Day 166: Kreuzberg Exploring — BBQ in Potsdam with Friends Made in Brazil

by Ted · Published June 20, 2019 · Updated June 23, 2019

It was really windy last night and we didn’t sleep well. If we had the windows open the shades and windows would bang around and if we had everything closed up it would get really warm without AC.

James woke with a bloody nose so we had some hand scrubbing of sheets to do. Remind me never to be an Airbnb host.

Margaret and I slept past our scheduled workouts, rationalizing that we had a bike ride plan happening later in the afternoon. That ride never happened but we needed the extra sleep.

We did the breakfast, shampoo, comb-out routine once again and were happy with the progress — no signs of our little tag-alongs to the Sullivan Family Adventure.

We were happy with yesterday’s program of school at a cafe so we did the same today. We headed south to the Kreuzberg neighborhood and found a table on the sidewalk at Baroomis.

We shared a couple blueberry muffins and two insane cinnamon rolls. Berlin is supposedly known for good cinnamon rolls and these were light and fresh, more roll than sugar sponge, not overly sweet and swimming in the melted sugar like a Cinnabon. So good.

After school I took the kids to a sailing themed playground nearby while Margaret found a little shop with a DHL acounter and shipped the wine cork crossbows back to DC.

Margaret has become a DHL pro. She found a little bodega that offers DHL shipping but no boxes. So she had to hack together a box from their garbage so she could squeeze in our two crossbows. Just a normal morning.

We met up at a nearby bike rental but unfortunately they didn’t have appropriate kid bikes for Willa and James. We tried one other place and go the same answer.

We wanted to get a glimpse of the Tempelhofer Feld, an old airport turned into a huge park in the southern part of the city. We walked through and then grabbed an Uber to the train station.

We met Bjorn, Ava and Marta at Praia du Forte in Bahia, Brazil back in February. They had invited us to their place in Potsdam, a Berlin suburb, for a bbq.

Our original plan was to take the train to Potsdam, check out the Schloss Sanssouci castle and then head to the bbq. After sharing a curry wurst at the train station we tried to catch an Uber to the castle but there was so much traffic from construction that we just stood there for 15 minutes (while the kids were driving us insane by complaining, whining, futzing, etc.)

Then all of a sudden Bjorn and Marta appeared — they had been driving home and saw us on the sidewalk outside the train station. So we ditched the Uber and got a ride with Bjorn.

Bjorn, Ava and Marta live in an apartment complex with a kids play space and garden in the backyard. We started the evening as we had left off… with Caiparinas!

They invited two families from the apartment community to join and we all had sausage, steak, potatoes, quiche, salmon and salad with a cherry crumble for dessert. It was all washed down with beers, rose and Aperol Spritz.

School just ended so both of the two families that joined us were headed off on vacation tomorrow — one to the Vancouver, Canada region for 4 weeks and the other to Croatia. (More evidence that Germans frequently travel internationally. We’ve seen them everywhere this year.)

The dad of a family headed to western Canada for a month tomorrow came late to dinner for the most German of all reasons: they have a super early flight so he was dropping his luggage the night before! Apparently several airlines offer this in Berlin.

We hurried to the train station and caught a train back to Berlin by about 60 seconds.

We were a bit scattered as we got on and just walked upstairs and sat down in open seats. I remember thinking, “wow, nice train…”

The ticket taker came by, scanned my phone and said we were in first class — but she didn’t really make any signal that we had to leave. So we just stayed but I watched as a guy a few rows up made a fuss to her about us being there. She ignored him and left the car.

Then the guy — who had a long beard and long fingernails — came back and said in a German accent, “This is first class. I pay a lot of money to be here so I would like it to be quiet.”

We all were kinda stunned. Margaret and I were buzzed from the drinks at the bbq so we laughed to each other.

Then Willa said, “Mom. I just want to go downstairs and cry.”