Steampunk bar

I'd never heard of steampunk before, so when a new theme bar opened and I made my friend L check it out with me, she had to explain the whole science fiction genre to me from Victorian aesthetic to Jules Verne adventure. Looking at the lovingly assembled Aetherloge 12° says a lot, too. The hand-built big, wooden bar, enforced with bolted steel plates, shelters the exotic rum and absinthe bottles and a set of decorative, brass pipes. What isn't hand-built is at least tweaked to perfectly suit the purpose, like the lamps; orbs that sit in simple iron holders, omitting a pleasing yellow light around the bar. As my friend was leaving Berlin for the winter, she made us promise that we were going to patron the customer-less bar and make sure it doesn't go out of business – but it seems like business has picked up and we now have to go on a week night to get a table. I guess it's apt that a steam punk bar allows smoking indoors to create a veil of mystery, but thankfully on weeknights the veil is thin.

Dresden + Nationalpark Sächsische Schweiz

We took a little road trip at the end of September / beginning of October and drove to visit our friends in Dresden. We took the long way home and drove towards the Czech border to the Nationalpark Sächsische Schweiz. The scenery between Dresden and the park was amazing when driving along the Elbe, and I wish we would have given ourselves more time for that part of the trip. The national park was small enough to be explored in a day, but we only spent a few hours there. I also wish we could have spent a night in the car free village of Rathen, just below the park, or one of the other adorable little villages around. Instead, after our mini-hike around the Bastei (the impressive mountain bridge in the national park), we drove to the village of Bad-Schandau for a riverside meal. Apart from the frustrating traffic jams and hold-ups on almost all the bigger roads, it was a great trip.

Bye, puppy

We had to say goodbye to our temporary dog back in August, but got to pet-sit him one more time on what was probably the last weekend of summer... I have a feeling that we won't be seeing much of him anymore. Maybe we'll have to visit a dog shelter and find someone to rescue there.

Onigiri, for the first time

Our first time eating onigiris. We got it all wrong and had to go home and watch Youtube videos on how to properly unwrap and eat this triangular rice snack. But even if we failed embarrassingly in eating technique, we really liked our onigirs and can go back soon again with all the youtube knowledge we gathered and do it right! Rice in, Grünbergerstraße 88, Friedrichshain.

Finland

A visit home in July 2012.

Best bread in Berlin

Our whole office has been abuzz about this for weeks now because a new bakery opened up just across the street, and they make the best bread in Berlin! In Germany you do get great bread: heavy, dark, ryes and wholegrains, packed with sunflower seeds. But soft breads and buns baked with yeast tend to be a disaster: airy and light and dry or heavy and dense and dry. At Zeit für Brot on Alte Schönhauser Straße the organic breads are just perfect: La Baguette (2.60€) is soft and chewy with a thick, crispy crust, the Zimtschnecken (cinnamon buns) are soft and juicy... And now I'm addicted to their Schokobrötchen, a fluffy little thing, resembling a flat scone, with big chunks of dark chocolate melted in it. Of course the more traditional, darker German breads like Bauerbrot are good, too, but a person just has to have a good baguette now and then! A part of the reason why the bread tastes so exceptional here is that the bakery itself is in the back of the shop, so everything is fresh, fresh, fresh. And what they don't sell by the end of the day, the donate to the homeless. Perfection.

A birthday dinner in the making

I'm trying to revive my lust for writing and reporting. I've wondered why I haven't mustered up any blog posts lately and came to the realisation that having the dog move in has cut down the time for bumming around online. Instead I now enjoy long walks and hiding dried chicken pieces in our living room and playing the search game with the pup. Time well spent, I think!

Anyway, it's not like that much has even happened in the last month. We celebrated May 1st with a picnic, then the weather got cold and has kept us indoors ever since. The first week of May, my brother and his band played a gig at the metal bar Blackland on their tour of Eastern Europe and we hosted nine, hairy metal musicians in our living room. The dog was super happy to have so many people to pet him, and so many sleeping bags to sleep in!

I've been planning a 60th birthday party for my father and so on the second weekend in June there will be a family invasion and a living room full of cousins, this time. I've researched, googled and emailed potential restaurants, finally settling on Weisse Villa in Friedrichshagen, overlooking the Müggelsee lake. Here's a few suggestions I got for birthday dinners in Berlin; you find a private room and an affordable menu Schneeweiß in Friedrichshain and the .HBC restaurant in Mitte or a great location on the canal at Altes Zollhaus in Kreuzberg, and simply fantastic food at Gugelhof in Prenzlauer Berg.

Let's hope the weather will be on our side and that the celebratory weekend is a great one!