Every Thanks, Everywhere

During my daily ritual of struggling to throw off my warm comforter and pull myself out of bed this morning, I thought about my last few Thanksgiving celebrations. Last year in 2011, I had just moved to Berlin and flew over to London to visit some family and friends. I celebrated Thanksgiving with a couple friends from college and their London crew at a big potluck. I made roasted veggies. In 2010, I was in grad school and traveled to NYC to celebrate with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. My aunt cooked a splendid meal as she always does and we drank loads of wine as we always do. I made the roasted veggies. The last time I was in DC with family for Thanksgiving was 2009 it seems. I'm pretty sure I made roasted veggies.

Veggies pre-roasting 2011, London

Somewhere along the line that is my life, Thanksgiving morphed into my favorite holiday. Christmas is still the big one in our family: it brings us all together without fail and will always remind me of our Oma who planned and executed every Weihnachten of our childhood, from the decorations to the music to the "boxes" to the big meal on the 24th to hiding the cookies from Opa. If I could only have one holiday, it would be Christmas, for these reasons.

Veggies post-roasting in 2010, NYC

But Thanksgiving, in its essence, is my favorite. Christmas certainly revolves around a big meal and loved ones, but it's simpler at Thanksgiving. Food and people are the star of the show. It's why people rush to the store to get the last frozen turkey and can of cranberry sauce, why people fly across the country or take long road trips in awful traffic to get home for just a couple days. I appreciate these rituals and this effort, but I personally don't find it necessary. For me, there is no need for turkey or cranberry sauce: for years my family did nontraditional Thanksgiving meals like surf & turf, quail, duck, and seafood stew. We drank heavy reds instead of Beaujoulais, and we bought our pies at Trader Joe's, when we had them at all. I'm obviously not one to criticize travel, but I am always content to spend Thanksgiving somewhere other than DC. It's comforting to know that Christmas is around the corner and I'll be home then anyway, and it's an opportunity to spend a special day with other people you care about, or maybe have recently met. It's a warm, fuzzy holiday that besides the cooking (and travel), is really relaxing. One could say I already spent my Thanksgiving this year with a group of Poles, Germans, Israelis, and Ukranians in a small town in central Poland a few days ago where we consumed immense amounts of food like schnitzel and pierogi, drank a few rounds of wodka, and sang songs from all our countries. 

Dinner in Poland, 2012

I'm a lucky girl though, and have the good fortune of celebrating again tonight with a group of friends in Berlin. Not only is it Thanksgiving, but it is also Kelly's birthday. I will be making...... garlic mashed potatoes. But you better believe I'll be roasting the crap out of that garlic first.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my family and friends celebrating today, wherever you are, whatever you are eating. I am thankful for all of you.

One

When I first arrived to Berlin exactly one year ago, I had a return ticket in hand and plenty of doubts. Whether the whole move would pan out- if I'd find the perfect job and lots of German friends and not miss home too much- was unknown. What I did know is I needed to try.

A year later, I don't have the perfect job and lots of German friends and I can't say I don't miss home. My job is very good- great in some ways- and challenging/difficult in others, the way any job should be. My group of friends is heavily English speaking but relatively international and objectively awesome, and my German friend group is growing at a snail's pace, the way German friendships tend to work. I don't necessarily miss "home" so much, but the people I miss terribly sometimes. The same way I would if I lived anywhere outside of DC for a job or the same way I miss friends from school, study abroad, and France, as well as the European side of my family when I'm in DC.

So it's not perfect, but it's real, and every day it gets a little more real. Rushing to make the bus in the morning for work, grabbing a bottle of wine to take to a friend's place for dinner, traveling 4 hours to visit family for the weekend... sometimes I forget I haven't been here longer than a year already. That was a confusing way to write that last sentence, but you get me.

Somewhat inappropriately I am not in Berlin today to celebrate our anniversary (sorry, Berlin). Instead I'm out west with Kelly in a small town called Soest to visit family and experience the 675th Soester Kirmes, which I've coined the Spring Break of Northwest Germany. But more to come on that later.

In the meantime, Happy Berlinniversary to me. Wonder where I'll be writing from next year! 

A Shot at Life

Hi, friends. I don't know about you, but I'm coming off an exhausting weekend. This morning the fatigue hit me like a truck, and with it the astounding realization that I took not one photo all weekend. Ok, I took two photos, but that may as well be no photos for me. One was of an election advertisement and the other of a band playing at the flea market. And look at everything I did! Drinks and live music, yoga, Turkish market, cafe, errands, clean, cook dinner with friends, bar, other bar for dancing, flea market, eat everything in said flea market, cafe, cheese market, consume a huge plate of cheese and two glasses of wine in said cheese market, bar for another glass of wine, karaoke, late-night Turkish snack at Alexanderplatz. That's 2 musical performances, 3 markets, and 7 neighborhoods in one weekend. I won't even attempt to count the number of glasses of wine. Maybe this is really living- being so caught up in the moments you're experiencing that taking photos of the moments doesn't even cross your mind. I can be down with that from time to time. But since I can't regale you with shots of my fun-filled weekend, I'll throw in some recent gems that got lost in the shuffle. A weekend without pictures is one thing, a photo-less blog post quite another.

Homemade bread at a colleague's house in Israel

Bathroom wall wisdom

Trendspotting on the U-Bahn

"Bowling Abend" with colleagues

Not our living room: Kiki Sol, our new favorite spot in Wedding

Jerusalem: Smoked salmon foccacia for... one?

Berlin's Bizarre Birthday

Uh, not sure how to begin this one. I suppose some context: back in September I had run into an open-air exhibit called Stadt der Vielfalt (City of Diversity). The exhibit was one of several to commemorate Berlin's 775th birthday this year that culminated with last night's celebrations.

Twilight installation in Nikolaiviertel

A little more background: Berlin turned 775 yesterday, but this is only his? her? her. her 4th birthday celebration ever. The first one to celebrate 700 years was in 1937, put on by the you-know-whos, and then two 750th birthdays were celebrated respectively in West and East Berlin in 1987. In a way, this was Berlin's first "unsoiled" birthday and the city took it as an opportunity to acknowledge the past but make a statement about the way it sees itself today and where it wants to go in the future.

Yes, this moose in stripper shoes was part of the celebration

I walked into the entire celebration a bit blind, expecting something like a typical Christmas market minus the Christmas. You know, Bratwurst and Gluehwein and live music and cookie hearts and the occasional Dirndl or Lederhosen. Your usual German festival fare. Instead I was greeted by excessive amounts of open flame and interpretive theater. I suppose it was nice that the planners mixed it up and threw in some social commentary about global warming and whatnot, but it kinda freaked me out a little. I just wasn't prepared! And the fact that I was still nursing a Sunday hangover, it being Halloween time, and there being a full moon just didn't help things.

Moose in stripper shoes approaches baby alien in ball

Berlin's only "medieval" quarter, the Nikolaiviertel, was covered in fire. A bunch of metal circle cages with inflamed flower pots and little men with clocks as heads, lightbulbs on fire as hands, rolling back and forth on unicycles on tightropes... I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. My very insightful friend Kelly put 2 and 2 together: fire to represent light during medieval times and metal men with clocks as heads moving back and forth represented us moving from past to present (and then maybe back to the past? making the same mistakes? that was my only contribution). My "ooh cultural differences!" brain kicked in and I couldn't stop thinking how the US would never put so much open flame in a public space for fear of being sued after some drunk idiot got too close and burned himself or tossed his beer into the fire leading to a few people losing their eyebrows.

Nastya, Kelly, and I staying warm by the medieval lighting

A wounded tree and some magical creatures

Guarding or about to decapitate a lone sunflower.
I thought guarding- I'm a "glass half-full" type of girl.

At any rate it was a sight to be seen and I am glad to have seen the sight. I was even more glad to escape to a warm cafe with Kelly and Giovanni afterward to decompress with an adult hot chocolate. Quick tip for the next celebration, Berlin: if you want us to watch people dressed as fish flopping around on volleyball courts, a little Gluehwein wouldn't hurt.

Nikolaiviertel: U/S Alexanderplatz or S/Hackescher Markt (across from the Rotes Rathaus/Red Townhall)

Seasonal Showcase

Before I left for Israel a week and a half ago, I was lamenting the fact that fall in Berlin was not nearly as beautiful as fall back home. Sure, the leaves were falling here and there, but the vibrant orange, red, and yellow tree-lined streets of my Maryland neighborhood were nowhere to be found. Berlin decided to put in some good work the 7 days I was gone, though, and the 30 degree (Fahrenheit) dip in temperature was much easier to digest when I saw all the colors the city had finally decided to put on display. Below, my favorite tree on the Lietzensee, the gorgeous pond by our office that provides the perfect location for a lunchtime stroll, showcasing the seasonal shift.

July

October

Quarter for your thoughts

Jerusalem's Old City

Did you know that I have Christian, Jewish, and Muslim roots in me? You probably did, because I talk about it a lot. Today it came to mind as I wandered Jerusalem's Old City, wondering in which quarter I felt most "at home". For my Ukranian colleague, the pick was clear: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian quarter. For me it was somewhat fuzzier. My strongest reaction came in the Muslim quarter, where I felt most excited but also somewhat nervous, probably an irrational by-product of not being allowed to go there on my Birthright tour. The Armenian quarter I found most peaceful- perhaps it's the underdog amongst the "Big Three" and gets less traffic? Of course they were all lovely, and as I later picked at my delicious fried feta salad at lunch (don't worry, vegetables were involved), I decided that I didn't have to choose. I will always do my best to navigate the world just as I did the narrow, winding streets of the Holy City: with an open mind and a smile. And sturdier shoes, because those stones were slippery. 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter

Armenian Quarter

Jewish Quarter... duh

Muslim Quarter

Monday Memo

Grunewald

Good morning! This is what I consider my last week of Berlin "freedom" for awhile. I've been here since my last trip to Istanbul in early September- a whole glorious month without travel for work or anything else- so I've actually felt like I live here for once. I've been going out on weekends, meeting up with lots of friends, regularly attending yoga class, keeping my apartment tidy, throwing and attending parties, buying groceries(!), etc. It's a nice feeling. This coming Saturday I fly to Israel for a week for work and that's when my crazy fall really begins. Or heisser Herbst (hot fall) as our senior project manager put it. I'll be in and out of Berlin after that quite a bit until I fly home in December for an eagerly anticipated break with family and friends. The blogging may get a bit sparser from now til the end of the year but I promise to keep y'all as updated as possible! Just be prepared for shorter posts laden with Instagrammed photos, like this one. ;)