Feb 21 The 60th Berlinale comes to an end. So much has happened over the past 11 days. I’ve met so many people. So many interesting people who share different loves, and favorites of different genres of film. The topics at the festival were all so real time on one end, and so reflective of the past… Read more »
I spent a summer in Japan when I was 15 and discovered that Japanese chefs can take any foreign pastry– Italian tiramisu, French puff pastry, and even Spanish churros– and improve on perfection. The Japanese versions of western style cakes tasted lighter and more flavorful. And boy were they pretty. But try as they might, the… Read more »
I spent a summer in Japan when I was 15 and discovered that Japanese chefs can take any foreign pastry– Italian tiramisu, French puff pastry, and even Spanish churros– and improve on perfection. The Japanese versions of western style cakes tasted lighter and more flavorful. And boy were they pretty. But try as they might, the… Read more »
When walking my daughter’s dog in Charlottenburg, I enjoy examining the plaques on buildings. My favorite is the one marking the building on Mommsenstraße where Hanns Sachs lived from 1920 to 1932. Sachs was a Viennese lawyer who was trained by Freud and became a member of his inner circle. Karl Abraham, another early student… Read more »
Herbie Hancock’s piano intro follows with a short riff of staccato trumpet. The 10 o’clock crowd is excited and attentive; beers sprawled across the packed tables. This is just a regular night at the historic A-Trane jazz club. Or at least I picture it that way. This Charlottenburg musical institution can boast the likes of… Read more »
As Berlin upgrades its chameleon wardrobe toward something more sophisticated, it’s tempting to find its bohemian foundations provincial or quaint—in any case, relegated to the pile marked, “donations.” But such a linear notion of progress belies this city’s iconoclastic nature. Berlin is a humane place, scaled for human beings. This is clear to anyone who… Read more »
In the winter, Berlin streets are notoriously grim; the eye savors any bright spot—a child’s mittens, a circus ad. But at the top of Rosa Luxemburg Strasse stands an oasis of color: local milliner Rike Feurstein’s eponymous boutique, a veritable confectionery of candy-hued hats. Inside, one tries them on like identities: A leopard-print cloche à… Read more »
The pre-war, stone row houses on my street in Tempelhof are painted colors unusual in drab Berlin: rhubarb red, periwinkle blue, hunter green and three different shades of yellow. Every house has an old cherry or magnolia tree out front. On the long oval patch of common green in the center of our street, we… Read more »
On the rare late fall day when blue sky pierces Berlin’s chronic dark gray, I bike across the river from my Friedrichshain neighborhood to Treptower Park. Unlike Tiergarten, whose lovely ponds and clumps of flora are constantly interrupted by city streets, the paths in Treptower Park stretch luxuriously for miles, like a good long yawn. … Read more »
This is actually a eulogy, for a cafe on Knesebeckstrasse that closed last year. It was called The Kitchen. The food was delicious. The proprietress, Patricia Ferer, a warm and wonderful person from St. Louis via New York City, was always welcoming. But it was more than that. Sometimes the stars align such that a… Read more »
