Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #4 – beer, food and sports

 

This week was pretty busy at work and the weather was not so great (this Berlin summer weather is similar to early Cape Town winter weather at the moment!). So the fun this week was in the food. During the week we visited two of our favourite restaurants in Berlin, Babel (a Lebanese restaurant on Kastanienallee) and Tommi’s Burger Joint, on Invalidenstrasse, which is a frequent pit-stop en route home from my bi-weekly German class. Also, it was Berlin Beer week, and several places around the city were showcasing various craft beers. I tried some new beers including a coffee cream beer, a sour rye beer and – my favourites – whiskey and bourbon barrel matured beers! I’m not sure if it’s just the Irish in me, but Wow, it tasted good.  I’d be happy if they put whiskey in all beers!

We also had a lovely bobotie (traditional South African dish) and peppermint tart (a favourite South African fridge tart) prepared for us by a South African friend also living in Berlin with her British husband, and made a stop next to the Cape Times cafe/shop, right next door to a friend’s apartment, for a coffee and a quiche. Although the household items sold in the shop are definitely “designer”, since the prices are pretty high, it’s a beautiful room to sit in and have a coffee.

Another good thing this week is that they finally opened a Decathlon in Berlin, on Alexanderplatz. In case you haven’t heard of it already, Decathlon is a sports store selling well-priced gear for a wide range of sports. A Romanian friend of ours used to take a group of us to Poland to pick up cheap sports gear when we were planning skiing or other adventures. Glad a Decathlon store has finally arrived in Berlin!

Join the blog event at A New Life Wandering to read what others have been up to this week!

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Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #2 – weekend in Czech

Last week was a pretty ordinary working week, with the highlight of the week definitely being the weekend trip to Czech to visit J’s family. Summer is slowly arriving, and the return of this season, including some lovely warm weather, was the greatest source of pleasure this week. Here are some of the moments that stood out this week: Continue reading

Weekly Small Pleasures #1 – park life

Mani, author of the blog “A New Life Wandering” had a great idea for a blog event – to write a post every week sharing some of the week’s enjoyable moments, the things that made you happy. There are usually those good little moments in every week that make you smile, so what a great idea to catalogue them. Here are mine for this week:

1) The beautiful fragrance of flowers from the tree Robinia pseudoacacia, which had fallen to the ground in a park Continue reading