We started with our morning coffee (the barista at the corner shop knows our orders now) and a stroll through our neighborhood doing some window shopping at little boutiques, then met Wabes at Alexanderplatz. We headed down to the Turkish part of Kreutzberg for lunch. We sat at an outside table, of course, and watched the residents of K-berg flow by: punk kids with dogs, students, backpackers, mothers with with small children, women wearing hijab, buskers, hustlers, laborers and office workers. Over a lunch of hummus, blocks of lemon-olive oil-soaked feta, eggplant purée and freshly-baked naan Wabes explained the research that brought her to Berlin for the summer. (I could summarize it, but better that you just wait for the book). Then a wander through the Turkish Market, again teeming with humanity. B, predictably hated the crowds but he’s a patient man and and amused himself with a cup of coffee while Wabes and I browsed the market stalls. Bolts of fabric, and rolls of trim, clothing, jewelry, spices, fresh produce, fish, meats, olives, cheeses, coffee, sweets, and housewares all jostled for display space.
I bought a hat. I asked B if it made me look like Debbie Gibson and he said, “who?”*

Later we met up with the Berlin “Yeahaw” pickup ultimate frisbee group in a park on the south side of the city. We played some good ultimate, but the group wasn’t particularly social and there was no going-out-for-beer afterward or anything. It was interesting to play the game in two languages, and B and I didn’t disgrace ourselves — our team did win. B and I headed back to our own neighborhood where we rewarded our effort with beer and pizza and a good night’s sleep.

*Critical three year age difference! it’s always pop-culture references that divide us.

We went on an all-day bike tour of Berlin today. The focus of the tour was cold war/Berlin wall history. Unfortunately the tour guide wasn’t the greatest public speaker. He clearly knew his German history, and knew a lot about herding 25 hapless tourists on wobbly bicycles safely through Berlin traffic. But his info spiels were too short, with ill-timed dramatic pauses and a special gift for killing the punchline in a speech that was clearly crafted by someone else. On the other hand, it was lovely riding around town on a beach cruiser bicycle in the sunshine, and getting to know the other people on our tour.* And with bikes we did get to see a lot of the city, including the East Side Gallery, which are commissioned murals painted all over the longest remaining stretch of the wall. B pointed out that probably I was looking for the 200-level course on German cold war history, and the tour is strictly a survey course. I guess I should just read books on the topic now. German history buffs, suggestions?

We were thoroughly sun-baked by the end of the tour. We wandered down a quiet side street that Wabes promised contained both a puppet workshop and the oldest bakery in Berlin. Both, alas, were closed. But we did find a shady garden in which to pass beer o’clock. Then home to shower off the layers of sunscreen and grit, and a late afternoon nap. (Seriously, yes, I know how indulgent this schedule is).

Then we headed downstairs to the Mallorcan tapas cafe next door to our apartment, where we ended up having one of the best meals of our entire trip. A menu in both spanish and german gave us the opportunity to leverage both my high school spanish and ben’s high school german when it came to food words. Also, the impeccable english spoken by the cafe owner helped, too. But it was definitely the first time I’ve ordered dinner using 3 languages in the same sentence. (“We’ll have zwei Gläser Hauswein, las gambas, las patatas, y gazpacho, bitte”). Prawns cooked in oil and garlic, bacon-wrapped dates, gazpacho, potato gratin, bread with aioli, house red wine from Mallorca, flan and coffee to finish**. With the bill came a taste of a spanish digestif called Hierbas Ibicencas – a sort of aniseed-flavored rum.

We completed the evening with a stroll around our neighborhood. On every corrner there’s a sidewalk cafe with candles flickering on the tables and a few people lingering over a glass of wine and a cigarette. The park is full of picnickers canoodling on blankets under a nearly full moon. It’s still very warm at 10pm. We sleep with the windows and french doors thrown wide open to the night breezes. There’s only 8 hours between sunset and sunrise in Berlin in July, making for lingering twilights (and early dawns, not that we’ve been up to see any since leaving Austria.) The sidewalk cafe is such a defining feature of the Berlin landscape that it’s weird to realize that, like Chicago, fully half of the year it’s too cold for sidewalk cafes and picnics. It seems like the longer and colder winter is in a given place, the better that place lives up summer. Maybe that formula works on longer-term scales, too. Berlin had it pretty rough for most of the 20th century – maybe this century can be Berlin’s long, lingering summer.

*Winner: the totally ripped, tattooed guy in a superman t-shirt who turned out to be a retired Norwegian border guard (the Russian/Norwegian border, that is) who now works as a smoke jumper. Cause, well, dang.

** These were all small-plate size dishes, befre you start thinking we are unbelievable gluttons. We’re just your run-of-the-mill size gluttons.

We behaved like real Berliners today and spent most of our Sunday in sidewalk cafes or picnicking in the park. We started the morning with a coffee at a sidewalk cafe*, then breakfasted in our apartment** while I assembled a picnic. Then we rented bikes for the day and rode through the Brandenburg Gate (and the hoards of tourists), then into the Tiergarden. We picnicked like champs, then rode the length of the garden, stopping to throw a frisbee and nap in the sun for a while. Then we headed to the Sony Center for a gelato break, which is otherwise a dumb mall but has this strange canopy that I have always been a fan of (pictured above). Our route back took us past the somber and starkly beautiful holocaust memorial.***

Back home again and it was beer o’clock on our balcony. Dinner was snacking on stuff at home (we call it “leftovers tapas” to make it sound fancier), and later we crossed the street to try Saphire, reputed to be the best cocktail bar in all of Berlin and conveniently located a 2 minute walk from our apartment. We sat outside, of course, to watch all the people go by. The cocktails were definitely a cut above, but it made us think that maybe the craft cocktail scene has not really arrived in Berlin yet. And why would it, when beer is cheaper than soda?

In all, a beautiful, sun-soaked summer day.

* Our travels have taught us this: Austrians couldn’t care less about their coffee, Italians are much too strict about the rules (what if I WANT a cappuccino after 11am?), but middle-class Berlin yuppies get it juussst right.

** yoghurt with ALL THE DAMN HONIG we want!

***While I realize that a maze of 2700+ stone blocks with narrow aisles between them does make for an amazing place for teenagers to play tag, I sort of wish someone’s grandmother had been around to slap them for not showing more respect at a memorial.

The tile floor in the foyer of our building.

There’s only time for a quick recap since we’re already on to the next day’s adventures:

Our studio apartment in Prenzlaurberg is charming and adorable. High ceilings, a wall of windows and french doors that open onto a tiny balcony just big enough for a table and two chairs. Clean white walls, crisp white linens on the bed, light wood furniture (IKEA done tastefully and in the European environment it was originally intended for). A well-equipped kitchen, in which I just finished assembling a picnic of ravioli, brochen, goat cheese, olives, tomatoes and bell pepper.

But I digress. That’s today. Yesterday: we woke up late to the beautiful morning light and I went for a short run in the nearby park. Then we walked 20 minutes thru the leafy cobblestone streets of babies/yuppies/ex-pat-friendly former East Berlin ‘hood of Prenzlaurberg to Cafe Godot, where I was first introduced to Käsefrühstück (literally, “cheese breakfast”) 5 years ago on my last visit to Berlin. Wabes made an unexpected appearance on an unexpected bicycle and saved us just when we were about to concede defeat to the vast quantities of cheese on our table. Then we wandered the open market at Kolkwitzplatz, buying produce and fresh pasta, then back to our apartment for afternoon naps. A light salad for dinner, eaten on our balcony, then out to meet Wabes (our personal Berlin concierge, yes!) at an exhibit closing party on the balcony of an art gallery. It was see-and-be-seen, all fancy artsy twenty-somethings dressed in their artsiest best, half a dozen languages being spoken over Absolute vodka-sponsored cocktails. Michael Stipe strolled by in a blue pork pie hat.* We watched some video installation art. Finally, late night kebab and falafel to wrap up the evening. We fell into bed to the sounds of a noisy party on the balcony across our courtyard, but greatest hits of Whitney Houston blaring until after 3am were no match for my earplugs.

*I tried to convince Wabes to stalk him in the bathroom line, but she was too classy for such behavior.

Here we are in Berlin!

With just one evening in Munich, we did a quick walking tour of the architectural highlights:

Germans like their clock towers.

…followed by beers and a pretzel bigger than my head at the Hofbräuhaus:

…And on the walk back to the hotel we encountered this band playing mashups of classical and pop music on the street.

Alps, I: Trekking poles: not just for gear-geeks, sissies and old people.

We scrambled down out of the Alps today. Not as filthy as if we’d been camping for four days, but still in pretty desperate need of showers and some quality time in the laundromat. The Alps are so so so spectacularly beautiful. None of our pictures will really do them justice, but we took a lot of them anyway. It’s really hard to capture the scale of the mountains in photographs — its just so much sheer up and down.

Our route was: a train from Innsbruck to Sharnitz (just on the Austrian side of the Austrian-German border), then hiked 4 days across the Karwendal Nature Park (essentially a national park), sleeping each night at a different hiking hut. On the 4th day we hiked out to the lake-side vacation resort Pertisau, then took a bus to Jenbach and a train back to Innsbruck. In all we averaged 11 miles* per day and 2000 vertical feet up/1200 down for the first three days, and 3300 down on our last day (most of it in the first 2 miles!)

B and I are experience hikers/backpackers, but we’re not mountaineers. We took care in planning this route not to get in over our heads, as many of these trails require climbing gear and mountaineering knowledge. So much so, in fact, that when we stopped at the OAV (Austrian Alpine Club) office in Innsbruck for a map, the guy at the desk nearly scoffed at us for even needing a map for this route. (We did, actually, require a map. Trails are well-signed but it’s still a big wilderness).

And we did pretty well. With only day packs to carry, we were able to cover 10+ miles a day, and while trekking poles would have made us faster, and hiking boots more sure-footed (there wasn’t room in the suitcases for hiking boots AND running shoes, and I do have marathon training to keep up with) the only place where we really got in over our heads in terms of experience and gear was not on the trail between hütten, but the day that we got in to our intended destination so early that we decided to summit a small nearby peak in the afternoon. It turns out I *am* a little afraid of heights, when those are heights from which I could actually fall and die. But there’s a point when you’re halfway up when it’s better not to look and just keep moving, because going back down is worse than up. (When we get home and can download pictures from our camera, we’ll post the 360 video from the top of Mahnkopf here). And there’s always a post-summit beer to steady one’s nerves afterward.

Alps, II: Die Hütten, or, What It’s Like to Share a Bedroom With 88 Austrians

I wish the US had some equivalent of the hiking huts – instead of camping at the end of each day, we hiked to these big, rustic lodges where we could recoup after a long day with a beer, a hot meal of hearty Austrian fare (for vegetarians, a rotating menu of dumplings made from potato, cheese, bread and/or noodles, or any other combo of those four ingredients. All of it delicious and TOTALLY vegetarian I’m sure — not a chance that everything was cooked in chicken stock… ha). Oh and don’t forget the butter. Everything cooked in butter. For dessert there was always apple strudel swimming in a big plate of vanilla sauce (fellow St. Catz alum, remember the puddings of our Oxford days? I found those again. I just had to go all the way to the top of the Alps).

What was I saying? Beer? Butter? Apple strudel? Oh right, hiking huts. The three we stayed at were each perched at the top of a saddle between mountains, so that each afforded 360 degree views of the valleys from which we came or were headed to next. Many climbers use the hütten as base camp from which to do more serious rock climbing. And they are huge, and popular. Over the course of the afternoon, more and more hikers (and in some cases, really hearty mountain bikers) came in from every direction, and by the end of the evening more than 100 people had arrived. The next day everyone was out, headed for their next adventure by 8am, some departing as early as 5, fueled by a breakfast of coffee, hearty brown bread with cheese, and yogurt and muesli.**

The rest of the facilities are a bit more rustic than the food, which makes sense once you learn that the hütte operators basically give the entire lodging fee back to the AV, and make their money through food sales. After keeping a VERY late night schedule in Italy we suddenly found ourselves going to sleep at 9pm and up at 6am. Some of this had to do with the sleeping quarters. Did I mention rustic? And a lot of people? At the first hütte we were lucky to get a private room with two twin beds. At the next two we were assigned bunk spaces in a barn with sleeping spaces for up to ninety people. All side-by-side, ten people in a row, with a bunk row five feet above to hold ten more people. Each person’s pack stands at the end of the bed, clotheslines overhead and outside for hanging up wet clothing, four sinks and two toilets for everyone to share. No showers. It’s very very cozy. Earplugs are a good idea. (B and I began referring to the chorus of snoring as a “snorus”). But everyone makes an effort to be polite and respectful of one another’s space and sleeping hours.***

Meals are served in a big common room, which affords opportunity to get to know your fellow hikers. We were limited by our language skills, but one night we ended up sitting at a large common table trading brain teasers (the “two guards stand before two doors, one is the gate to heaven. one guard is a liar and one is a truth-teller… ” sort of thing) with several other hikers. The group was made up of ourselves, three men (who speak the Persian of their childhood amongst themselves, two of whom now live in Germany and speak German, one who lives in London and speaks English), three women (Austrian, one who speaks English and German and two who speak only German). Every puzzle was conducted in three different languages, with different vectors of who could speak directly to whom. And the next day everyone was sent off down the hiking path with another puzzle to chew on as we walked.

Alps, III: The Sights and Sounds of the Alps

Apparently we timed our trip very well, as locals told us that it was only about two weeks ago that the cold wet weather ended. We encountered a few patches of snow, but otherwise it was all green alpine meadows and wildflowers. No rain, only a few puffy white clouds, cool at night but actually quite warm for hiking. (I have a galaxy of new freckles to show for my efforts). And soooo many wildflowers, of so many varieties – pink, purple,yellow, baby blue, red, orange. The meadows have soft, deep green grass, and you can literally lay down in a meadow for a nap. Just watch out for the occasional cowpie.

Because that was the other surprising thing. The adorable baby cows! At the end of the first day’s hike we reached the saddle, walked through a gate and discovered ourselves in a meadow full of alpine cows. Each one of which is wearing a leather collar with a cowbell around her neck. It turns out that the sound of the Alps isn’t the wind whistling through the trees or through mountain passes, it’s not those big alpine horns or yodeling or any such nonsense — it’s the clamor of fifty cowbells all clanking at the same time, ringing out across the valleys.

I’ve always thought that cows, when viewed up close, were the dirtiest, grossest animals, covered in their own shit, with flies settling in the corners of their eyes – but I realized that it’s cows in barnyards that are the dirtiest animals. These alpine cows were surprisingly clean, healthy, and cute. It helped reinforce my meat-eating policies — which is to say that I don’t object to eating animals, but I do object to eating animals that are raised in inhumane commercial environments. We tried to tell these guys how lucky they had it, but I’m not sure they could hear us over the clank of cowbells.

Alps, IV: The Everywhere Triplets

The hiking route we selected was a popular one, and frequently we ran into the same people several days in a row. Our hands-down favorite had to be the parents traveling with their 7-year old triplets.

On the first day, while still on the valley floor, we noticed a family hiking along the path with three small boys in matching red caps. Later that night we saw them at Karwendelhaus. We were impressed that they’d made it all the way up the hill. They couldn’t have been cuter with their matching trekking pants, three pairs of tiny crocks clipped onto the back of three tiny backpacks, and of courses the little red baseball caps.

The next day, they turned up at Falkonhütte and were assigned the bunks directly below us where they slept for 12 straight hours. The third night, they were in the bunk spaces right next to us. We basically slumber-partied with these triplets all the way across the Karwendel.

That’s right: we’re exactly as tough as 7-year old German triplets.

When we arrived at the third hütte, there was no sign of the triplets. We figured they had bailed out at Eng, the midday stop and a popular place to begin/end this particular hike. The route up from Eng to Lamsenjochhütte had been pretty tough. But sure enough, 2 hours after we arrived, we looked up to see 3 little red caps trotting along the path, completely unconcerned abut the nearly-sheer dropoff on one side of the path that had us clinging to the mountainside when we crossed it.

The next morning we hit the trail only a few minutes ahead of the triplets. All the way down (2000 vertical feet of twisty switchbacks), we could look up and see the little red caps, alarmingly, gaining on us. That is, until we hit the valley floor and encountered a petting zoo and playground at the first alpine village. Surely that would slow them down enough to allow us to keep our lead, right? What 7-year old can resist miniature goats who eat out of your hand AND a trampoline?? We did, in fact, leave the triplets in the dust after that. We arrived at Pertisau, and enjoyed a beer at a lake-side cafe like the petty triumphant adults that we are.

An hour later, when we hoisted our dusty, sore muscles out of our chairs, we discovered the triplets enjoying ice cream sundaes at the table directly behind us. If they turn up next to us on a train platform in Berlin, or Chicago, I will no longer be surprised. Creeped out, maybe, but not surprised.

*The Austrians don’t seem to measure hiking distances in, well, distance, but rather time. When asking “how far?” the answer was always given in hours. We assumed there’s a national hiking-pace standard and that one can calculate distance backwards from there. Being mere mortals, we usually took the time estimate and added 15% for ourselves to complete it. That seemed to be abut right.

 
**DO NOT ask for a side of honey to go with your muesli, BTW, unless you want to create an international incident. Apparently that is not how they do it in Austria.

***Plastic-bag rattling-guy, go back to the youth hostel from which you came.

We are halfway thru day 3 of the hike & happened upon a town with some cellular service. Here’s a sneak preview of the alps photos!

Tomorrow we are headed up there!

Today was all administrivia, and what a picturesque place to do errands. I went for a run along the river while B pursued his first proper Austrian breakfast (something about sausage, as I understand it), we did laundry (a laundromat called “Bubble Point”), repacked for the hiking trip, wrote postcards, paid for our Österreichische Alpenverein memberships, and bought hiking maps, groceries, sunscreen and various necessities for the upcoming trip. One of my favorite things to do in foreign countries is to wander around grocery stores and drug stores. I love to look at the differences in packaging and marketing, in the products themselves and how people shop for them.

In the evenings we wandered through Old Town, which is basically like Epcott Innsbruck. It’s gorgeous, but clogged with tourists and really only exists to sell stuff to tourists (not that I’m begrudging any city the right to make money from tourism, mind you, just that I want to see how the normal people live and speak, too). All of Innsbruck is so charming that it’s not really necessary to spend time in the Old Town unless you simply WANT to pay double for your gelato (and sometimes, let’s be honest, I do). Better, however, to wander on the other side of the river where the buildings are still impossibly charming, but a combination of old-fashioned/traditional and clean modern European design and it feels like the Innsbruck where people really live. Also, in the city center no one has the patience to let us fumble through our bad German; they switch to near-perfect English because it’s faster. Better to be a little further off the tourist path and risk having to eat cookies for breakfast.

Speaking of which, we’ve eaten so much delicious but heavy Italian food for the past week that I needed something lighter. We ended up eating vaguely Thai pan-asian food both last night and tonight, as there are plenty of Asian and Indian eateries clustered around the University. I can safely say that the Austrian take on Thai is, well, different from the American take on Thai. But, I did to eat get a big plate of rice, tofu and vegetables, which was a welcome change from all the meat.

B put it well when he described Innsbruck as the Boulder, Colorado of Austria. Mountain sport dominates over all. The town is filled with shops selling outdoor gear, the cafes open at 6am for an early coffee before heading to the mountains, hotels are measured by their proximity to the gondola, there are hiking and biking trails marked right from the center of town, and traditional Tirolean cuisine sits next to lighter, health-oriented fare. There’s still a lot of beer-drinking and gelato-eating, however. This is Europe in summer after all.

I might never want to leave here. :)

Early tomorrow we head up into the mountains — which means four days without internet, or blog posts. Bis bald!

Today we took the train from Milano to Innsbruck, through the Dolomites and then into the Austrian Alps. Holy heck is it beautiful here!

Also, when we got off the train in Austria, this sight greeted us. Ben was so happy.