I’ve spent a very pleasant week here in Berlin. It’s been sunny and warm, but not too much so. I’ve had many enlivening conversations with friends new and old. My soul is fed. Off to London for the weekend for the St. Bride Foundation Wayzgoose, and then home to Prince Edward Island on Monday.

Thanks to Peter Bihr and Michelle Thorne for generously loaning me their Kreuzberg flat for my stay here: it’s in my favourite part of my favourite neighbourhood in Berlin, on a quiet, leafy street that’s nonetheless near anything and everything the heart might desire from the city.

In 2009 when Oliver and I landed in Kosice, Slovakia, we spent a good amount of time seeking out the components of a diarizing system with which we could, in analog form, document our trip. We sought a notebook. A pen. A glue stick (for affixing receipts and other paper evidence to the notebook). This was one of a long line of such assemblaging adventures, and something that we’ve come to rely on as an important part of travel.

There’s a lot to recommend it.

First, the process of gathering the required materials takes us into all manner of places that we’d never go otherwise: stationery stores, pen shops, the glue stick aisle of the grocery store. It’s a tour of the local paper goods aesthetic. And the tour often results on spin-off benefits — the restaurant found down an unlikely alley, the conversation with the pen shop owner.

Second, having a formally acquired tool set for making a diary ups the ante with regards to actually writing diary entries: we’ve already invested all this time, we must make best use of it.

Third, the process of writing the diary entries is both a useful way of processing the day’s events and a useful reference for the future when trying to remember the name of the smoky restaurant in Kosice (Amir) or when it was that you lost your temper and wanted to go back to the hotel forever (Phitsanulok). It’s a counterpoint to the digital diarizing that happens in this space (or this one), but includes things too mundane, too personal, or too salacious for public consumption. It’s point-form notes, the detailed plot of the adventure before it’s distilled into story form.

And, finally, writing in a diary is a slow process best done outside and over coffee. It’s completely unlike sitting in the wifi-enabled Airbnb and tapping away at a keyboard. It’s a contemplative, public, social act. And that’s something that every trip needs more of.

I’ve found it useful, recently, to add one item to the kit: a holder. Conveniently for this trip, I happened to visit MUJI, which specializes in such things. So the Berlin assemblage looked like this:

The MUJI here in Berlin includes a “MUJI YOURSELF” station near the exit, with a collection of self-inking rubber stamps you’re free to use to customize products you’ve purchased (and MUJI products, branding-free as they are, are perfect for this):

I left BER02, the second of the notebooks, as a gift for Peter and Michelle, who generously loaned me their flat while I’ve been in Berlin.

My friend Christina, upon learning that I am in Berlin this week, assigned me a special mission:

I was just reading about Berlin in a Bon Appétit magazine this morning, apparently there is a street food night there on Thursdays - looks tasty!

Christina helpfully sent this on a Thursday. And I helpfully read it while sitting 700 m from Markthalle Neun where Street Food Thursday is held. Every Thursday.

I immediately dropped everything and headed toward the food. Ten minutes later, there I was. I didn’t need a map, as there were teaming hordes of hungry people headed from the Görlitzer U-Bahn leading the way. Here was the scene I encountered:

Inside was the regular market hall – what you might expect from Charlottetown or Saint John or Halifax or Toronto – amped up with a collection of itinerant street food stalls offering all manner of interesting food. As the market’s website describes the event (translated by Google):

It is a platform for all those who dedicate themselves without own restaurant and big investments but with even more creativity to their passion: cooking! The appeal of the matter is, of course, to taste many details from various corners of the world for little money.

And so it was.

I started near the entrance, on the left, at a stall offering rice rolls filled with tofu and topped with cucumber, cilantro and hot sauce. They were fantastic. 5 euro.

Directly to the left of the rice roll stand was a stall offering a plate of 4 raw milk cheeses and bread. The plate came with a careful explanation of the origin and nature of each cheese, and a special instruction to use the compote provided while eating the aged gouda, as this is tradition. A. Lot. Of. Cheese. But what cheese it was. 6 euro.

At this stage I tagged out for a moment for a mint iced tea to clear the cheese fog from my palette and then tagged back in for something I remember being called a “Kimchi Slam” but which likely had a different name; I found it about a third of the way back on the right. Steamed bun, tofu, cabbage slaw, kimchi and hot sauce. The highlight of the night. 4 euro.

I would have kept eating had I not been stuffed by this point: there was plenty additional to consider. Vegan burgers. Tapas. Burritos. Waffles. Taiwanese snacks. Raw chocolate. But full I was, and it was getting hot and humid, so I bowed my head and headed out into the Kreuzberg twilight.

Christina deserves some sort of award for “right place, right time,” something she seems particularly adept at. I await further instructions.

Five years ago I spent each Tuesday in August here in Berlin – just up the street from where I type this, in fact – conceiving, designing, setting and printing a letterpress broadside. It was tremendous creative fun: having only 8 hours for the entire process focused my mind in a way that it hasn’t been focused since.

The manager of the print studio at Druckwerkstatt, where I was printing, was a man named Frank, who I introduced here at the time like this:

Fortunately at this point Frank turned up. Frank is the amiable manager of the print studio, and he sprang into action suggesting that although it would be nigh unto impossible to set smaller metal type, we could use the partially-functioning proof press – a Grafix-brand press and operates much like a Vandercook – with larger wooden type, manually inked with a brayer, to get me going (he also referred me to the neighbourhood Linotype shop; is there nothing that Kreuzberg cannot provide?).

Frank couldn’t tell me exactly where the Linotype shop was – “somewhere on Weiner Strasse” was the best he could do – and I never did find it.

On this trip I’m staying in the same neighbourhood, and I set out on Monday afternoon down Weiner Strasse to see if I could solve that problem And, sure enough, after 5 minutes I found this:

I copied down the email address and telephone and when I returned to my flat I sent a note of inquiry, a note that ultimately resulted in an invitation to visit the shop this morning.

And so shortly after 9:30 I headed through the front building:

and into the courtyard:

to find Setzerei Peter von Maikowski und Harald Weller:

Harald greeted me warmly at the door, and gave me a tour of his shop — two Linotype machines, a Heidelberg letterpress, an etching press, a plate maker – and showed me some of the beautiful work the shop has produced (their specialty is art books).

We ended up chatting about type and printing and related matters for a bit, and the topic of klischees came up (printing plates of ornamental material like logos and illustrations). I mentioned the large collection that Ian Scott loaned me, and how I needed to organize them better, perhaps producing some sort of index. At which point Harald pulled a book off the shelf showing me that he had done exactly that for his own collection:

I am now inspired to return to my shop and do the same, especially as Ian has continued to feed the collection and I’ve supplemented it myself, to the point where I may have two or three hundred examples to index.

It was a lovely visit, especially as it was yet another node in a long journey that started with my trip to the Cognitive Cities conference in February 2011, after which followed a casual mention by my friend Luisa about a print shop she noticed out of the corner of her eye, which led me to a plan to spend part of that summer in the city, spending Tuesdays printing, which led me to Frank, which led me to seek out Harald, finding him five years later (and, full circle, I first met Peter Bihr, in whose flat I type this, at Cognitive Cities).

Follow your curiousity.

What a feeling it is, going to the fridge of an overseas friend to retrieve the morning yogurt, to find a piece of your own craft work affixed thereto. Such a feeling washed over me this morning in the flat of Peter Bihr and Michelle Thorne, on loan to me this week I’m in Berlin: upon their fridge I found Act Quickly Summer Is Almost Over, a reminder I created, to myself and to others, three summers ago. The discovery was sweeter still as the flat is in the same neighbourhood where I spent August 2011 printing.

Michelle and Peter were very generous to loan me their lovely flat: truth be told, we’ve only met face-to-face a few times, the rest of our relationship mediated by a shared love of travel and readership of each other’s blogs. 

As it happens, summer has just arrived in Berlin this very week: every single person I’ve encountered has mentioned that I’ve come at exactly the right time, as the weather turned from cold and grey to warm and sunny just this past weekend. I’ve been a great beneficiary of this turn, having spent many lunches, suppers and drinks outside in the sunshine this week.

Berlin and the people I know here are a great tonic for the mind and the soul; it’s a good way to start the summer season.

Once of the things I love about Berlin is that walking its streets often presents you with such unexpected delightful things in the oddest places. I Like Paper, in Kreuzberg on Reichenberger Strasse, for example, which I stumbled across today.

They describe themselves like this (translated from German by Google):

A young Berlin label which specializes on designing with illustrators and designers unique collections and accessories.

They use a lot of Tyvek. And my favourite of their Tyvek products is the Pappwatch. While they have their own range of interesting watch designs, you can also design your own, using an elegant tool to upload and arrange your own imagery. Like this:

Neato!

On previous trips to Berlin I’ve waited until I’ve been set up in the city to search out a SIM for my phone, but for this trip I needed to be SMS-ready soon after landing to arrange for transfer of apartment keys. Fortunately there’s now a handy solution (that’s a double entendre for those bilingual of you paying attention!) in the Capi shop right in the terminal at Tegel Airport.

They sell prepaid SIM cards for the Blau Internet Flat plan that fits any GSM phone (it’s a universal mini, micro and nano SIM) for 19,95 EUR; this includes 20 minutes of calling and 1 GB of data; calls are 9 cents/minute and SMS are 9 cents each. It may not be the best deal in town, but it has the virtue of being (a) very easy to purchase, (b) not in need of any activation using a browser and (c) no wait for activation, so the number is active as soon as you put the SIM in the phone and power it on.

What a strange and wonderful ride this unlikely trans-Atlantic friendship with Olle and Luisa has turned out to be.

We are eleven years old now; one year after I first met Olle – and before I’d ever even met Luisa – they were married, an event we missed face-to-face, but marked with a gift of a MacAusland’s blanket and a visit (me, Catherine, wee Oliver) the following month. A visit that culminated in a lovely supper in the garden at Luisa’s parents. We were all so much younger then, a decade ago:

Ten years on it seemed like I was going to repeat my missing of important wedding-related-commemoration, remaining in Canada for their 10th anniversary celebration. But fate and last-minute planning cooperated, and so last night I was not across an ocean, but right next door, for an epic celebration:

This morning, walking with Luisa to a morning-after brunch at her house, I characterized the gathering like this: it was as if Luisa and Olle have appeared in many Broadway shows, together and apart, and the party was an opportunity for all of the casts, flung across time zones, walks of life, sensibilities, to come together and meet each other. Can there be a better way to mark 10 years together than this, in a great overlapping of the Venn diagrams of a relationship?

The party was grand: hosted at a community hall of two rooms bisected by an expansive bar. Well-stocked with a rainbow of alcohols. All in attendance following the dictate on the invitation to dress colourfully and comfortably. There was a klezmer band to animate the proceedings. Singing. Dancing. Much conversation about many things. I met new people, got reacquainted with people I hadn’t seen for years (in some cases forgetting entirely that we’d met before). I had a moment of “I must get out of here; this isn’t working out!!” panic that, fortunately, subsided quickly.

After the party proper there was a decamp to a nearby office for an after-party, more subdued but no less interesting. Where else would I learn about the challenges of being a Scandinavian writer of erotic fiction?

We finished off in fine tradition, with Olle and Jonas and I heading out for falafel at Sara on Bergsgatan (time stamp on photo I took: 3:35 a.m.).

Jonas and Olle got me to within shouting distance of my rental flat and I rolled into bed just after 4:00 a.m.

This morning in the beautiful garden behind Olle and Luisa’s apartment there was the aforementioned reconstitution with many of the same cast of characters. There was a generous tendency to skew English when I was within earshot and discussion of Gothenburg sushi, Donald Trump, Nordic alcohol policy, and a long and high-spirited mondegreen stemming from a confusion of “emu oil” with “eagle oil” in which a squeegee was prominent. And interconnecting writhing snakes.

As I type I am cloistered in my flat, trying and failing to have a restorative nap. In the morning I fly to Berlin for more adventures. 

I hope to be here, in this place, with these people, in 10 years for the 20th commemoration.

A snippet of the klezmer band that played at Luisa and Olle’s 10th anniversary party. They were very good and very spirited.