The Alhambra

Spain continues to inspire..

Malaga day 1

Butterfly park, the beach (2), lunch on our balcony and a Buddhist Temple with a view of the Mediterranean.

Beer delivery day

And water of course

Pastries

Buttery, flakey pastries are easy to come by in Berlin. There are bakeries in the uBahn stations, at most grocery stores and then stand alone on seemingly every other block. This morning I ran out and found these delicious ones: Apfeltusche (Apple pocket), Rosinenschencke (raisin swirl), and a butter croissant for €2.50. That's the other great thing - they are cheap! I do miss Cafe Besalu in Ballard but these are pretty darn good.

Mauerpark floh markt

Weekend activities..

Sent from my iPhone

Kiddisms and Single Parenting while Cassandra back in den USA

JASPER AS CLASS CLOWN

Jasper is concerned about his perception as a funny person. He loves entertaining people and making them laugh. Yesterday he mentioned something interesting:

"Since I learned German I think I am not as funny as before." What?? He went on to relate how he was much more humorous when he first showed up in Germany than he is now. I asked him to explain. He said that before he knew German he would say things in English and everyone would crack up.

"What sorts of things did you used to say in English that were so funny?" I asked.

"Well, I would say 'yes.' And 'no'."

"And the kids thought that was funny?"

"Yes, when I said said 'no' one time they all laughed so hard that their pants fell off!"

I agreed that was quite a trick. I told him that he is just as funny as before, but if the only way to be truly funny is to try to interact with kids who don't speak English or German then we will have to move somewhere else, like Poland. He considered this for a second, then asked about the blue wig.

The Blue Wig is a picture of Jasper looking like Cookie Monster. He presented it to me as a Father's Day present and I took it to the office to keep on my desk. He wanted to know if people thought it was funny. I told him yes of course everyone thinks you are quite a funny person! He was very happy to hear this. So the kid potentially has a career in entertainment coming up.

Daddy's work desk.

Other shenanigans include dinner gymnastics. For some reason it is super fun to hang upside down on the chair and explore the world underneath the table. This picture is a common view an adult who is dining with Jasper might see: a plate and the bottom of feet. Cody also lays on his chair and interacts with Jasper underneath the table, making strange noises and chirps until they are convinced to resurface and finish dinner.

A common dinner scene.

The children also enjoy exploring the flat. The other day they discovered the small slot in the closet between the clothes dryer and where we store the vaccuum cleaner. Not only is is valuable for hide and seek, but also a fun challenge to see the small places where you can stuff your body.

Of course, we were on our way out somewhere. Let's go! Let's go! Jasper goes into the closet to get his shoes. Five minutes later we are all but walking out of the door and there is no Jasper. I open the closet and there he is, lying on the floor, half in the new cubby hole and half out, just staring at the ceiling.

He went in to get shoes and coat, got distracted by the hidey-spot, crawled in, played, crawled halfway out, got bored, and lay down to contemplate the coat rack. Meanwhile parents are uttering serious-sounding pronouncements that they hope will be motivational (I'm leaving now! See you guys later! I hope you'll be ok here alone"). To no effect.

It is quite refreshing really that someone can be so in the present that they truly forget anything going on around them.


CODY NIGHTTIME TRAINING

Cody is still working out nighttime training, or getting through the whole night without soaking his bed. It varies, but he has gone a week at a time with no accidents, but then two of the next three days there are big accidents. The thinking is that once you get away from the nighttime diapers, you can't go back because it is like starting over for the kid. The process lately has been to make sure he goes before bedtime, then go back in around 11:30 and take him again to increase the chances of him getting through the night.

Those 11:30 pm trips are slightly heartbreaking, since the kid is a sack of potatoes and you must physically hold him upright or else he will fall into the toilet. I hate waking up sleeping kids, it really goes against parental instincts. But doing laundry every morning also goes against parental instincts and desires, so we get him up.

This morning Jasper got up at 6am and crawled into bed to snuggle, which is pretty rare. Usually Cody is the first one up, and he is motivated to find the iPad and watch Wild Kratts or Feuerwehrmann Sam. But this morning Jasper came in and promptly fell asleep. Then around 7 woke up and requested my presence in the front room to join him and play Legos. I took a shower then went to check on Cody. He was still sleeping peacefully. But as he stirred he looked up at me and said,

"Daddy I'm soaked."

Agh. Off with the sheets, comforter, everything. Into the tub for shower spritz (we took showers last night, sigh, unnecessary). Back in their room Cody is huddling on the floor in tornado-preparation pose underneath his towel, muttering that he is cold. I am trying unsuccessfully to inspire action that will lead to dressed children, and hopefully, breakfast at some point. I can't just leave without howls since Cody is convinced there is a ghost in the flat and he should not be left alone.

Jasper comes in asking why it is taking me so long to come out and play legos. I show him the stripped bed and tell him about the Cody shower. He is annoyed.

"Cody should just go back to diapers, this isn't working!"

I explain about how THE THINKING is that once you stop doing the nighttime diapers you can't go back to them later as you will lose all the progress you've made.

"The only progress he's made is to soak more pairs of underpants," Jasper quipped.

Cody, still huddling under the towel on the floor, whimpered pathetically. "Cold!"

I agreed with Jasper, ok let's go play Legos. There doesn't seem to be any progress with anything so might as well go play.


KIDS PLAYING

The kids are amazing playmates. While they are getting strong enough now to significantly hurt each other with a kick to the head or by bodily dragging each other into a thick wooden table leg, this doesn't happen too often. Most of the time they just wrestle and make lots of silly Minion-sounding noises. Since the floor wrestling likely creates a racket for our downstairs neighbors, this is a little stressful. But overall the fact that they play together so well is really cool.

https://youtu.be/sk_52mhMhjk


Also, Berlin's playgrounds are sandy instead of woodchipped, like those in Seattle. This creates lots of sandy shoe situations.

This morning Jasper was dumping out his shoes in the wastebasket before putting them on. He asked if anyone wanted to hear a little rain storm, since that is what it sounds like when shoe-sand cascades out and into the plastic trash bag. So we put the morning "get out of the house and start our day" energy on hold to sit and listen to Jasper's little rain storm. Cody sat close to the wastebasket to get the best seat for the show and was clearly enthralled.


ADRIAN COMES OVER

Saturday afternoon and we have one of the kid's friends from Kita over for a couple hours of playtime. This is Adrian, his mother Astrid is German and dad is Spanish. They are moving to Madrid in a year.

Anyway Adrian comes over and the three kids enjoy showing off toys (Jasper & Cody) and exploring new ones (Adrian). And then there is the running: children in our flat seem to enjoy running back and forth back and forth from the front room to the bedroom in back. They can't help it, there is just a need to sprint loudly on this course in spite of parental objections and obstacles placed in the way such as closed doors, overturned furniture and authoritative yelling.

I've learned that children are animals, not far removed from their cave-people state by the experience of years of culture that adults have. Children are therefore wild, feral beings. Just when you begin to despair about all this, you notice suddenly that the place has been absolutely quiet for the last five minutes. What are they up to??

I look around the corner and the three of them are sitting on the floor in the front room playing cards with a new ninja game that Jasper received for Easter. They are trying to figure out the rules based on other card games they've played since they can't read any directions. But they are doing this in a calm manner, and all in German. Even Cody, who frequently feigns ignorance of the language, but who chatters along effortlessly with the rest of them.

Soon they tire of this and return to running pillow-fight battles, but now it doesn't seem as big of a deal.

Sparglesuppe test

We went to the Harz Mtns about 2.5 hrs from Berlin by car. It's the beginning of Spargelzeit (Asparagus Season) and the Germans seem to pride themselves on great cream of asparagus soup (made with white asparagus). So I decided to do a taste test during our trip to see if there were notable differences or standout recipes. Here are the results of our Sparglesuppe test:

Nite #1 Cafe Roland

Buttery, smooth, small/thin spargle pieces

€5 for a bowl

Nite #2 - Zur Schönen Ecke

Creamy, big spargle pieces, small chunks of thickener that melted apart. Good butter flavor without being overly so. 

€3 for a cup

Nite #3 - made at home with a packet + a bundle of fresh green asparagus 

Creamy, (few lumps), lots and lots of spargle pieces. Cody thought it was the best! Jasper had two bowls

€0.99 packet + €6 for the bundle made enough for 5-6 bowls 

Nite #4 - at the Spring Street Fair

Nearly no pieces of actual spargle. Thin. Voted Least favorite by all. 

€2.50 for a large cup

The winner is: #3 - make it at home and add lots of spargle. And green is better!

Street Fair fun food

The Week of Curiously-Awesome Activity Levels

It doesn’t happen too often but when you get a good run of back to back activities. A recent week:

Thursday, 15 April.

I met the preschool ("Kita") -Dad’s group out at a local soccer bar to watch the Europa Cup Quarterfinals between Liverpool and Dortmund. Usually when I go out with the dads group I mostly default to English but tonight I decided to try going an entire evening in Deutsch. Everyone obliged and I then had an exhausting evening of heavy concentration on syllables and remarks interspersed with soccer discussions and celebrating the goals. 

It was actually a good game, with Liverpool jumping out in front 2-0 in the first few minutes, then Dortmund coming back and ultimately it was 4-3 Dortmund on a corner kick in the final seconds. Also, there was the beer aspect. Big hangover from two litres of the Helle (light) beer the next morning. Germans may not drink good, Seattle microbrewery beer, what what they do drink, they drink a lot of. And the all-German aspect of the night made me realise that learning this language is within the realm of possibility, and that it will ultimately be a valuable part of these Berlin years.

Friday, 16 April.

On Friday night we attended a costume birthday party for new friends Simon and Becky. We went as rock music legends. I was Elton John and Cassandra was Cyndi Lauper. These guys are from the UK and we met them at the La Coquette French restaurant on Vorbergstrasse during our Valentines Day date night out. They are super hilarious and have kids similar ages to ours. They’ve been in Berlin for 8 years and have flawless German, which of course makes me jealous. I came home at 11:30 to relieve the babysitter, Maria, the Spanish girl that lives in the flat above ours. Cyndi stayed out later and caught the bday cake and singing, which occurred around midnight.

Saturday, 17 April

On Saturday we took the train out to the Grunewald forest that sits at the SW edge of town to get the kids out into the woods for a bit of fresh air. The station is also the site of the Gleis 17 (Platform 17) memorial, so we went over and took a look. Gleis 17 was the exit point for all the Berlin Jews who were sent to the camps between 1941 and 1945. (Once again, history intrudes on nearly everything you decide to do). Roughly 50K people boarding trains on these very platforms.

By way of a memorial, the old platforms and tracks themselves have been retained. Metal plates on the platform have the dates of the train departures, the number of people on board, and their final destinations. The tracks end in a forest and are cut off from the rest of the nearby rail network. People have left flowers on some of the plates.

On the other side of the station lies the expanse of the Grunewald Forest. Wide dirt paths bisect this forest to accommodate mountain bikers, hikers and horse riders from a local stable. Desperate to get the kids into the woods, we ambled along and let them stop at every log and tree to search for bugs or climb easy to reach branches. In the distance a hill arose in the forest with a bunch of decaying radar domes sticking out above the trees - this is the former US Cold War listening post. 

Built on the ruins of a former Nazi training academy, the Cold War complex was neglected for years after the Wall came down and is now surrounded by three huge fences to prevent curious people from sneaking in. They do tours of course, and for 7 Euro you can get a guy to walk you around the buildings and let you climb up into the unsecured radar domes to snoop around. Unlike the polished and snazzy aesthetic you find in other historical places in Berlin this is a bit slap-dash: a guy sitting under an umbrella near a break in the perimeter fencing will collect your money. Around him are old cars, caravans, spray-painted outbuildings and other things mostly recalling a junkyard. Holes in the fence where people have snipped through with wire cutters have been patched up with rusty bike frames and metal sheeting. A haze of barbed wire plies aimlessly along the top of the fencing. I’m curious to see the area so I’ll come back and do that at some point, but not today.

Radar dome barely visible through the fencing and spring buds.

Water tank storage outbuilding near the former US facility.

The “forested mountain” we’ve walked up also has its own story: It is not a naturally-occurring terrain feature. Here and there you notice fields of bricks and concrete alongside the trails in the forest. Why did they dump such stuff up here, some people might wonder. Other more informed people realize that the ENTIRE mountain is rubble from the bombed city, and those are just the pieces of it that happen to be sticking out. After the war and the division of East and West Berlin, the rubble from the bombed buildings had to be placed somewhere. In the east much of the rubble ended up in various places outside of the city; since Berlin lay deep within East Germany they could put the rubble wherever they wanted. 

In West Berlin this wasn't an option, so they had to find a place within the boundary of the Western side of the city. Most of it was put in the middle of the Grunewald forest, making a large terrain feature some 80 meters high. It was approx 25 million cubic yards of debris. Dirt was also dumped on the rubble and trees planted in the 1950’s which have now turned into the current forest. Today wild boar roam the forested glens, tearing up the dirt and leaves seeking roots and fungi. 

Where the soil is too thin, the bones of the "mountain" appear: bricks and rubble from the bombed-out city.

Back at the Grunewald S-Bahn station we happily found a wonderful biergarten. Germans are well-turned out when it comes to this: place a great restaurant with hearty meals and beer right next to the wilds. You get to have as much adventure as you wish and you are never more than a few miles from a beer, schnitzel and potato soup. By the time we got home we’d walked 8 miles. 

That night Cass and I went to a cabaret show in our Schöneberg neighborhood. Why cabaret? So much has been made of the “Paris between the wars” thing and the Lost Generation of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. Berlin had its own mirror of this experience as well, as it attracted the wildest night life and open views on sexuality and vice of any city in Europe during those years. This was the tolerant era of Weimar Berlin, when cabaret shows and other craziness defined the scene. Ground zero for this was just a few blocks away from our current flat on Gleditchstrasse at the storied Nollendorf Platz. 

A British author named Christopher Isherwood made his home in Schöneberg in the early thirties and wrote his famous “Berlin Novels” during this time. These books profile various characters he met during his time in Berlin from 1930-1935. They are set against the backdrop of the political struggles between the Fascists, the Communists, and the centre party in the time just before Germany was sucked into the abyss. Isherwood’s work inspired the film “Cabaret." Bowie was a huge fan of the whole Weimar time, and actually met Isherwood when he lived in Schöneberg in the mid 70’s. (see my David Bowie entry for more on this).

The "Living Room" performance venue at Sally Bowles

Since we are here, I decided we should get to know this whole thing, so I found a bar that offers an authentic cabaret experience. Named “Sally Bowles” after a character in one of Isherwood’s novels, we packed into a tiny room with four tables. There was a welcome Prosecco, and then we were treated to a historical journey of the cabaret concept from its beginnings in Paris in the 1890’s at Le Chat Noir to Munich and finally to its ending stages in Berlin. Three players acted out the scenes and songs and spliced in historical references while performing typical cabaret acts. In a nod to the open and free aspect of the times, the male lead spent all of the third act wearing a tux and garter belt and stockings. Afterwards we bought the poster and I resolved to put Isherwood’s book on my birthday wish list. 

Full moon behind the Kirche on the walk home.

Sunday, 18 April

Today we went out to a children's concert at the Urania Theatre with said new friends from Friday night’s party and their kids. The kids had the unique experience of blowing an authentic Bavarian alpine horn. Cody took a few tries then finally nailed it. It is my dream to orchestrate a family Christmas card of us all in lederhosen standing on top of a mountain in Bavaria all blowing these long horns. It may remain just that, a dream, but at least two members of the family now have practice with the instruments.

Afterwards, we strolled back home with Simon and Becky and the sun came out. We got some beers at the corner store and engaged in the time-honoured Berliner parent tradition of standing around drinking beer at the playground while the kids whoop it up. Soon, the sun tilted behind the historical block rooflines opposite the church, a chill settled into the shadows, and we parted ways.

Kirche, in a different light. Playground is directly behind it.

Monday, 19 April

Nada Surf, a favourite band from our Seattle years, was in town. We trucked out to Neukölln on the U7, got off at Hermannplatz, and wandered over to Huxley’s Neue Welt on the border of Hasenheide volkspark and slipped in. No line (suspicious). It was 9:20 and the doors opened at 8pm. But there was an opening band so it seemed fine. Oops. Nada Surf started at 9 and we missed about five songs! Learning Moment! Rest of the concert was quite wonderful - hearing such familiar noise helps stave off any homesickness. 

Got home around 11:30pm. Whew what a night! Of course our night was just beginning, as we awoke at 1am to change Cody's sheets/give him a shower after he wet his bed. Then did it again at 5:30am. We are trying to break him from nighttime diapers and apparently once you start the transition to underwear, you can't go back as they will lose all the "progress." He's gone a week without any pee in his night time pull ups so we decided to start this process. So some mornings you just have a ton of laundry! It is a little tough since we are now used to sleeping all night...And when you go out to a show that evening...And when you are past 40.


Tuesday night we took a break and went to bed early.