May Days

This bucolic scene is just a 10 minute walk from Maite and Denis’ house

I started a new job on April 22, but thanks to Germany’s penchant for May holidays, I think I’ve only worked one whole week since.

There’s Labor Day on May 1, Ascension Day on May 14, and Whit Monday on May 25. The latter two are both Catholic, and while I believe firmly in the separation of church and state (and find it absurd that if you are Catholic or Protestant in Germany you pay taxes to the church) if it means a few extra holidays a year, than sign me up.

So what did I get up to? Well Eagle Eye readers will have seen my last post concerning Dresden, but the other weekends were similarly jam packed.

Ascension Day

Now, one major quirk of German holidays is that almost none of them are rolling. That means they’re always on a fixed date, which in turn means it can be years before a holiday falls on a Friday. Germans have a solution for this, “Brückentage” or “bridge days” a culturally accepted practice of taking days off to gain a long weekend.

This year I was fortunate to learn my new employer gave us the Friday off as a company holiday. So, hello four day weekend.

What did we get up to?

• Bowling: we met up with our friends Patricia and Balaji for another round of cosmic bowling complete with 2010s jams that we hated at the time but have now become nostalgic and heartwarming (“apple bottom jeans, boots with the furs” “the ceiling can’t hold us,” “club can’t even handle me right now”). My competitive streak remained intact, while others had their fun practicing spin shots (something I only got into in the last game once I had already proven victorious¹). Afterwards we visited a delicious Ethiopian restaurant called Bejte near Nollendorfplatz. Kathi and I shared lentils and a delicious mild curry and cheese atop the wonderful Injera — the sour, fermented, spongy, incredible flatbread that accompanies many of their dishes. Also, I gotta say, eating with your hands is just a wonderful way to experience your food, and the Injera is the perfect accompaniment to sop up the spicy, savory, sweet flavors of Ethiopian cuisine²

• Radiators: We visited our friends Maite and Denis at their new house that they are pretty much singlehandedly renovating themselves. This day’s task was to remove radiators, bleeding them dry of age old liquid as black as tar. After a couple of sweaty hours draining them and moving them outside, we had a lovely afternoon of coffee and cake. Side note, since moving to Berlin I’ve basically become a freelance mover, having helped with four different moves³.

• Pausify: I stumbled across this collective on Instagram, a space two sisters created for people to come together and disconnect. You arrive and spend half an hour mingling with other attendees, and then you are set free to find a comfortable nook to read your book or work on a creative project without smartphones and distractions. Afterwards, you come back together with your peers and discuss the book or the project you’re working on. I’m currently sitting in another session as I type these words.

• Gartenakademie: Our friends Luca and Elie are two people who we love to enjoy the finer things in life with. Sunday was no exception, as we visited the Königliche Gartenakademie. Next to the Botanical Gardens, it is a shop where people can walk outside amongst large strelitzia and monstera, peonies and lavender, and run their fingers along thyme, rosemary and basil to inhale their savory scents. I spent weeks playing a game of cat and mouse with a reservation for their cafe on OpenTable⁴. I’m very glad we were successful, because we shared a lovely brunch of eggs benedict and afternoon tea.

An idyllic Sunday in the sun

Whit Monday

This long weekend coincided with Berlin’s Karneval der Kulturen. A multicultural festival that begin in 1996, it features food stalls, performances, and parades celebrating cultures from all over the world.

• Saturdays are for the boys: On Saturday, Kathi had plans to visit a Biergarten with the girls, so my new friend Nate and I met up for an afternoon of snacking and drinking. Karneval der Kulturen is generally a mix of families with small children, teenagers, and young 20-30 somethings trotting around large water bottles not full of water. The drinks are flowing, the air is thick with cigarette and weed smoke, while nearby children play on bungeed trampolines. Nate and I discovered our own shared cultural touchstones — namely a love of baseball, even more specifically, a love of the short lived video game series “MVP Baseball”. It was a lovely cultural exchange of two white guys, one from the Northeast and the other from the strange and distant lands of the Midwest.

• Sunday parade: Something absolutely magical about Kathi is her profound sense of empathy, and how she is always moved by what brings out the best in humanity. Whenever we observe runners in the Berlin Marathon, and she sees this testament to the human spirit — people pushing themselves to achieve greatness, friends and family standing on the sidelines cheering on their pursuit — she cries. Sunday’s parade was no different. Seeing people marching in that hot sun, drumming, singing, twerking, and shaking. Watching different countries and cultures all together in a single procession, all sharing in the very basic human urge to dance and shout and express oneself, brought tears to her eyes. It’s so beautiful to witness, and I wish some of it would rub off on me.

• Swimming and Star Wars: On Monday we visited the local pool, the Sommerbad am Insulaner. It was that perfectly nostalgic experience of smelling french fries and ketchup as you set down your towel on a concrete promenade, listening to the splashing of children, the steady hum of chatter, seeing the serious lap swimmers compete for space with the contentedly drifting and the young, thrashing children. The best part was watching the action at the high dive. Every once in a while a person would go up there and stand stockstill, afraid to take the leap. Nearly everyone would turn their attention to the frightened one and shout words of encouragement. Despite the support, some still turned around, but for at least one brave young boy the onlookers energy was enough to give him the strength.

  After our day in the sun⁵, we packed up and prepared for dinner and a movie with our friends Andy and Khanh-Ly. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which is why we were so grateful to Andy, whose expertise on the best eats in Berlin is second to none, for suggesting Kailash Parbat — an Indian restaurant near Friedrichstraße that serves streetfood inspired vegetarian dishes. Before we could be served, however, Khanh-Ly regaled us with the story of visiting her relatives for an event honoring her late grandmother, where all of her family cooked their own versions of pork belly and how they ate themselves to bursting before realizing they were only on the appetizers. She also detailed a strawberry matcha cake that had us nearly faint with hunger, and green with jealous rage. But then the food arrived and we could listen to the story with less discomfort.

  The evening finished with a 3D viewing of “The Mandalorian and Grogu” at Cinestar Cubix on Alexanderplatz⁶. We had to buy 3D glasses, the cups had only sippy lids, and the previews took about half our lives, but when the movie started rolling we had a good time. The movie was far from perfect, had odd sequences throughout, and included Jeremy Allen White playing a Hutt who kept saying “I need to be my own man,” but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

So there goes the May recap, thank you as always to everyone who reads my blog, particularly those who make all the way to the end⁷.

Stay tuned next month for a review of the best bagel places in Berlin.

1. I’ve got to lighten up!

2. Don’t worry, I’m not saying I’m Gael from “How I Met Your Mother,” “eat, experience your food…”

3. It reminds me of the “Nathan for You” episode where he tries to disguise helping people move as a fitness program. To be honest, I see the potential.

4. I’d get an alert that a table was free, click into the app sometimes mere moments later, and it’d be gone.

5. The whole time we were there I was reading “Isaac’s Storm” by Erik Larson about a major hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900. It felt very odd to be reading about 200 mile an hour winds and 15 feet of seawater when I was baking in the sun.

6. I accidentally booked 3D tickets because, honestly, who knew they were even still making them?

7. We saw our friend Pablo at a Biergarten on Thursday and he said he’s been enjoying the blog. Pablo, if you’ve made it this far, text me the promo code BENINBERLIN26 to redeem your prize.