park near where I used to live, where we enjoyed the summer flowers. This afternoon we also got to relax and BBQ in the garden of a friend-of-a-friend in the outskirts of Berlin. When you live in an apartment in Berlin, like many, it’s always a luxury to relax outside in a garden. Here are some pictures of the summer flowers that are out at the moment in Berlin. To see what others have been up to this week, check out the Weekly Small Pleasures blog event.

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Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #5 – Food and more food

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Anyone reading this blog might get the idea that my life revolves around food! (I can see my mother nodding vigorously). But hey, if you are ever in Berlin, now you will know where to find good food! Here are my week’s highlights. Join Mani’s blog event to share yours!

 

1) Rain! My least favourite weather is hanging grey skies without rain, especially in summer. And apparently the crops of Brandenburg were not enjoying the dry spell. Luckily it finally rained, and of course, after the clouds had rained themselves out, we finally had some blue skies again.

2) We’ve run out of Dr Who episodes on Netflix for the moment and have now started watching Heroes. I’ve seen it before, but  J hasn’t, and I’m enjoying watching it again.

3) Our first tayberry (growing on the balcony) was ready to eat! (apparently it’s a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry).

4) “Sein oder nicht sein, das ist hier die Frage…” We went to see Hamlet in German at Monbijou park theatre. I really liked the theatre, which is wooden and built in the traditional style of Shakespeare’s era. Sometime the German was too fast to follow (for a non-native speaker), but you could get the general story and it followed the original quite well – amazing, considering there were only 3 actors playing all of the roles! Watching them juggle between roles was also entertaining. The mysterious Ophelia was always talked about but never seen…

5) Cheese fondue at Ars Vini! Followed by chocolate fondue at Ars Vini! Do I need to say more?

6) A friend of ours told us that Tommi’s burgers (in Berlin) has great sweet potato fries, which we didn’t notice before (usually we arrive so hungry that we just automatically order cheese burger and fries without even reading the menu). This time we went for lunch with aforementioned friend on a rainy Saturday and I noticed they also have a “Burger of the month” (I didn’t order this month’s one as I’m not a huge fan of sauerkraut on burgers, but our friend enjoyed it). The sweet potato fries were amazing. I would go there just for that. I also had a thick, coffee milkshake – delicious.

7) Pizza on Sunday night at Il Giradischi in Prenzlauerberg, Berlin. Everyone prefers a different style of pizza – this place and Pomodorino in Friedrichschain are my two favourite pizza places in Berlin. Normally I can never finish a whole pizza and take leftovers for breakfast, but in Il Giradischi I always finish it (so unfortunately…no leftovers!). At Pomodorino they serve it sold in squares, so you can mix and match or take away.

8) Biking on a Sunday. We did a 60km bike ride from Oranienburg to Eberswalder, through forests, past rivers and canals, lovely villages, farms and fields, and old stone roads. The scenery was amazing. I’ll write a separate blog post about that with some photos.

9) Our bike path led us through a small village where they were selling fish brötchen and renting canoes. The Backfisch (fish in batter) option I tried was absolutely delicious – crispy batter and good fish. Of course, food always tastes good after exercise, but so far it’s the best fish I’ve eaten in Germany and I’d happily cycle 60km to get there again!

PS – In case it seems as if I live on pizza and burgers, I should add for the record that I also had lots of huge salads in the cafeteria this week (but they were not included in my weekly pleasures 😉 )