Bike Tour of Potsdam

This past Saturday, I went to Potsdam with our field trip course, "Berlin vor Ort." Potsdam a city to the southwest of Berlin, a few stops on the S-Bahn outside of the city. It was the residence of former Prussian kings and the location of the Potsdam Conference, which I will talk about further down. We rented bikes next to the station, and 30 Stanford students proceeded to ride all over the city, dominating the streets and annoying locals. Here is a 6 minute photo walk through or our 6 hour bike tour. One observation: taking good pictures is pretty hard when you are in a pack of 30 bikes.

The city has a series of interconnecting lakes, and we saw our first one not long after we started riding. The city is really scenic, has a lot of green, and was basically just really beautiful. The professor led the way, and the rest of us followed. He said we should be okay, but some people got lost last year--which he said was mind-boggling.

We saw a lot of really nice houses, but I could not hear our professor as he was too far away. Maybe this house had some significance, maybe it was just cool. Either way, I appreciate it.

This next picture gives you a glimpse of what the cars had to go through to navigate around us. I thought the old school Chevy was a particularly interesting sight. Also, most of the streets were covered in cobblestone, which was quite painful in combination with shockless bikes.

I don't quite remember what this was and will ask my professor.

Schloss Cecilienhof is the English tudor style summer residence of the Hohenzollern family. More importantly, this is where the 1945 Potsdam Conference took place, where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin met to deal with the problems at the end of WWII.

I remember this by Spy Bridge, but it's actually called the Glienicke Bridge. The United States and Soviet Union exchanged captured spies on this bridge during WWII.

We stopped at a Biergarten for a late lunch. The professor was slightly baffled by the fact that no one ordered beer, which he says is the best part of the place. I personally think it's a good idea to bike sober.

As we were eating, a shark boat passed the Biergarten. Before this, my friend Kristine pointed out that there were many interesting looking boats on the lake. This one takes the cake though.

After the break at the Biergarten, we biked over to Park Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great. My guidebook claims that it is "among the most beautiful palace complexes in Europe," and I don't doubt it. The name "Sansscouci" means "without cares," and one of the interesting interpretations of this name comes from the fact that Frederick the Great was buried here--we are without cares in death. Morbid.

The park had many beautiful sculptures of Greek mythological gods. Here's Artemis.

The Neues Palais in the background can be seen from the main avenue in the park.

After our brief visit at Park Sanssouci, we walked over to Friedenskirche, the Church of Peace. We were in the right place at the right time, so the professor decided that Stanford should pay for tickets to the Peace on Earth choir concert. The music was good, but it was slow and we were tired. I'm pretty sure each of us fell asleep at one point or another, which was especially bad because we were something like a third of the whole audience.

I took this next picture while riding over a bridge on the way home. Its serene calmness is actually pretty deceptive of the actual circumstances. An hour and 15 minutes into the concert, our professor rushed to get us out of the church. Some of us thought he was angry that we fell asleep, but it turned out that we needed to return the bikes by 7pm. It was 6:35 when we left the church. What ensued was pure hilarity as a long parade of Stanford students mad-rushed down the streets of Potsdam, dodging cars and riding down the wrong side of street at times. Because some people were trailing pretty far behind, our professor stayed behind and let the students find their way. At one point, we were off road and in the midst of a forest. I think we fully understood how some people could have gotten lost last year. I am honestly surprised that no one was lost or hurt. Ultimately, everything turned out fine, and we found our way back 20 minutes past 7.

Vegetarier in Berlin: Massai

Lychener Str. 12, 10437 Berlin
www.massai-berlin.edu


Yesterday, after several cancellations spread out over the last six months, I had dinner with my friend Chris. We chose Massai, a self-described "African" restaurant she found in her guidebook, because the guidebook said it was an vegetarian friendly but will also satisfy the adventurous omnivores. Yes, it serves zebra, antelope, and crocodile, but I won't be able to tell you about these fine delicacies because we're both vegetarian.

The guide was right--two pages of the menu were dedicated to vegetarian dishes. We ordered the Maadee combo under Vegetarische, along with Dju Dju banana beer and Dju Dju palms beer.


The place is really nicely decorated and looks touristy. It was dimly lit, with bold colors and animal wood carvings as decorations. They even had giraffe utensil holders which would probably make good presents for someone back home. But I'm in Germany, so I will try to purchase "German" things.

The beers came first. The banana beer was light and sweet, and you can smell the banana when the bottle is open. I would definitely go for some in the future if I come across it again. The palms beer was dark and almost red, but other than that it just tasted like a strong beer (its alcohol content is more than 8%).


Our first course was a soup that tasted saltier than it looks. It was a little like porridge and very tasty. I think there was some type of dried fruit in there (raisins?). Then came the "salad," which consisted of thickly julienned cucumber, carrots, and some other vegetables. It was drizzled in these yellow and brown sauces that added just a tiny bit of flavor that was barely salty with a hint of sweetness. Overall, it was refreshing and light.


Finally, the main course arrived. It was a big plate that spanned the length of our two-person table. The two main dishes were Foolfeta and Agbisa with rice and couscous, but the meal also featured small spinach, cabbage, and another dish--all sitting on two generous pieces of Injera bread. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure what I was eating most of the time, but as a vegetarian it was comforting to know that we weren't eating any exotic animals.

The Foolfeta, covered in shredded cheese, is African beans, tomatoes, and paprika. The African beans are humongous, so big that we didn't realize they were beans. They were like obese kidney beans and something like three-quarters of an inch long, but they definitely had the characteristic bean texture.

The menu described the Agbisa as a dish with sauce, onion, and tofu. However, instead of tofu, we had eggplant, which I am slightly allergic to. It's okay though, because I still enjoyed the small vegetable dishes, especially the spinach one. The spinach dish, next to the Agbisa, reminded me a lot of the Palak Paneer that I've had at various Indian restaurants (without the tofu-like cheese though). The couscous, under one of the dark fruit shells, was excellent as well.

The meal with the two beers came out to be around 30€ after tax and tip for two, which seemed very reasonable given fancy decorations, interesting beers, and three delicious courses. It's one of those meals that fill you up slowly, leaving you satisfied but not stuffed. Overall, I had a wonderful meal and would definitely recommend it to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike!

Taiwanese on the U-Bahn

It's interesting how your brain filters out "noise" that you receive from the environment. I've read that if the brain actively processes all the sounds and smells and images that it's constantly bombarded with, it would explode from all the electric signals the neurons are firing at each other. Okay I made up that bit about the explosion, but it makes sense doesn't it?

Today, I hopped onto the U-Bahn to return home after having lunch at the Hackescher Markt stop. The U-Bahn was fairly busy, and the "noise" from my environment was German--simply because I don't understand it. All of a sudden, I heard something that vaguely sounded like Mandarin. I turned around and saw an Asian family and proceeded to eavesdrop. I was too far to understand what they were saying, but I was sure they were speaking Mandarin and Taiwanese. When the U-Bahn stopped at the next station, I moved away from the door as people boarded and unboarded. As the U-Bahn started moving again, I was close enough to them to initiate a conversation.

Ning eh hiao gong dai-wan-weh?

They looked at me, a bit surprised, and started being really talkative. I learned that they are originally from KaoHsiung in southern Taiwan, but the man has been working here in Berlin for 30 years. It seemed that the rest of the family was just visiting. In our short conversation that lasted two stops, the grandmother also managed to give me several life lessons. There was also a young boy who had his head in his mother's lap, who looked up at me once in a while and was generally unimpressed with seeing another Taiwanese on the U-Bahn.

I feel pretty at ease in Berlin after only two days, but hearing English reminds me  of home. Home in the broad sense of growing up in the states, an experience that includes school, friends, and the language I think and count in. Hearing Taiwanese in a foreign place evokes a different sense of home, the family sense that is almost completely disjointed from my experiences outside of home. It reminds me of my parents and aunts and grandparents, and I'm sure the life lessons from the grandmother contributed to that feeling too.

First exploration

Welcome to Berlin!

I spent the last two weeks as a migrant moving from one place to another: Houston, various rooms at Stanford, and finally to Berlin. After my temporary housing at Stanford expired, my friend Mario was kind enough to let me stay in his single. I tried to be as out of the way as possible and stacked my stuff into one neat but oversized stack everyday.


The flight was long but smooth, but it was a labrynth getting through the Frankfurt airport. I went up elevators, down escalators, through tunnels, past customs, past security checks, through more tunnels, more moving sidewalk deals, then ended up here. waiting for my connecting flight at Frankfurt airport, reading the Financial Times and sipping coffee to stay awake (I had essentially pulled an all nighter).

In any case, I arrived at center and the Stanford in Berlin staff were just amazingly nice. My classmates were generally friendly, and I immediately started talking to some of them beyond names, what they did during the summer, and how their flight was. After the paper work, I waited for the taxi to take me to my homestay, which didn't come for a good 45 minutes even though they said 5-10 minutes. And Germans are punctual too; shame on the taxi driver.

I pulled up to my homestay's house on Onkel-Tom-Str.-you read that right, and their U-Bahn station is called Onkel Toms Hutte-in my taxi and they were waiting for me. I was expecting one person, but I found three people greeting me at the door: my host Monika, her daughter Kathy, and her daughter Elyssa. Kathy doesn't live in this apartment anymore, but instead lives more towards the center of the city. Her daughter Elyssa, 7 years old, is adorable and quiet (in part because she didn't speak much English). Kathy and I immediately started talking at the dinner table while Monika was prepared a delicious dinner. She never really sat down for more than five minutes because she was so busy preparing the courses for the evening: dried olives, pasta with tomato sauce, declious 2005 something wine, freshly brewed coffee made from beans an Austrian man roasted himself, and the "biological" (organic) cake that Monika made. Talk about being spoiled.

During dinner, Kathy (kah-ti) mentioned that it was her friend Patrick's birthday, and he was going to celebrate it at a salsa club. She asked me if i was interested, and of course I saidyes--why would i come this far and sit out on my first chance at cultural immersion?

On the way there, Kathy diligently explained to me how the Berlin public transit system worked, trained me to navigate myself, and in no time we were there. it was around 9:45pm and we walked from the station to the club, which by day is a indoor put-put golf lounge--Capitol City Golf Lounge. She describes it as a retiree-friendly atmosphere, but I didn't see that many old folks. On the way there, we stopped by the Spree River that runs through Berlin. It was nice that I was already seeing some attractions. The air was cool and the river was calming in its size and darkness.

When we arrived at the club, we got in free because Kathy actually teaches salsa. I definitely felt like a badass getting into a retiree-friendly salsa/put-put club for free. Kathy and her friends were welcoming. When they weren't dancing, they would come over to talk to me and buy me drinks and introduce me to new people, who would toast, "Welcome to Berlin!" I had my first beer in Germany, a Beck's, which apparently is the first German beer company to use green bottles. I also busted out some knowledge about Cuban rueda salsa, which definitely impressed her friends. ¡Un fly!

On the way home, Kathy gave me another useful tip about Berlin public transit: if you're catching the U-Bahn at night, you better run. In the evenings, the trains come in intervals of 13-17 minutes, so if you miss it you're in for a long wait. We made all our transfers with seconds to spare, and she dropped me off at U3 for me to return to Uncle Tom's Cabin.