Shabbat in Berlin and a Random Walk

Friday evening, July 8, 2016.

Since it was Friday night, even though I wasn’t hungry I decided to have a Shabbat meal at Mazel Topf, a restaurant across from the Ryksestrasse Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Germany.

http://www.jg-berlin.org/en/judaism/synagogues/rykestrasse.html  Masel Topf is owned by Russian Jews.  I met the owner the other day after breakfast at Gagarin, which is next to Pasternak (which is better than Gagarin and where I had a six-hour brunch last Sunday to be discussed later) and which is across the street from Unami, an Asian, mostly Vietnamese restaurant which is very good – the four restaurants are within two blocks from my apartment and all face Wassersturm Park which is part of another story.  But, I digressed.  Masel Topf  isn’t kosher but doesn’t serve tref.  It did have challah (which was okay but I like mine underdone and it wasn’t) and delicious brown bread.  I was at a table next to three women.  The one facing me was not friendly at all, the only unfriendly person I’ve encountered in Berlin.  I was not expecting the food to be very good and even though I was thinking of getting the rack of lamb or the rib eye (because I haven’t had a steak since I got here), I ordered what the waiter said was their specialty, pulke, the Yiddish word for chicken, stuffed chicken leg, which was minced chicken meat and seasoning and chopped vegetables stuffed back into the skin of the leg of the chicken.  It was a taste from my childhood and amazingly delicious.  The portion was generous and I kept thinking I would take half home and eat it another day, but, as full as I was, I finished it all.  It had two gravies, one was apple flavored.  The side dishes were a salad with a good vinegar dressing and a fried potato dish, which they called a latke.  It was okay, but the pulke, oy vey vas dat gut.  Anyway, the pulke was so good I felt I had been rewarded for my remembrance of the Sabbath.

Earlier Friday July 8

So I’ve been saying “what we have is now” and a graffiti I passed today which is pictured in the FaceBook version of this entry, asks “How Long Is Now.”   Today, when I finally got going about three, my initial quest was to buy a book on German English phrases.  A German English dictionary just gives one a word at a time.  Too cumbersome.  I looked up a book store on Yelp, took a train and a walk to get there, but the only book they had was phrases for artists (huh?  Well, as it turned out, it was in the heart of area where many art galleries are located.). They gave me directions to another book store.  Dussman.  I decided to walk.  I realized I had been on the street I was on, Auguststrasse, the day before with my tour guide, Gabriella of Milk and Honey Tours.  It was in the Jewish section and had many galleries.  I visited many of them.  One of the galleries had a Lyonel Feininger drawing going up for auction on August 6.  The day before I had seen much finer examples of Feininger’s work at the Bauhaus Gallery (though perhaps not so fine as the wonderful piece I saw last summer at the Whitney).  Augustrasse to Friederichstrasse, I continued on to the bookstore, but when I crossed the Spee, maybe at the Oranienburger Str.  I felt a small pang of hunger.  I saw the outside café at Hotel Melia.  Smart looking people were sitting at the tables.  I looked at the menu and it was tapas.  I thought, this is a stop to make.  Maybe I’ll get to the bookstore.  Maybe I won’t.  I had (too much) sangria, stuffed dates wrapped in bacon and an octopus’ garden of octopus and shrimp and marinated onions and olives. Maybe I’ll get to the bookstore I thought.

I did get to the bookstore.  It was just a few blocks further.  Dussman is a book store four stories tall and had many choices for me to make for a German English phrase book.  I chose the Langenscheidt Pocket Phrasebook.  I hope it’s helpful.  Then I took the 75 to Alex and the M2 to the Prenzlauer Allee/Metzer Str. Stop and walked the few steps home.

So what was the point of all that?  Follow in Berlin the mantra I had set for myself in New York last summer, Going Where My Green Light Tells Me The Intersection Might Be Interesting, and walk whenever possible and my Now is enriched.