Aug 19, 2020

Saar Protectorate 2020

Worlds collided this weekend and met somewhere in the middle of an Audrey sandwich. Audrey and Ombline came to visit me for the week - Audrey came to visit me in Berlin back in February but I had just moved here so I wasn’t much of a tour guide while this was Ombline’s first time in Berlin. Ombline is the typical French girl with a je ne sais quoi that drives you crazy because you can't quite put your finger on it...AND she is Camille Rowe's literally doppelganger. I was determined to be a great tour guide and had quite the week planned for them.

When they arrived on Saturday, we headed to Silo Coffee (Gabriel-Max-Straße 4, 10245 Berlin) in Boxhanger Platz for brunch which definitely lived up to the hype. We ordered cappuccinos all around and different versions of something on bread. After brunch, Ombline taught us about olfactory marketing.

“French bakeries pump the smell of fresh baked bread through their air vents…it’s called olfactory marketing…you know, like Abercrombie!”

We did a quick lap around the Saturday market and walked the main stretch of the East Side Gallery.

When two French girls comes to Berlin, they have to see the French Cathedral in Gendarmenmarkt. Tell them the story of why the cathedral was built so that they know pettiness runs in their blood. Drink some sort of sect in the plaza’s cafes and take in the vastness of the square.

We got ice cream at Rosa Canina (Ackerstraße 174, 10115 Berlin) (and again later in the week) and headed home for an afternoon siesta. We were bright eyed for dinner at Rodolfo’s Tapas Bar (Choriner Str. 62, 10435 Berlin) where it was made clear that this week was going to be a salad of languages. French, Spanish, German, and English morphed into one fun language in my head which was evident when I tried to place our dinner order:

“Ich hatte gern el plato jumbo con pulpo, carne, y ceviche por favor. Merci!”

The night was short, but a perfect introduction to Berlin.

I have long dreamed of hosting elaborate dinner parties at my future home that has a long table set with flowers, candles, and all sorts of international dishes (definitely garlic confit and some tagine thrown in the mix). The 24-year old version of that is having friends sleepover at your apartment and make pancakes in the morning! That’s exactly what we did on Sunday morning. We sat out on the balcony in the rain, drank OJ, stuffed ourselves with pancakes (thanks AD!) and plotted what to do with our days.

Options are limited on a rainy Sunday during COVID-19 in Berlin so we ended up at the Neus Museum and got to marvel at the Head of Nefertiti. We trekked to Zimt & Zucker (Potsdamer Straße 103, 10785 Berlin) only to be told they didn’t have any more apple strudel and rewarded ourselves with thai food at Vina (Invalidenstraße 159, 10115 Berlin) for dinner instead.

The next day after work I met up with the girls at the Brandenburg Gate and we made our way through Tiergarten to Café Neun am See (Lichtensteinallee 2, 10787 Berlin). I love the vibes of this biergarten. It’s less aggressive than Prater Garten (Kastanienallee 7-9, 10435 Berlin) and the combination of twinkle lights, people rowing on the mini lake, and people of all ages makes you forget that you’re really just at a bier garten. I love the spicy mustard that comes with everything from the oversized bretzels to the bratwurst sausages. Last time I visited this biergarten, I somewhere finagled a ride home so I didn’t think about the fact that we were going to have to walk through a pitch black Tiergarten to get home. As soon as we found the right path, we took what we learned from horror movies and linked arms, turned on our phone flashlights, and belted our hearts out to drive away any potential predators. A perilous walk through Tiergarten calls for doner. We hustled to K’Ups Gemusekebap (ll Kastanienallee 102, 10435) where Ombline’s world was rocked by the doner.

Later in the week I got the whole gang together at YAFO (Gormannstraße 17B, 10119 Berlin). The gang being Audrey x2, Ombline, Lena, and Julia. (I was very serious when I said worlds collided at the beginning of this blog post). YAFO was delicious but our seating was not conducive to conversation and we all left with hoarse voices from shouting over the table. I recommend the Cauliflower Hummus and the Eggplant Hummus. This is a horrible photo of all of us (except for maybe Julia because she can't take a bad photo) but my heart was so full here!

The week was sprinkled with mid afternoon Vietnamese food at Kamala (Oranienburger Str. 69, 10117 Berlin), an Italian group dinner at I Lost My Love to Italy (Torstraße 165, 10115 Berlin), and swing rides in Mauerpark. The Italian dinner was another smorgasbord of languages except this time there was some Italian sprinkled in instead of Spanish.