A Bit of Berlin

It all began with calendars -- specifically our school calendar and that of the Berlin Philharmonic's concert calendar.  We knew we wanted to take a trip and we knew we wanted to hear this world renowned orchestra play.  When we finally decided to begin thinking about planning a trip (a couple weeks after returning to Germany), we quickly realized that  unless we ventured to Berlin soon, we wouldn't be able to hear them for months.  The most feasible option?  That coming weekend.  Last minute?  Maybe just a little bit.

Being just about five days before the concert, we knew that it was very possible for the seats to be sold out.  But with the magic of the internet (which we had only gotten to work a few days before -- yay for switching to Vodafone!), we were able to see exactly how many seats were left (which we could count on one hand) and where they are in the concert hall.  What was left?  Probably the most amazing concert seats we have ever sat in.

The seats definitely cost a bit more than what falls in our usual price range, but it was more than worth it.  The concert hall is designed so that the audience seats wrap completely around the stage, so while you are looking at the orchestra, you can also see into the faces of other audience members.  Our particular seats happened to put us facing the conductor, an experience we've never had as members of the audience.  Better yet, we were in the very first row (at least there were no other seats in front of us), so it was very much like sitting in the orchestra itself.  You can see our seats here.  We were on the right hand side, the second row from the bottom and the seats furthest in.  We were literally right over their basses and could read their music with them.

The entire program is here, but the highlight of the night was Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.  It was especially fantastic to experience the piece while being able to see Bernard Haitink's every gesture and facial expression and watch the musicians perform up-close.  I appreciated each exchange of glances and nods of congratulation between the players throughout the concert.  Really, just an amazing night.

The Philharmonie is on a street named after Herbert von Karajan, who led the orchestra for thirty-four years and helped build their fame.  Mike was very excited to be in the presence of his street sign.

We took some pictures of the hall by night.  It is a uniquely shaped building, but very cool looking with the lights and falling snow.

Before the concert, we had just enough time to grab a quick dinner since we only had time to run home from school after our last classes and grab our bags before hopping a bus to the train station.  In the Sony Center just across the street we found the perfect place for a quick, but nice bite to eat.  You can never go wrong with sushi!

 

 

Excited about being out in a bigger city, we could help but stay out a bit later after the concert finished to nibble a bit more and have something to drink.  We journeyed back to the Sony Center and decided to stop in a café/bar/restaurant called Josty that had autographed movie posters such as Lord of the Rings and Troy.  I think we confused the waiter by ordering a bowl of soup to share, but it was incredibly tasty pumpkin soup.  We also had a lovely red wine and a delicious chocolate tart to go with the wine for our dessert.

The return walk to our hostel was quick and easy, and we went to bed (in our own room) quite content.

We stayed at the Berlin International Youth Hostel which is run through Hostelling International.  There was a definite collegiate backpacker feel to the place -- especially because it was more or less a big dormitory, but it was nice, cheap, and clean. 

Here is the hostel before we left for our day in Berlin.  It was chilly and snowy throughout the morning, but the wind from the previous night had died down.

We had noticed in the previous night that there is an instrument museum connected to the Philharmonie so we decided to check it out that morning.  When we got to the music museum, we saw that it didn't open until 10 AM.  Having about an hour to pass, we decided to take a few more pictures of the building before finding something warm to drink.

This truck was parked in front.  We found it fitting and amusing.

Back in the Sony Center, we decided to get some coffee at the Australian restaurant next-door to Josty's.  This picture is for you, Charlie.

 

Before heading back to the museum, we said hello to Spiderman in his symbiote outfit at the famous film museum of Berlin.  Perhaps we'll go inside the next time we're in Berlin.  Attached to the museum is a large cinema that plays movies in their original languages.  So if we ever wanted to see a movie in English...

  

The music museum was absolutely fascinating.  We spent at least three hours wandering among the display cases of, in some instances, centuries old instruments.  There was a huge collection of old and beautifully decorated harpsichords, clavichords, and cembalos.  They also house a Stradavarius violin and various kinds of crumhorns.  

The glass harmonica piqued our interests as we had no idea what it was until one of the attendants explained.

We also were able to see this man's personal piano.

The display is labeled "Weber-Flügel", or Carl Maria von Weber's grand piano.  I like the German word for grand piano: Flügel.  Literally translated, it means "wing" because grand pianos look like a giant wing.

Here is a unique kind of piano.

Of course, I personally was very excited about seeing old clarinets.  It's interesting to see the different kinds and forms.  There are a lot of pictures...

 

  

Here are some of the first Öhler system clarinets.  (In my opinion, the French Boehm system is significantly better.) 

  

I promise I did not neglect the brass section.

  

The museum only had one display case housing Mike's instrument of choice.

  

There was a mandolin whose body was made of a tortoise shell.  I couldn't help but take a picture.

Unbeknownst to us, one of the big attractions of the instrument museum is a giant Mighty Wurtlizter theater organ. 

Designed to be a "one-man orchestra," it can also play a variety of sounds in addition to the expected organ timbre... percussion of all sorts, whistles, even more wind instrument-like tones.  

The insides of the organ is craftily displayed so you can see it's versatility.

 It's kind of amusing to watch the mallets strike the marimba... its as if a ghost is playing.

  

Once we finished with the instrument museum, it was high time for lunch.  We decided to make our way over to Under den Linden to find a suitable place for food.  Upon consulting our handy guide book and maps, we began to realize that everything was in very reasonable walking distance.  Since the Holocaust memorial was on our way, we also took some time and stopped there.

  

 

The blocks of concrete start out low in height, but become massive, looming over you as you go further into the rows upon rows of blocks.  It was interesting seeing the different reactions visitors had to the memorial.

Once we passed through Brandenburg Gate, we meandered down Under den Linden until we came upon a nice traditional German restaurant.  Mike had a classic braised pork knuckle while I had some pan seared trout in honor of my 11th graders studying Schubert's lied, specifically, "Die Forelle" .  

Once lunch was finished, we had a few hours to fill before our Intercity-Express train took us back to Wolfsburg.  Immensely enjoying our leisurely discovering of Berlin attractions, we decided to check out the Kennedy Museum.  From there, we stayed hit up the always packed Café Einstein - a place that Jo raved about when we were in Berlin last August.  Apparently, big name politicians like to frequent the café.  We were lucky and found ourselves a seat.

Our Berlin guidebook mentioned that Café Einstein's desserts were excellent, so we each ordered a dessert along with our much needed hot coffee drinks.

 

  

Mike went for espresso with a giant helping of vanilla ice cream.

I ordered the German version of a latté.

  

We both appreciated the little cups of water than came with our rich drinks.

From Café Einstein we decided to slowly meander our way back to the main train station on foot - about a twenty minute walk.  We went back through the Brandenburg Gate and also stopped to see the Soviet War Memorial as dusk was falling. 

  

Unlike the train ride to Berlin, we had a place to sit on the way back.  Fortunately, the ride isn't terribly long in the Intercity-Express, or ICE trains.  Making the the trip between Berlin and Wolfsburg is only an hour long.  And, as Mike was able to document, the trains move quite fast.

In Wolfsburg, the main train station is more or less just across the street and around the corner from the main bus station.  We walked out of the train station just in time to see our bus home drive by.  Not wanting to wait another 20 minutes in the cold, we decided to book it and sprinted about four blocks to try to meet the bus a few stops ahead.  We looked absolutely ridiculous running with our bags, but we did manage to get to the stops just in time to hop on the bus.  It was a crazy end to our exhausting, but wonderful weekend trip. 

German Treats

As usual, we're very behind on blog posts.  It's nearly March and we've only just finished blogging about December.  Life from the last two months as well as a few big trip... Berlin, Stuttgard and Cologne, and now Frankfurt will make it up... eventually.  In the meantime, enjoy this filler post about randomosity!

Actually, it's not that random.  The two of us are rather fixated on food...


So.


As you can imagine, things are just slightly different in the German grocery stores.  Definitely lots of different brands and different packaging.  Sometimes we find some very amusing things.

Sliced cheeses and cold cuts are very popular and very common for light breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  Admittedly, we have bread and cheese with the occasional cold cuts nearly every day.  We were very amused when we found this...

 

They had cold cuts shaped like other animals, too.  To me, this goes against the normal German aversion to "non-natural" foods...  Anyway, we didn't buy any.

This next product also piqued our interest.

I think the idea was supposed to be some sort of frozen apple crisp/apple pie ice cream.  A German version of mochi ice cream?  So the vanilla ice cream ball was rolled in crunchy flakey stuff you'd get with an apple crisp.  The very center had apple filling.  The concept was good -- the actual product, no so much.

Lastly, one of the things that we've learned to wean ourselves from is snack-y foods.  Sometimes, though, you can't help but crave popcorn.  After searching long and hard, we finally found microwavable popcorn.  

So, not exactly Orville Redenbacher, but it works and tastes like popcorn.  The container is a cardboard box that fills as the corn inside pops.  You pull the tabs so that the box becomes upright.  Then it looks like this.

To be honest, the packaging really confused us at first.  In the end though we were thoroughly entertained.  It's almost like having a popcorn carton from a movie theater in the comfort of your own home.  Success!

Anyway, it's my goal to have a post about Berlin up later this week, so stay tuned!

The Last Hurrah

Every December, some of the staff members prepare the nativity play (Krippenspiel), also known as "The Shepherds' Play" in American Waldorf schools, and put on a production for the school and community.  This is a rather involved process as there is choreography, singing, costumes, and makeup.  Also, the play is performed in an old German dialect - much akin to performing in Shakespeare's English. 

The final week of school before the much needed winter break consisted of a Monday and half of a Tuesday, both days which had major events happening at the school.  The first public performance of the play happened Monday night.  This production was open to students, their parents, and the community.  The following morning was the performance for the student body -- in essence the "real deal" since the purpose of putting on the show is to give Waldorf students an experience about miracles.

For Mike, Annelie, and me the "big day" was Monday when we prepared a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal for the staff -- those performing in the play; those who helped with the production by doing lighting, makeup, or handling the audience; and those who were there to support everyone else by watching the show.  Being one of the few times the staff gets to be together and socialize for the sake of being together, it was also a highly anticipated meal.  That and most people here haven't had traditional Thanksgiving food before.  They were all excited to try something new.

It was an extremely crazy day since we still had to teach our normal classes on top of preparing dinner for about 35 people by 8 pm.   We thought we had bought all of our ingredients over the weekend (not on Sunday!),  but somehow we had forgotten little things here and there, so between some classes, I dashed over to the grocery store across the way to pick up things for pumpkin pie and such.  The other major hurdle was getting all of the food from our apartment to the school.  For example, a heavy giant pot with a thawed turkey is not easy to transport down seven flights of stairs (because of course the elevator was broken) and down the path and across the school yard covered in icy snow.  Plus, we kept forgetting random spices and such... both Mike and I got quite the workout running back and forth that afternoon.  There was this prevailing feeling of being on Top Chef: Wolfsburg... or some culinary olympics gone horribly awry.

Despite working in the school kitchen that has a refrigerator the size of one you keep in a dorm room, one stove top, and one oven, we were able to pull off quite a nice dinner for our colleagues.  School ended at 3, and we worked from then until dinner was served at 8 -- just after the conclusion of the night production of the play.  I used a different recipe for the turkey and it turned out absolutely perfect.  We also made gravy from the drippings, stuffing, lots of mashed potatoes, wild rice, scalloped potatoes, Annelie's pumpkin soup, and put together a big salad.  As you can see, there were a lot of potatoes.  There were even potatoes in the soup.  With all of the peeling, Mike definitely earned a doctorate in potato peeling.

Except for whipped cream, desserts were prepared ahead of time.  Mike and I made apple crisp on Sunday.  The pumpkin pie was also a combined effort between the two of us and made by running home during random breaks throughout the day on Monday (preparing filling from scratch, making the crust from scratch, and finally baking it).  Annelie made her gooey and yummy glutin-free fudge brownies during her lunch break at school.

Obviously, it was quite the spread.  Except for the dry goods and a few odds and ends, all of the produce that went into the dishes and the turkey came from the organic farm that one of our teachers (actually one of the founders of our Waldorf school) owns.  She also holds a little market every Friday and sells teachers, students, and parents organic food.  While we cooked, Christiane, as well as other people, would come poke their heads in to see how we were doing and comment on the smell which, even I will attest to, was delicious.

The school owns a number of buffet servers, so a few of the other teachers turned our teachers' room into a very cozy little buffet "restaurant".  The numerous tables that usually form one large circle for Thursday conferences were separated and then pushed together to make a number of little tables to seat five or six.  Every table was nicely decorated with pine branches, ribbons, and lit candles.  Unfortunately we don't have many pictures of the final result.  Hopefully the few we have give an impression of our cozy evening.

Below, happy and hungry teachers are in line for deliciousness.  Most people had never eaten turkey or pumpkin pie.  Stuffing was also a great mystery to most.

 

Heiko, in front and staring wistfully at the food, and Erdmude who is smiling at the camera, were both in the Krippenspeil. 

In addition to mastering the peeler, Mike beautifully carved this turkey.

 

Ulrich always seems to be in line for food...  Here, the table has been reset for coffee and our various desserts.  Next to the pie is a lovely raspberry cream dessert with meringue that is also glutin-free.

The dishes that were left at the end was rather scary to face.  Luckily, a bunch of our fellow teachers stayed to help rinse, hand-wash, load the dishwasher, dry, and put away all of the school dishes.  I think it only took an hour and a half or so to get it all done. 

Around spring of last year the school had finished building a new main hall that serves as both a commons area, a cafeteria, and a place where a stage can be built for concerts and shows. Most of the student body sat down there for the performance.  The little ones had long benches and rows and rows of chairs were set up for the older ones.

Here is Frank, current class teacher of the 6th grade and light technician, given the opening remarks and introduction to the play.

 

I was positioned in the loft with some of the 11th class in addition to select members of the 8-10th classes... hence the bars and such.*

 You can see Heiko above in all his get-up.  Below is a better view of more or less the entire cast. 

The teachers who played the three shepherds did a fantastic job.  They were absolutely hilarious and and a lot of fun with their characters.  Ulrich, in the middle, continually blew his nose in the noisiest of manner -- it is entirely possible that he just had an awful cold.

Probably one of my best pictures from the morning.  It was extremely hard to sneak in pictures inconspicuously.  

 

Once the play ended and most of the kids had left, we had the rest of the afternoon to clean our apartment and begin packing for our flight back to the states.  And we all know what an adventure that was...

*All accounts of the Krippenspiel are Vicki's alone.  For Mike's experience, feel free to e-mail him.