Berlin: Monday

[jducoeur]

We have developed an official pattern for our food in Berlin: Asian for lunch, European for dinner. Today, the Asian was at Yumcha Heroes, which can be summarized as DumplingsDumplingsDumplings! We had the Black Beef, Pink Lamb and Shanghai Dumplings, and I was slightly startled to discover that the colors are meant literally: the Lamb are in pinkish wrappers, and the Beef in pitch-black ones. It's pretty clever, actually: all of their dumplings differ in shape and color, which presumably makes life easier for both the waitstaff and patrons. We also had the "Stripes of Beef", which I think is supposed to be "strips", but whatever.

Overall, tasty but not going for lots of seasoning. The Stripes of Beef were a bit overwhelmed by the soy-based sauce, and all three dumplings were flavored mainly by their different meats, with just hints of flavor from the other ingredients. I might be interested in exploring more of the menu someday, but it only gets a 3/5 from me so far -- the concept is great, but I'd love to see more depth of flavor in general.

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The afternoon was focused on a walking tour, conducted by Original Berlin Walks. Their website only lists the official tours (which cost money and want reservations), but there are actually also secret, somewhat shorter, tips-only tours that launch from the hostels -- and the Circus Hostel is across the street from the Circus Hotel where we are staying. So we jumped in on that.

Our host, Campbell, was an Australian ex-pat who came to Berlin to study history, and as he described himself as having achieved the ultimate dream of every history major: playing tour guide. Snark aside, though, he was a great guide -- funny, informative and personable -- and I suspect he'll wind up a very good teacher someday.

I can't claim it was a perfect day for a walking tour: it was anywhere from spitting to seriously raining on us for at least half the walk, which in 60ish weather with high wind isn't optimal. But I think everybody (about 15 of us) stuck it out as Campbell walked us around highlights ranging from the Reichstag, to several major points where the Wall used to be, to a block of high-rise East German apartments (with a talk about "this parking lot where we're standing right now? 20 feet down was Hitler's bunker. Let's talk about the last days of Hitler, and what happened after") to finishing at Checkpoint Charlie (with a host of warnings about how very, very fake and Disneyfied it all is, and the various scams to watch for).

I was bemused to realize, as he was talking about the fall of the Wall, that I was the only person present who was an adult at the time. But given that it was a hostel-centric tour group, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Underscoring his future as a teacher, Campbell led us through the Holocaust Memorial, and then tried to get everybody to open up about their impressions. The word that came to my mind was "Kafka-esque" -- the descent into claustrophobia as you walk through it, the failure of the angles to be quite right, the sense of always being in public and on display even while being closed-in, all reminded me of nothing quite so much as Peter Kuper's illustrated editions of Kafka. Of course, some members of the tour objected to how abstract it all is, provoking some mild argument, which Campbell pointed out was kind of the point: this is a memorial intended to keep people thinking about it.

It was a hoot despite the cold and wet, and we were happy to give him a good tip. Based on this, I'd give Original Berlin Walks a solid thumbs-up, especially if you can choose less sucktastic weather.

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For dinner (European, remember), Kate declared that we really should do actual German food at least once during our trip. (Which led us to a long digression about whether the phrase "American food" means anything.) We asked for recommendations at the concierge, and after deciding that Lokal looked way too trendy and modern for what we were looking for, we instead opted for Schwarzwaldstuben.

It was a perfect choice -- as I had a feeling it would be from the fact that we were almost the only non-Germans in the place. I gather that "German food" is also a bit hard to define, and this place is more specifically a Black Forest restaurant, but it's a delight: really a German gastropub more than anything.

We split a Flammkuchen -- a crisp cracker-pizza made with sour cream, sweet potato and chorizo. Which sounded intriguing but a bit scary (I'm not a huge sweet potato fan), but the flavors balanced perfectly, the sweetness of the potato against the sour from the cream.

Then we had the "Geschmelzte Maultaschen mit schwäbischem Kartoffelsalat" (thank heaven for online menus and cut-and-paste). This revealed that the second theme of the day was Meat Dumplings: five big triangles of meat-filled dough, fried in oil and onions -- vaguely pierogie-like, but more substantial and crispy -- served with a savory potato salad.

I took the opportunity to pair that with a half-liter of German beer (it being the right meal for that -- I had the Konig Ludwig brown ale, a fine middle-of-the-road ale that paired very well with the food).

And having noticed that the "Bitters and Half-Bitters" list included something I'd never heard of -- Borgmann Kräuterlikör -- I of course had to try that. It's a good mild Amaro, very cinnamon-forward with only a little bitterness, which I'd recommend to folks looking for a less-dangerous Amaro to try. (And they served it in the most wonderful glass: a shotglass-shaped block of glass, frozen hard, with just enough cavity at the top for one shot. I must have one of these.)