Visit Szczecin, Poland

When we talked to friends from Berlin early on about day trips from Berlin some people mentioned Szszecin, Poland.  After living here for a year we finally decided it was time to go to Poland for a weekend.  From Berlin, you can cross into Poland within about an hour depending on where you are headed.  So we thought back to what people had said about Szczecin in northern Poland.  Then I started to do some research looking up what to do there and whether we should spend the night or come back the same day as it is only a 2 hour train ride.  After several blogs and other sites the general impression I got was- "Don't go."  It seemed people much preferred the day trips within Germany.  I started to waver and was thinking about alternatives.  

Then I talked to a friend from work who is from Poland.  He has been to Szczecin and said that if people go there thinking they are going to a big European city like Rome or Paris, they are often disappointed.  Also, much of the city was destroyed in World War II, so it is not as old as some other destinations in Poland, so it has less of a sense of history about it.  He felt that the town was a bit grey, but it was a nice place to walk around and was worth seeing.  Also it would be a taste of Poland: the culture, the people, the food, while also being close to home.  Not only is not far from Berlin, it was for a time part of Germany and only went back to Poland after WWII.  In German the town is called Stettin.  I recently saw a map of Europe from during Frederick the Great's time and Stettin was on the map as part of Brandenburg.  In the end we decided to go.

We tried to book train tickets online but could only get them mailed to us.  We decided that since it was less than a week a way that might not be the best plan.  So we went to the station and got them a few days in advance.  This turned out to be a good plan.  Online the only option was about 60 euros per person round trip.  At the train station we got tickets for only 20 euros round trip per person.  This made it definitely worth going to just get out of Berlin for a couple days.

We of course picked the rainiest weekend in weeks, but since we had tickets we stuck to the plan.  Even in the rain, I really enjoyed walking around the city.  It is really a good place to walk around.  There is a tourist path (drawn in red on the sidewalk, even) with historic and important sites to stop at (all numbered and everything).  We didn't really have the walking tour book and didn't care much to take out paper to read about what we were seeing since it was raining.  While parts of the city are a bit grey and looked even more grey in the rain, the buildings were cool.  I know nothing about architecture, but the architectural styles around town were varied and interesting.  Some of the old part of the city have been redone with bright colors, so that made everything a bit more cheery.  There are museums but they apparently don't have much labeled in English, so we didn't go to any of them.

As a significant port city, they have a nice waterfront walk in front of the Maritime Museum and Nautical Academy, which impressively sat upon a hill overlooking the water.  As you walked along the river you could smell chocolate from the chocolate factory on the other side of the city.  In the future they will be creating gardens in the water where the river is too shallow for large ships.  Apparently you can also rent kayaks and canoes, although it was a bit too cold for that in October.  

 

 

There is a castle of the Pomeranian Dukes, which supposedly has some exhibits, but really was just a cool building to walk around.  In the warmer weather they do open air concerts in the courtyard.  And the space inside is also used for weddings which we saw as well. 

We ended up meeting with my friend's friend who lives there and she took us around the city a bit.  Two things she showed us which we would not have done on our own were to visit the cemetery and to go up to the 22nd floor restaurant to overlook the city.  I had seen that the cemetery was one of the things to see in Szczecin, but as it was a bit outside of the historical district (so you needed to take a bus or tram) and we don't speak Polish I figured we wouldn't bother.  I am glad that we did because it was unlike most cemeteries I've been too.  Szczecin at some point decided to move all of the cemeteries from around the city into one place.  What resulted was one ridiculously large cemetery with some sections specific to certain religions and others more general.  There are fountains and statues.  Also, there are many many trees.  I am used to no trees and being able to see all of the graves.  I think about the military graves from the civil war where you can just see lines of the white crosses forever.  But here the graves sites seemed more intimate, with personal touches like gardens and benches and they are hidden from the roads and pathways with clear sections between graves.  I liked the feel much better.  Although I suppose that this cemetery has a different intention than the military ones where they want you to feel how great a loss it was.  

 

Overlooking the city was also fun, although would have been nicer on a nice day.  You could really see how green the city was with all of its parks from above.

 

The food was also amazing, which makes the train ride worth it on its own. For lunch we went to a brewery that opened a year ago called Browar Stara Komenda.  The beer was great and the food was awesome!  Not all of the food was traditional Polish but we tried a more traditional soup (I think it was a cabbage soup), bread with schmalz, and what we decided was a Polish hot pocket (only actually good).  

For dinner we went to Karczma Polska Pod Kogutem, which both our Poland tour book and the hotel recommended as good for traditional Polish food.  It was a bit hokey and touristy (people on one side of us spoke German and on the other side English), but the food was good.  We had Bigos (cabbage stewed with pork in a bread bowl) as a starter, then Polish pierogi with bacon and barley, and pork knuckle village style.  Overall, it was a lot of cabbage, but all so wonderful.  The pierogis aren't at all like the ones we get in the US and in fact not what we had at the Culture Festival in Berlin either.  (This was a bit of a shame, as the Berlin ones were the best.)  We again had beer, which was great.  We were tired from the long day and rain so we didn't move on to vodka.  Some say Polish vodka is the best.  I am not in a position to say, since I don't drink vodka often.  But it is cheaper and they have a great variety so we did bring some home with us!

If you are visiting Berlin and don't have much time, it may not be worth going to Szczecin.  There is plenty to see in Berlin and Potsdam.  But if you are in Berlin for an extended stay or are living here, it is definitely worth it.  I would recommend going in nice weather and maybe when you can go kayaking.  It is a perfect mini getaway that makes you feel like you have gone much further.  Plus you get to train through the countryside to get there.

Kartoffel Fest

Potatoes are not my favorite, but they sure are a staple here in Germany.  There are even potato based restaurants in Berlin like the Kartoffelkeller.  We haven't been there, but even I am interested in seeing what the restaurant is like.

So when it is potato picking season, what better than to have a Potato Festival?  There is one on a farm in Dahlem, a section in southwest Berlin.  As festivals are generally fun, we went to check it out.

I learned how they pick potatoes.  A tractor goes and pulls up the plants from under the ground.  Then the potatoes can easily picked up off the ground.  There were lots of kids waiting for the tractor to come past so they could scoop up a bunch of them.  People were walking away with huge bags of potatoes.

I also learned that there are a ton of different types of potatoes, besides white, blue, purple, and sweet.  The sad thing was that they didn't have any that you could taste.  It would have been interesting to find out what the differences were.

 

We had some excellent kartoffelpuffers, which is similar to a potato pancake, but different than any I've had in the US.  These I actually like to eat, even.  We also had Federweisser, which is a fall drink of freshly fermented grape juice.  It tasted a bit like a apple cider (the non-alcoholic American kind).  Sadly we have bought some since at the store and it is not half as good as the glass we had at this festival.

There are so many festivals in Berlin.  They are fun and rarely disappoint. 

Feigen

Every once in a while we would buy some new exotic fruit from the grocery store, look up online how to cut and eat it, and try it.  In this way we have tried Lychees, Dragon Fruit, Tamarillos, and a variety of other fruits.  One that I never tried were fresh figs.  I eat them dried and love them.  But whenever there would be a few fresh ones at the store they were so expensive especially compared to the packages of dried ones that I never bothered.  I figured it was better to try something I had never had in any form.

Here in Berlin, fresh figs, or Feigen, have become a fall treat for us.  They are in season in Turkey and get shipped here.  You can buy them for most of the year and they are still cheaper than in the US.  However, when it is the height of the season, they reduce in price to about a pound for 3 Euros. 

They make a great quick dinner after a long day of work.  Slice up a fig, put it on some fresh baked bread with some prosciutto and arugula (which the Germans love and eat on everything including pizza) and add some Balsamic vinegar and you have a great sandwich to go with your favorite sides.  I am not a big sandwich-for-dinner person, but these are worth it. 

This summer while back in the states I picked up a Food Network magazine that had several jam and preserve recipes.  One of them was a Fig and Ruby Port Preserve.  I have never been tempted to make my own jam, but this one called to me.  I have had fig jam before at La Femme, a Turkish restaurant near Hermannplatz that makes their own jams to go with their simit rings (sesame bread rings) for breakfast.  I love all of their jams.  Generally they serve strawberry or some other berry, but every once in a while you will get fig instead.

So I went for it.  I bought a few canning jars and a bunch of figs and tried the recipe.  I had to use Tawny Port as it is difficult to find Ruby Port here (3 stores, 2 of them wine stores and still no luck, which is crazy considering they come from Portugal which is in the EU).  I am also pretty sure that the La Femme puts honey in their jam so I traded out about 1/4 a cup of sugar for honey.  Since I tripled the recipe it took about triple the time to cook down, but it was completely worth it.  The preserves were amazing with strong cheese, on scones, and I bet will be the best on vanilla ice cream!  I can't wait till I have time and cheap figs again!

Ping...Pong

For the most part it doesn't get so hot in Berlin that it is unpleasant to be outside.  This is good since there is almost no air conditioning here.  It is also not as humid as the east coast of the US.  That means that on a nice summer day it is fun to go to a park.  And Berlin has a ton of parks.

Victory Column

There are big ones like Tiergarten in the center part of the city.  This park contains the Victory Column (Siegessäule in German) and is right near the Brandenburg Gate.  It is hard to tell how big the park is when you are in it because it is broken up by a streets and rivers and lakes and also sectioned off by trees and paths.

Soviet Memorial in Treptower

One of my favorite large parks is Treptower Park.  It is in eastern Berlin along the Spree.  Along the river there are cafes and snack stands.  The most appropriate one seems to be the smoked fish stand.  Here also there are many paths and sections to the park including open fields, flower gardens, and wooded places for shade.  Treptower Park also has a large Soviet War Memorial which I enjoy walking through.  The most interesting thing about the park is the SpreePark, an abandoned amusement park.  It is all fenced off and there are many trees that make it difficult to see into the park, but you can see the ferris wheel and a beat-up fiberglass dinosaur or two.  Apparently this park was open until 2001.  But it seems much older and creepier because it seems overgrown.

Can you find the ferris wheel?

Dinosaurs

The other large park we go to is Tempelhof Airfield.  According to Wikipedia it gets its name because the land was originally owned by the Knights Templar in medieval times.  As I have mentioned this airport is the one used for the Berlin airlift when allied troops brought in food and supplies to West Berlin while roads and water routes were closed off between June 1948 and September 1949.  The airport building, rebuilt by the Nazis, was at one point in the top 20 largest buildings in the world.  Now the building is used for events like a large fashion show.  And the airfield is used as a park.  There are areas to grill, dog parks, mini-golf, and gardens.  And you can rollerblade, bike, or skate sail on the runways.  This is a park you don't want to come to if you are looking for shade though.

Viktoriapark- looking up to the monument

There are many smaller parks as well.  Viktoriapark has a lot of space for picnics and walking but its main thing is that you can walk about the hill (one of the very few in Berlin) and look out over the city.  There is a monument to the war against Napoleon at the top of the hill and this is a great place to watch the sunset.

View from top of Viktoriapark

A park we recently went to is Volkspark Hasenheide near Hermannplatz.  You can almost walk from this park directly to Tempelhof but you have to go on the road for a little bit to make it between.  We went here just to walk through a park on a nice afternoon.  What we found was that this park also has mini-golf and a mini-zoo (camels and llamas plus more). 

There are also mini-parks with just a playground and some shady spots and some sunny spots dotted throughout the city.

The one thing that most of these parks have in common (other than Tempelhof maybe) is that they have ping pong tables.  These are smooth slab tables with metal "nets" so they don't get ruined by weather.  You can bring your own paddles and balls to most parks and play a round or two.  While I am not the biggest ping pong player, I find this a nice thing to do at a park.  Something to think about in the parks in the US.

Overall I think that the parks in Berlin offer something for everyone:  shade, sun, history, water sports, ping pong, grass, walks, and all without having to be too far away from home.

Olympics 2012 in Berlin

While I am usually an avid Olympics watcher, this year I did not watch as much as I would like.  Instead I was busy traveling and visiting people.  But once we were back in Berlin we were able to take advantage of being able to watch the Olympics at Tempelhof Airfield.  They had a big screen set up airing the Olympics all day.  We brought some beer and sat in the grass watching the Mexico vs. Brazil soccer game.  It was a perfect day with some sun and some clouds and 70 degrees.

You could set up camp there all day either bringing in packed food and drinks or buying things from the stands set up around the area.  They brought in a bunch of porta-potties too.  They cost 50 cents to use, but they were clean! And outside there was a real sink with soap and water.  I really don't mind paying to use a bathroom when I know that it will be clean and have toilet paper. 

And if just watching the Olympics makes you feel like getting up and being active you were in the perfect spot.  You could go onto the runway and rollerblade or bike.  If you didn't have your own bike you could rent one or if not into biking you could rent a segway.  They also specially set up a soccer field, hockey field, volleyball court, and badminton court for people to play in.  And apparently in the mornings they had free yoga and pilates classes.  If only we'd found out about this before the second to last day!

Erdbeeren

As Spargel season started to come to a close, it was time to move on to another seasonal love--Strawberries.  You know when the start of strawberry season is close because the little strawberry-shaped huts where the best strawberries can be found start popping up.  One appeared one day at the U-bahn station I get off at for work.  We then had to patiently wait until they opened.  But one day I walked out of the U-bahn station and smelled them!  I don't know what is so different about these strawberries, whether they have less chemicals sprayed on them, are not genetically enhance to grow to enormous sizes, or whatever, but they smell so wonderful.  And you don't need to put your nose towards them, you just need to be in the area.  Granted, there are a lot of strawberries in that little hut on a given morning, so it may be quantity that leads to the strong aroma.  Whatever it is, it made the trip to work that much more pleasant.

As strawberries became more at their peak the prices got better.  Then I also learned that if you buy them in the morning and not on the way home from work they are even cheaper!  You can get 2 kilograms of strawberries for 5.50 Euros.  That is 4.4 pounds of strawberries.  I am sure that you can buy them cheaper sometimes at the grocery stores here, but these strawberries always look and taste so much better.  We also find that the ones at the grocery store often have many strawberries that need to be thrown out (especially in the off-season you to need to buy twice as many to get the amount you need).

If I can find something to do with 2 kilos of asparagus, I can surely find things to do with that many strawberries.  So we had a strawberry dinner.  Thanks to foodnetwork.com, I found many options to choose from without having to look any further.

For an appetizer we had Brie with Strawberries on Crostini.  I added more strawberries than the recipe calls for (one strawberry for 6 servings is ridiculous!)  Next time I will dice them though and sprinkle them on so that it is easier to eat.

Then for dinner we had Roast Pork with Cumin-Spiked Mixed Berry Sauce, spaetzel, and Strawberry Salad (where I substituted bacon for the speck).  The pork was especially good.  I recommend trying it.  I used blueberry preserves instead of boysenberry and would add more strawberries next time.  I also cooked the sauce, which was quite runny, with some flour to thicken it before serving.  The halloumi made the salad different than most strawberry salads with balsamic vinegar.  It really hit the sweet/salty mix just right.  We had a Montepulciano D'Abruzzo with dinner.  This is one of our favorite types of red wine and is quite easily available in Berlin.  It is much lighter than most but still has some good flavor.  We didn't really plan the wine to go with dinner (a friend brought it) but it was a perfect pairing.

To finish the meal we had strawberry rhubarb crisp.  The recipe wasn't my favorite, so I won't link it here and will look for another one to use for next time.

Beyond my strawberry dinner, we have been having strawberries more in general.  In Berlin one of the big things to have is a Strawberry Bowle.  This is a strawberry punch.  There are many other flavors as well, but strawberry is the one that I am drawn to.  We didn't end up making any so that we wouldn't overdo the strawberries in the dinner, but it is worth noting.  At one street festival I had one that was more a large cup full of strawberries with some strawberry wine to fill in the crevices.  This was perfect in my book.  Although usually there is more liquid than strawberry like in this picture.  I guess it is a matter of preference.


I just hope that the strawberry season is nice and long.

Flags everywhere!

Around June 8th or so suddenly all of the German flags came out: on people's cars (both the kind that stick up from the windows and side view mirror covers that look like flags), on buildings, hanging from balconies, in restaurants.  It was like the German equivalent to the 4th of July in the US.  So which national holiday were we to celebrate?  The Euro Cup of course!

Fussball (football) is a big deal here.  Regular games are big enough, but the Euro Cup is of course even bigger.  Not only flags come out, but so do huge TVs.  Every restaurant, bar, food stand, and sometimes the bakeries suddenly has TVs for people to hang out and watch.  And they put them right outside so people can enjoy sitting outside, having a beer or dinner, and watching the game.  (Berliners love to sit outside and now that it is warm and the sun is out till 10pm, no one wants to sit inside.)  You can pretty much walk down the street and not miss much of game as you walk from viewing one TV to the next.  Or you could go to public viewings at Tempelhof Airport (yes, the airport of the Berlin Airlift is now a place to watch the Euro Cup) or at Brandenburger Tor.  We have heard that at Tempelhof you may not get within viewing distance even if you go an hour and a half before the game, so we haven't bothered.

2 TVs from our seats at dinner

And in case you don't have the TV on, you can often tell what is going on by the yelling.  As I write it is the quarter final game between Germany and Greece.  The whole neighborhood is going crazy over near misses and exciting plays.  You can hear people cheering and shouting.  For the last Germany game when they scored people were setting off what sounded like cannons nearby.  And now Germany scores to make the score 1-0.  Tonight's choice noise-makers seem to be air-horns and fireworks!

 So as you can see it is a bit like the 4th of July...cheering, cannons, fireworks, and national pride.

Go Deutschland!

Halbzeit Eier (Half-time eggs)

Karneval der Kulturen

No frowny faces allowed

On the weekend of Pentecost Sunday, which in Germany is a 3-day weekend, Berlin celebrates the cultures that make up the city.  Last weekend was the 17th Karneval der Kulturen.  It is an all weekend event starting on Friday and ending Monday evening.  The main event is the parade on Sunday.

The Karneval takes place between Mehringdamm and Hallesches Tor, so is pretty close to where we live.  This made this festival even better for us because we could just walk over and back whenever we felt like it.  It is also completely our type of things as other than the parade it was a giant food festival with food from all over the world. 

Bigos (Beegohsh)- Note in back is an AK47 of vodka

Best sign

We tasted many cultures over the weekend, fitting in as much as possible by only ordering one of anything and splitting it.  We had Mexican burritos, South American empanadas, Polish pierogies, Polish Bigos (sauerkraut and meat, rather like what we had in Prague), Indian samosas, Spanish chorizo, Dresdener Handbrot (bread filled with cheese and mushrooms topped with sour cream), a trendy chicken, raisin, and date wrap, German strawberries in cream, Egyptian Kushari, Jamaican funky chicken, African BBQ chicken, and Ghanan fried plantains and beans. I really can't pick a favorite.  Just writing about makes me miss the festival.  Sadly many of the stands do not have restaurants in Berlin.  As far as drinks went, we had coconut juice straight from the coconut (so Hawai'i), Brazilian caipirinhas, Southern German Schwarzbeir, Mexican Corona, Cuban Mojitos, German Strawberry Bowle (in this case a whole cup full of strawberries in a bit of strawberry wine), an unsweetened strawberry and rhubarb smoothie, and West African palm beer.

African BBQ

The parade was also quite an experience.  It was the longest parade I have ever known.  We walked down Gneisenaustrasse, which was the parade route, until we ran into the parade.  Then we walked back to find a good place to watch and waited for it to catch up to us.  Some of the parts of the parade where just what you would expect of a Culture Parade:  the name of the country on the sign, and people singing and dancing in traditional garb.  However, there were also some skits going on that were very odd and at least one theater group that seemed to be doing interpretive dance as they went.  There were clearly a lot of dance schools in the parade showing off a variety of types of dances.  We also saw a Vegetarian group with a giant fake pig and many signs telling us why we should not eat meat.  In general, it was a very random parade.  And we didn't see it all.  We stayed for about 3 hours and then went home for a while.  We then went back to meet up with some friends, thinking that the parade would be over.  We found them at parade group number 50 (about 20 past where we last saw).  And this was apparently only half-way.  As we started getting to parade group 65 the gaps between them started getting bigger and bigger.  As it was 6:30 and we had first started watching the parade at 1:30 or so we gave up and moved on for the evening.

Blue Dragon

Overall, I really enjoyed the Karneval der Kulturen.  I only wish it happened more than once a year.  But it is something to look forward to next spring!

Spargel- The Asparagus Craze

Fitting with the stereotype of being a kid, I always hated eating my peas.  To this day I really don't like them.  On the other hand I really enjoyed some of the things TV told me I shouldn't like:  spinach and asparagus (and TV would never lie).  I like to cook with spinach, but haven't used asparagus that much as I know it is more difficult to prepare well and I only like it if is not stringy. 

The Germans though take liking asparagus to another level.  But before I talk about that, I will give you some background on Spargel.  Spargel is German for asparagus, but refers to white asparagus, which is difficult to find in the US.  Green asparagus is usually referred to as grüner Spargel.  White asparagus is grown covered with dirt so that it does not see light until it is picked.  That is why it stays white.  If it has seen some light it gets tinged with purple.  I think that this kind looks nice, but it is considered marred.  I have read though that the purple doesn't actually change the taste, so I haven't been too picky about the coloring when buying Spargel.  The other thing you have to know when buying Spargel is that just because they are super thick doesn't mean that they will be less good.  In the US when I would buy asparagus I would always look for the thinnest ones as they always seemed to be the most tender.  Here you can't get thin asparagus.  This becomes helpful because you actually need to peel Spargel.  The first batch we bought was early in the season (mid April), so even though we peeled a good portion off of it it was still stringy.  I peeled some of that batch the next day but peeled off a bunch more and it was better.  If you peeled this much off US asparagus there would be nothing left.  We have heard that they are also stringy-er early in the season.  After peeling a ton (actually 2 kilograms) of Spargel in two days, I realized why the dishes with Spargel in it at the restaurants are a bit more expensive than most things here.

Spargel Soup at a Greek Restaurant

Last spring we were in Berlin for a weekend during Spargel season.  We didn't know it at the time.  We just noticed how every weekly special item no matter what restaurant we were in included asparagus.  Actually it was one of the new German words we learned on that visit since it was everywhere.  When out to dinner with some German friends we commented on this and they told us that you can only get Spargel fresh in the spring. So people eat a ton of it now because they can't get it again for the rest of the year.  And now that we are living here, it really does pervade through German daily life.  Suddenly everything comes with Spargel: soups, salads, pastas, pizza.  At one restaurant the weekly menu had listed Beelitzer Spargel as a main dish. (Beelitz is apparently a "thousand-year-old Spargel metropolis.")  When you read the description of the dish, you find that it is asparagus and new potatoes in hollandaise sauce with chicken.  I love that chicken became the side!  And it was a meal-sized portion of chicken too.  I've actually read that it's proper Spargel etiquette to always list the Spargel as the main part of the meal, no matter what else there is. (Why there is specific Spargel etiquette I don't know.)

You also see Spargel being sold everywhere.  We were at Treptower Park walking along the river Spree and set up near the food huts was a lady selling Spargel.  I went to the new mall on Schlossstrasse (which is actually like a huge American mall) and there was a Spargel stand set up as you walked into the mall.  I don't think I have ever been to a mall where I could buy produce as I entered the building.  It is also prominently displayed at the grocery store. And you can see above that it was the topic of the cooking magazine!
 

Spargel for soup

The peelings

Since I like asparagus anyway it has been nice to fall into the craze and I find that I often order something with it in it when we are out.  I also have tried to cook with it a bit while it is around.  I have tried what was said to be a traditional recipe from Saveur.com where you boil it with some lemon juice and also White Asparagus Soup.  Both were very good.  It has been a while since I have made anything with asparagus now so I am ready to buy some more, peel away, and try some new recipes. 

So if you are thinking, yum asparagus...come to Berlin in the spring and dig in.