A little shameless self-promotion for you on this cold and rainy August day. I recently began working for the NPR station here in Berlin as a food-blogger. About twice a month, you can look forward to my insights on food and drink life in Berlin.

I began with a short piece (very short, in fact my bio is about as long as the review) about a restaurant in Neukölln where Brendan and I had a 13 course meal! Next time I promise more in-depth coverage.

On a similar note, I am writing posts about wine and wine related stuff on our dear friend Stuart Pigott’s website. The posts are in English and fall under the heading “Pass the Bottle”. I have been given very free-reign at Stuart’s Planet Wine, and my style is perhaps a little snarkier than usual.

From the New York Times article; What is it About 20-Somethings?

“The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation. ”

New residency every year, check! Moved back with the rents at least once, check! Ditto for the multiple jobs, romantic partners and unmarried status at 29. I have to say that for all my years proudly proclaiming myself as different, unique and complicated, I am finally very comforted to learn that I am just like the rest of my peers.

As I reach the end of my 20’s (I’ll be 30 in October) with the feeling I’ve got little to show for myself, I recall all the moments of suffering and struggle when I thought…this seems so much harder than it did for my parents! I mean, I know that my mother’s generation was burning bras and juggling careers and kids in a way that was previously unheard of, but at least they had jobs when they got out of college if they wanted one!

I was talking to my 22-year-old sister who is itching to be done with her undergraduate studies so she can begin life in the real world and I just want to shout…Don’t Leave! It’s a fucking mess out there.

Here in Germany, many people my age are just completing their first degree and work life doesn’t begin until their mid 30’s. I wish this fact comforted me. I feel much more like an American when it comes to my sense of where I should be at this stage in my life. And even though I feel totally fine about turning 30 and don’t have this complex that it means I’m losing my youthful energy, looks, etc…I do feel annoyed that I’m not further along. I know that therapists love to throw out comforting lines about all of us developing at different paces but I doubt anyone my age feels good about asking their folks for money, deferring important purchases, or reading about classmates in blockbuster films! I’m talking to you Chris Pine!

For the rest of us, here’s to baby-steps and the hope that the next decade will bring at least a little success and clarity.

And…in the midst of fighting off my fantasies of success in favor of realistic goals, I didn’t manage to see much of Sweden at all! I spent all day in a series of cramped airless classrooms learning about presentation skills and the finer points of Swedish Kosher cuisine. Occasionally I made it out of the heavily secured building to the Salu Hall, a marvellous 19th century indoor market with gorgeous heaps of meat, fish, fruit and vegetables.

It was maddening to be around so much traif (non-kosher) food and know that I was forced to pass it up because of time limits and price. The one night I made it out with friends, I ate heaps of shrimp at an outstanding Vietnamese restaurant. And there was also this incident where I was dying for breakfast on a Sunday when everything is closed in Stockholm. I ended up getting a sausage McMuffin at McDonald’s and then wrapping it in three plastic bags so that the smell of piggy-patties wouldn’t waft into the room before I had a chance to scarf it down. It was a very Roth-ian moment, to say the least and I realized that I’d have to learn a lot more about kosher eating if I want to write this cookbook.

I did realize that soy is very kosher and that fake-chicken is quickly becoming the staple of the Swedish-Kosher diet. You can bet there won’t be any of that in my cookbook. On the one night that I cooked for the group (with plenty of help from the international students in my program) we cobbled together a respectable meal of vegetarian Borscht, Pisaladiere (a French anchovy and caramelized onion flat-bread), an incredible very lemon-y tabbouleh and strawberry cheesecake. I gave a little (alcohol fuelled) speech before we ate. I think I said something about making messes and cleaning up later…It seemed meaningful at the time.

On the last day, I took a picture with everyone in the program from Central Europe. I really liked everyone in the program and especially the people in this photo. I guess I feel like I belong in the Central European crew…. It’s funny how subtly the sense of yourself as an outsider can expand and shrink depending on the context. I had no qualms about getting in this picture but now that I look at it, I wonder….It’s not like it’d be easy to play spot the American. Only you and I know which one in the group grew up on junk-food and TV.

I did make it to the synagogue for Friday night services no less! And it was eye-opening to be in this incredible and very significant building surrounded by religious Swedes who showed up in everything from 3-piece pin-striped suits, to sweat-stained gym outfits. Long live pluralism!

I was happy to get back to Berlin, but I think I will always have a soft spot for this narrow street where the program was located and what it meant to be a European Jew, even if it was only for two weeks.

So Spain won the World Cup. Spain, the country with no lyrics to their national anthem….how weak is that? What do the Spanish do when their country is war torn and they need to boost morale? Hum to each other.

Sorry if I seem a little cranky. It’s probably because it’s 113 degrees and I could fill a jug with the sweat under my boobs. There is no air conditioning in this country, not much anyway, and I don’t feel bitter about that. I mean, it’s only this hot four days out the year and the rest of the time, it’s like a dark, slightly moist basement.

And, like all extreme weather, it feels sort of pride inducing to get through it as a city. The people of Berlin are doing the only thing they can do. They are going to the lake, the pool, draping wet towels across their necks and sticking frozen water bottles in their crotches.

The heatwave was actually pretty well timed in my opinion. Coinciding with the World Cup meant that I wanted to be out of the apartment drinking beer anyway. Discovering that the little Italian café/grocery across the street from us, Maritnellos, sells huge Moretti Lagers for just 2 Euros, helped sweeten the deal. When you are as hot as I’ve been for the past few days–the kind of hot where you can only eat things that are frozen, a super cold beer is like mana. I drank 66 cl down like it was barley pop.

I also discovered birch juice at a nearby Russian speciality shop. If you’ve never tried birch juice before, it’s very light and refreshing. It tastes slightly sour and has a little bit of that woody flavor you get when you eat fresh sugar cane (such an amazing treat if you can ever get some).

I’m not sure how they drink this in Russia. I tried drinking it with and without sparkling mineral water and I liked it both ways.

For those of you who are interested in reading the full article, I am printing it here, enjoy!

Sabrina Small: I found this amazing white wine, it’s really good on ice. It’s called Liebfraumilch. Ever heard of it?

Stuart Pigott: Yeah of course. Liebfraumilch and I go back 40 years, at least. But if you like it, and you like it on ice, then I won’t try to dissuade you.

SS: really?

SP: It’s not my job to tell people what they should enjoy.

SS: But how could the world be snowed by something like Liebfraumilch for so long without learning about the truly good wines that are available in Germany?

SP: Well people did discover other wines and Liebfraumilch collapsed in every market beginning in US in the 80’s. But most of the time, the new wines they discovered came from places other than Germany. That was sad. But it was because Germany had identified itself so much with Liebfraumilch, just as it had simultaneously with BMW and Mercedes. That continued to work, up until now.

SS: Do you think Liebfraumilch could come out with an amazing wine today?

SP: I see no reason at all why the basic idea of Liebfraumilch, that you blend together different grape varieties to make a wine with a bit of sweetness that’s not too heavy…this seems a great idea to me. But, you know, if you start with shit grapes you’ll end up with a shit wine, and this was the problem.

SS: I’m from California, and the wine bottles coming out of Napa Valley and Santa Barbara always seemed sort of playful to me. They had funny names and wild typography. I feel like the old school German wine labels look like police badges in comparison.

SP: (Laughs Boisterously) I can understand that. The old style is very old indeed. The whole German wine game changed dramatically roughly ten years ago. All the old stuff went out the window and people began from scratch, in a really creative way. If it hadn’t changed, I doubt I’d still be writing about it, but the wine-makers in the Pfalz region, where Liebfraumilch was made, are mostly under 30 and they are blowing my mind with their wines.

SS: Now that we’re in summer gear, what do these wine-makers have to offer that wasn’t there before? Is it still Riesling Riesling Riesling?

SP: Well Riesling is statistically the most important grape in Germany for good reason. It gives the most amazing diversity of white wines, ranging from feather light to heavy metal, from raspingly dry to honey sweet. But the new wines that are being made with Müller Thurgau grapes, Sylvaner, or Weiss Burgunder, are developing a cult following and they are more interesting than they’ve ever been. And recently, I’ve had some psychedelic experiences with Scheurebe (a sweet explosive white).

SS: Beer trumps wine because you can drink a lot of it, cheaply without getting super shit-faced.

SP: (Laughs Boisterously) I’ve seen a lot of people get super shit-faced on beer. And if you’re gonna vomit on beer, a lot more liquid comes up than wine.

SS: So you’re advocating for wine because it’s easier to deal with coming up?

SP: I’m saying that wine is a drug, just like beer is, and it offers a different sort of high. I’ve had absolutely effervescent experiences with wine, and I’ve also had ghastly experiences talking to the big white telephone when I’d reached my limit.

SS: Is that a British euphemism for puking?

SP: One of many.

SS: Well one idea I had to get the most out of wine in summer, was to mix it with mineral water. It would dilute the alcohol and allow you to drink at the same pace as your beer buddies. Is a weinschorle out of the bounds of good taste?

SP: You can do whatever you want. People think that wine is a snooty zone where you have to play by the rules. But this is all complete bullshit! I think mineral water mixed with a very dry Riesling is a damned good idea!

SS: But would that Riesling be really expensive?

SP: You can get a very decent Riesling for €2.50. I wouldn’t buy it in the discounter grocery stores though. The buyers there will take a bottle that’s a cent cheaper than one that would taste 10 times better. Geitzig ist Geil is a real problem in Germany. But penny pinching only ends up pinching their customers in the ass.

SS: So where should I buy wine?

SP: Well, the bio markets are much more picky about the wine they buy. You will have a much higher success rate there than at a regular supermarket for the same price. But, you have to buy the slightly more expensive stuff. €2.99 will taste like shit. €4.99 will taste dramatically better.

SS: Why is there so much cheap crap out there?

SP: Well, there is a serious overproduction of wine, a global surplus. Too many vineyards were planted in places like South America, Australia and South Africa, and now there is a lot of crap sloshing around. It’s a hit or miss thing. If you’re willing to try a bunch of wine, you might find something good, but you have to buy it up because next month, it’ll be some other ridiculously cheap wine from the same label and it might not be half as good.

SS: What about wines for grilling? Would you go red or white?

SP: Well there’s this very old-fashioned idea that’s still in the heads of a lot of cool young people that somehow with red meat, you need red wine. Well this is complete bullshit. This is drivel your parents were sold about wine, and it’s high time your generation act like rock stars and chuck this idea out the window.

SS: But most people think Germany produces terrible red wine.

SP: Well this is also complete bullshit. Even 20 years ago, Germany was producing top-notch red wines, but it came with a steep price-tag. 10 years ago, partly thanks to global warming, and partly because the new wine-makers stopped making the same mistakes with red grape varietals, the price of red wine in Germany has gone way down and the wine is totally pleasant.

SS: I had a real epiphany as a wine drinker when I realized my beloved Pinot Noir was being produced in Germany under the name Spatburgunder.

SP: Oh absolutely, Germany grows the third highest amount of Pinot Noir in the world.

SS: And they’ve been making these wines for a while?

SP: Well, since the 14^th century.

SS: That seems like a time-span you can trust as a consumer.

SP: These things happen in waves. I think, for example, French Pinot Noir in the lower price-range is not half as good as what Germany is producing. But 20 years ago, my opinion was the exact opposite.

Our friend from DC came to visit and I asked, as always, for the two things that I constantly crave but can’t find in Germany: Red Vines and Advil. Usually someone brings me the 32 vine pack but this time I received the gift that keeps on giving, the 4lb, 240 vine tub. Oh bliss! Oh ecstasy! Oh enduring freshness!

Yesterday, I took my vines with me to watch America play Slovenia in their second World Cup game. I know the US won’t win the World Cup, but it’s still awesome to watch a game where you can root for your country and get a little sassy with the audience. I was taking Red-Vine based bets with the German’s to our left and when the US got ROBBED! of their third goal, I felt totally vindicated yelling out, “That is some bullshit!” with all the outrage of a Steelers fan in Pittsburgh. A guy who was sitting behind us actually approached me later and concurred that it was truly “some bullshit.”

I think the reason football is so fun to watch here is that it takes place on this very public level. Unlike the US, sports are not watched on massive couches in curtain-drawn living rooms with close relatives and friends. Rather, bars and cafés all over Berlin (all over Europe) set up indoor and outdoor TV’S, projectors, and long benches so that people can watch the game. I like the fact that there isn’t this sports-bar vibe about these places. Even the quiet Pernod sipping bars will set up a TV and show the game. And the fact that it’s such a neighborhood based viewing culture allows me to recognize who actually lives on my block, which of them are Danish, which are Kiwis, etc…I think we all view it as a chance to spy on each other publicly, but in a nice way, not in a scary The Lives of Others way.

I recently came across this undertaking by Salon advice columnist Carry Tennis, How I Became a Pothead, where he tries to give a personal account of his relationship with the drug and in doing so, to poke at the larger questions of politics and legality surrounding it. It’s hard to be sure, from my liberal pot-smoking perch in Berlin, what the overall cultural climate is when it comes to marijuana, but it seems like we’re turning a corner and daring to talk about the possibility that pot should be considered no more dangerous than alcohol, and probably less so.

Part of this change in perspective comes from smart people admitting to smoking pot. If we don’t come forward, the non-pot smoking contingent will continue to characterize us as tie-dye wearing, low-level employment holding, Phish listening buffoons.

I first started smoking pot at the end of high-school with a group of friends that would gather into a tiny bedroom near Universal Studios, pass a Bakelite pipe around, get stoned and listen to Rock Steady mix-tapes. Sometimes we would pile into a car and head off to Eagle Rock to get these incredible potato tacos that only cost $1.00 for 2. There was nothing especially revolutionary about our group, and we didn’t feel particularly tied to the moniker “pot-heads,” although we smoked quite a lot of it.

About a year into my friendship with this group, I fell in love with a very sweet guy who was a little younger than my friends and I. He had a deep distrust of drugs and alcohol due to the fact that his parents were both in recovery. I gave up smoking pot while we were together and I am happy I did because I got to enjoy the drug that is first-love totally undiluted. At this point, despite the fact that I had been smoking for 2 years, somewhat regularly, I never actually bought pot. I found that there was never any shortage and all I had to do was show up to a party or small gathering, and eventually the pipe or joint would be passed. When I stopped smoking, I began socializing almost exclusively with my boyfriend and oddly enough, my parents, who, at the time, were part of a big group of friends that met every Friday night for dinner and a movie. They were more than willing to cover our tab for the evening and it was sort of fun to tag-along and get to know my parents as people with a social life.

When I went to college in Pittsburgh, I rediscovered pot and broke up with my boyfriend, or vice versa. I don’t think one had anything to do with the other. I just found myself in a totally new world and I couldn’t imagine feeling tied to a long distance relationship. In my last year of school, I had an apartment over a garage in the middle of a parking lot. It was my first time living on my own and it was also the first time I began to buy pot and smoke it alone, usually in the evenings, and let it work its magic. I began to enjoy smoking just a little bit of pot and working on poems, art-projects, etc…I was aware that my concentration was different and that my willingness to follow my instincts was somehow sharper and stronger than usual. I could see an outcome and work until I got there. I could work for hours in perfect bliss.

Here’s the part that you’re not expecting to hear: This never changed. Not only that, but my enjoyment of this drug as a tool for creative exploration has had no negative effects whatsoever. It didn’t get in the way of my personal relationships, work output, punctuality, life’s goals…I was able to get a Master’s degree, own a pet, hold down a job, while intermittently smoking pot. I say intermittently because it hasn’t been this daily ritual that I can’t live without. I smoke and I don’t smoke. If I  have a dime-bag, it usually lasts me a month or so. I don’t come home and smoke every last drop and spiral into depression. This is not to say that my life has been peace-signs and roses since my first puff. It’s been a bumpy road and I don’t have everything figured out. But, neither do my friends who don’t smoke pot.

Anyway, I felt inspired by Mr. Tennis to come-out, so to speak. Feel free to come out as well.

When I was growing up in a female dominated household in LA, the shower was always a buffet of choices. At any given time there were at least 5 different shampoos, 6 conditioners (usually a couple of deep conditioners thrown in there as well), 5 different body-washes, 3 scrubs, 4 soap bars at varying levels of decay and no less than 5 razors.

I never once considered what this must have been like for my Dad until I moved in with my boyfriend. Brendan, rightfully so, prefers a spare shower scene. In his ideal world there would only be one bottle of each product, preferably without any labels (he actually peels them off and reuses the label-free bottles). I try to get behind this system because anything minimal seems luxurious after the smorgasbord of my childhood, but inevitably, new bottles creep in. I realize that I need to exfoliate, for example, and so I create some magic potion with salt, mint oil and coconut fat. I decide that one conditioner makes a better shaving lotion and so I bring in a second bottle just for hair. At some point I walk into the bathroom and all my bottles are lined up outside the shower like evicted tenants.

I ask Brendan why, why can’t they all just get along? Today his answer was hilarious. “You already act like a crazy old lady and you’re not even 30. When you get to be old you’re going to run around in a tablecloth and shower-cap, holding two old marmalade jars filled with motor-oil, acorn squash and drive-way gravel, claiming that it’s some sort of skin treatment.”

1) Today I found out that the little Indian grocer I go to on Falckenstein Strasse was having a special on coconut milk, 3 cans for 2€. Were they on their last legs? Were the cans damaged? No, the owner told me. They are from South America and therefore slightly lower quality than Thai coconut milk. I pictured coconuts falling from the trees in Guyana, and imagined them feeling sort of shabby and under-dressed for the occasion. I felt sorry for the coconuts and bought three cans immediately. I went home and made a curry  with one of the cans. It was slightly less creamy than the Thai brand I usually bought. But it was fine. I felt like a food activist for buying from the lesser loved coconut manufacturers of the world.

2) The other day I was walking past a church on Nansen Strasse and I noticed that one of the second-hand deposit  bins was overflowing with donations. I know it’s not nice, but I couldn’t keep from peeking at what was there and I happened upon a pair of black leather jeans. I have been dreaming of owning a pair of these, exactly the style before me, for years. Berlin is one of the only places that you can get away with wearing leather pants in, and i am a sucker for leather anything. I love the way it molds to your body. So I took them home and tried them on and they fit like a dream. I was ecstatic. Brendan made jokes about me getting a motorcycle to go with my new pants.

3) A few days ago I was waiting for the M29 bus on Kochstrasse. An elderly woman, wearing the most kick-ass sixties swing coat, cat-eye glasses and abstractly shaped earrings, turned to me and inquired in a thick Russian accent if I wanted to ride the bus for free as a guest on her year pass. I said absolutely. We chatted a little and I realized this woman reminded me a lot of my grandmother on my mother’s side. I asked her if she like Russia or Berlin better. It was hard to understand her. I had the impression she said she liked Berlin but she missed the Schwarze Manner (Black Men). I was really stunned. I repeated the last part back to her and she laughed at me. Schwarze Meer (Black Sea), she corrected me. It was much easier to imagine her missing that.

That is Miranda, the teen ingénue of Picnic at Hanging Rock. I look at her and all I can think is thank god I didn’t see this film when I was a chubby awkward 14 year-old, because her look would definitely have spawned an obsessive copy-cat impulse in me. From the safe distance of my late 20’s I watched this Peter Weir film about the powerful force of a geological structure known as Hanging Rock and its effect on a small Australian community at the turn of the 20th century.

Here is the story: On Valentine’s day in 1900, a group from an elite girl’s school in Southern Australia picnic at Hanging Rock and 3 of the group never return. One girl is found, a week after the picnic but she has no recollection of the events of the day. The most amazing part, is that this story is true. The place Hanging Rock actually exists and these girls really did go missing there. Whether or not all the spooky aspects are taken from a real account, I don’t know. There was a great detail in which all the watches stop at exactly noon, and this is a foreshadowing of the loss of time that leads to the girls’ disappearance. I hope that aspect wasn’t added for narrative’s sake. Even so, the film has so much haunting mystery and such a mesmerizing hypnotic quality, that the story becomes secondary to the effect of the film on the viewer.

In an interview for Sight & Sound, Weir said of the film, “We worked very hard at creating an hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions.”

For my part, I found that I was drawn to the film the way people seem to be drawn to Lost. The film hints at this hugely unanswerable part of existence. It is not about one specific thing, like ghosts or aliens, but rather about that intangible pull we feel from inanimate objects, that suggestion of another world lurking right beneath (within) the one we can identify and explain. Why do we get the creeps? Why do we feel strangely exuberant during a full moon? These are the questions explored by Picnic at Hanging Rock.

On another level, the film is about the restrictive nature of Victorian society for girls and what happens when they…go native. These are girls who wear corsets and gloves, tights and long-sleeves in the middle of summer because it would be considered un-lady like not to do so. When they explore the monolithic rocks (which, by the way look like huge phalluses) they begin removing their inhibiting layers, stripping their stockings and shoes and petticoats, so they can commune with nature. They become slaves to their body’s will; dancing dreamily under the spell of this rock.

Somehow, because of the graceful cinematography, I think, this film manages to look very fresh visually. It’s a far cry from dated 70’s films of a metaphysical nature like Don’t Look Now. I was very aware of the pull this film must have had on Sophia Coppola when she made The Virgin Suicides. That sleepy, dreamy, quality and the coven of beautiful girls are two things these films have in common.

Sometimes when I see a really perfect movie like this one, I wish there were an historic preservation act for films. A no remake law. It would be a real act of destruction to fuck with this one.