The Oven Wall: Gorky, Stalin and Hitler. Are there sausages?

Though it looks minute on the map, especially when you're used to driving a comparable distance in sleeting snow and fog, with Christmas presents or sleeping and hungover friends in the back of your car, the distance from the South of France to Northern Germany is a hefty one. Through the Swiss alps, past lanes of sunflowers, faced tilted towards the sun, to the Northern coast of the giant Lake Geneva, where Geneva, Lausanne, Vevey, and Bern are all placed next to each other like identical siblings in a line. Each stop on the train is like a return to Brussels, with signs in multiple languages, though Switzerland has no Euro. They still claim the Swiss Franc, which translates two coffees and a tin of chips into $30. My Dad's sister, Genevieve, and her family live in Vevey which is about an hour outside Geneva. Pictures they would show of home on their trips to Canada usually were comprised of 'You have an Alp in your backyard" or "I'm sorry, that chocolate blew all my brain cells so I can no longer make conversation." We were originally supposed to hang with them for a couple of days when we rolled through Switzerland before I realized, AGAIN, that I hadn't planned our trains properly and the "ten days within two months" pass we bought wouldn't cover us stopping over there. Have I mentioned no one should EVER travel with me?

The landscape began to seem very different as we rose up in latitude into Northern Europe. Forests, from being the sparsely green beach trees of Provence and Northern Spain, bloomed into dense mushroom clouds of leaf and canopy that pouffed up from the ground, greenery pushing up from about a foot and a half off the ground and rounding up like a dome. Quaint villages, encircled by fields of fully or partially harvested wheat and cereal grains, popped up without warning, near and far. Clouds dotted the sky like a suggestion, as if they were there only to round out to picture. It was like passing through an Albert Bierstadt painting. You expected groups of women in dirndl skirts and men with beards without a moustache to skip out into the fields in choreographed dance. Can you tell I have no German relatives? No German acquaintances of any kind? Otherwise, I probably would have had some resident daydreams comprising of beer steins, cabbage rolls or sauerkraut. I'm a Gaul, through and through.

We rolled into Berlin with the sand still in our hair and salt still on our skin. Berlin is a strangely quiet city at night. Most has shut down, the rail tracks along the river lit only by streetlights and the occasional late night bus, late night being 945pm. Our hotel, Derag Livinghotel Grosser Kuerfurst, is very similar to where we stayed in London at StayCity, a combination hotel and serviced apartments. It sits just off the canal in the Mitte, or central, district. Our train from Aix had been long and the connections had been nerve wracking. All we wanted to do was crawl into bed. But then. A sign above the mini fridge reads: "We've replaced our mini fridge with two beers and two bottles of mineral water. The very best part is that these are free of charge!"

*The addition of the exclamation point is mine.
What's more, those bottles of beer and mineral water are replenished everyday, just like your bars of soap and bottles of lotion. We're planning our next trip to Berlin just so we can stay there.

At first, we were admittedly not necessarily excited for German food. Sausage, cool. Sauerkraut, okay. Beer, definitely. Sounded kind of like anywhere else we had been. But German food? We weren't sure. Until we got there and started stuffing our faces. German food is the food of working people. It's not like French food where it's all about richness and pleasure, where price seemed to be no object, nor did time nor modesty. German food is the food you eat in order to farm, in order to work hard. Hefty carbs, usually deep fried or stewed together.

The No Reservations episode for Berlin was extremely strange. Bourdain produces a episode that is extremely hard to make sense of if he's less than keen about the culinary prospects. He said as much at the beginning of the episode but right off the bat he was fed a pork sausage and some beer to drink. He smartened up after that. Which is just about exactly what happened to us. I wanted to find a beautiful bakery that would be good for my imagination. Matt wanted to try Curry Wurst, an Eastern-Bloc era invention from Berlin. It is comprised of a pork sausage with curry powder in it that is then fried, lathered in ketchup, dusted with more curry powder and served with fries or bread. Apparently you had people who would come over the wall just to have one. Konnopke's, one of the original Curry Wurst joints, sits under a tram track with the large Prater Market beer garden just down the street. Tourists, locals, to stay or to go, it doesn't seem to matter, everybody loves it. Curry Wurst is everywhere too, from the Curry Wurst Checkpoint Charlie to a resplendent stand outside the massive Haubtbanhof. In German it sounds more like "Cully Vurst" from a German. Chant it with me.

Berlin has amazing street art. Some of it is just careless and small. Some of it is recognizable tagging. But some of it is large scale, well facilitated and eye catching.

What surprised me, though I don't understand WHY it surprised me, is the Russian influence in Berlin. They were only occupied by Russian government for sixty or so years. We passed numerous cafes, bars and restaurants all with Russian names, cyrillic (Russian) lettering or soviet insignia. Things like "Gorky", a famous Russian writer, or the hammer and sickle symbol. Anthony Bourdain says bad things happen when the Russians happen to food so we were happy that Germany has its own cuisine, distinctive and resilient enough to survive that kind of Russian repression.

We chose Berlin above any other Germany towns, Munich, Frankfurt, or Dresden, because of the history there. We wanted to see a Holocaust Museum. The 'best' Holocaust museum was apparently supposed to be in New York but we thought that's couldn't be right. Berlin was the centre of it all. There's got to be something better there. We decided on the Judisches Museum, the Jewish history museum. What was meant to be a chronicling of the history of the Jewish people in Germany since the 10th century felt more like an unwieldy hijacking of a Holocaust museum into an art project. Not to be confused, the museum is not marketed as a 'Holocaust Museum' but rather as the Jewish Berlin Museum. It is meant to put Jewish history and the Holocaust in context, in a way to help someone viewing the Holocaust to understand that there was a cultural attitude towards Jewish people that was embedded in social psyche that made something like the Holocaust possible. During my Jewish history class, in looking at the museum, we studied how even the structure of the new part of the museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind is designed to create a sense of emptiness, confusion and a lack of resolution just as one would feel after learning about the Holocaust. It felt more like watching an art film, where you're trying hard to interpret something which distracts you from what feels like it should be the point. You feel somewhat 'used' as the audience. I'm not advocating the absence of artistic license or even the absence of interpretation. I was just looking for a moving Holocaust museum. I don't know what it's like to be a German-Jew post-WWII though. Daniel Libeskind does. Maybe that should be enough for me to allow him, and the grant he received from the Berlin Government, to do what he would wish with the German Jewish Museum.

Strangely enough, down on Wilhelmstrasse, at the remains of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, there is The Topography of Terror, a museum totally free of charge that chronicles The Third Reich, the SS and SA, the Gestapo and the various purges and deportations that occurred. It had models of Berlin during the Third Reich. It showed that, just like any other museum, the Third Reich functioned like any other government on paper. It had a Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Nutrition and Agriculture, embassies for England and France.

Nazi Propaganda was even a part of holiday advertising.

We also took in the Berlin Wall Memorial, which is located in the only place where the wall still blocks a roadway.

There are memorials to all the people who died at the Wall. Some died when they were caught trying to escape. Some killed themselves when they realized they had been caught. Some were innocent bystanders. The day was overcast which kind of made the memorial feel excessively morbid.

But then across the street from The Topography of Terror was the Checkpoint Charlie exhibit which, thanks to the Curry Wurst stand, looked like a lot of fun.

How 'bout back to something where I'm not talking out my ass?

Bread maybe. Yes, bread.

The day perked up after the sombre subject matter of the museums with a healthy recommendation from Chowhound. During my last few weeks at school, I asked my German chef where he would suggest I go for good German bread in Berlin. Extremely helpful, he told me that if I saw a bakery I should go in. But apparently there's been an upsetting trend -and by upsetting I mean somewhat disgruntling to a pastry kid with a carb problem- where many independent family bakeries were bought up by big chain stores and started producing big chain store bread. So when you wander into a place like SoLuna Brot und Oel, you start to get excited. Really excited.
Fresh and local artisan cheese and cured meats paired with house-made tomato walnut pesto and creme fraiche behind the counter as well as canned tapenade and liverwurst make for a welcome sight inside the door. Twin slabs of pain de herb, aka 'the best pizza bread you've ever had', filled with tomato pesto, peppered with fragrant thyme and crusted with bubbly, crackled mozzarella greet you first. After that you peer along the back wall where Five or six different varieties of rye greet you, stacked like books on their ends, faces dusted with flour. A large wood burning stove, almost kiln-like, burns behind you.
Julian, whose father owns the place, chatted us up while I oohed and aahed and decided what to buy. I don't think anyone has likely put as much thought into a rye bread purchase as I had because Julian's co-worker felt the need to coach me along best he could.

I spewed out my requisite, "I just graduated from Pastry school" line as I stared glassy eyed at the loaves.

"Are you looking for a job?"

"I think I am now."

Then I paused. I looked at Moozh.

He looked at me. "Do you speak German?"

I ordered him an Americano and kept looking as he sat down.

"I was just in Maine for a year, to bake," Julian began. "All you see is walls of white bread. I missed my rye."
Those feelings were channeled constructively into the creation of a line of rye breads, all with such a perfect density and bitterness. The loaf of wasserbrot we picked up had the perfect crust, chewy and tasting of molasses, with chopped walnuts scattered throughout.

But it didn't stop there. Julian was selling it. We were treated to fresh briochettes as well as slices of Kaeskuchen, Linzer Torte, and a walnut caramel bar, which is apparently a house specialty. We also also had pieces of the Pain de Herb, I couldn't very well pass that up. We tried their smoked mozzarella as well as their raspberry preserves. Needless to say, we were full when we left and there was a part of me that was trying to facilitate an extended stay in Berlin.

The sky strayed from the cloudy forecast, opening up into sun. Germany is known for it's Riesling, wines with a citrus clarity and the tartness of green apple and ripe pear, and the German's take their Riesling seriously. But what they do even more is sparkling Riesling. About 75%** of Germany's Sparkling Riesling is consumed IN GERMANY. In the midst of our meanderings, we came across a 'Wein Kellar' where we popped inside to see what we could find. We have been grateful for the people we have met along the way who have understood the foodie compulsion we have to find something tasty, authentic and memory making. They seem to understand that we are wanting to look back on this trip and think, "I am broke now but THAT was friggin worth it."

The owner pointed us towards a Joachim Flick sparkling Riesling. "Tiny winery, not super well known yet so not super expensive. But you can't get this wine outside Germany and I think it's great." We also picked up a still Riesling that we would chill and enjoy in Rome.

While we were browsing, we had one of these which I drank rather…indiscriminately. It is a bitter lemon cooler, friggin delicious and 12.5%. I think I actually had some of Moozh's too. Everything just seemed really fun after that.

I joke that my husband is an anti-globalizationalist. He loves the diversity of cultures and how they make life more interesting to live. But he's a sucker for the romantic notion of life and that's no secret. Everywhere we've been, he's been been looking for a scotch distillery with a ninety-year-old that still turns their malt on the night shift or the old woman who doesn't speak English and spends her day rolling gnocchi while she yells at the Pope on her little black and white television. It's made our search very exciting and has helped us narrow down what we're looking for. Some places along our travels we have been able to find this. Islay was a step back in time. Provence had this old, artisanal flavour to it. But even Islay had a chinese restaurant and Aix had foreign workers running some of their back kitchens. Our last day in Berlin, after we had tried to watch an AWFUL movie about the Life of Hitler (with Stockard "Abby Bartlett" Channing in it!), we heard fireworks going off outside our window. Wandering out into the street, we found a tiny German market where locals were eating sausages, drinking kirsch bier (cherry beer) and sauerkraut out of paper cones. People hawked it out of tiny, carnival-car like stands with David Hasselhoff-esque German pop music running in the background. It was that moment where you feel like you got exactly what you wanted in order to believe that not everything, everywhere has become an exercise in feeling the same. A moment where we knew "nowhere but Germany".

We have had phenomenal weather during our travels. Our first day in Berlin was actually the first day on the Mainland we had experienced an overcast day. The next day, cleared up and was beautiful. The day we were leaving, the day produced photos that I quite literally could not have doctored even if I wanted to. Quite the send off.