Lee Evans

Isn't he amazingly funny? I ran across Lee Evans (on TV)while we were in London and I laughed until I cried.

Reading online, or on the screen.

I've actually been reading quite a bit recently, although it's not showing up in my "Good Reads" widget. That's because I have been reading e-books, and I'm not quite certain how to put them up. First I read Rollback by Robert Sawyer. Now I have just finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi, which is a reread prior to reading his The Last Colony. As you might guess, I am reading my way through the 2008 Hugo nominees preparatory to the vote this summer. All the nominees (except The Yiddish Policemen's Union) have been released in e-form to the members of Denvention III, the voting body for the 2008 Hugos.

What this has shown me is that I don't really enjoy reading books on screen. It's not that my screen isn't great: I have the option of a 17" or a 13", both with good clarity. It's that I like to walk around with my book, cook with my book, carry my book downstairs while waiting for the girls, have my book in my backpack for public transport or queuing. I have Mobireader for my Palm and I used to use it while commuting, when the laptop and work literature made carrying hardcovers painful, but now, I just want to hold the book in my hands.

In the past, if I like the book after the first 50 pages, I would just order it from Amazon and have it tomorrow morning. But here, where it can take weeks for me to get English language books (if they are even a bit abstruse, or not yet published in the UK) I am just reading online. And it's annoying.

Mmm, rhubarb compote on the stove...

You really know that it's spring when rhubarb and its companion strawberries are on the shelves at the fruit market. I bought a large punnet of strawberries and a large bunch of rhubarb on Monday at the market at the Bahnhof when I went back to Charlottenberg to visit Broken English. It was an interesting market: all Russian. I was tempted to try some of their deli, but my bag was already too heavy (I added kiwis and pears to the above). I had been going to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie (can't quite get my mind around pie crust without shortening yet), but the Things demanded strawberries as their due yesterday and today at snack time, so I wound up throwing together compote.

I love the ease of compote: slice the rhubarb, add whatever strawberries you have left, toss in some lemon juice (I was out so I squeezed an orange in), a little bit of water and start adding sugar (or honey to taste). Yumm.

Oh, and it rained again. Is this the 120th day of some type of precipitation?

I was wandering about...

reading Neil Gaiman's blog and while watching his first embedded video fell into this one. I think Christopher Walken is just amazingly funny!

Weather, dad-blast it!

How can it be 37F here and 63F there? Life is so unfair.

Waiting for Godot

I was just realizing that I haven't written a letter to a friend that is now overdue three weeks. I keep waiting for something interesting to happen in my life. Compared to so many blogers out there, in Italy, Israel, Singapore and other exciting spots (for vacation, I mean) my life seems boring. But if I keep waiting, I might as well just stop blogging, so here goes with what happened over the weekend:

• 4 loads of laundry, washing, drying, folding

Some other bloggers have noted that they use a drying rack, but I can't quite figure that out. Either they have far more clothes than we do, or they must have a magic wand: it rains just about every day here and it would take days for jeans to dry on a rack. A load takes hours, with the slowness of the front load washer and then about another 90 minutes to dry. Then folding and putting away, which I generally try to do when the children aren't around:

• 3 loads of dishes, putting away each time
  
• Made a one pot ground turkey/rice/zucchini meal
  
• Went grocery shopping (I need to go at least every other day just to get milk. Then I add whatever else I can manage to put in my trolley).

Saturday morning the German and Thing1 (with 'help' from Thing2) put together the playhouse that we had gotten from Ikea (with help from our very kind landlord: we saw the house last week but it wouldn't fit in our rented car, so he picked it up for us this week). The Things love it and it's a help to be able to let them go out and play in it when it rains (again!) and they are begging to go out.

Sunday I sent the German and the Things out to play in the (wonderful) playground at the Zoo after breakfast: I needed to clean up, put clothes away, get dinner/lunch ready and in general reclaim the apartment. It amazes me how rapidly the apartment degrades after a few hours of the children playing.

They came back just after it started to rain (again) and Thing 2 was sleeping so we just put her down for her nap. Then I fed the others and set off for the first meeting of a potential women's book swap/club. It was in a section of Berlin that's quite close but which I hadn't seen: Charlottenberg proper. I quite liked it (and its architecture) and I found myself walking by the Broken English store that Dr. J had mentioned.

The group was nice (although no times were set for another meeting- let's see how it goes) and it was so relaxing to my eyes to see an apartment that was painted and had colors- I am so tired of being in a sterile white environment! But while we never know how long we will be here, we really can't paint. This is the longest (6 months) I have ever lived anywhere without painting the walls.

My favorite Tibetanische-Nepalische (& Thailaendische)

Mount Everest
Zossener Strasse 25
10961 Berlin (Ecke Bergmannstr.)
691 94 34
taeglich von 12-24
U-Bhf Gneisenaustr.-Bus, 140,341

I love this place. I love it so much that we pay a babysitter more an hour than the cost of one of the extremely reasonably priced entrees. What you see above is a mixed plate of Momo balls. These things are great. the sauce is a slightly sweet chili sauce and the three colors topping the steamed dumplings indicate the fillings: in this case, vegetable, lamb, and spinach mit kase (I think frischkase). The salad is a type of kohlsalat, very light and refreshing (and crunchy). I like these so much that the last two times we have gone to the restaurant I had them as a main dish rather than an appetizer. I started with a Tom Yam Gai (a chicken base soup). I asked for it to be a little spicey (and I'm a person who eats habanero stuffed olives) and it was wicked spicey, so much so that the German could not share it with me, so be cautious if asking for extra spice. Although I'm never certain whether when one asks for extra spice, whether the staff take it personally and really ramp the spiciness up.

I wasn't able to get a picture of this charo tareko, a chicken dish, before the German had dug his chopsticks in. It was very tasty, although he still felt hungry afterward and ordered himself a dal-lindensuppe which he also enjoyed.

We like this place so much that last night the German called an order in and diverted his way home from work to pick up a take out order: we had some guests and I had enthused about my Momo balls, so I wanted them to try them.

What I learned from the experience was: 1. Don't order soup unless you bring your own containers. I should have remembered from our last take-out experience (an Indian restaurant) that Berlin restaurants don't have appropriate containers and that the soup always leaks. 2. Although they gave us lots of extra chili sauce, as I had requested, it was straight chili sauce, rather than the sweet/hot variety that I usually get with the momo balls. (They also come with peanut sauce, but I don't like that so requested to have none). Fortunately, I also like straight chili sauce (not oil-based, yeah!) but I really like the other as well and will request that in the future.

And I missed the Cobra bier I drank at the restaurant. I'm not a big beer drinker at all (would usually prefer cider, apfel schorle or even water) there's just something about a pale ale/Indian style beer (I guess that's a really hoppy beer?) that I think goes really well with spicy foods.

Driver's License...finally!

So, only 4 months after we set the wheels in motion (ie, jumping through all the required hoops) my new Fuehrerschein is here.

It started with having an American driver's license from a state that has reciprocity with Germany. Then having that translated and 'notarized' and taking that to the ADAC with my passport (and all the other official documents that they said they would not need but did). Then we (the German and I, because they were only in German) filled out forms, paid our fees, and went off, expecting to be notified of the license arrival in 11 weeks. We were told it could not be mailed, which was itself problematic, of course, because we were expecting to leave Berlin before it would arrive. I would then, apparently, need to fly back to Berlin to pick it up.That was mid-November.

In mid-January we received notification that the license would be held up because my motorcycle certification could not be transferred unless I took a written and practical test, so I said that I would take the license without the certification.

We received the letter stating that the license was in March 19th. What with all of our illnesses and the holidays, I went to the correct Landsamt, off Friedrichstrasse, to pick it up Monday. It's located just down the street from Checkpoint Charlie (so now I know the U-Bahn stop for that museum).

After going in the wrong entrance and being sent around, providing my letter, my passport, and my driver's license in one waiting room, I was sent to another. In that room a gentleman asked who I was, handed me my Fuehrerschein and bade me a cheery fare-well, while retaining my US license.

In my oh so pitiful German, I tried to explain to him that I actually needed to keep my US license. After my second sentence, he sent me along to another room. In that room, a woman explained to me, in extremely rapid German, that Germany would allow me to have only 1 license and that I should use my German license when visiting the US.

Once again, in my so slow German, I explained that I needed the license, that the German one did not have my motorcycle certification, that US citizens are not allowed to drive on German license, that although my husband, with a visa, could use a foreign license, I a US citizen was specifically not allowed to.

She offered me the option of paying 100Euros every time I needed my USA license and that they could keep it somewhere that would require my asking for it a week or two in advance, which I said was both exorbitant (zu tueur fur mich) and unbelievable (unglaublich). I asked her what she suggested I do, in a city where the average apartment costs 300Euro a month, and she just shrugged. So I said thank you and left.

I assume that the answer is to get another US license when I am in the States and I assume that is what her shrug was suggesting that I do and I think that's just great: to need to break the law in order to be legal.

Another typical German experience where the letter of the law absolutely is more important than the meaning behind it. Sometime soon I will blog about our experience with German banks and with German American Express.

What's on my shelf...and what's on yours?

Slouching Mom posted a new meme (originally from Niobe) showing what is on her shelves.

SM felt that was harder than exposing her morning face. Well, I'm not going to expose my face because the German wants to remain anonymous, but SM- I don't wear any make-up either. (In fact, we might be related, looking at our snub noses and uncontrollable hair. Do you have cowlicks too?)

Moving on, here's one shelf. I might add another later, but I am a bit atypical: since we have such limited storage space here, I tend to remove the books I have finished and don't want to refer to later, which is why this shelf is a bit heavy on cookbooks. The Lilydale is awaiting the sequel before it's put away. And the Chinese self-study (unopened, I must add, is the German's). The books are pretty typical of my interests though, and you can look at what I have been reading this year in the Goodreads icon on the left of my blog.

I'm going to tag people for this meme (my first time!), but feel free to pass if you don't want to or don't have the time:

Diana at Martinis for Two
Lynda at Lulu's Bay
Snooker at Snooker in Berlin
Cathy at Planet Germany (your book is on my shelf;-))
Dani at Earth to Dani (looking forward to your book being out)
Dr J at Alien Ted

and Ree at Pioneer Woman, who I expect has too many comments to have time for this (but whose blog is fabulous and you should all check it out).

And anyone else who care to join in: please drop me a line if you post and maybe I can try a mosaic like Lynda did with her window meme and set up a list of links for those who participate.

It's a small City...

Today I took the Things to a local playground after school. The goal is to exhaust them so that the light in the evenings doesn't keep them up.

After we had been playing for a while, a woman showed up with two small boys, each perhaps a year older than my Things. I thought she was speaking Hebrew, and Thing1 said she knew the boys. But when I asked her what they were called, she couldn't say, so I thought she was wrong. However, when I started talking to Thing1 about her school day, the woman asked if my girls were in the same school (she recognized the teacher's names). Now, that's a small world, because this school is actually out of our area and the girls are bussed to it. And, in an even more comical turn, when we were talking it turned out that R. is the organizer of some classes for children that I had been interested in and I will be taking advantage of them, trying the Judo this Thursday and the Dance on Monday. Both for Thing1 but R. assures me that there are plenty of younger siblings there to keep Thing2 amused while Thing1 has class.

I'm really looking forward both to getting Thing1 into these activities and also to perhaps meeting some moms and kids in the area. It rains too much not to know any other children to play with! (And it is pouring tonight, after an atypically gorgeous day.)