Ex-pat Newlyweds

After living here for over a year and a half now, we’ve become used to people asking us for tips and hints on things to do and places to stay in Berlin. One of the common questions we get is where to stay in Berlin when you are coming for a month or more. Well, here’s a list of sites that we looked through to help us find something when we first moved here.

Rooms in Berlin *
City Wohnen *
Ex Berliner *
OTA Berlin
Coming Home *
Fine and Mine *
Home Company
Zeit Raum
Vacation Rentals by Owner (VRBO) *
Central Home *

I have starred the ones that seemed to be the better sites. In the end, we found a place with Coming Home and they were perfectly good. Central Home has lots of managed buildings and I know several co-workers who use them just because it’s dead easy (and close to our office). They will be more expensive than a “private” rental though since they offer more services and manage the entire building, not just per-unit.

The last one to try that we can highly recommend is the fabulous Schoenhause Apartments. They are more of a self-service, long-stay hotel but we stayed there a few years ago as tourists in the city. The location is great, apartments are newly renovated and the cafe/restaurant in the main floor is a block away from one of Nokia’s offices, so I can often be found there chowing on some amazing Italian food!

A few spare moments have revealed themselves to share photos from our last trip to Vienna…

Click through for HD version!

A quick update!

The entire video was filmed using a GoPro Hero HD camera. It comes with all sorts of attachments, which is how Josh was able to attach it to the end of his ski pole for some of the shots, with the help of a rubber washer.

If you’re interested, you can also find them on Amazon.

Oh hey there blog! Hi. Yeah. I know. It’s been a really long time. I’m sorry. I guess after four consecutive trips to Austria kind of put me in a schnitzel-induced coma and made writing anything really difficult. What? You find that hard to believe? Well wait until you hear what we’ve been through before you judge.

It all started in January after our return from Canada. Our last ski season was inadequate — barely existent! — so we had to make up for it. It started with a four day trip to St. Anton. It was beautiful. The first day was a bit cloudy, but what followed were two of the best days of snowboarding I’d ever had. Not only did we have beautiful snow, but we had access to six different villages and eight villages on one ski pass that cost us less per day than a single day at Grouse Mountain in Vancouver would. We made it to all of them, thanks to the White Ring.

Now, as you can imagine, all that travelling on skis or a snowboard can inspire an alpine-sized hunger, and we were in Austria! Land of great things like Wiener Schnitzel, Kaiserschmarrn and Germknödel! We refuelled heartily. And the apres! St. Anton is most definitely a place to go if you live for the Apres life.

Josh checks the map for which village we want to go visit ... and which peak.

Oh yeah... on top of all the villages and peaks we rode to, we also managed to go across state borders.

Wait. What?! Your apres beer won't cost you more than your dinner here?! AMAZING!

Josh in Lech, one of the many villages we skied to, but one of the few we actually stopped for lunch in.

Apline views.

Germknödel is a yeast dumpling covered in vanilla sauce with a plum jam centre.

Our return from St. Anton saw us stop in Cologne for a little thing called Karneval. I’m sure you remember our adventure there from last year? It was more or less the same, but without Dom, Andrew or Krister. Sad faces. But that left more Kölsch for us!

The Ampelmännchen costumes made a return. As did the litres and litres of Kölsch.

While we missed our Canadian friends, these lively German seniors were party enough! My Oma shares a tune with her friend Werner.

We were back in Berlin for a little more than a week before we boarded a bus for 13 hours to get to Kaprun with a bunch of Josh’s coworkers from Nokia. Yes. 13 hours. On a bus. Gross.

But once we were there, it was pretty great. We spent our days with coworkers turned friends and on the second day, I had easily one of the best days in the snow EVER. Josh and I are usually pretty slow in the mornings of our ski trips. Not that Sunday. We were on the lift five minutes after it opened to get in as many fresh tracks as possible. And we got LOTS. It was amazing.

The snow here is different than what we’re used to from the West Coast. I’ve never seen snow as beautiful as what we were dealing with in Austria. It was so dry, that the slightest of breeze would make the sky around you sparkle with snow crystals. It was so light, that even when you were riding over other people’s tracks, you could just surf on top of it. It was heaven. And definitely led to a massive lunch. Again — we were in Austria!

Josh had shiney new goggles. I had to use them to my advantage.

These things are great! You hang your boots up and the metal rods are heated. Over night, they dry your boots and make them toasty warm for you when you put them on in the morning.

Alpine views take 2.

Sisterhood of ridiculous socks.

Well, after that day, and another 12 hour bus ride back to Berlin, Josh still had five days of vacation from 2009 that had to be used by March 31, 2010. What else could we do but go somewhere else? After exploring our options in Switzerland, France and Italy, it was back to Austria. This time it was Mayrhofen and even though it was just two weeks after we had our powder day in Kaprun, spring skiing was in full swing.

Again, one ski pass and we went to a different mountain every day of our last four days of the 2010 season. And again, that’s pretty exhausting and we had little choice but to make sure we properly refuelled to get through the soft slush. More schnitzel! More spätzle!

That early-morning sunlight looks promising...

Who needs beach chairs at the beach when you can have them in the snow?

We made detour to the glacier cave on the Hintertux Glacier. It was incredible and our pictures from the experience mostly suck, so you're going to have to go see it for yourself before the glacier migrates and closes off the cave.

Glacier caves excite me into making stupid faces.

Kaiserschmarrn is an eggy pancake, usually doused in powdered sugar and apple sauce. It's delicious.

End of the season.

Anyway, you’d think that we’d have had enough of all of this Austrian fare, but oh-ho-ho! In February, we decided to book our Easter weekend trip. Guess where we planned to go? Oh yes. Austria. This time to Vienna to enjoy the city life of Austrians.

Vienna is beautiful. Full of white buildings and parks and history. We managed to score an incredible deal on a five-star hotel that served a breakfast buffet that included caviar. And if ever you go to Austria, you have to visit the Naschmarkt. It is a massive outdoor food market that has just as many restaurants. And it was Easter! There were Easter markets everywhere! That also included food. And we would spend all day exploring the sites like Schloss Schönbrunn, the Prater gardens and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Also, you’re in Vienna! It would  be crime not to eat Wiener Schnitzel while you’re in Vienna.

One evening, we managed to persevere through the start of the schnitzel coma to make it to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed in Ballet at Vienna’s State Opera house. We made sure to stop in on a couple famous coffee shops along the way to help us stay up.

So, as you can see, we’ve basically eaten our way through Austria. And yes, that takes a while to recover from. Never have Opa’s words of “You guys like to eat everything” rung so true.

Josh pretty much took command of the camera, so you’re going to have to wait for him to stir from his schnitzel coma to post those.

Ok. So I do have this one. Yes! I jumped in Vienna in front of Schloss Schönbrunn, the summer palace of the Hapsburg royal family.

But the good news is I’ve awoken from my schnitzel-induced coma and have stopped neglecting our blog.

This time I swear I’ll be better about it.

Celebratory Expat Newly Weds

I know there is ski trip and another Karneval adventure to tell you about, but I’ve been very distracted.

Did you know there was a hockey game on tv last night? In Germany? At prime time? Well, our neighbours certainly did (because of us). We had a few people over, even two Americans, two Germans, a Brit with a Canadian exgirlfriend/American current girlfriend and even a Ghanaian. None of us woke up at preposterous hours to watch the other matches (I tried once but woke up in time to see the start of the next hockey game and to learn that Canada had lost to the U.S.) and a couple (you can guess which ones) had no idea what was going on, but we had a good stock of beer and salty snacks and cakes, so it didn’t matter much what was going on the screen.

Even with just four Canadians in the multi-culti mix, our nervousness was palpable and our elation unexcusable. Like the rest of Canada, we let go of our politeness  to curse Zach Parise’s last-24-seconds goal, to cheer for Sid the Kid and celebrate our victory with the anthem.

As Stephen Harper said:

Yet, we should never cast aside our pride in a country so wonderful, in a land we are so fortunate to call home, merely because the notion has sometimes been abused. We will ask the world to forgive us this uncharacteristic outburst of patriotism, of our pride, to be part of a country that is strong, confident, and tall among the nations.

We’ll apologize for ours when the hockey hangover fades.

Trash-talking treats made us laugh, but did nothing for the U.S. American team.

Just be glad you didn't have to smell our kitchen Monday morning.