A Day in the Parks
We were told that the parks in Berlin were pretty amazing and that we should definitely visit many of them. One park, nicknamed Thai Park, was about a 20 minute car ride from our apartment. We were told to go there on the weekend and that old Thai women and men set up food stations all around the park and the food is amazing. It also said that the park was pretty nondescript and the only thing there were the food stands. So, when we arrived to the area and saw a bunch of blankets in an open field with people milling around we knew we had found the right place. The comment about the park being nothing to look at was pretty accurate, but the people, the food and the surrounding culture was so rich that the surroundings pretty much faded away.
The person with the largest line (always the best place to go) was an older gentleman who was cooking dumplings. He had both tofu and pork dumplings. Noah and I were walking around as Noah took pictures with my telephoto lens. We bought an order of dumplings and went back to share them with Ilise and Drew. Next, we stopped at one of the booths that had fried chicken wings. There were many people who were frying up just about everything, but the chicken wings looked the best. After that I bought a big bowl of soup and some more dumplings for Ilise. In the end, we were there for about 2 hours and it was a pretty cool experience. Ilise did some research about one of the open air markets on the other side of the city, so we got back into the car and headed there.
We parked the car, which was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Car travel around Berlin is not that challenging, certainly easier than driving around Manhattan! We arrived at Kollwitzplatz around 3 pm or so. We walked around the market which was really nice. The kids had some crepes and a smoothie as we walked around the two full blocks of booths. We passed some really nice food options and settled on some dried mango to munch on as well as some fresh salmon to cook for dinner. We also picked up some fresh preserves from one of the vendors since we have been eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly on this trip. Finally, we bought a little juicer that you stick into lemons, oranges, grapefruits or any other citrus to get the juice out. All in all, it was a fun day driving around Berlin and seeing the different markets. Today is a few more parks and the kids were invited to visit a Jewish Youth Group. Should be a fun day even if we are all a bit tired. The finish line is in sight.
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 