101 in 1001 - #57 (1 of 101)

The last time I was in Berlin I visited the Mauer Park flea market in Prenzlauer Berg for the first, but definitely not last time. It's a fantastic market - huge, great selection, and a ton of mid-century modern stuff. I only had an hour and change to spend there so I only got to rush through, but on my way out I did a double take when I saw a yogurt maker. I'd been wanting one for quite some time and had bookmarked a few on ebay (my new best friend), but wasn't quite ready to commit. At €5, I pretty much had to get this one. The only problem is that it's from the 1970s and came with no instruction manual. I set it to the highest temperature and hoped for the best, and the picture above shows the outcome. I used a starter powder together with a liter of milk, heated it to (what I think is) 45 degrees Celsius, dissolved the powder and then poured it into the jars. I then left it in the yogurt maker for about six hours, followed by 12 hours in the fridge.

For a first attempt I'm quite pleased, though I would like my yogurt to be a little thicker than it turned out. The second attempt turned out a little lumpy and a little runnier than the first, but I pretty much know why, so it should work out better next time.

34. Osttransport

During a visit to Berlin I found these memorial tiles on Oranienstrasse in Kreuzberg.

The five tiles read as follows (from top, left to right):

Here lived
Dieter Hohenstein
Born 1934
Deported
34th Eastern transport

[died in Auschwitz on April 20, 1943, at the age of 9]

Here lived
Alfred Hohenstein
Born 1898
Deported
34th Eastern transport

[died in Auschwitz on April 20, 1943, at the age of 45]

Here lived
Erna Hohenstein
Born 1905
Deported
34th Eastern transport

[died in Auschwitz on April 20, 1943, at the age of 38]

Here lived
Elsa Goldenthal
Born 1889
Deported
34th Eastern transport

[died in Auschwitz, date of death unknown]

Here lived
Walter Lustig
Born 1903
Deported
31st Eastern transport

[died in Mauthausen, May 12, 1945, at the age of 42]

This site lists the houses on the street and their residents. The Hohensteins, Elsa Goldenthal and Walter Lustigs resided in 206/207 Oranienstrasse. Dr. Alfred Hohenstein apparently also had a medical practice in the building. Three more of the building's residents, Channe Schnurmacher and Albert and Martha Sorauer, were also deported. I was unable to locate any information about Frida Lessmann, another listed resident of the building. Also appearing on that website is a list of the remaining Jewish homes on the street, the current occupants of the buildings (whether original or rebuilt), and the location of other tiles, which I'll have to look for next time I'm there.

Hello Birdie

Yesterday, after traipsing all over creation in a squillion degree weather and a bazillion percent humidity in search of orange Crocs in a particular size (a gift, mine are purple), I walked into the living room and nearly had a heart attack, because the world's stupidest bird decided to fly into our apartment. Seriously - of all the houses on the street, it had to pick the three-cat household?

I barely blinked and Schnitzel was already on it, so I clapped my hands and shouted loudly until the cats scurried away. I'm not sure if they'd been playing with it for a while, but the bird (which looked mostly intact) just kind of stood there on the floor, facing the wall. I opened the window, picked it up and put it on the window sill but it wouldn't fly away.

I put it in a little box and pondered for a bit what I'd gotten myself into, having to nurse an injured bird having no cage and three cats. When no solution came to me, I took the box outside, sat on the front stoop and waited for the little birdie to fly away. No go. I picked it up and put it on my finger, and it held on tight, but wouldn't fly. I looked more closely to see if something was broken but it didn't seem to be, as it kept rebalancing whenever I moved my finger. I thought I'd be stuck there until M came home and took the night shift with it, but suddenly it just fluttered its wings and flew away.

Was it some sort of sign do you think?

Can you hear me? Is this thing on?

1. Lose 5 lbs.
2. Run a 5k race - completed 18.07.08 in approx. 31 minutes.
3. Run a 10k race - completed 12.10.08 in 1:00:52 (Munich marathon 10k)
4. Run a half-marathon
5. Do a triathlon
6. Drink 5 cups of water a day
7. Learn freestyle swimming
8. Go swimming 4 times per month
9. Keep up with rowing
10. Find a good moisturizer
11. Moisturize daily
12. Take better care of teeth
13. Learn to ski - Learned and forgotten. The lesson for this one is that I hate going downhill, in any form of transport, with slippery sticks attached to my feet topping the list
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14. Get a yearly physical
15. Visit 5 new countries
16. Get a proper flash for my camera
17. Get two new (to me) lenses for my camera and use them
18. Upload 25 new pictures to flickr per month
19. Participate in 10 photography challenges (excluding project 365)
20. Complete Project 365
21. Explore Munich
22. Organize scavenger hunt
23. See a game at Allianz Arena
24. Watch Seinfeld with Michael
25. Donate 1500 NIS per year to Fat Meir’s Kitchen - Sizable donation made February 2010 to cover last three years, hope to continue doing so, wishing I didn't have to.
26. Go on an overnight motorcycle trip
27. Cook a whole chicken - Done twice. So easy. Interesting post from Michael Ruhlman should get you to do it too.
28. Cook a perfect steak
29. Make sushi - Done at a sushi workshop at Fat Meir’s Kitchen recently. Still have to try at home.
30. Cure olives
31. Make pickles
32. Make ice cream
33. Get Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from my home to yours
34. Make a cookbook of favourite family recipes, including photos and distribute to family members
35. Hang pictures on walls at home
36. Buy a lamp for the kitchen - Sort of done. Well, not really, but I've moved out of that apartment and the new kitchen doesn't require one.
37. Buy a lamp for the hallway - We bought three really cool paper lamps at winter Tollwood. Two are hanging already and we need to hang the third.
38. Have a proper guest bathroom kit at the ready
39. Buy print from Geninne
40. Buy art on Etsy - Bought beautiful prints from this gorgeous store.
41. Buy a mid-century sideboard
42. Make the apartment more colourful
43. Have Miriam make me a custom vinaigrier
44. Clean apartment for 5 minutes every day
45. Camouflage litterboxes
46. Reupholster living room furniture - Done by the super-talented father-in-law of my former colleague. Photos once we train the cats not to wreck them.
47. Fix and hang mirror bought on eBay - We hung it up a few months ago. Unfortunately when we came home from our last trip up north we found it shattered on the floor. Bummer.
48. Finish knitting a scarf
49. Learn salsa - Did four courses at a school in Munich and loved it, but stopped dancing after our trip to Cuba.
50. Read camera manual
51. Make a photo book
52. Learn to play chess
53. Make scratched paintings on canvas
54. Live a more sustainable life, reducing consumption and making things myself - In Germany, recycled almost everything, grew a garden, tried to shope locally. Now in England, doing everything to make things from scratch, buy locally, and generally leave less of a negative impact on the earth. Am thisclose to dumpster diving.
55. Plant a herb „garden“ - Done successfully in Munich, currently germinating next batch for our English garden.
56. Make vinegar - Turned some old wine into white wine vinegar (intentionally). Took forever. Now want to start a red wine crock.
57. Make yogurt - completed June 2008 (I'm leaving out the precise date because I *may* have done this before the official start date).
58. Start my own compost heap - Accidentally put kitchen waste in the garden-waste-only bin. Have ordered a proper bin (they are heavily subsidized by the council here) and will transfer the contents when it arrives. Need some worms, but found a tackle shop in town, so should be ok.
59. Pick fruit at a self-picking field
60. Make jam from self-picked fruit
61. Purchase carbon offsetting for flights whenever possible - I've done this on every flight it's been available on so far and will continue to do so.
62. Buy most produce at the farmer’s market
63. Plant a tomato plant
64. Can my own tomatoes
65. Take lunch to work 3 days a week
66. Start a monthly savings plan (€350)
67. Start a monthly shipping savings plan (€150)
68. Put €10 in savings for every completed task
69. Launch my website
70. Take editing/writing course
71. Buy a style guide
72. Find a passive income stream
73. Learn to use Trados properly
74. Raise favourite client’s rate
75. Get a good office chair
76. Attend a conference other than ITA - Attended a very interesting food translation seminar in Inverness, Scotland, in June 2010, held by the Scottish chapter of the ITI.
77. Get an external hard drive - I got a couple of these. They don't have the best capacity and aren't top of the line, but damn, I feel like I'm drinking my files out of a flask. Gorgeous. I got one in black and one in a pinkish shade
78. Find who owns translation rights to AT
79. Learn 50 German words per week for 1 month (total 200)
80. Get Pimsler German CDs - Bought in US in November 2010. Discovered that they would have been helpful when I first started learning German (though Michel Thomas was an excellent audio program too), but were a bit too simplistic at this stage.
81. Find a place to hem all my jeans
82. Revive and keep up blog
83. Participate in http://www.nablopomo.com/
84. Sell red Crumpler bag and use money towards photo gear
85. Learn to parallel park
86. Drive a Smart
87. Drive a Trabi
88. Construct a cat perch
89. Find a way to make the cats get along
90. Send a postcard once a month
91. Read 101 books - Stopped counting. I read between two and three books a week, so I've got this one WAY covered.
92. Subscribe to British Homes and Gardens
93. Subscribe to delicious. (Australian version) - Subscribed to the English version after all. Love it. The Oz version was prohibitively expensive.
94. Send 6 care packages a year to a friend or a relative
95. Get new bed linens - Have bought a couple of sets recently. Love you, TK Maxx!
96. Sew bed cover
97. Teach M my family tree so he stops crying at the mention of yet another cousin
98. Use airmiles
99. Declutter iTunes and get rid of stuff I don’t like
100. Watch an entire season of a TV series on DVD - Watched the entire Alias series with Michael. Started watching Mad Men but streaming takes too much juice out of my mobile wireless; may revisit once we have proper broadband.
101. Find and perfect pizza dough recipe - From Jamie Oliver's "Jamie at Home". Love Jamie.