Vacation, Teil 1

May 5, 2007 · Filed Under Germany 

Yes, I am finally getting around to blogging our recent “Last Vacation As Two”. You’ll have to forgive my tardiness (well, I guess you don’t HAVE to, you can certainly hold it against me if you wish), I’ve been pretty exhausted the last week and I’ve also been working hard on several items for my genealogy blog.

So our vacation began in Bamberg, where we stopped for lunch and sightseeing on the way up to Berlin. I was pleasantly surprised to discover Schloß Geyerswörth (I talk about this briefly on my other blog), we had a good lunch and toured the Neue Residenz (New Residence) and the Bamberger Dom (Bamberg Cathedral). The Neue Residenz was interesting, but I had serious trouble understanding the guide, who spoke Oberfrankisch the whole time (the local dialect). The cathedral was wonderful though, as we were the only ones who showed up for the daily tour, so we had a nice hour long private tour of the building.

Bamberg town hall
Bamberg’s Altes Rathaus (Old City Hall)

I would have loved to have spent more time exploring Bamberg (we’ll have to go back soon), but we had a dinner date with Rita in Leipzig, so it was time to be off. We ended up eating dinner at the Kartoffelhaus in the Barfußgässchen, and let me tell you, they aren’t kidding about the Kartoffel part (Kartoffel=potato). Everything on the menu was potatoes (well, except for the drinks, so, maybe not everything). For dessert, we crossed the street to Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum, which Rita told us is the oldest still operating coffee house in Europe (their website says it’s the oldest in the World). It did not disappoint. I had the utterly delicious Sächsische Quarkkeulchen auf Zimtschmand und Vanilleeis (Saxon Fried Curd Balls in Apple-Cinnamon Sour Cream and Vanilla Ice Cream), along with a perfect, not too sweet, not too bitter, hot chocolate. Funnily, Rita worries in her post about the night, that we might have bored Rainer with our discussion of books. If he was bored then, he must have been REALLY bored over the weekend, because every time we met up with people, I ended up in a discussion of books with them! Anyways, now Rita needs to come see Regensburg!

Saturday in Berlin was pretty non-stop. We began with breakfast with two old colleagues of mine from Schering (now known as Bayer Schering Pharma), Carsten and Susanne, at Wiener Conditorei Caffeehaus in Berlin-Grunewald. I highly recommend this place. Not only do they have good breakfasts, they have outstanding cakes. After many, many weekends of coffee and cake at various coffeehouses all over Berlin back in 2003, this was the one I picked to make our wedding cake, which ended up being by far the best cake I ever had in my life. We love the cake from this place so much, that we bought a bunch to bring along with us on our visit with Lynn and family in Potsdam.

Lynn and I enjoyed discussing books and babies, while Rainer and Todd got very excited over partial differential equations on high dimensional spheres. They gave us a bunch of baby stuff, for which I am very grateful, since they are on the way to a new life in Australia now.

Afterwards, we headed over to Sala Thai restaurant on Dortustraße. I’d eaten there before and found it acceptable, but as we looked at the menu, a bad feeling came over me. It was completely different and no longer had any of my favorites! I wondered whether we should get up and go, but then the waiter came, so I asked if he could cook me up some Pad Thai Gai, while Rainer asked for Lad Na. He indicated that it would be no problem, so we settled in. Soon our steaming dishes arrived and they looked… scrumptious. Not only that, my Pad Thai was Thai spicy, and I didn’t even need to ask for it to be spicy! By the end of the meal, my eyes were watering and my tongue was pleasantly tingling. Whatever changes they made to the menu, I approve!

But there was no time to waste, because we were expected for drinks in Prenzlauer Berg in 40 minutes! We were the first at Prater, which was packed, except for two empty tables on a stage. These seemed strangely conspicuous, so we chose to stand at the bar instead. We were soon joined by BiB, RFM, Bowleserised, and Ben Perry. We stayed out way past my bedtime talking books, books, and more books (these guys are all impressive writer types). I was having so much fun, I didn’t even notice it was 2am. We closed down the bar! Then poor exhausted Rainer had to drive all the way back to the hotel.

I let Rainer sleep in the next day, and sometime in the afternoon we headed off to the Alte National Gallerie, which now has the highlights of the Egyptian collection. So, after moving away, I finally saw the bust of Nefertiti (and a lot of other really beautiful stuff - if you haven’t been, go now). We picked up some baklava at my favorite Turkish bakery in Wedding (I forget the name, but it’s next to the Lidl that’s right at the entrance to the Seestraße U-bahn station) and headed off to eat it at sunset at Wannsee.

The next morning, it was off to lunch with B. at the Greek restaurant Mythos Palace in Dresden, where Rainer got her hopes up by suggesting that there was a German equivalent to root beer. He was wrong. But the food was good and I had fun discussing, what else?, books with her.

But alas, I hear the sounds of the DSDS decision show coming from the next room, so I’ll have to cut it short there. Stay tuned for the next installment, where Rainer and Christina discover that Karlovy Vary is not really a wellness vacation spot, but rather the cool place for elderly, obese Russians to get Darmspülungen. (You can also read about our visit to the town of Geyer in the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains, over on my other blog).

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Comments

5 Responses to “Vacation, Teil 1”

  1. BiB on May 6th, 2007 12:45 am

    Good to see you looking so WELL and my apologies too if we bored Rainer with our Quatsch. And I feel doubly guilty as I believe I was a Karlovy-Vary-recommender. Oh damn. In any case, hope all’s well, Rainer, Charlie and Oliver are all behaving and to see you again soon.

  2. Christina on May 6th, 2007 2:13 pm

    @BiB: Rainer wasn’t bored. He thought everyone was great and enjoyed meeting you all. ;-)

    But all’s well here. I’m just a little more tired than I have been (but it’s no where near as bad as the first trimester!)

  3. rita on May 6th, 2007 5:27 pm

    you went to geyer? i could have given you some tips about which places to drop by on your way there. this is basically just around the corner at my mum’s. :D

    your weekend in berlin sounds really exciting (well, maybe except for rainer, what with all the book talk). lot’s of people to meet up with. and the museumsinsel to visit. sigh!

    too bad to hear that karlsbad isn’t a top-notch spa anymore. when i was there the last time it was just beautiful. and no obese russians in sight. except they were hiding in the flowering shrubs.

  4. Christina on May 6th, 2007 7:28 pm

    @rita: The area around Geyer is incredibly beautiful. The town of Annaberg (I think that was the town, it’s on B95 just south of Geyer) was so picturesque, the sun was right behind it though, so I couldn’t get any decent pictures from the road and we didn’t have time to stop.

    Karlsbad WAS really beautiful. Rainer says it was like being in a Thomas Mann novel. We were just in the wrong demographic to enjoy the spa offerings!

    And Rainer got an afternoon of math talk, so that made his trip to Berlin enjoyable! ;-)

  5. Vacation, Teil 2 | an american expat in deutschland on November 11th, 2007 11:30 pm

    […] part 1 of our vacation, we headed into the Czech Republic. The first thing you notice upon crossing the border, is that […]

Leave a Reply