Domain Dahlem

In the morning, it wasn’t raining! The reason that deserves an exclamation point is that it has rained every darned weekend basically since we got here. And being cold as well, it has been hard to do things with the children. But on Saturday, the sun was shining, so we bundled everyone up and went off to Domaine Dahlem, a working farm here in the city which also holds markets on the weekends. Rebekah got to ride a pony and was pretty excited. We also ate some traditional German foods (in my case, a plate of new potatoes with a side of herbed quark- a dairy product similar to sour cream in taste but with far less fat and more taste) and the others drank Gluhwein- I donated the majority of my glass to the common cause because I am just so slow at drinking hot beverages.. Before we left, we spent about 15 minutes watching a fire eater. His patter was very funny and Rebekah loved it.

We had hoped to go to Masters of Gregorian Chant on Saturday night, but they were sold out and when we looked for scalped tickets, we could only find one. So we had a really good dinner instead (Ernst’s parents were in for the weekend and had given us a night of babysitting as a gift for his birthday). We went to a Tibetan place around the corner from the Passionskirche (where the concert was) in Kreuzberg, and it was delicious. The appetizer was momo balls and they were so good that if we go again I think I would choose to have them for dinner. Our meals were also very good (my curry chicken was quite spicy) but those momo balls! After dinner, we visited a Weihnachtsmarkt, a holiday market of which there are what appear to be hundreds here!

We were aiming for the Nostalgic Weihnachtmarkt opposite the State Opera, but we got off at the wrong subway stop (or left the station from the wrong side) and instead wound up at the Gendarmenmarkt, the city’s most famous and posh market. It was very nice- I will definitely head back with the SLR to take pictures and purchase some things.