After the KZ we all went to an Italian restaurant together
to get something drink and just decompress and digest all of the information. I
tried gluhwein because it was the one hot item I couldn't figure out, and no
one on our side of the table knew what it was. Turns out it was a spiced wine.
It was very similar to this drink my mom made me when I was little with lots of
fruit juices, and it had an orange slices and whole cloves floating in it. The
base for the drink was a red wine.
After this we took the subway system out of that area (which
I feel like I’m getting significantly better at), and instead of going home we
decided to do dinner out. We stopped off at Alexanderplatz and found a
restaurant called 1840.
It was really neat because it was in this square area
(similar to Market square for the Knoxville folks reading this). There was
seating inside for all of the restaurant but then there was also a really large
outside seating section. Because it was cold they had blankets on the backs of
all of the seats for outside guests. I ordered “Schweinshaxe” mostly because it
was the specialty items that I haven’t seen along the road vendors. Turns out
it was a “Pork Knuckle” I thought it would be the general size of a pork chop?
I was so wrong. It was huge. There was German Sauerkraut on the bottom of it
and came with German mashed potatoes. My mother has spoiled me and her’s are
super creamy, these were kind of dry because it seemed like they had only
mashed the potato and didn't add any milk. Still very good, just different. The
Schweinshaxe was Bavarian style instead of Berlin style. My host dad explained
to me that that meant that instead of just boiling it, they then baked it so
the outside fat would get crunchy, and it definitely was. The butter knife that was on the table
couldn't cut into it because it was so hard. After that I was able to pull it
apart sort of like barbecue, but could only eat a fourth of it.
Then we went and walked around Alexanderplatz and saw some
of the monuments at night. The city is very gorgeous at night. There is a lot
more graffiti then I was expecting, but still gorgeous. We saw the Berliner Dom at night,
and then several churches.
We ended up walking into St. Nicholas square, and it
was named after the oldest building in Berlin which was the St. Nickolas church.
We walked past this a little bit and saw a statue of St. George and the dragon.
Archangel Michael and resurrected the dragon who then over took the city and
would eat the city’s people, so St. George overtook the dragon, saving the
city. We also saw a very gorgeous Poseidon fountain that was just a tribute to
him. Because it’s so cold none of the fountains have water in them just yet.
The day ended on a really good note.
Sorry this is so late in getting up, it's been really busy!
-C
No comments:
Post a Comment