Ich bin ein Berliner 5

The following day we took a train to the far west side of Berlin to visit the Olympic stadium. The olympic stadium was built in 1936. It has a roman Colosseum motif, and is dawned with stone gods and goddesses of strength, victory and war. The stadium can seat 100,000 people. It is still used today for different sporting events in Berlin including its football team.

Ich bin ein Berliner 4

 The only logical explanation of where our adventure took us next, was down the famous road Unter Den Linden where you pass some of the most historical and magnificent buildings on Earth. All travel sights and books recommend a stroll down this road starting at Alexanderplatz and ending at the Brandenburger Tor. These are the sights as you walk down. Sadly there was a lot of construction through the city so there are many photos that are not as beautiful as it could be.

Ich bin ein Berliner 3

After the zoo, it was time for lunch. We were no longer in schwabien country, so finding some of our local favorites was not an option. We walked and passed many good looking asian restaurants, but it was not quite what we were in the mood for. We continued walking until we found the large market place in the tiergarten. Illuminated as if it was meant to be, was Hard Rock Cafe Berlin. Yes there are Hard Rock Cafes everywhere in the world, but we were so hungry, and the nachos appetizer with a 10 oz mushroom and swiss burger was calling our names. All we needed was something not so Germanish. Plus it was a good time to maybe pick up a souvenir for a certain someone who likes guitars.

After lunch, we headed back onto the U-Bahn which is the very convenient subway train system that runs through all major cities in Germany. Especially since we bought an all day pass, we could take it as many times as we want to all the different edges of the city. But we were just going to Alexanderplatz.

Alexanderplatz is where the TV tower is, the best view of Berlin some 203 meters above the city. It has a lift that only takes 40 seconds to get from the bottom to the top. At the observation deck, there is a 360 degree view of Berlin. As well as a bar. The next floor up is the TV tower restaurant with a rotating floor that makes one full rotation in 30 minutes. But reservations were full.
Here are some photos.

                                                                  Berliner Dom

 < This is the Reichstag
(The bright flash of light)
Directly to the left you can see Brandenburg Gate in the middle of the road.

 Above is the Berliner Dom

Probably what was the funniest part of the whole visit, was the amount of English speakers were all at one place at the same time. In fact, our entire elevator was filled with 3 different families that all only spoke English. I nearly forget where we were. Just kidding! I could never do that.

Ich bin ein Berliner 2

Our journey to Berlin began on Tuesday, 10 in the morning. We hopped on a train heading towards Augsburg. In Augsburg we caught our ICE train. The ICE train makes less stops and goes faster than the regular R trains. But the journey from Augsburg to Berlin still took 6 hours. Thank goodness I am so used to long trips. It is quite funny though that it takes us 6 hours to go from a city in southern Germany to a city in northern Germany in less time than it takes to go from southern to northern Florida. But the trip was nice. Our train was mostly empty, so no issues with finding two seats together for Emma and I. Getting to see Germany by train was very exciting. It was nice to see all the little towns and villages. We passed many wind turbine fields and many solar panel fields. This was awesome! Some of the Solar fields went on forever it seemed like. It is amazing to see something like that, only because I’ve never seen anything like it in America. 6 hours and a couple of naps we arrived in Berlin Hauptbahnhof, an extremely large, multi-floored train depot that confused us a little at first. From the glass front you can see the Reichstag and the expanse of the city that continued to stretch past my view. Once we got our bearings, and asked for some help, we found where we needed to go and headed towards the hotel.There was a small issue once we arrived at the hotel, our online reservation did not go through correctly even though we had a confirmation. The hotel was very sorry that they did not have an extra room for us, but were nice enough to put us in the hotel down the street free of charge. Not making a very big deal of it, we planned for the next day and went to sleep.

Bright and early the next day we headed off towards Tiergarten and the Berlin Zoo! This was something Emma really wanted to do. Not going to lie, it was incredible! What a fantastic zoo. Something I loved, I got to learn all the names of our favorite animals in German. We also saw some fantastic things. The zoo seemed to have more baby animals than I had ever seen at a zoo. They had a year old Asian elephant and a year old orangutang. They were adorable! Something else that was interesting was the way some of the animals reacted towards the other animals, like my favorite experience of the zoo, the white wolves hunting the brown bear. The wolf and bear exhibit were right next to each other only separated by a small wire fence that the wolves could easily jump over. The bear decided to go for a swim right next to the fence, and the wolves went into hunting pack mode. For a couple of minutes we watched at the wolves stalked the bear around the fence. I could have sworn for a minute the wolves were going to jump in, and all the children standing and watching were going to get a hard lesson on nature. Thankfully though, the bear swam away and the wolves went back to the other side of the habitat. Here are some photos of the zoo.

I just recently changed my settings so that anyone can comment anonymously. I did not realize that you had to set up an account to comment. Hopefully this makes it a little easier for everyone.

Thanks!

Ich bin ein Berliner!

This up coming Tuesday, Emma and I have 4 days off of work. We asked for these days off so we can go to Berlin and spend a good amount of time there to do everything we want.
Chef Florian used to work in Berlin so we were asking him some questions of where to go and where to stay. He recommended to us Hotel Pankow. Its a little small, but in expensive and in a good area for traveling around. Its a quirky little place based on the photos and descriptions we have gotten of it. We will have to see for ourselves when we get there.

Travel takes about 5-6 hours by train to get from Salach to Berlin, so two days will be half days to travel there and back again. But still it is a ton of time and we are so excited.

The next question is, what are we going to do in Berlin? So far on the list is to geocache. A couple of fellow cachers set up a list of good caches for English speaking tourists to guide you through the city and take you to the best monuments. What a grand idea! One takes us to the Brandenburg Gate which is a popular landmark in Berlin. One takes us to a Hiroshima monument. And another takes us to a park where the largest section of the Berlin Wall still stands. I read that it has been converted into a freelance art piece where different artists paint murals on it. If only I could still find a piece of the Berlin Wall to take home with me.

Something else that is on my list to do while in Berlin is to go to the one of the other Salvidor Dali Museum! For those of you who may not know, I lived not to far from the Dali museum in St. Petersburg. I also worked down the street from it for 10 months, and I remember at the top of the parking garage you can see the surreal building in the distance. Dali is my favorite artist, and to have the opportunity to go to the one of the other collection of his art is an opportunity I cannot pass up!

On Emma's list, she wants to visit the Berlin Zoo.

We will be traveling to the Tiergarten to get to the Berlin zoo which is in the center of this park. It is the largest green space in Berlin, and was restored in 1955, after being devastated during WWII and the trees that stood were chopped down for fuel.

Well the preparations are still being dealt with, and our plans are being made.

Here is a question to my readers, "If you were going to Berlin, Where would you go?"
Comment and let me know.

It has been great learning all the German words for produce and products. Although most of the kitchen staff would rather teach us insults and profanity, I do always try to remember the important words.

When prepping for a long time, usually standing still, I practice my numbers and counting. I can now count to 20 without any hesitation.
Eins
Zwei
Drei
Vier
Funf
Sechs
Sieben
Acht
Neun
Zehn
Elf
Zwolf
Dreizehn
Vierzehn
Funfzehn
Sechzehn
Siebzen
Achtzehn
Neunzehn
Zwanzig


My favorite word that I learned yesterday is Hippenmasse. It is German for tuile batter that we make shaped cookies with. Most popular shape that everyone knows, the fortune cookie. So from now on I will forever call it hippenmasse.

Patisserie Day 1

This past week has been as if the kitchen staff was playing "hot potato" with me. I am just bouncing all over the place.
So today I was placed in patisserie, and what a crash course it was. Not that today was very busy, with a full dining room of just four people... but that it is the second to last station that I have not yet learned. It could also be considered the last station, since I highly doubt the Chefs will attempt to put Emma or I on Saucier.
Anyway, today I made my first batch of petit fours. Including fruit tartlettes, chocolate tartlettes, jelly lollies, and an array of different chocolates that Chef Florian calls praliniens. But what he is referring to is the standard Belgian Praline. This is a chocolate with a hard outer coating, a softer inner or sometimes liquid filling. Not to be confused with American pralines which everyone from New Orleans and myself just love. Of course, I had to do a little research to know all this.

Afterwards, I was sent to the deli slicer or cutting machine as we call it at the Burg to make a component of a dessert called Ananas Carpaccio. Ananas is pineapple in English. Not bananas without the "B" like I thought at first. This is a long tedious process of thinly slicing the ananas on the cutting machine, and carefully layering it, over lapping some, onto a large sheet tray. Make six of these large sheet trays and put them in the shock froster, or freezer as we say. The comment of the day was... "This is a day job isn't it?" Yes, yes it is. It took me about 2 hours. At least I have a ton of songs memorized in my head so I could sing to myself to pass the time.

While standing on one spot for two hours, I did notice something that was rather humorous to me. Since spring has sprung, the insects have come out to play. And like the kitchens in Florida, the fruit gnats swarm. I was happy to see some of the oh so familiar and annoying bugs. At least I know that German kitchens have the same issues we do in Florida. Or it could be our fault... the Pommelos do come from Florida here.

Entrementier Reflection

Well, it was a good try putting me on entrementier. Emma lasted 2 days, and I lasted 3. It is not that we were not good, or not surviving, but we cannot speak German.
So a quick review of what they had me doing for three days.

8:30 - Cut 20 onions
9 - Cut Cabbage
9:30 - Cut carrots
10 - Cut zucchini
10:30 - clean
11 - Clean the rest of the kitchen and see who needs help
12 - Go to Garde Manger.

For the three days that I worked at Entrementier, I was always sent back to garde manger. One day I helped with plates and tried to learn all the plates that get sent out, but everything moved so fast, no one had any time to really explain to me what was what, and where it went. So most of the time I was pushed out of the way and then told to go back to garde manger. In reality, the only thing I was going to be able to do was prep before service, and plate during, since I do not understand German, they really could not train me on any position. It was nice for them to try and give us the opportunity, but I think everyone learned a lesson.

So back to garde manger I go! I like it there more anyway.

Spring is in the Air!

How odd that just a few weeks ago it was -3 degrees, snowing, and the sun was never shining. I guess German Mother Earth finally hit the switch and decided she was done with winter. This past week has been a wonderful 20 degrees, sunny, with a light breeze. It has been quite a change from seeing people in the town bundled up for the next blizzard, to the towns people walking in t-shirts and hiking around the trails by the Burg. Another beautiful surprise that I was told about but did not believe is the wild flowers that have sprung up everywhere! The green grass has turned into a rainbow of colors. It is amazing.

So I made a promise that I would pick and dry a collection of wild flowers from Germany for my Aunt Lois.

This is the first one, collected from the front of the personal house I live in. Tomorrow is our off day and it is so beautiful, we are going for a hike on the trails around the Burg Staufeneck. We do not know where they lead, or what the view is like on the other side of the hill, so it will be an adventure! Maybe there will be a field of flowers for me to pick and dry for my beloved Aunt Lois.

Real quick, I know this is a bad photo but it is of the tree outside of our window. While it was cold it was just sticks. Now it has pink buds all over it but no leaves. We do not know what kind of tree it is. Can you help us figure it out?