Speaking Russian

For the past two days, my friend Lena has been living in her own room. Since I am living in her Mitbewohner's room, I was her de facto Mitbewohner for a couple of days. It was fun. Since I'm going to Russia in only a few days, we made the decision to speak only Russian. It turns out I don't have too too much trouble with making myself understood, and I only have intermittent trouble with understanding. These problems will presumably fade pretty quickly once I am in Russia. That is, I don't have to worry.

And yet, I'm worried. Although the content of the conversation was all quite normal, I couldn't shake the feeling that Lena was slightly annoyed at me. Pretty much constantly. I don't generally have this feeling when we speak German, so I'm going to blame it on Russian. I have a couple of hypotheses for why Russian would make me feel this way:

1. The intonational contours of normal Russian are similar to contours an annoyed American would use when speaking English. There may be something to this: Russian is, according to my subjective judgment, spoken in more of a monotone than is English.

2. I am annoyed at myself for speaking slow and with mistakes, and I assume Lena is also annoyed.

3. Lena actually finds it frustrating to talk to me, because we get along better when we both use German and can understand each other.

It could be a combination of factors. Anyway, I hope that I can shake the feeling of being a nuisance when I'm in Russia. Otherwise I will probably be sad.

Coffee

My life is pretty much in order. I've found a place to live. My friend Daria, who is moving away for several months, is giving me most of her furniture. Thus, I am free to turn my thoughts to higher things. Mostly, that means I've been doing a lot of thinking about coffee. 

My coffee situation in the last couple weeks has been as follows:

That is to say, my coffee is hilariously larger than my coffee maker. No, that's an artifact of hunting for images on the internet. The coffee is okay, I guess, but the little coffee press above allows a fair amount of grounds to come through. Anyway, I really want to finish this coffee, so I can get something fresher and better. So every day I've been putting more and more coffee in the press, brewing progressively stronger coffee. Today, it was pretty excessive. So I'm going to also need to increase the volume of my coffee consumption. Or find someone to share with. 

Anyway, though, my new Mitbewohnerin (the British would say "flatmate," and Americans would say "roommate," I guess, but "roommate" isn't strictly accurate, so anyway I'll stick with "Mit-bewohnerin" = co-inhabitant) doesn't drink coffee. So my new place comes without any means of making coffee. This is really excellent, because that means I get to buy my own equipment. And I'm going to do it right. I deserve the best coffee, and I can afford it because of my exceptionally low rent (on which I congratulate myself daily). 

Anyway, the first thing I'll need is a grinder. I'm considering buying the Solis Typ 166. It's not cheap, but I can always sell it when I leave, or bring it with me. And I've been wanting a grinder for quite some time. The other thing I'll need is a press. This I can get for fairly cheap. I'm considering the AeroPress. The most attractive feature of the AeroPress is that it is for sale at the Coffee Museum of Berlin! I had no idea that such a place existed, but now I do have an idea, and I want to go there. Kind of a lot.

The point is that if you come visit me, I will give you excellent coffee. So that's an incentive. So come visit!

Hungarians

I had dinner with a Hungarian friend of mine today. It was pretty great; I made dal (red lentils, ginger, garlic, cloves, cardamom, pepper, tomatoes, and some peanut oil, topped with yoghurt and mint leaves). There were supposed to be other people there, but they had to cancel. So I had dinner with a Hungarian friend of mine, who I met at a Couchsurfing language meeting, and who works at a Hungarian tourist bureau in Berlin. He's a pretty cool guy.

Mostly, the conversation was not too terribly unusual. I, as is fairly normal, did a lot of the talking. But then we came to the topic of The Treaty of Versailles. And my Hungarian friend has a lot more opinions about the Treaty of Versailles than I do. The Treaty of Versailles, you understand, deprived Hungary of half its land and half its population. Most of this land was predominantly ethnically Hungarian. Many Hungarians, including my friend, have relatives in these places. My friend is pretty okay with the loss of Croatia--there aren't Hungarians there anyway. But he is still embittered about the loss of Transylvania, and he is also annoyed at Slovakia for refusing to allow dual Hungarian-Slovakian citizenship for its ethnic Hungarian minority. I get where the dude is coming from. But I was still surprised.

Also! Today I started buying furniture for my room. I put down a deposit on a bed, and I bought a small bedside table. Craigslist is a beautiful thing. I'm going to check it right now...

German beer

I have to admit something a little embarrassing. It's not embarrassing for me personally. Rather, it's a little bit embarrassing for the German Nation. And also a little embarrassing for me personally. This is partially because, in my mind, I am Germany in your mind. It is also partially because, in researching this post, I realised a lot of my own personal failings.

Beer in Germany is, above everything, traditional. In 1516, some Bavarian king instated the Reinheitsgebot, or "purity law," stating that beer may contain only malt, hops, and water. Apparently, in the 16th century it wasn't uncommon to add harmful or hallucinogenic ingredients to beer. The law was admirable in that it allowed people to drink beer (probably the only available beverage) without pesky divine visions or whatever form hallucinations generally took in the 16th century. Later, scientists or brewers or brewer-scientists realised that yeast was also necessary, so the law was changed to accommodate this. Eventually, the Reinheitsgebot was adopted all over Germany, and has persisted unto the present day. And Germans are very proud of this. To wit, the website of the Brewers' Association of Germany features three prominent axioms as gateways to various areas of the site: "Beer is pure," "Beer is Enjoyment," and "Beer is Germany."

Of course, not all beers brewed according to this law are awesome. Cheap beer, too, is brewed this way. Now, admittedly, cheap German beer is excessively cheap, and not as bad as my (admittedly limited) experience with cheap American beer. It's just, an absence of arsenic doesn't always makes for a great beer. German beer just doesn't always taste good. I don't like Berliner Pilsner, for instance, even though it isn't really even all that cheap. Germany is not some magical beer heaven, and in fact the weight of tradition dictates that people drink beer even if it isn't that delicious.

On the other hand, it's not as if you can't brew a great bear beer according to the Reinheitsgebot. I'm pretty sure 90-95% of delicious American beers also follow it, because most beer aspires only to be beer. I have no problem with the Reinheitsgebot, really. It's just I think it's unnecessarily limiting. When I visited the Harpoon Brewery, I had a beer that had been brewed with a few dozen oysters. It was deliciously chocolatey and also deliciously delicious, and it would never have been possible if America were as draconian as Germany about beer ingredients. The original Reinheitsgebot seems to me to have outlived its usefulness; that is, if a brewery wanted to put hallucinogens in its beer, it would only be allowed to market the stuff in the Netherlands due to other, more modern, laws--and it would advertise this feature of the beer pretty prominently, even though the "purity" of the beer would be compromised.

My local supermarket has some delicious beers: Pilseners, light and dark Hefeweizens, a couple of Schwarzbiers (see below)...and that seems to be pretty much it. That is, Germans do lagers. They don't really seem to have ales. This is kind of a problem, because Pale Ales, Porters, Stouts, etc. are a part of my conception of a balanced beer diet.

"Kyritz Murder and Deathblow. Schwarzbier. Brewed according to the German purity law."

Anyway this beer was good, but the taste kind of overpowered my lunch.

On the other hand, I'm rethinking my conception of a balanced beer diet. I'm in Germany, not England. Different countries have their own languages, their own cuisines, and their own beers. Who am I to complain, if I come to Germany, and all I find are German styles of beer? Answer: I am no one to complain. Like, I'm being ridiculous. 

I've also found a list of breweries and brewpubs in Berlin, and there seem to be a lot of them. In perusing the lists of offerings, I have realised that small breweries are (predictably) much more adventurous than my supermarket (although they still don't do ales). So anyway I'll let you know as soon as I visit some of these places.

Now, some beer comedy:

Beck's Pilsener, according to the website, is "a beer that fits you: sovereign, self-assured, and cosmopolitan" [my own translation].

Also, a block away from my current residence:

The Beer House Sunrise. 

Because there is nothing better than enjoying a nice lager at sun-up. (The bushes in front are just the median strip of the Sonnenallee. I don't live in the woods.)

I feel bad

Guys, I just chose where I'll be living for the next year. I had two choices. One of them involved sharing an apartment with my friend Philipp, who I met last time I was here. I just got off the phone. I was telling Philipp that I would not be living with him, but rather in the other place I was considering.

I feel bad. Now he has to hunt for another roommate, which is an awful process. And I really would have felt at home there. Hanging out with him and his other roommate reminded me of hanging out with (some subset of) Jeremy, Jeremy, Huy, and James. On the other hand, I'll presumably be visiting fairly often, so it's not as if I'm repudiating Philipp as a friend. It's just, I could have done the guy a huge favour, and instead I just didn't do him any favour at all.

On the other hand, I'm excited about my new place. I'll be moving in in mid-September. More details later. I'm sleepy.

What you do when you're not in Hungary

It occurs to me that most of you have some inkling of what a person might do, if a person were not in Hungary. You yourself have likely been that type of person on more than one occasion. But I think that we could all benefit from another perspective, another voice in the growing body of literature on this topic. And I'd like to be that voice. So I'm going to be that voice.

When a person doesn't go to Hungary, his friends often go on vacation. So he resigns himself to being alone in the city. And he drops this ridiculous third-person story-telling style.

Anyway, I went to IKEA to buy a knife. I love that store. I went through the self-checkout, because I thought it was weird that I went to a furniture store and bought nothing but an enormous knife. And I didn't want to get a weird look from a cashier. Anyway, now I can cut things. Like my fingers. I only have two visible scars at the moment, but production is ramping up, and the five-year plan involves the accidental amputation of 1-2 fingers. Either that, or the learning of better knife technique. I'm open to both possibilities.

The entire complement of knives in my life, pre-IKEA.

After that, I went to ethnic grocery stores. You kind of need to, in order to get ingredients that make things taste good. The Turkish supermarkets in Neukölln (which is where I'm living) are particularly cheap and excellent. After the ethnic supermarkets, I still needed a carrot. So I made one last stop, at Real, which was a pretty unimposing building. Except when I went inside, it was huge! It was like a store in America! There was even an international foods section. I bought a carrot, but then I went a little crazy and also bought fleur de sel, which nobody really needs, and which is really expensive. I also bought coconut milk, because I'd forgotten to get it at the Asian supermarket.

Then I started cooking in earnest. I first made chicken stock. Mark Bittman said it wasn't hard, and I believed him. So I cut up a whole chicken and cooked it in water with some onion and carrot and a couple of bay leaves. I had to split it into two pots, because I didn't have one big enough. I used a tea-strainer to scoop off the foam.

The chicken with my new knife

Ingredients for stock (excluding water)

In my cooking, I am using Mark Bittman's book "How to Cook Everything." I recommend this book to all and sundry. Mark Bittman is so helpful and encouraging. He stresses the importance of good ingredients, and believes that everything can be made from scratch, often without much extra effort. He also is always telling me to use a food processor. I guess I'll buy one? I am keeping a food diary, wherein I record what dishes I have made (there are four entries already!), and what I would want to add or subtract the next time around. For instance, when I made chicken soup, Chinese style (with homemade stock!), I decided that it would have benefited from some radishes. Next time, I will remember to add them.

I froze the rest of the stock in an ice-cube tray, and now I have little stock cubes. It's great.

Anyway, the result of all this cooking is a kitchen that looks like this:

If this post was a lot more culinary than you expected, you're not alone. But it's too long, so I'm cutting it off. The next post won't be so much about food.

I can't figure out how to buy things

I'm trying to decrease annoyances in my life by buying things. For instance, I bought a pen. Awesome. Now I can write things down.

The apartment I am living in lacks two important kitchen tools: an actual knife, and a can opener. I have been cutting everything using tiny disposable paring knives, and it just isn't working for me. I tried to open a can by stabbing it with a tiny sabre-shaped knife with a very dull blade. That didn't work for me either.

So anyway I went to a store today. They didn't have a knife that cost more than 2,79€. They didn't have a can opener that cost less than 5,50€. I already have crappy knives, and cans just aren't that hard to open, no matter what kind of can opener you're using. I want a nice knife and a basic can opener. I've been hunting for these items since I got here. Why is this so difficult?

In short: I want Target.