Pippa's Visit

On our last weekend in Berlin our friend Pippa came from Aberdeen to visit. I’d been looking forward to her visit since it’s fun to see friends and since we didn’t know when we’d next see her.

She arrived Friday night so we had a warming supper of pasta and garlic bread, followed by a late night walk through the area and the procurement of some vanilla-kirsch-eis from Kaisers. We had a great visit and stayed up a bit too late talking :)

On Saturday we left David at home, working, while we went out to explore the city. Our day was a mix of shopping, eating, and sightseeing – an attempt to get the feel of Berlin during daylight hours! We began by viewing the Berlin Wall Memorial and then heading towards the Berlin Bear Pit – as a vet Pippa was particularly concerned with whether or not the bear pit had bears in it... unfortunately it seems that it does, although they were indoors so we couldn’t see them.

Graffiti must be grammatically correct

Statue of a Medieval warrior outside the Märkisches Museum

Berlin's Bärenzwinger (Bear Pit)

En route to the bear pit we’d stopped for some mulled wine, and it turned out to be a good thing that we did since the next stage of journey took much longer than expected as there was a relatively large island missing off my map and it was difficult to tell if we were going in the right direction. But all was well and we ended up at the Georg Braeu in the end!

Getting lost -- scenic style

Going to a “brauhaus” was such a great experience and I was really sad that David had to miss it. The beer was delicious and it was so fun to have authentic German food that wasn’t sausage or schnitzel (or boulette). I ordered a cabbage roll and really enjoyed comparing it to the Ukrainian and Mennonite cabbage rolls that my family makes. Ours are cabbage stuffed with a mixture of rice & meat (either ground beef or bacon), whereas this was cabbage stuffed solidly with seasoned pork. Sort of like a giant sausage only with cabbage for the casing. It was really tasty, especially with the beer. This is around the time that Walter started cluing in to grown-up food so I had to wrestle my beer away from him, at which point he want after the gravy on my plate. 

Enjoying some German beer

Following lunch we went shopping, browsing through some of the more electic shops enroute to Alexanderplatz. It was a great way to kick start Christmas shopping and we even managed to take in the little beginnings of a Christmas market. Then it was back to our flat in Wedding for my own version of German food (wiener schnitzel, spätzel & red cabbage), followed by an evening walk for some (and time at home with Walter for me). 

Pippa Pinocchio!

Pippa had to leave early on Sunday morning so our visit was lamentably cut short. But we were so glad that our dear friend could come visit us while we still had a fixed address.