Barcelona

Flauta

May 30, 2019, Barcelona--We packed up and left Berlin yesterday for a great evening in Barcelona, at our favorite hotel, the Axel, and dinner at our favorite restaurant, Flauta--a superb tapas place where we had lots of seafood, including excellent sardines, and cod fritters with a romesco sauce and a bottle of Montsant that was superb.  Finished off with a nightcap of the free house shots (awful sweet stuff) on the roof of the hotel at the Skybar.  Now we head off to lunch with John's friend Tony and his wife Christine who retired to Spain from England a few years ago and then home to the States. 

We learned however yesterday the travails of travel.  We rode a hugely crowded bus to Tegal Airport, which is worse that National Airport was in the days before the new terminal.  We asked for assistance, which took more than an hour.  When it came we were raced through the lines and made the gate less than 10 minutes before loading--only to find out that the plane was delayed by a few minutes.  Got on board and found we had at least 20 minutes on the ground because of overcrowded skies.   Arrived in Barcelona and then had to wait more than 30 minutes for the bags.  Got the bus to downtown and it developed a diesel leak.  Changed buses at the side of a motorway!  Short walk to the hotel and had a great dinner as noted.  All in a days work of travel--glad it all happened at once and we weren't pressed.  Oh, well.   

And so ends this part of jmcbaddatlarge.blogspot.com.  More to come in a few weeks.

Bauhaus and Debussy

Thursday, May 30, 2019, Berlin--As we pack to leave Berlin we can look back on many fascinating activities and programs.  Art, boats, meals, architecture, walks and museums.  Yesterday we added to the list--opera.  

Staatsoper

We had tickets at the Staatsoper for Debussy's Pelléas and Mélisande.  This opera, which a friend describes as "whatever happens?", was a production originally staged in 1991, in a modernist, blocky set with costumes that belonged more to the Pet Shop Boys than the opera.  Grotesque hats and wigs, huge shouldered coats and a Modigliani inspired set.  It's a long opera, over three hours, and while the music is lovely--after all Debussy was a master French impressionist--the dramatic flow is slow.  Ben found the production mesmerizing.  The singing was superb, though the orchestra, at times, tended to overpower the voices for us in our orchestra seats.  

HKW

We started the day with a trip to the Haus die Kulteren der Welt where we had earlier seen a huge poster for a Bauhaus Imaginista show.  https://www.hkw.de/en/  This show, in four parts describes the interaction and spread of Bauhaus thought during the 20th century over the world from its beginnings in Germany to India, Africa, Japan and other countries, with a collection of letters, products, visuals and a fine group of movies.  We enjoyed it very much, though the letters and small pieces are hard to read and are in mostly foreign languages.  



Before the opera we had dinner a local Vietnamese restaurant on Unter den Linden near the Staatsopera.  Very nice pho for Ben and a rice and grilled pork bowl for John.  We started with a salad and spring rolls of shrimp and pork.  The restaurant is called not surprisingly called the Vietnam Restaurant.  

We also visited the memorial to the book burnings of 1933 before in the platz between the Opera House and the Law Faculty of Humboldt University, the empty library below ground is quite impressive, though as a French student nearby remarked, "très petite."



 

Potsdam's Imperial Grandeur and Berlin delights at Panama Restaurant

The alley way

Wednesday, May 29, 2019, Berlin--Last evening's dinner at Panama https://oh-panama.com/en/welcome/#menu captivated the synthesis, creativity and dynamism of this city.  Panama is located in an upscale neighborhood Lützoplatz with high-end retailers.  The restaurant is reached by walking down a landscaped alley off the main street.  

We were ushered upstairs to a large white room decorated with tropical 

Panama

flourishes.  Our highly competent and friendly waitress, a young woman with a nose-ring, explained that everything on the menu (except for the three course prix-fixe dinner) was meant for sharing.  We chose to go à la carte.  First, with her help, we chose a mid-priced bottle of German riesling  wine, a 2017 Clemens Busch v.b.S. which was delivered and poured for us by the male sommelier, a former San Franciscan who has fallen in love with Berlin.  The wine was fresh, balanced and great with the dishes we chose.  We ordered Panama empanadas with sesame dipping sauce, batavia salad with caviar and pomegranate, ceviche of salmon trout followed by pork cheeks with grilled pineapple and white asparagus with wild garlic, seaweed and thai basil.  The crowd was young and middle aged of all stripes, well dressed and friendly.  We briefly spoke to people on both sides of our table.

Earlier in the day we had taken the recommendation of friends and ventured on the S-bahn to Potsdam, the center of the Soviet occupation of East Germany, the Imperial summer palace in the days of the Hohenzollerns and the site of the Potsdam agreements near the end of WW2 between Stalin, Churchill and Truman.  

The tour guide insisted 

Five of rhe seven languages offered on the bus

Potsdam really was a no-place village until the Hohenzollerns took ownership in the 17th century.  Then it grew over the centuries into an imperial wonderland of palaces, mansions and military barracks--Prussia, the big north German state--was quite militaristic to say the least.  What is really fascinating as we learned on multi-language tour on a double-decker bus is that all of it is like frosting on the German cake as imagined by the rulers.   A grand palace to celebrate victory--the Neue Palace, a summer home, Sanssouci,  where Frederick the Great entertained and partied with his greyhounds and Voltaire, and buildings for immigrants like the French Huguenots and Dutch architects brought in to complete the town for the kings.

The Potsdam triumphal arch

Nevertheless the overall effect comes somewhere between real magnificence and the contrived parvenu views of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia.  We had a beautiful day to enjoy the vistas and the palaces.

Homes built for Dutch architects
who never came

Phony dachas for Russians

Looks like a mosque--i
t hides a pumping station

French protestant church

The horrors of occupation--
East German on the left,
West Berlin on the right

Celciliahof,The palace of the
crown prince
completed in 1916,

The red star of Stalin installed in infurtate
Churchill at the Potsdam
Conference in 1945

Roman gods celebrating inebriation at
Sanssouci, the summer palace of
Frederick the Great

FG the Great's grave. 
He brought potatoes to Prussia

Servants quarters at Neue Palace

Kaiser Wilhelm II mobilized for
World War I from her

George Baselitz 

In the entrance hall, no others exist

After returning from Potsdam and before leaving for dinner, the hotel offered us a guided tour of the art in the hotel.  Most of it has been given on a long-term agreement by the Neo-Expressionist German artist Georg Baselitz who is still living in Berlin in his eighties.  He and some of his East German contemporaries were degraded by Soviet political constraints and moved to West Berlin in the mid-50's.  Most of the works, including two in our room, are etchings and many of them are upside down landscapes or figures--which accounts for the name of the bar in the hotel.

Museums and a tram ride.

May 27, 2019, Berlin--We  returned to the hotel and John thought about pig knuckles and cabbage for dinner.  Ben was once again in an asparagus mood.  We  picked out a German restaurant that filled us, the Zur Hippe Gasthaus (translated literally "to the hip guesthouse").  The restaurant, located in the eastern sector, will be closing permanently after 33 years in operation.  It opened before unification.  It provided us with a good menu of asparagus dishes, soup and with boiled potatoes for Ben.  John got his pig knuckle, which was huge and very easy to eat once the layer of skin and fat was removed.   

The restaurant filled us up, like breakfast at this arty hotel (the Art'otel).  Everything from smoked fish to eggs to yoghurt to croissants eaten in a dining room surrounded by modern art.

Yesterday we headed off to the Museums!  We visited the Neue and the Pergammon Museums. From ancient Sumeria and Egypt to ancient Germany with the palace gate in Babylon, the mummies and temples of Egypt, the ancient walls of a home in Aleppo from the14th century, castle walls in Muslim culture and beautiful ceilings.  Quite a cultural feast.

Then we took off for coffee and a beer in a local park and a tram ride to see East Berlin's architecture from Communist days.   Not great.  The DDR looks like it was so dull, full of wide boulevards and huge nondescript buildings.  Today the ground floors bustle with activity.

 Here's an array of pictures.

Nefertiti poster, no camera in her room

Egyptian temple ceiling

Pre-historic Germanic era gold calendar hat

Muslim caliphate castle walls

Mummy cases

Gate of Ishtar

Temple painting

Muslim era Aleppo house

Never pass up a tram ride

Communist Architecture

Willkommen in Berlin from foot and boat

Monday, May 27, 2019, Berlin--We arrived in Berlin on Easyjet from Montpellier on Saturday.  Easyjet is a flying bus.  Cramped and uncomfortable, but surprisingly cheap.  However, due to delays, we admitted that the next time we travel any distance in Europe we will do it by train.  Longer, certainly, by several hours from the South of France to the North of Germany, but much more comfortable!

Getting from the airport to the hotel was easy, despite no Metro to Tegel airport.  We are in a beautiful hotel, the Art'otel, in Mitte, behind what was the wall, about 100 meters or yards, depending on where you read this, from the canal around the Museum Island, and across the street from a U-bahn station.

We had dinner Saturday night at a place called Verona, an Italian red-sauce place, overlooking this canal.  Pleasant, with a nice riesling.  We did not eat from the "Italian" menu, which was mostly pastas and pizzas, but had their spätzl, Ben with mushrooms and John with bacon and spinach.  It was a bit overdone, but very acceptable.  We walked around the canal and headed off to bed.

Yesterday we tour-boated for several miles on the Spree and walked over 5 miles (over 12,000 steps on my i-phone).  The boat was lots of fun, not crowded and gives a chance to see the architecture that's developed in this city that was totally demolished in war just 74 years ago.  The architecture takes advantage of the flatness of the city, rising dramatically with overhanging floors that increase the views from the windows.  There are bits and pieces of old architecture around, like the bridge that may have been rebuilt, the ruins of the Reichstag now rebuilt, and the occasional structure that withstood the bombings.

The happy couple

Holocaust Memorial

On Unter den Linden,
almost bare

We walked through the Tiergarten, by the Reichstag, then to the Brandenburg Gate, where a demonstrator was showing his all but a little bit, by the monument to the Holocaust, which is most impressive and fascinating in how it draws you into the horror of the many monoliths that make it up. Then we headed through Potsdammer Platz, hoping to catch a boat home, but missing it by minutes.  So we ended up riding upstairs on a double-decker bus back to Mitte.

Berlin, like many imperial cities, has massive boulevards, designed by long-dead designers of long-dead kaisers, blocky formal buildings, but soaring modern ones too.

We ate at the hotel, hoping for a marvelous asparagus dinner--since it is the time of the Spargl Festival.  The meal was good, though the asparagus soup for Ben and the asparagus strawberry salad for John had little taste of asparagus.  The white, huge, asparagus for the main course was excellent, coupled with nicely broiled salmon for Ben and some local excellent ham for John.   We joined this with a local pinot gris that went well with the meal.

This morning we were up for breakfast of excellent smoked fish, yoghurt, fruit, croissants and eggs.  A good bit of sliced tomato and cucumber rounded off a fairly healthy meal.   Yesterday we avoided lunch and probably will do the same today as we head off. 

Bears are the city's mascot

The Voyage Ends, Élas!

  

"Le Sky Rider"

Spinnaker training

Monday, May 27, 2019, Berlin--It's been a hectic two days.  It's hard to believe, too, that two days ago we were moving through the last locks of the Canal du Midi and then cruising across the Étang de Thau towards our last port of call, Marseillan.  The voyage had been superb.  The last day was full of different sights:  "le camping" sites, a new amusement park with a smallish roller coaster, and low level dikes into the lagoon, the étang, with its massive oyster farm and sailboats, both modern with spinnakers and trapezes, and old fashioned with steppable masts and lapstreak hulls.    


















It was basically a chilly day on the water, visibly so as we ate our lunch from the local waters and huddled in our coats and blankets, enjoying the flesh of the thinly-shelled mussels marinières with roasted potatoes in place of frites. 

Noilly Prat

That afternoon we landed in Marseillan and took the time to visit the local Noilly-Prat cellars, the only place in the world making the necessary vermouth for American extra-dry martinis.  Lots of huge caskets, a tour explaining of how the various vermouths are infused with spices and herbs, and then a tasting of the four (two dry, two sweet) the company makes.  The American market is huge for the product, but one is kept for sale only at the cellars, the sweet amber.   Needless to say we invested in a bottle.  The tour-guide was officious, (we're being kind), and quite the dictator otherwise.  

Oysters three ways

Oyster beds, grown on strings

From there we returned to the boat for the preparation for the Captain's dinner that evening, where we abandoned our jeans and casual clothes to "dress up" for the occasion.   The meal was superb.  We started with oysters from the lagoon in three ways--with lemon, raw with vinaigrette, and grilled with bits of sweet bacon, à la Rockefeller.  Then we proceed to superb beefsteak.  We finished off with an excellent cheese course, and a dessert of American-style cheesecakes.  All the wines were superb as we ended our tastings of Languedoc and regional products. 

The dinner brought all the members of the staff, who had been so excellent during the voyage, together with us to enjoy the wines.  They were an interesting group.

Marianna from Hungary

Christie from Newcastle UK

Mattieu, our captain
bringing the daily bread

Our final dinner

Pierre Yves our pilot, and chef Lee
from Wales

Cheesecake with local cream cheese

Adieu Occitanie