Easter Holiday Shopping

This past weekend was Easter holiday. So, we got Friday and today (Monday) off from work. It was great, because I've finally had a chance to really get myself settled in. For instance, I did a bunch of shopping on Saturday. I bought a bunch of groceries and finally tried the weird banana milk drink I kept seeing everywhere (turns out it is bad).

Immediately after buying the groceries, I discovered a much better (i.e., about 5 times bigger, with two floors) grocery store. And it's equally close to my hotel room, so I'm pretty excited about it. While I was there, I bought myself a water filter (the pitcher kind), which should come in very handy since the tap water here tastes like dirt.

After the two grocery stores, I made my way over to Potsdamer Platz to the mall. Most importantly, I needed to buy either a step-down voltage transformer or hair clippers that can take 220V (which is the AC voltage in Europe). I ended up going the transformer route (despite being tempted by about 20 varieties of hair clippers, each more impressive than the last). This may have been a mistake, as when I later clipped my hair, my old US clipper (which was actually one of the first things I bought in LA, incidentally) sounded like it was about to explode, and my ears were ringing by the time I finished. So maybe the voltage only made it down to about 140 or something... The electronics stores out here are called "Saturn Electronics." This was confusing to me the first time I rode past one, because there are lots of retail stores for different car brands out here, and I drive a Saturn.

While at the mall, I went into pretty much every clothing store and looked at what a Berlin mall has to offer. Of course there's H&M (and in fact there are 2 H&M's about 200 feet apart from each other in Stadtmitte, where I'm staying). There was a store called We that had decent looking stuff. And there was Whorl, which was really big and had a lot of different brands. The complete listing of what's in the mall is here.

There are a bunch of Esprit stores in Germany, apparently. I remember my sister having Esprit stuff a long time ago, and I had always just assumed they'd disappeared. My impression of them now is the same as when I was 5: "Esprit is for girls." There was also United Colors of Benneton, which I actually have seen in the US. Whereas Esprit is too pastel-centric for a guy to wear, Benetton is too rainbow-centric for a straight guy to wear. I think this is probably why my mom stopped buying me Benetton clothes right around when she heard about what rainbows meant sometime in the 80's. (I have a reference for when this happened, because for a long time, my parents wanted to name their sailboat "The Rainbow Connection" and at some point they finally realized that was a really bad idea.)

The one article of clothing I bought was a pair of shoes. They're brown leather, with two shades on the toe, a white stripey thing down the side (with vestigial half-buttons) and a bit of green trim on the back. So they match the leather jacket I have been wearing a lot out here (because everyone wears crazy leather jackets in Berlin), but the green is usually hidden under my jeans, so they don't match too obviously... There are two problems with the shoes. First, they're not super comfortable. I mostly resolved this by putting better insoles in. Second, the brand of these shoes is "Doo Dogs," which is pretty obviously the worst name ever for a brand of shoes. I'm trying really hard, but can't find them on the internet. "Doo Dogs."

While at the mall, I bought a kiwi-based juice drink from a juice bar. The drink was called "African Queen." It was fine, I guess. When I first got to my hotel room, there was a bunch of fruit, including a kiwi. After about two days of being too afraid for no good reason, I finally ate some of the fruit. When I got to the kiwi, I ate it with the skin on, and somehow, it still tasted great. So on Thursday, when I was in the business class lounge waiting for my flight back to Berlin, I grabbed a kiwi and started eating it with the skin on. This time, it was horrible. But there was a German guy there from work, so when he asked me in slightly broken English, "You eat kiwi with skin?" I just had to go with it. So, in his mind now, all Americans love kiwi skin. Or I'm just a particularly weird American.

I'm going to cram this into the shopping post, since I already had a food post, but last night after the concert I went to, I finally tried a Turkish Doner Kebab. This is the food everyone has been sort of raving about. Like, it was mentioned on Chow Hound as a thing you have to try in Berlin (Kreuzberg, specifically, which is where I was). I got the lamb one, with all three types of sauce (not because I wanted 3 types of sauce, but because the Turkish guy couldn't understand what I meant by "give me whatever sauce you think is best.") It looked pretty much exactly like the "German-style" kebab on Wikipedia , but with WAY more sauce. I was actually pretty disappointed, but I think that's just because I don't like things that are similar to fast food hamburgers. If you like fast food hamburgers, you might be pretty into Doner Kebabs. Basically, it's a lot like a gyro wrap.