Banket

Here are some pictures of the Banket I had in Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam

The midnight train took us from Berlin to Amsterdam. The train was 2 hours late but we somehow arrived on time. Each small room has two rows of beds, three high. The beds are really more like shelves, but I was so tired I didn't have much problem sleeping. We arrived in Amsterdam early in the morning and took a cab to the apartment where we were staying.

Our place in Amsterdam is a very nice little spot in the Jordaan neighborhood with a balcony that looks out over a canal.



















We had a great walk around the Vondelpark where it started snowing perfectly formed snowflakes. It was so pretty! We spent a good bit of time trying to catch them on our mittens.




















Other highlights include a fantastic dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse, the van Gogh museum, and of course, the Oliebollen. I didn't realize I knew any Dutch at all until I saw this stand:









We also found Banket. This is something my mom always used to make, and explained it was a traditional Dutch holiday treat. They call it Kerstkransstaaf and cover it with fruitcake fruit. There was way more paste in the middle than mom's and not nearly as good. It's also a pricey thing at 5 Euro a stick.


We also did a canal cruise by night. The pictures didn't come out so well, other than my cute bottle of bubbly. I really liked the canals with their romantic little lighted bridges, cruising past gorgeous old homes.














The cruise took us right past the swanky Holland Casino, so we stopped in to check our luck. Eoghan won 50 euro on Roulette!

Brandenburg Gate

We stopped at Brandenburg Gate so see where the Berlin Wall was.

We're in a pretty good mood considering the anti-American protesters surrounded by police officers with machine guns in the background.

Knut and Other Berlin Animals

Stopped off in the Berlin Zoo to see Knut and some other zoo babies. Berlin seems to have some animal husbandry program, and they had lots of young guys. The baby lions were my favorite. We stayed until closing time at the zoo, which was also feeding time for the big cats. The noise in the background is an angry oselot waiting for dinner.



The Panda was getting so close! He was more into showing off than the Pandas in Washington DC. Those Pandas were hungover. I swear.











I was surprised how close the zoo allowed you to get to the animals.






Eoghan could have reached in and grabbed one of these Penguins. Nothing good would have come of it, but he could have.






Remember Knut? Cutest polar bear baby of all time.....
















Well, he's is all grown up now... but still pretty great. He spent most of the time we were there taking some kind of snow bath.




We finished the night off with some Glühwein (hot, sweet wine) at a Christmas market outside.

Berlin Day 1

Things started a little roughly here in Germany. Our Ryanair flight was rerouted from Berlin to Leipzig. After a few days of heavy snow and winter storms, the Berlin airport had run out of the deicing fluid necessary to clear the runways. Leipzig is about 118 miles from Berlin. The airline had no support for passangers once we landed, and simply told us "good luck". None of the other passengers seemed too angry or surprised by the whole situation. Generally while everyone was mildly inconvenienced, people seemed sure they would make it to their ultimate destination.

We found the train system that would take us into Berlin, which was confusing and difficult only because we don't speak any German. The names of cities and towns look like total gibberish most of the time. We should have studied a little bit more German before traveling. Having almost zero words or phrases makes even basic communication difficult. Once in Berlin we've found almost everywhere has someone that speaks English, but I still feel guilty for not making more of an effort to learn some German before I left.

Despite arriving several hours late, our AirBnB host was very accommodating and friendly. He's originally from Chicago, so that was interesting. The place is very nice and seems to be right in the thick of things. Here is the view:

A few blocks down we found dinner at Prater Garten. It's one of the oldest beer gardens, started in the mid 1800s. Of course, with all the snow we weren't interested in the garden aspect but we went inside and had some tasty beer and traditional German food (Königsberger Klopse (meatballs in caper sauce) and Roast Pork with Potato Dumplings and Coleslaw). A fellow dinner inside the restaurant was a tiny black poodle with a red plaid jacket.

Almost as surprising as a dogs in restaurants was that Berliners smoke in the bars. I've gotten so used to the prohibition on indoor smoking that I can't really decide which seems more taboo to my Chicago standards.