Bauhaus Tannenbaum

Friday was spent pretty leisurely. I made the last of my curry attempts with the remaining veggies that we had in the kitchen. The second attempt was not any where near as good as the Green Thai Curry, but the third was a bit better. These last two were more of an Indian tomato-based approach and those are just difficult to recreate. I think that I might just go out for masalas from here on out...and luckily we just saw an Indian restaurant with a buffet (at least on Sundays) yesterday that would be more exciting than cooking at home anyway.

On Saturday we went back to complete the IKEA shopping we had begun 2 weeks ago. For awhile now I have be looking for something a little festive for our apartment...not quite an actual Christmas Tree, although I have considered a few miniature ones, but mainly something that would exude some holiday cheer. While walking around a store called Bauhaus (which is almost exactly like a Home Depot but also uses the name of a famous German art/architecture school from the early 20th c. known for simple/functional and innovative design) next door to IKEA, I found the perfect surrogate Christmas Tree...a black plexiglas geometric box with six flashing colored lights. Now we have decked the apartment with out our Bauhaus Tannenbaum!


Bauhaus Tannenbaum


R with our Bauhaus Tannenbaum

Speaking of Tannenbaums, I always thought that the Christmas song 'O' Christmas Tree', or 'O' Tannenbaum' in the original German, gave me a good sense of the German language. The song is so familiar and it translates so smoothly...

O' Christmas Tree
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us.
They're green when summer days are bright;
They're green when winter snow is white.
O, Christmas Tree, O, Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us!

O' Tannenbaum
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie grün sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie grün sind deine Blätter!

...etc.

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We picked up most of the rest of the things we needed at IKEA so the bedroom now especially seems relatively complete. I could help but buy this throw pillow with such an awesome design.


our bed

Somehow we have ended up with a combo of colors on our bed that just reminds me of an avocado (two shades of green with dark blue)....like our combination of avocado and other soaps (with a pit!). We must really miss avocados!


our soap

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Another thing that I decided to do this weekend was a two-day juice fast. It was recommended to start out my meal plan and I always wanted to so I thought now was the time. I had already been eating a lot of veggies and little meat with the curries so I felt prepared to start. I bought a bottle of fruit medley juice and a bottle of veg medley juice from the Bio that was or course organic and contained only those ingredients, with no extra sugar or anything. Then I also bought a few vegetables to make a basic veg broth.

Over the next two days I roughly drank fruit juice for breakfast with some herbal tea, drank veg juice for lunch and had the broth and/or a combo of the other juices and some more herbal tea for dinner. I also drank at least 2 Liters of water each day.

I was not super hard-core about it, since it was only two days. Anytime I got hungry I just drank some juice or tea so it was not like starving yourself. The reasons people might do this is for detoxifying the body (which happens the most starting on the third day) and to reset your metabolism. I didn't really have any side effects except my mouth felt really dirty so I brushed really well and that felt good. (I guess your mouth is a major place that toxins come out.)

For me, I think that the most valuable thing was gaining a new perspective on food intake. A person can go 1-2 weeks without eating at all and most of the time that just seems incomprehensible. Not that that is healthy for you, but there are plenty of people in the world who don't eat much at all everyday. And, it gave me a really new perspective on proportions and general moderation. For example, when I started eating today I started slow with raw foods, so all of a sudden a few carrot sticks and hummus was this really intense feast. I mean, who needs drugs when you could fast?

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On Sunday we went to a large Floh Markt (Flea Market) that is kind of near us in Mauer Park. It was made up of rows of tents that people have laid out with various wears, from garage sale type items to boutique-y hand silk-screened t-shirts. It has taken me a long to figure out that these are the urban equivalent of garage sales.


Floh Markt

We got there pretty late so we mostly just looked around. I bought two young adult novels. They were from a series of books written by a Danish guy but then had been translated to German. They all center around a young girl names Lone. I bought "Lones Sommerferien", which I think means "Lone's Summer Vacation" and "Lone in Tirol" which I think is a place in northern Italy or southern Switzerland. I guess I will soon find out...

The second thing I bought was a large 1998 calendar that had reproductions of Wassily Kandinsky's paintings from the years he was at the Bauhaus. Surprisingly (or not) at least some of these works R and I could agree on as nice for the apartment. We picked out three to hang opposite our bed.


Kandinsky with Laundry

Now that we had added a few touches the apartment is feeling quite cozy. Still very simple, but now there are a few accents that it make it a bit more our own.