Interpol-Hands Away

Posted on January 18, 2008
Filed Under Song of the Day, music | Leave a Comment

Sometimes when I am losing faith and starting to wonder why I like these guys, I listen to this song and I find out why all over again.  It’s love.

Eurotrip 2007-2008: Berlin, Day Three–New Year’s Eve

Posted on January 18, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, dining, films, wide world of vacation | 3 Comments

My recollections of December 31st in Berlin are a little jumbled. Hopefully I’ll get this right and if not Ez can help me fill in any gaps.

Our first goal for the day was to head back over to the Filmmuseum. It was interesting. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. It focuses pretty heavily on German film, past and present, though there’s also an entire section on Ray Harryhausen and special effects (I think Ez wrote that those bits were special exhibits, but they are in fact a part of the museum’s permanent collection). There’s a section on Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, which I must see a.s.a.p. as it’s a big gap for me as a lover of old movies.


Still from Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)

There are also entire sections on films under the Weimar Republic, Metropolis, propaganda films, Marlene Dietrich, German filmmakers in exile in America during the Nazi era, and modern German cinema. It was interesting to discover that some of my favorite character actors from the 30s and 40s were in fact German or Hungarian actors in exile–for example, Felix Bressart (Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be) and S.Z. Sakall (Christmas in Connecticut–Mr. Hunky Dunky himself!, Casablanca, In the Good Old Summertime)… not to mention one of my favorite directors ever, Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be, etc.).

Ezra describes the section on Nazi-era German films on his blog. It’s one of those things–so fascinating. It’s like this train wreck that never should have happened but you can’t look away. At first I didn’t even realize that visitors were supposed to pull out the drawers tucked into the wall. It was only when I saw another visitor doing so that I realized. If the museum didn’t arrange the Nazi-era section that way, it would take up way more space. I can’t help thinking that reflects their complicated relationship with that part of their history. They’re not proud of it, exactly, but they know it’s important and they know that it fascinates people. The museum notes next to each display are certainly written from the viewpoint that what the Nazis did was terribly wrong and a sad, disturbing tragedy. But at the same time, putting their vast collection in that little room and keeping the displays largely put away in drawers definitely gave the whole thing a relatively low profile. Very interesting.

The Marlene Dietrich collection is massive and takes up two rooms (or was it even more?). They are obviously proud of their Berlin-born star. Their collection includes costumes and items from her films, outfits from her personal wardrobe, letters, photographs, and personal effects like her make-up box. It was pretty neat. For anyone who loves her the way I love Garbo or Bette Davis it must be a shrine.

The section on Harryhausen totally reminded me of Nora and her dad. Harryhausen was responsible for all of those fabulously goofy effects in Clash of the Titans, which I might never have seen had it not been for Nora. Nora, if you ever go to Berlin, I think you’d enjoy the Filmmuseum.


One of Ray Harryhausen’s creatures

After the museum, we needed a little refueling. The Sony Center is in a pretty touristy area, so we decided to stick with Billy Wilder’s, the bar/cafe adjacent to the Filmmuseum. Apparently Billy Wilder was Austro-Hungarian (he was born in an area of what is now Poland) and wrote a lot of scripts for German films until Hitler came to power. At that point, like many other Jewish filmmakers during that era, he emigrated to the U.S. (via Paris) and moved in with Peter Lorre in Hollywood. The Germans seem to love him, though–possibly because he directed A Foreign Affair with Marlene Dietrich, which takes place in Berlin. We had little coffees and shared some apfelstrudel. It was quite nice, but so crowded. We had a heck of a time trying to get the attention of the wait staff so that we could get our check. Oh well, there are worse places to be stuck for an extra 20 minutes.


Billy Wilder’s

If I’m not mistaken, we then caught a bus back into the Tiergarten en route to the Bauhaus Archive. Unfortunately, it turned out to be closed for the holiday, so we were only able to enjoy it from the outside.

We resolved to return on Thursday.

At this point I get a little fuzzy on what we did next. I think we ended up on a ferris wheel–or was that the previous day? Well, one of those days we rode a big ferris wheel at twilight.

We returned to our hotel that night via Savignyplatz, where we noticed lots of nice little shops and restaurants. We decided to go to a tapas place in Savignyplatz for our New Year’s Eve dinner. It was festive, though I must say a couple of the vegetarian dishes were a little disappointing. We had a good time, though.


Ezra on New Year’s Eve, having fun at the tapas restaurant

On our way home from the tapas restaurant we stopped at the petrol station convenience on the corner and bought a bottle of champagne (or was it cava?) and a bag of decadent German cookies. On our way out, we encountered a bunch of people walking around setting off firecrackers. Apparently fireworks that are not legal (at least, not for an average citizen without some kind of license) in most places I’ve been in the U.S. are both legal and popular in Berlin. We watched (and admittedly chuckled at) some of the New Year’s concerts and such on TV, but mostly we drank our champagne and gazed out our window at the fireworks people were shooting off the roofs of surrounding buildings. Lots of other people with windows off the courtyard were doing the same thing. The firecrackers were bouncing off the buildings. It was noisy and raucous and the kind of thing that I LOVE about traveling… I think it’s something I won’t be experiencing any time soon here at home.

Eurotrip 2007-2008: Berlin, Day Two

Posted on January 16, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, christmas, dining, wide world of vacation | 3 Comments

On our second day in Berlin, we discovered the full wonders of our lovely little hotel. I wish I’d taken more pictures of it because it was really very cute. They had little Christmas decorations here and there and it had a very warm but uncluttered feeling. The bed was super comfortable and had one of those lovely personal duvets that I’ve once or twice experienced elsewhere in Europe. The breakfast room there is bright and orderly. Gosh, writing about it I wish I was there! They had yummy yogurt and cheeses and rolls and cereals, tomatoes and fruit, and some meats for the carnivores. It was a fairly typical European spread–very nice.

Once we had enough caffeine to pull ourselves away from all that, we embarked on our first S/U-Bahn journey (I can’t remember which) to check out some antique markets at Friedrichstrasse. This was our first foray into the Eastern part of Berlin, and we did notice some subtle differences (though that might just be because of the nice section we were staying in–it’s hard to know how representative that is of the Western side of the city). There were a lot of lovely things at the antique markets, but much of it was more along the lines of fine antiques that we could probably neither afford nor fit in our suitcases. It was neat to see everything, though. We saw a lot of cool old furniture and lamps and clocks–arts and crafts things as well as sleeker stuff from the 1930s.


Antiques at Friedrichstrasse. These are actually some of the newer items we saw.

After cruising through the antique stalls, we ended up heading westward on the Unter den Linden, a wide avenue that cuts east to west through the city, crossing under the Brandenburg Gate and turning into the Strasse des 17 Juni., which bisects the Tiergarten. We stumbled upon Berlin on Ice, a public ice rink that’s open from the end of November through early January where, besides skating, they apparently hold a number of other holiday events. Here’s a picture from their site:


We followed the people wandering away from Berlin on Ice and found ourselves at another big Christmas market at Gendarmenmarkt. This one was very pretty. I don’t remember this one having rides, except maybe a carousel, so it was a little less carnival-like than some of the others, but it was still very nice. We wandered the stalls for quite a while and sampled some drinks and these yummy little spiced dough things that were really tasty. Though I just got a nice pair of slippers for Christmas, I was unable to resist the fluffy wool footies I found in one of the stalls. As soon as I saw them I had to try them on, and as soon as I tried them on I had to have them. It was hysterical, really. I sort of wish I had a picture of when I tried them on. I think the people running the booth thought I was a little nutty, but dang!–those things were fluffy! (They still are, though they’ve been smushed down a bit from wear.) So, these are my new “woolies.”


We shared a yummy little pizza at an Italian place inside the market, where we huddled under a heat lamp and grinned goonishly at each other across the tablecloth. I remember the place had these cute red felt drapes over the chairs–very Christmas-y.


Ezzie at the pizza place, under the heat lamp.

After lunch we wandered around a bit more and went into a little indoor tent that was full of more stalls. There were lots of artisans in there. One was selling loads of carved ornaments and decorations. That’s another thing that’s very big there, as far I could tell–hand-carved things made of wood. In the “it’s a small world” department, there were also a couple of people there making letterpressed business cards.


An indoor stall selling lots of things made of wood.

Then it was time to head over to The Filmmuseum at the Sony Center. Unfortunately, the guidebook I was using said that the museum was open until 8PM and closed on Mondays. When we got there, the museum was about to close, but the woman we spoke with told us that it IS in fact open on Mondays. So, we planned to return the next day. There was still time, though, to go to the museum shop, which was full of lots of interesting goodies, promising much fun in the museum. I bought the exhibition poster for the current exhibit titled Sound – Film – Music, 1929-1933. The poster was cheap–7 euros, or about $11. It’s based on this photograph. Doesn’t this actress look like Claudette Colbert?


The Sony Center is this big commercial complex at Potsdamer Platz, a huge commercial intersection that’s been totally rebuilt since the war. Ez wrote about it on his blog. There was a sort of little Christmas market at the Sony Center, too, with curling (I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before in person) and a big Christmas tree made of Legos.


The little Christmas markets at the Sony Center.

I think it was on this day that we wandered over to even more Christmas markets at Potsdamer Platz–they call it Winter World because there’s ice skating and a big toboggan run. It’s smaller and more touristy (due to it’s location) than some of the other markets we visited.

I think after that we headed back to our neighborhood in search of food and warmth–not necessarily in that order. We ended up going to a rather tasty Italian restaurant (Italian is an easy choice for the veggie traveler) in our neighborhood called Ristorante Tre. I’m fairly certain it was run by bona fide Italians and everything I had was very tasty. (If you check the menu at their site, I had the spaghetti mafioso. NUM!)

Eurotrip 2007-2008: Berlin, Day One

Posted on January 16, 2008
Filed Under Blather, christmas, dining, wide world of vacation | 1 Comment

I really loved Germany. Overall, it’s very clean and orderly and I found it very pretty. I guess it’s as-advertised. The Germans are good at design, Christmas, and engineering. They’re efficient. The trains–even the S-bahn and U-bahn, which are more or less like our subway trains… AND the buses–run like clockwork. It was chilly, but that was perfect. I mean, it was Christmas/New Year’s! But I’d better go in more or less chronological order, as much as I can recall, or I’ll get everything mixed up.

So… We flew American Airlines through London. I do NOT recommend American Airlines. Their seats are pretty cramped and their food, at least on the way over, was GOD AWFUL. It was without a doubt the worst airline food I’ve ever had. Our layover in London was sort of funny in retrospect. We were so tired and out of it. It was fairly early in the morning, and as the airline food had been so terrible, we decided to get a cup of tea and a bite to eat. I got toast (it had some grand name on the menu that I wish I could remember) and a pot of tea and Ez got a little omelet. This was our first encounter with the little portable credit card machine that servers use in Europe. They don’t have to take your card away from the table–the whole transaction happens right there. Maybe these are showing up in the U.S., too… but I haven’t seen them here.

We arrived at Tegel airport in Berlin sometime around noon, I think. As soon as we got off the plane it was like, “so THIS is Germany!” Passport control was right there at the gate, as was the baggage claim for our flight! The carousel was literally right at the gate. Fantastic. So, we quickly gathered up our bags and headed for the buses. There is surely a simple way to buy a bus ticket from a machine, but a bunch of us travelers hadn’t figured that out, so there was a bit of a line. Once we had our tickets, though, we hopped on the bus and were on our way.

The bus stopped just a couple of blocks from our hotel, the Hotel Art Nouveau, which I highly recommend. It’s in what appears to be a quite nice neighborhood in Charlottenburg in the western part of the city. We were quite near the Kurfürstendamm, a long tree-lined shopping avenue. As we made our reservations a bit late, we ended up in a suite (oh woe!). It was beautiful. The whole hotel is in an old art nouveau building with very high ceilings, big lovely windows, and an old-fashioned elevator.


A bit of our clean, airy, cozy suite

Though we had every intention of going out, we had to take a little nap. After sleeping an hour or so, we set off to find our first Christmas market. It so happened that one of the biggest and best was not far from our hotel, next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. I loved the Christmas markets! They’re sort of these little carnival villages with lots of food and drink stalls, rides, gift stalls, and bright lights. Lots of the food stalls sell gluhwein (Ez tells me this means “glow wine”), a hot mulled wine that’s a bit sour-sweet for my taste but that warms you up quite well. When you order a mug of this stuff, or of beer or hot cocoa, a euro or two of the price is a deposit on the mug or glass in which they serve you the drink. The gluhwein and cocoa are served in special Christmas market mugs, which I guess some people collect. Ez and I brought home a few, of course.


Stall selling gluhwein and wurst


Note the mugs warming in the foreground. We brought home two of those.

Several of the markets had big indoor Christmas shops selling ornaments and decorations. It was like German Christmas wonderland. Here’s Ez in Christmas glow outside the one by the Kaiser Wilhelm Church.

We were hungry, so I ended up getting veggie lo mein from a stall (yeah, they even had that!) and Ez got what I think was his first wurst of the trip.

After that, we decided to track down the large and famous German department store, KaDeWe, which was just a few blocks away. It’s a big shiny department store–the largest in continental Europe. It’s interesting in the way that it’s interesting to go to food shops in other countries–just to see what they have and how they do things. AND they had a big, beautiful sock and stocking section (bliss!)… Falke, a fabulous German hosiery company, was well represented. In fact, they had some lovely tights on sale that I snapped right up. They’re so warm! Totally worth the price (which was considerably less than it would have been at home, even with the unfavorable exchange rate).

Vintage Christmas postcards

Posted on January 15, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, christmas, me and my brain | 5 Comments

I think I did actually post about my Christmas postcards once quite a while ago, but my collection has grown and there’s been a request from on high (well, from Kim) for another post. I love my cards, so I’m happy to fulfill that request.

I can’t remember when I started collecting them. It’s been a little while, because I think I’ve been collecting them the whole time we’ve been doing our annual advent calendar, and we started doing that in 2001. I recently separated out my cards into those with clear postmarks or hand-written dates, those with unreadable postmarks, those with writing but no postmark or hand-written date, and those that appear to be unused. Of the ones that are dated, the vast majority of my collection is from 1907 to 1932. My oldest and newest dated postcards both came from Nora, who rescued them for me from the Georgia State Historical Society. The oldest appears to be from 1905 and the newest is from 1944. Some have stamps and some have Christmas seals. Most were produced either in the United States or Germany. A fair number of them are embossed–especially the older ones. I also have about 10 old Christmas cards that I couldn’t resist, but at this point I’m much more interested in the postcards.

The breakdown of my collection is something like this:

Hand-written, no postmark or date: 71

Handwritten with unreadable postmark: 14

Unused: 34


Three of my favorites from among my unused postcards

Sample: 1


My sample postcard, front and back

With readable postmark or hand-written date: 158

Antique Christmas cards or card fronts: 10

Which, if you include the cards, gives me a total of 288. My collection has certainly grown!

Some of them have pretty designs on the back:


I don’t collect any particular images or designs–just things that I like. I seem to have a lot of bells and holly–so I guess I like bells and holly!

Among the cards with dates, the breakdown goes something like this:
1905: 1 | 1907: 13 | 1908: 19 | 1909: 15 | 1910: 12 | 1911: 11 | 1912: 6
1913: 4 | 1914: 4 | 1915: 5 | 1916: 9 | 1917: 6 | 1918: 4 | 1919: 6
1920: 7 | 1921: 3 | 1922: 5 | 1923: 5 | 1924: 5 | 1925: 7 | 1926: 2 | 1927: 1
1928: 1 | 1929: 2 | 1930: 1 | 1931: 1 | 1932: 2 | 1944: 1

Among the newer ones, this one is one of my favorites:


Dated 1920

My impression is that people sent them more from about 1907 to 1917, and most of my favorite ones of those I have that are dated are from 1907-1911.


Two of my favorite Santa postcards. The one on the left reminds me a little of W.C. Fields! Heh. It’s dated 1910. The other is undated.

And I’ll leave you with this pretty one.



It’s a good example of a lot of things I like in vintage postcards. It has good color (the scan doesn’t quite do it justice), a bit of shine (gold or silver–there’s a bit of metallic gold applied to this one, which doesn’t really come through on the scan), snow, holly, a pretty scene… I love it when I find rich cards like these. This one is dated 1911.

Start as you mean to go on… Christmas

Posted on January 15, 2008
Filed Under Blather, Gastronomie, Pennsylvania, christmas, daytripping, dining, family, friends, photography, the pusses | Leave a Comment

OK, so my updates are going to have to stretch back into time here. I’ll get up to the present eventually!

This year felt even more busy at Christmas than usual. Between the Bazaar Bizarre, our party, getting ready to go to Berlin and Nice after Christmas, and the usual Christmas festivities, we were in a bit of a tizzy. I’m not complaining, mind you, though I do hope we can spread things out a little more next year somehow.

Our party was super fun. We had SO MUCH food. Our friends really are the best chefs ever, and this year we were even treated to fabulous homemade bread courtesy of John and Sonya, who made it down for their first (hopefully the first of many) Terri and Ezra holiday party. We were also pleased that the Breens could join us, as we hadn’t seen them for a while.


The Breens: Christie, Elizabeth, Jeffrey, and Patricia

We spent Christmas in State College with my parents and Kim, Glenn, and Hope. The Saturday before Christmas we got a sitter for Hope and went to the State Theatre to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. Ez and I have seen it several times at The Brattle here in Cambridge, but Mom, Dad, Kim, and Glenn had never seen it on the big screen before. I think the screen at The State is actually bigger than the one at the Brattle. Anyway, it was great. Afterwards Ez and I caught up with our friend John Kenyon for a couple of drinks.

During the day on Saturday Kim and I did a big antiquing extravaganza at Big Valley Antiques and Dairyland. For those of you who don’t know, those are big antique co-ops practically across the highway from each other near Lewistown, PA (I think they’re technically in Milroy??). I love our trips over there. We always make delightful discoveries, and I almost always find some additions for my collection of vintage Christmas postcards. Between Big Valley, Dairyland, and Apple Hill Antiques in State College, I ended up with some new goodies again this time. I’ve promised Kim that I’ll do a post about my collection, so stay tuned.

Sunday we went over to Lewistown to see the aunts and uncles and cousins. Hope wore an adorable dress Kim and Glenn bought her on their trip to Italy and was just generally entertaining and cute as always.


Hope with Nana at Aunt Kay’s house

My Aunt Kay and Uncle Larry had been taking care of a sweet kitty and her five baby kittens, and we got to see them. They were SO ADORABLE. How I wished I could have taken one or two of them, but with Suki and Edie it just didn’t seem like the best idea. I seriously considered it, though! They were the sweetest!

Since we celebrated with the families on Sunday, we spent all of Christmas Day at home in State College. I stretched my toes by the fire and had lots of time to gaze at my new Garbo book, eat holiday M&Ms, and play with the point and shoot camera Ez gave me. Hope made out like a bandit, of course. She spent a little time enjoying her new maracas before becoming enraptured by her new Play-Doh set. Ez and I had lots of fun with her and the Play-Doh.

We had to scurry back to Massachusetts the day after Christmas, which felt a bit weird and rushed, but we made the most of it. Then it was two days at home with the cats and packing before cabbing it to the airport for Eurotrip 2007-2008!

A quick update

Posted on January 9, 2008
Filed Under Blather, christmas, family, photography, wide world of vacation | 3 Comments

It’s been a wildly busy and wonderful couple of weeks in the lives of Terri and Ezra. Christmas was very nice, as always, and flew past too quickly–as always. After a short jaunt back home to see the kitties, we set off for Berlin. We spent several days there, with a day trip to Leipzig on New Year’s Day, and then flew down to Nice on the 3rd. Ezra’s sister April married Manu (a native of France) in a civil cermony on the 7th and a church wedding on the 8th. We fly back to Boston via London today. I have about a million pictures to weed through (only a slight exaggeration). I’ll share many soon.

xo

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