My dear old grandmother once remarked on a plain white freezer bag, in her gentle Florida drawl, “Isn’t that the whitest bag you ever saw?”. Her eyesight was failing due to macular degeneration at the time, but still she nailed it: that was a white, white bag.
I had to think of my Grandmama upon discovering the rather aptly named White Chips pictured above. read more…
The Wall Street Institute used to advertise English classes around Berlin with a pretty conventional subway poster that depicted a gang of businesspersons in silhouette, heading for a bright future on The Wall Streets. The implied message: “Come join the crowd!” read more…
This is our neighborhood pet store. It has been here for fifty years, at least, he says. The old man is certainly old enough. He is old enough, in fact, to have opened the shop fifty years ago as a pet project upon retirement. He is small and bald and amiable. He shuffles very slowly between the bird seed and the fish tanks and the musky hamsters. He sports thick spectacles and a white lab coat, which makes him appear both adorable and wholly overqualified. He also happens to be the Mona Lisa of liars. read more…
Faces abound on Berlin’s markable surfaces. Some are tiny and elusive like the baby Mao my dad spotted around Warschauer Straße, pictured above. Others span vast windowless walls. The good ones belong. read more…
In the winter months, Berlin’s high latitude and low altitude yield a bleak urban tundra. The abundant summer green deciduates and rots. Bushes and trees become dark skeletons. But if you look closely there is another kind of spring with strange and lovely blossoms all its own. read more…
“It won’t fall down from the platform,
it goes up and down, trun around
on the platform with the real engine sound”
This toy’s main main selling point is that it does not fall off the platform on which it is created to run.
Spotted at the Dong Xuan Center, where else?
We came across this totally cute home and gift shop in the twilight betwixt earth and flesh, where the grinding of souls whispers a tale of how the dead do dance. Right by Pizza Hut. read more…
Pinguin Club is our favorite neighborhood bar. It doubles as an ice cream shop called “des Pinguins Eisloch” (the penguin’s ice-hole). read more…
Walking along a gritty, industrial street on our way back from picking up a twenty liter Weinballon (carboy), I noticed some of these lying on the ground. Wow, I thought, those really looks like hops. But for sure it’s not hops, because how could it be? Growing along a fence separating S-Bahn train-tracks? But it was!
Today we tasted the first beer that I brewed all by myself. I wanted to make a California style Ale – something that we miss a lot living in Germany. And boy-oh-boy, is it delicious! Too bad there are only three liters of it.
Only water, yeast, barley and hops (well, hop pellets).
Edward
Lu