72 Hours in Berlin

I was an idealistic thirteen-year-old when I saw images of the Berlin Wall coming down, broadcast on TV in our U.S. living room, with my parents chanting "Cuba's next!" next to me on the sofa. I still remember Schwester Irene, our high school German teacher, and her excitement about the events unfolding in Germany in 1989. She brought in newspapers with big, bright pictures of people just a few years older than us standing atop the Wall or at the Brandenburg Gate, arms raised, faces caught in mid-yell. And so Berlin had lived in my imagination since then, despite my best efforts to visit it properly on previous European trips.

Malanga Girl and I made the two-hour flight to Berlin on a Wednesday afternoon last week, with a long list of sights to see, parks to visit and things to eat before our return flight on Saturday (thanks, KP, whose German experiences are artfully chronicled here). I had no idea how immense the city of Berlin is nor how much living in compact, walkable from end-to-end Paris has skewed my ability to manage my time in other cities. We quickly learned how to navigate both the S-bahn and the U-bahn, and learned that you can ride it for a long, long time and still be in Berlin proper. There's a lot we didn't do. Let's get that out of the way first, so I can refer back to this list in case I get to Berlin again anytime soon.

We didn't get to visit Checkpoint Charlie or the Museum there or any of the last remaining pieces of the Wall at Mauer Park or East Side Gallery; we missed out on the German Museum of Technology (supposedly fantastic for smaller visitors), the Legoland Discovery Center at Potsdamer Platz and on the more pedestrian pleasures of tasting Currywurst or a Berliner (jelly doughnut). We walked past the lovely and inviting Cafe im Literaturhaus, but Malanga Girl wasn't too interested in making a pit-stop there. I am also disappointed to report that I discovered upon arrival in Berlin that I'd left my camera's battery in Paris, so I have no pictures of our journey or of Berlin's majestic, tree-filled parks. I am inclined to call them mini-forests instead of parks. We did get our fill of those and you will have to believe my description, in lieu of pictures.

Here's everything we did see, hour by hour.

Wednesday

5 p.m.
1) Charlottenburg

We arrived at Zoo Station via train from Schönefeld Airport. It was a very easy ride, during which I couldn't stop thinking of U2's Achtung Baby, another strong high school memory. After checking in at the Grand City Hotel and realizing it was the biggest hotel room I'd ever been assigned in Europe, Malanga Girl and I wandered up to Savigny Platz. There were tons of sidewalk cafes and restaurants inviting us to sit down for a meal. Hesitant of my German language skills, I chose Anda Lucia, the Spanish tapas restaurant where the entire waitstaff spoke Spanish with accents from Southern Spain. Minus two points for not pushing my comfort zone, but at least I asked the waiter to teach me how to say "check, please" in German.

Thursday

11 a.m.
2) Tiergarten

We walked past the Zoo, at the request of Malanga Girl (who was not in a zoo-visiting mood this day), and entered the vast Tiergarten, a veritable forest in the very center of Berlin. I had to consult one of the large maps posted by Strasse des 17 Juni (the main road that cuts through the Park) to find the Spielplätze (playgrounds) hidden within the dense lot of trees. We went to two different playgrounds, although there were several more dotting the Tiergarten map.

2 p.m.
3) Bus #100

My French guide book said this was the bus to take to get a full tour of Berlin's greatest sites. When I realized we were only 1/3 of the way through the Tiergarten and that it might take us much longer than I anticipated to reach the Brandenburg Gate on foot, I jumped on the #100 bus that stopped as we were waiting to cross the street. Too bad I got on in the wrong direction. Instead of taking us through the rest of the Tiergarten and then to the Brandenburg Gate, up Unter den Linden and eventually to Alexanderplatz, the bus took us back to the Zoo. We jumped on the U-bahn at Zoo Station to fix this mistake. It is extremely handy that a public transport ticket is valid for a full two hours no matter which combination of buses, S-bahn and U-bahn trains you take and not just valid for a single ride (take a lesson there, Paris).

3 p.m.
4) Unter den Linden (Mitte)

We stopped for an Apfelstrudel at Cafe Einstein. Malanga Girl accompanied hers with Erdbeer Eis (strawberry ice cream), even though the menu suggested Vanilla ice cream. One Apfelstrudrel would have sufficed for the two of us since it was rather large. The strawberry ice cream threw Malanga Girl over the top and she had no interest in eating anything again for several hours.

We wandered into Berlin Story bookshop, where there were many novels set in and about Berlin, available in English, as well as dozens of guidebooks, post cards, and children's books. I consulted more guide books with lists of child-friendly sites, just in case I could cram any more into my 72-hour window. I am compulsive like that. Two doors down from Berlin Story, we popped into the Nivea flagship store, because I can't resist gawking at beauty products. Too bad I wasn't checking luggage on the flight back as there weren't really any travel-sized containers to be had.

5 p.m.
5) Monbijou Park

This park is across the bridge from Museuminsel, the island home to many of Berlin's important museums. Malanga Girl and I made a deal that she would accompany me to a museum if we went to one more Spielplätz. The Berlin sky drizzled some rain on us, but Malanga Girl didn't mind at all as she climbed all over the playground equipment. Meanwhile, I studied the map once again in awe of how much ground we had covered with our feet already and how much of Berlin was still left unexplored.

6:30 p.m.
6) Pergamon Museum

Museums are open as late as 10 p.m. on Thursdays. Some are free after 6 p.m. According to the sign on the door, the Pergamon is not and hasn't been since 2010. Happily, admission is free for kids. This museum was quite magical, with its Greek altar and Gates of Babylon. The Museum of Islamic Art, on the second floor, also housed a beautiful collection and included a domed Moorish ceiling from Granada, Spain.

8:30 p.m.
7) Fernsehturm- the TV Tower

Just when I was looking for Bus # 100 to take us back to our hotel area, Malanga Girl spotted the TV tower and wanted to go inside. We walked until Unter den Linden meets Alexanderplatz and rode all the way up to the top of the tower. (It's open until midnight, in case you were wondering.) I enjoyed the view of the Brandenburg Gate at night, but couldn't quite make out the Soviet-style buildings of Karl Marx Allee. Surprisingly, this ended up being Malanga Girl's favorite sight in all of Berlin, even though she wondered why we couldn't go all the way up to the skinniest point of the tower.

9:30 p.m.
8) Bus #200

We got tired of waiting for Bus #100, so hopped on Bus # 200 instead. The end of the line is Zoo Station as well, but it goes through Potsdamer Platz instead of through the Brandenburg Gate and the Tiergarten. Several train lines stop at Alexanderplatz, but  I actually love seeing cities from the windows of its public buses.

Friday

11 a.m.
9) Viktoria Park (Kreuzberg)

Another veritable mini-forest in the middle of the city. I had to ask three different people, "Wo ist die Spielplätz?" to find the playground. I believe there's actually more than one playground in this park, but the one we found is by the tennis/raquetball court on the western edge of the park. I marked it with an "x" on my physical map of Berlin, like a treasure spot.

4 p.m.
10) Zoo

It took a long time to get out to Kreuzberg in the morning and back to the Zoo area, which is a shame since the Zoo closes at 6 p.m. Nonetheless, we got a nice taste of what a wonderful Zoo this is. The giraffes mesmerized both of us and Malanga Girl was also quite taken with the lions. In addition to the almost 14,00 animals, there are also small playground areas in the Zoo, as well as, you guessed it, many, many trees. I would go to Berlin again just to spend a full day at the Zoo with Malanga Girl.

6:30 p.m.
11) Ka De We

This is the big department store in Berlin- Kaufhaus den Westens. According to one of my guide books, it's also continental Europe's largest department store. Ka De We is a short walk from the Zoo and is open until 9 p.m. on Fridays, so it seemed like a good place to stop before dinner. The gourmet food hall on the top floor satisfied my usual curiosities about food-shopping in other countries (and had some deliciously ripe peaches that we ate on the spot). The toy floor, however, was where we spent most of our time. Playmobil, Haba, Gotz dolls, Steiff stuffed animals and various non-German brands of toys all share space here in neat rows that afford opportunity for hands-on play. It was the vastest toy selection I've seen in a long time (in Europe, at least) and the prices were very reasonable considering that Ka De We is an upscale department store. We left with a few new Playmobil figures, including a flight attendant from the Playmobil "Special Plus" collection, a collection I haven't seen in France at all. I also grabbed a German Playmobil catalogue and have since been agonizing over the price difference (compared to France) and the availability of play sets in Germany that I didn't previously know existed. Maybe they'll come out here soon?

Saturday

10 a.m.
12) The long subway ride to Kollwitz Plaza

I thought I was planning efficiently by choosing a playground spot right by a much-raved-about farmers' market on the same side of town as the airport, where I had to be by about 12:30 p.m. Little did I know that the journey from Charlottenburg to the neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg would take almost an hour, leaving us just a precious 30 minutes or so to take in the market (well worth the hype) and play in the playground (also quite nice). There was no time left at all to walk just the few blocks or so on to Mauer Park before heading to the airport, but I'm glad Malanga Girl was able to get a final taste of Berlin's Spielplätze.

12 p.m.
13) Weltzeituhr- Alexanderplatz

Our last ground-view glimpse of Berlin was of the Weltzeituhr, the World Time Clock, on Alexanderplatz as we ran from the U-bahn station to the big train station for our airport-bound line. This futuristic-looking clock shows the time in different cities around the world. It gave me pause for thought that this clock was at the heart of East Berlin back in the day, and that most people there were never allowed to visit any of the cities listed on the clock.

Malanga Fiesta (Happy 2nd Birthday!)

The birthday parties of my childhood are a blur of piñatas (what I remember is the moment of panic as seemingly hundreds of children crushed down on me in a rush to get to the candy on the floor), freezer pops and frilly party dresses with matching panties underneath. These weren't just my parties, but those celebrating the birthdays of cousins and friends whose parents were so close with my parents that we called each other "cousins" as well. Somewhere there are pictures around of all of us Cuban kids from Philadelphia standing around with our hairbows and black-patent-leather Mary Janes, all lined up behind the birthday child blowing out the candles on his or her cake. And when I find them, I will try to post one or two on this blog or somewhere on the internet to amuse or embarrass the kids shown there who are all grown up now and doing fabulous things with their lives.

In the meantime, the one tangible thing I have to evoke the mass chaos of those parties, and I say mass chaos in the most positive sense, is the taste of the bocaditos that seemed to be ubiquitous party fare. These are simple enough to prepare, yet for some reason I hadn't made them in years. I knew, without a doubt, that I had to serve the bocaditos at Malanga Baby's second birthday party, a mass chaos affair of its own that involved 15 toddlers running around my living room. The rest of the menu, however, was something that I pondered long and hard. I had to make enough food to feed 15 toddlers and their parents late enough in the day to be practically dinner time. Here's what I came up with:

- Assorted sandwiches ("Cuban birthday party" sandwiches and PBJ)
- Tortilla Española (I made four of them and Malanga Baby even helped)
- Swedish Meatballs in the crockpot (this recipe made about forty meatballs)
- Audrey's Tortellini Salad

Plus, I had loads of:

- Peanut-butter-filled pretzels
- Earth's Best Letter of the Day Cookies
- Mediterranean Snack Food Co. brand Baked Lentil Chips & Hummus
- Blue Corn Tortilla Chips & Salsa

And in honor of the birthday girl:

- A very large ice cream cake

My cousin Raquel baked brownies, too. I considered making this cornbread recipe, which I made and served at Malanga Baby's first birthday party last year, but I seemed to have enough food with the above.

There was no piñata. Maybe next year.

***RECIPES***

Cuban Birthday Party bocaditos

Ingredients

1 can deviled ham
1 8 oz. package cream cheese (spreadable works best)

Method

Mix deviled ham and cream cheese together.
Spread on white bread.
Cut off crusts.
Cut into triangles and serve.

(I highly recommend putting them in the fridge if you prepare them way ahead of time.)

Tortilla Española

Ingredients (for 3-4 tortillas)

3 potatoes
2 medium yellow onions or 1 large Spanish onion
Fresh parsley
Eggs, approx. 3-4 per tortilla
Salt
Garlic powder
Cumin
Olive oil (for frying)
A plate about the size of a small frying pan (for flipping the tortilla)

Method

(This one is trickier to explain because the real success of any tortilla depends on the egg-to-potato ratio and the ability to flip the tortilla successfully.)

Cut potatoes into cubes. Chop onions. Chop parsley.

Pour olive oil into pan. (I like to put in a lot, enough for the potatoes to be basically immersed. It seems to work better for me this way, then I pour off the excess later in the process.)

Throw potatoes into pan, enough to cover most of a small frying pan. Fry them for about 7-10 minutes on low heat, until they become softened, but not crispy on the outside. Add onions, fry for another few minutes until onions become soft.

While potatoes & onions are frying, beat 3-4 eggs in a bowl with a pinch of cumin, a pinch of garlic powder and a dash of salt. Add some of the chopped parsley.

Pour egg mix into the frying pan. Fry for a few minutes (this is really depending on how hot the pan has gotten, if you make 4 tortillas in a row like I did, everything starts cooking much more quickly as you go on.) Check to make sure the underside is cooked by inserting a wooden spoon around the sides.

Take pan over to sink (REALLY, if you have a disaster, you want to be over the sink, not the stove), place plate on top of frying pan and flip as quickly as you possibly can before slipping the flipped tortilla back into the pan.

Return frying pan to stove/flame and cook for another few minutes.

Slide out onto a clean plate to serve and slice like a checkerboard, inserting toothpicks in random different cubes of tortilla.

Audrey's Tortellini Salad

My cousin Audrey came up with this one years ago and I fell in love on the spot.

Ingredients

1 can black beans (make sure they say "Listos para Comer," meaning you don't have to cook or season them)
3 plum tomatoes or 1 box grape tomatoes
Small bag frozen corn- cooked
1 package frozen spinach- cooked
2-3 small bags of tortellini

For dressing:
Balsamic vinegar
Regular vinegar
Olive Oil
Vegetable Oil
A little bit of Mojo Criollo (a marinade available in the Latin groceries aisle)
1/2 big white onion
big scoop of sugar
Salt, pepper & oregano to taste

Method

Make dressing in the blender, using 3x more vinegar than oil.
Toss with other ingredients.

Year-End Picadillo

2009 seems like a blur now that it is coming to a close. When in doubt over how I spent the year, I can go back to old posts and reminisce about the guavas I steamed in vain one cold January evening or the ridiculous amount of brain power I devoted to how to make the perfect lentil puree for a nine-month-old. It’s funny to think I used to set Malanga Baby on the kitchen floor on a Mexican blanket with some toys spread around her while I did my thing. Now, she runs all over the house while I cook, so there’s no time to meditate over perfecting the process. In fact, there has been many a night on which I have burnt rice or undercooked soba noodles as a result of trying to be in three rooms at once while the stove is going. (The woman who cooked all of Julia Child’s recipes in a year certainly did not have a toddler to distract her.)

If anything is clear, however, it’s that I still subscribe to the not-so-original idea that food is a kind of home. I began my foray into off-the-beaten path baby foods with malanga, the taste of which practically brings my grandmother Aya back into the room with me when it hits my tongue. Every time I feed my daughter, I hope her palate is archiving these moments and that one day, she’ll be who-knows-where and have a big plate of, say, picadillo, and think of home.

Picadillo is a basic Cuban dish that probably varies a little from family to family. Sadly, in modern Cuba, it’s very hard to come by beef, so it’s often made with chicken or soy beef. You could try substituting ground turkey if you like. Malanga Baby enjoyed her picadillo tonight with a side of carrots and brown rice for dinner. (That’s the tomato sauce from the picadillo all over her face and hands in the picture.) In honor of Malanga Baby’s aversion to olives, I left them out of her plate.

Picadillo (Malanga Mama’s home recipe)

Ingredients

1 lb. ground beef (lean is best)- seasoned with black pepper, cumin &
salt OR with Goya brand Adobo (a ready made seasoning)
¼ to half of 1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 small can Goya tomato sauce
Approx. 1/4 cup dry wine
Green olives stuffed with red pimentos
Raisins
Vegetable or olive oil for frying the onion & garlic

Optional ingredients-
Goya brand "sofrito" (it's an orangey mixture sold in the Hispanic
foods aisle of major grocery stores)
Capers

METHOD

1. Season the beef, set aside.

2. Chop the onion and garlic (or use garlic press). Fry the onion in a
large skillet with oil until translucent. Add the garlic and a heaping
spoonful of sofrito (if using) and cook, careful not to burn the
garlic.

3. Add the beef, breaking it up well with a wooden spoon. Turn heat down
a bit. Stir beef often.

4. When the beef is nearly cooked, drain the fat from
the pan and stir in the dry wine (you may use a little less or more
than a 1/4 cup, eyeball this, the mixture should not be too watery),
cook for a couple of minutes more (if you put too much wine in, allow
it to evaporate a bit) and add the tomato sauce, stirring everything
together. Cook for a few more minutes and add the olives and raisins
at the end (and capers, if using). Taste to see if it needs more salt
or seasoning.

SERVE WITH

Rice (cook this separately)

Plantains in any form (maduros or tostones) make a nice side dish

Mamey Mornings

Behold the mamey. I ate half of one of these every morning when I last visited Cuba in 2007. They were fresh from my uncle Carlos's backyard out near Bejucal, in the outskirts of Havana. My sister sliced them and served them with love and I did my best to eat my share, despite how thick the fruit felt in my throat. Before that 2007 trip, I had only ever eaten mamey in smoothies, mixed with lots of milk and sugar and served by waiters in Miami who called me "reina" or "princesa." Eating chunky slices the consistency somewhere between avocado and sweet potato was a challenge. My brother had to help sometimes when my sister wasn't looking. There we were, full grown adults acting like kids over breakfast. I love the memory of it and couldn't resist picking up a mamey for Malanga Baby when I saw them at the local supermarket this week.

It's a big fruit, as you can see, and has served as baby breakfast for several days in a row now. Malanga Baby gobbles it up, my good little cubanita.

Meatball Baby

I should say I made Malanga Baby “albóndigas,” but the first word that springs to mind is actually the Italian one- “polpette.” The summer before Malanga Baby was born, I spent a dreamy three weeks in Italy doing yoga in Tuscany, eating scrumptious meals in various cities and cooking in my friend’s small kitchen in Naples. The activity that brought me closest to the Italian language was those afternoons shopping for the ingredients for whatever I was making. I learned that the Macellaria sold meat and that what I wanted from the local produce vendor was not a cebolla or even a sebola, but a cipolla (so many attempts to make myself understood!) and that bread crumbs, such a plain and pedestrian thing, sound like something infinitely more interesting in their Italian incarnation- pane gratuglatto. I will forever think of those brilliant, sun-drenched Naples afternoons chatting with the locals whenever I make meatballs.

I hope Malanga Baby grows up with happy memories of meatballs, too, since she seemed to gobble them up with great pleasure last night. Her method is unique. First she takes the entire meatball in her hand and gives it a squeeze, looking at it as the meat squishes and flexes. Then she pops the whole thing in her mouth, dividing it into smaller pieces with her jaw and spitting it all back out to then pick up the pieces one by one for proper eating. Our dinner was a very drawn out affair last night, but such an enjoyable one as the three of us ate our meatballs. I am thrilled to find something that Malanga Baby finds both fun to play with and delicious.

My meatball making has become a bit more refined since my Italian days now that I have access to lots of cookbooks. The following recipe is from “The Best Recipe.”

Meatballs for the whole family

Ingredients
2 slices white sandwich bread (crusts discarded), torn into small pieces
6 tablespoons plain yogurt (the original recipe calls for thinning out with 2 tablespoons whole milk, but I didn’t use the milk and everything turned out fine)
1 pound ground meat
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh parsley leaves (REALLY FINELY MINCED)
1 large egg yolk
I skipped the salt, but did add some ground pepper
About 1 & ¼ cup vegetable oil for pan-frying

Method
- Combine bread and yogurt in small bowl, mashing occasionally with a fork, until smooth paste forms, about 10 minutes
- Place ground meat, cheese, parsley, egg yolk, garlic and pepper in medium bowl. Add bread-yogurt mixture and combine until evenly mixed. Shape into meatballs, making sure you don’t make them too dense. I made quite a few of the meatballs smaller for little hands.
- Pour vegetable oil in a sauté pan to a depth of ¼ inch. Turn flame up to medium-high. After several minutes, test oil with edge of meatball. When oil sizzles, add meatballs in a single layer. Fry, turning several times, until nicely browned on all sides, about 10 minutes. Transfer browned meatballs to plate lined with paper towels to cool before serving.

Piwi

For the second night in a row, she ate the piwi! That’s pear mixed with kiwi. I have to admit that I didn’t make up the term, but it’s perfect. The pear is a great way to cut the kiwi’s acidity. I wish I had thought of this with the guava last week.

Last night, I scooped the kiwi flesh into the food processor and made it as smooth as could be before combining it with some pear puree. Tonight I just mashed it into the pear puree with a fork. It turned out well both ways. Malanga Baby was positively riveted by all the little black seeds in her plate.

My favorite baby food site warned that kiwi could cause diaper rash, or worse still, a rash in the mouth. Happily, we haven’t had any of that.

Banana supposedly mixes well with kiwi, too. Would that make it biwi?

Of Maracas & Manzanas

I made two discoveries recently. One is that maracas make for great diversion while out to lunch with Malanga Baby. Her Leap Frog Learn & Groove Counting Maracas allowed us to eat at a local Peruvian restaurant today where the service is on the slow side. These maracas light up, play music, count and sing the colors out in Spanish and have a plastic surface that is easy to clean. While I kept fearing Malanga Baby would smack herself over the head with them, no such thing happened.

My other discovery is that apples are the secret to making everything palatable to Malanga Baby. She will eat most things, but wrinkles her eyebrows or screws up her mouth when she's not as excited about a certain food, like carrots. Freshly steamed carrots are such a beautiful thing to behold that I refuse to give up on them. Tonight, I was inspired to try them with some apple mixed in and voila, she ate them without complaint. Apples go well with blueberries and sweet potato, too, combinations Malanga Baby gulps right down. This week, I think I'll try to mix apples in with butternut squash, a veggie she rejected outright on Thanksgiving and hasn't tasted since. Here's hoping...

Why Malanga?

A curious thing happened the first time I travelled to Cuba, nearly ten years ago. I went in search of family and history that I had no personal memory of since my parents left Havana before I was born. I sought to connect to my sister who had grown up on the island through our common language, Spanish, but all words seemed to fail me when faced with the overwhelming emotion of meeting her for the first time. There I was, feeling so hopelessly foreign in a place I thought my deepest senses would recognize, when I was served a plate of mashed malanga for dinner one night. That malanga on my tongue unlocked the flood gates of memory. It brought back my mother and grandmother in the kitchen of my childhood, spoon-feeding me, caring for me, bringing me up "Cuban" as best as they could in a place like Philadelphia. The malanga was, in a sense, a big part of my portable homeland.

This portable homeland is what I want for my daughter. She is now part of the second generation of our family born in the United States, but in a city like New York, I have all the resources at my disposal to raise her to celebrate her heritage. I just have to do a little research. And task number one is to figure out how to feed her malanga, because this vegetable doesn’t appear in any of my baby food recipe books. Nor do mamey or guava for that matter.