August 25, 2012

Here's best friends Helmi and Kerttu and some spontaneous excellence at today's birthday party:









August 23, 2012



I have the morning off from work and I'm celebrating it with a long breakfast, listening to Gregory Porter and the rain and dreaming of days when I'll have time to bake bread. (I realized I have an amazing cookbook in the shelf I never really picked up!)

August 4, 2012

So here's my long Berlin post with old and new favorites:




The best coffee in town is in The Barn. I found the place a couple years ago through a blog I read and it has remained my favorite since. This time I tried their fruit and nut bread (big chunks of dates and figs!) and fell head over heels in love with it. I will definitely try making this!




On Auguststrasse we passed this most inviting restaurant. (Must go!)


Coffee in No Fire No Glory was very good and their banana bread even better. Yet I think my second favorite coffee was in DoubleEye near my uncle's place. (One day my uncle, being adventurous, ordered "Super Spezial" from their list of coffees and got a mouth-watering espresso with condensed milk. Yum.)


We had coffee on the patio of Michelberger Hotel and what a pity it is I never need a place to stay in Berlin! It was the most amazing hotel I've seen (with old suitcases and cuckoo clocks in the lobby to begin with), oh wow.




Petri is the master of karelian pies (and of all cooking) and we all love to eat them so we try to make them every time I'm there.


(Me and Mariia accidentally bought exactly the same glasses a while ago.)




The breakfast menu of Factory Girl looked scrumptious; we had coffee and Magnolia Bakery inspired banana pudding (in this style).


I found blackberries.


Breakfast in Ungeheuer was alright. (I think we should've tried their homemade müsli.) The place was charming!


Mondo Ruoka&Matka magazine told us the best kebab in town is Mustafa's gemüse kebap on Mehringdamm 32. They were right.


On Sunday morning it rained so much that for the first time I missed the Mauerpark fleemarket. However Tanja and Martina got us to join them for the smaller fleemarkets in Friedrichshain and I ended up finding the jeans jacket I'd been wanting AND bumping into Sandra whose blog I've been reading for some years already and whom I've actually been hoping to bump into when in Berlin! It was lovely and absurd meeting her and her boyfriend (absurd because I know so much about her yet she had no idea who I was). It was Sandra in whose blog I found The Barn back then!






Danke schön Berlin. You were everything I wished for. (And thank you Juha, Pete and Mariia for all the delicacies and the drama.)

This weekend I spend most of my time in the kitchen cooking various meals (and just enjoying time at home) because for the coming weeks I'll be spending more time at the theater than at home; the rehearsals for Fiddler on the Roof start on Monday and will keep me perfectly busy till the end of August. I hope to find the time to post a little something here but please bear with me if I won't! Have a beautiful and inspiring August everyone!