Biking around A'dam

It's still November 26th but I'm adding on to what I wrote this morning and adding a few more photos as well. I absolutely love this city, Amsterdam. I'm already scheming about how to come back here, maybe I'll come back here after Spain, or maybe next spring, even next November? Bring a bike and take a month or two to  travel around this country. Also, remember, it is a blessedly flat country. The only hills you ever climb are to go over canals. Great bicycling everywhere.

That said, I was out riding the bike all day today. When I first peeked out of the hotel this morning it was raining and there was a slate colored sky overhead. I was disappointed because I had been looking forward to the ride and for a moment I considered going back upstairs to wait until it cleared up or stopped. But when I looked out on the main drag I saw plenty of bikers riding, just as they were yesterday, and in the rain the day before that. When you see others out there suffering in the wind and weather, you're more willing to submit yourself as well. Then, surprise surprise, the weather factor sort of recedes into the background and if you let yourself go, you'll realize that, after all is said and done, it's actually turned into a wonderful day for a bike ride. So I got my rain parka on, put on my windstopper headband, unlocked the bike and headed out. Here's a house I spotted on one of the streets near Oosterpark: lovely canal view, tile roof, authentic Dutch architecture, circa 1700 possibly. Cost? In the millions no doubt.

For my tour I went first to the Albert Cuyp Markt. Nice ride. Again I want to say that once you're out in the weather and you see that everyone else just dealing with it, you get encouraged to more or less ignore it too--it's easier that way. I followed my GPS as it directed me to the market. It was spitting light rain as I carefully locked the bike to  a wrought iron railing near the entrance. I strolled along looking at the wares, enjoying thoughts of the day in front of me, and, not lastly, looking for someplace to eat. I bought some BBQ chicken at a stand, ate that, and walked back to where I'd left the bike. By this time the sun was popping in and out, adding light and detail to the stuff I was photographing.

I bicycled to  a couple of points of interest that I'd discovered on Google Earth last night: the ancient De Waag building that dates from 1607 (on the left side, above), the flower market at Bloemenmarkt, a random spot out on the main channel of the Amstel River so I could see some salt water and shipping, and another park, Oosterpark (photo below), this one in the eastern part of the city. I'd been to nearby Vondelpark at the end of the day yesterday and enjoyed its quiet lanes and the feeling of serenity it offers in a very busy city. I'm thinking it would be fun to do a  tour of all of the major parks every day that I'm here. I'll work a museum or some other attraction into the itinerary but the emphasis will be on getting around to everything I want to see on the bike. This town is so bicycle oriented! It's really cool.

I've got to get going. It's almost 10 o'clock. But before I take off today I've got to relate my experiences in the Mellow Yellow coffee shop. Naturally I wanted to sample some of Amsterdam's famous weed and to do that I had to go into this little place, on my first night here of course, a stranger in a strange land, and come right out and ask for what I wanted. Now, I don't know about you but when I go into a normal bar, I'm always a little apprehensive. After all, there are people drinking inside and some of them have issues, issues that alcohol tends to make worse. So I try to look casual as I walk up to the bar with my eyes involuntarily bugging out at the sight of all the dope laying around. And I'm a bit hung up. I'm wondering how to actually go about buying something when this fellow approaches me and asks, Can I help you? Ah, yeah, you can. I fake a short laugh and say, Like, I'm a tourist. How do I go about buying some weed?

Well, he says, here's the menu, look it over. Then he lines me out on what's good, what won last year's Cannabis Competition, which type of hash is most potent, etc. Turns out he's a shuttle bus driver driving folks to the 2009 Cannabis Competition which is going on as we speak. So I buy a joint of generous proportions, a true fatty as my Alaskan friends would say, of some stuff named "Pure" for 7 euros (prices ranged from about 5 euro up to about 35 euro for some exceedingly strong stuff) and for some reason, maybe because it was so cheap and so legal, I bought 2 grams of bud for 10 euros. And I note to myself again that everybody in the place is real friendly. The young barman who weighed up my purchase was very welcoming, and when he'd finished bagging my 2 grams, asks if I'd like anything else. Sure, I say, I'll have a coffee. So he makes me an espresso. I paid him something like 20 euros for everything and headed over to a table near the door. A couple was already sitting there but they quickly made room for me to sit down. I lit up my joint and took maybe three tokes, drinking my coffee and enjoying the really friendly environment. It didn't take long before I wanted to get outdoors for some air as it's quite smoky in these bars (like France and Germany, no cigarette smoking is allowed in public places but then this isn't cigarette smoke). After I sat down outside and became "one with the environment" for a few minutes, I realized I was pretty wrecked: I wanted to get back to my hotel room. I was definitely feeling the effects of those 3 hits. I started yawning as soon as I got back to my room. I hit the sack early that night and slept for a solid 12 hours. I guess I needed the sleep. I've been running pretty hard and fast for a month now and the long sleep felt good. And I must admit I was feeling plenty relaxed. I'm still not finished with that joint and it's going on day three already. As I said earlier, it's very strong stuff.

I've been buying food at that same little Italian take out place, Le Delizie, and just before supper last night I stopped in again at Mellow Yellow, ordered a coffee and walked upstairs. I headed over to a vacant table in the corner, sat down and lit up. Pretty soon a guy appears, looks around for a seat and as I have the only table with empty chairs, he comes over with his coffee and sits down. Immediately a conversation ensues. We chatted for a while and had a few laughs. He tells me his wife is in the diplomatic corps (for which country I don't recall). He said with a laugh, "someone in the family's got to work." A nice fellow, like me he's here to enjoy the very friendly, er, mellow, atmosphere and get high. Now that I'm a regular I feel completely at home walking in and ordering my coffee. There is a complete lack of anything even resembling hostile vibes in that shop. One immediately feels welcome and becomes part of the scene. Awesome.

And here is the obligatory photo of last night's dinner from Le Delizie. Pasta is lower left, pickled octopus on the lower right, canneloni bean salad opposite the wineglass, a bundle of spinach with oil and balsamic upper right and and then, behind the wine glass,  a tray of mixed olives with pickled onions.  (Tonight I went in and got a variation on that same general menu.)

Right now it's off to the Anne Frank Museum. By the way, I am loving Amsterdam. Did I already say that? It bears repeating. What a hoot to be here and on a bike, visiting the parks and food shops, and yes, the coffee shops. I'm going to head to  a new coffee shop, an older one with a bigger rep, De Rokerij. And then there's the Rembrant house... Busy day ahead.

Amsterdam

Oh wow! This is a great town. I've only spent one day here and I've fallen in love with A'dam already. Friendly people, friendly laws, bikes everywhere, canals, museums, and I have a little, simple hotel room, at the Euphemia Hotel, it's clean and modest with a comfortable bed, centrally located, the Mellow Yellow coffee shop just a block away. Yesterday I was looking for a place to eat and looked in on a little Italian market just a couple of blocks away. Bought some pasta, marinated octopus (good but not as good as Homer friend John's) grilled and marinated eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms to complete a nice take-out dinner.  I tell you, I'm enjoying the hell out of being here.

I want to write lots about this amazing city but I want to get out while the day is young to visit some markets. As soon as I arrived and started walking around I realized that the way to travel here is definitely by bicycle. Bikes seem to rule the roads. They're literally everywhere and people ride in all weather, with umbrellas, cell phones, kids fore & aft, so I went ahead and rented a bike. It's a road warrior type, 3-speed, quite heavy, with a basket, hand brake for the front, coaster brake in the rear (yep, it's a bit weird) and I cruised all over yesterday afternoon after my visit to the Rijksmuseum.  Now, I said earlier the bikes rule the roads. That's not quite true. Motor scooters "share" the bike lanes and the bikers themselves are quite reckless, cutting in front of one another, practically brushing up against the trams that are always very close by. I consider myself a good bicyclist but I'll tell you, one had better pay attention in traffic here or much shit could happen in a hurry. Again I find myself wishing I had my Cannondale here.

Anyway, more later — to check out the photos that go with this article on Google Photos, just click on the link: Amsterdam.

Leaving Berlin

It's a windy rainy day today, my first awful weather really. I went out to do a little shopping at the big KaDeWe department store (I'll have more to say about KaDeWe in another post) and seeing as I want to stay warm and dry, I thought I'd tie up the Berlin part of my trip. I did a bit of walking last night after taking the U-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz. I wanted to see the Holocaust Memorial and the Reichstag. By the way, I have yet to be asked to show a ticket on any U-Bahn train I've ridden in Berlin. Germans mostly play by the rules and I'm left to assume that everybody has paid their fares in some manner. But being an ignorant tourist I never did properly "validate" the 1 week pass I bought back a couple of weeks ago so I've been riding for free ever since.

The Holocaust Memorial is quite impressive. I have a photo of a portion of it below (The building in middle background is the U.S. Embassy and the Brandenburg Gate is just beyond that.) Jana tells me that many Germans ask themselves every day how the Holocaust could ever have been allowed to happen. Furthermore they ask, what would I have done in that time, and under those circumstances? It's easy from our vantage point to look back at those ordinary citizens who were in the end culpable for the genocide and say, It couldn't happen to me, it couldn't happen in America. And yet, recall just a few short years ago when Bush was drumming up all that patriotic drivel, lying to us as it turns out, about the necessity to invade Iraq. Did any of you feel a little bit shy about saying, No, I don't want this? Even the liberal media swung into place behind the administration lest they be labeled unpatriotic, or worse. I imagine things started out in roughly the same manner back in the 1930s when Hitler began his rise to power.

I took my look at the Reichstag and then began to look for the Holocaust Museum Jana had told me about. I wandered around and somehow missed it. It was Sunday night and getting dark so I headed home on foot for dinner. As I walked I noticed a rosy glow in the sky. The sun was going down and throwing some nice color toward me so I turned to the west and took this shot.

I rode the U-2 train to Zoligisher Garten so I could pass by the Kaiser Wilhelm Church once again. This memorial has me quite spellbound. As a boy I read everything I could get my hands on about World War II. Like many kids I had romanticized war, especially that one because my father and uncle fought in it, were in fact casualties of it, and I guess that's part of the reason this church has made such a strong impression on me. How beautiful it is in the present day. I try to imagine the bombing raid in November of 1943, when it was transformed from the work of exalted art that it surely was into what it is now. The nicks and dents in the stone facades were caused by shrapnel, bomb fragments. The interior bricks are exposed like the bones of a body that once was a living being. More images of people dead or dying all around, people bleeding to death on these very same streets sixty odd years ago: these images will be forever etched in my mind. Perhaps the memorial has served its best purpose.

 

Christmas is just around the corner and the walks around the church and indeed all the sidewalks nearby are full of little sheds selling food and Christmas baubles. I left the church site and walked down the avenue to Jana's.

She prepared another of her specialties: coriander roasted new potatoes with beets (rote bete salat) marinated in garlic-ginger dressing. An awesome meal, again.

Almost forgot. While we're on the subject of food, my favorite subject I remind my readers, I ate my smoked eel today. Those of you who have had smoked black cod know how oily it is compared to salmon. But you should try eating some of these little guys. Very oily indeed, and delicious. I had a small piece from the middle of one -- I'm not sure eating from a piece with the head still on would be quite as easy to enjoy.

Tomorrow I'll drag my suitcase back to the Zooligisher Garten U-Bahn station and catch a train to Amsterdam. It should take about 6 hours, if I don't screw anything up that is. ;-)

Berlin Reprise

I'm back in Berlin and loving it. What a great town this is. First thing that meets the eye as I emerged from the Zooligisher Garten train station was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. I did not have a good photo of it from last time I was here so I took this shot. The place is magnificent and a lasting testament to the horrors of war.

Jana and I went shopping yesterday on a beautifully warm, sunny day. We walked to her local outdoor market, the Winterfeld Markt, and cruised around looking mostly but I did buy a few Christmas gifts, some fruit and cheese, tea, a piece of smoked eel finally, and a loaf of the best bread I've had in Europe up to now.The bakery we got it from is named Lindner, like our friend Maynard who I know from KBay Caffe and who is about to become a father. The first photo below is of Jana buying spices:

These vendors caught my eye. The woman has quite a hairdo. They were selling fruits and veggies. Nice selection, good prices. But my favorite vendor was the olive seller. This guy was so happy to be serving up bags of his specialty olives. Lovely man. We bought some kalamatas and some of Jana's favorites: walnut stuffed olives.

Another interesting food item that was selling like hot cakes, or rather, like hot cheese, is just that. It's a local favorite snack called raclette. In the photo you can see a long black arm thing-a-ma-bob. Sort of looks like  jig saw or sewing machine. It's actually a gas grill which is pointing down so it throws heat onto block of cheese placed below it. The cheese gets hot, bubbly hot, mouth burning hot, and after enough has melted she will scrape off big gobs of it onto slabs of fresh bread. I wanted to try some but as we had planned to eat at a restaurant nearby I forced myself to walk on by. Just as well probably.

We sat outdoors in the very agreeable weather at a Lebanese restaurant and ordered a variety plate for 6 euros each. Falafel, hummus, Baba Ghanoush, gyro-chicken, and sliced veggies. It was a very good meal, and cheap too. By request, for those of you who, like me, are gastronomically inclined (haha), here's the obligatory photo:

Later, Saturday at 8:00 pm:

Okay, I know isn't the type of musical event that many of you would appreciate but as it was so very exciting for me, I must relate the story. I mentioned earlier that I had purchased tickets to a chamber music concert before leaving for Poland. I attended that concert was last night. It was superb, fantastic, and awesome in every way. Here I was, in the Berlin Philharmonic Kammermusiksaal about to listen to a Haydn String Quartet. The members of the Delian Quartet walked onto the stage, the audience politely applauded, they took their seats and began to play. I love Haydn's quartets and I mistakenly thought they were going to play one I wasn't familiar with. But to my surprise they began playing an Opus 76 quartet, Op 76 no. 2 to be exact. The six quartets comprising Haydn's Opus 76 are among my absolute favorites! I know every note in that piece. It was all I could do to stop myself from audibly humming along with it, or worse, whistling an accompaniment like I do in the car or at home.  At the end, people rose from their seats, as did I, shouting Bravo! Bravo! I was totally thrilled.

Next they played a quartet by Shostakovitch. His dark and moody music has never appealed to me but I listened and tried to savor the moment. A brief intermission followed during which I mixed with the Berlin concert-going crowd and had a glass of wine. I decided against bringing my camera along and I regret it now. The interior of the auditorium was impressive, very modern with an interesting layout; stairways going every which-way and fancy hanging lights everywhere.

The second half of the concert was the Brahms Piano Quintet in F with Menahim Pressler performing the piano part. I hurried back to my seat. Never heard of Mr. Pressler? Well, much of the chamber music I love is piano trios. Piano trios by Mozart and Beethoven especially. For many years the famous Beaux Arts Trio recorded some of the finest renditions of these great masterpieces available. Menahim Pressler was, and maybe still is, the keyboard player for that illustrious group. I'm a bit out of touch with what's happening in the world of chamber music these days.

Again the Delian Quartet players trouped out. They were followed by a diminutive old man who was wearing a tuxedo whose cummerbund I swear came to within 12 inches of his neck. He was tiny, and round. But when he sat before the huge grand piano and started the powerful first movement of the piece, the sound filled the place totally. The Brahms Piano Quintet is another of my favorite pieces of music. Fantastic! Again the audience applauded with gusto. The performers came out for an encore. Pressler played a short and beautiful piano solo while the quartet members looked on politely. Obviously, he was the maestro, the star, for the latter half of the program; an awesome artist probably nearing the end of his career, taking his bows, the other players acknowledging his stature by remaining seated.

How could I have been so lucky as to have obtained tickets to a concert, in Berlin no less, and at the precise time I was visiting Berlin, that contained not one but two of my favorite pieces of music? Two massive works by German composers, performed in Germany. Go figure.

I emerged from the concert hall into the warm Berlin evening and counted my blessings, again. The brief walk back to Jana's was the perfect end to a totally enjoyable day.

Dobrzyki at last

I finally made it to my Grandmother's hometown yesterday. I rented a car from Avis in Gdansk, a very expensive rental as it turns out (more on that later), and drove there yesterday morning. I have been looking at the general area with the help of Google Earth for a couple of years, visualizing the general layout of the towns and roads and looking at photos of the nearby lakes, posted by Google Earth users, which are a popular vacation destination for many Poles, so I knew what to expect in general.

My first stop was Zalewo, the bigger town my grandmother walked to for things like coffee and sugar. In 1907 she knew it as Saalfeld. Saalfeld and Weinsdorf were located in the German province of East Prussia before the two world wars. Zalewo has a nice brick and stone church and some quaint old homes and buildings, a store, a school, some type of industry, a town square and a few streets. It also serves as an entry point to Ewingi Lake (Ewing See, misspelled as Erving See on my map) and the rest of the neighborhood lake system via the canal that my grandmother knew only as "the river". Zalewo has a small recreation area and docks, a boat launch ramp, etc. In one of the photos below some graffiti I saw uses the word Saalfeld which means the artist was aware of the town's history in East Prussia. I also include a scan of the little map I sketched from a ca.1880 Russian Atlas in the Boston Public Library in 1976 after Grandma first told me about her homeland. Using Google Earth I inspected the various lakes in the general region looking for something that matched my sketch. And one day I found them — Ewing See, Geserich See and the two towns, Saalfeld and Weinsdorf, located right where they should be according to my drawing. I had found the place I had wondered about for years. By the way, the reason I mention only my Grandmother in these posts is because I never met my Grandfather. He died in Buffalo in the 1918 influenza pandemic in which millions died worldwide. Grandma raised their six children alone after that. She outlived all but two of them. I had questioned her closely about the name of the river but she simply didn't know it — it was merely "the river".

Note, January 2015: In my original post, I had included a portion of a map of Prussia I had found online. The waterway my grandmother told me about was just barely visible on that one. I just located a much better map on the wonderful David Rumsey Historical Map Collection site. The level of detail in this image is fantastic. The main map is quite large and is a composite of 674 sheets scanned at 800 dpi. (More details are at the end of this post.)

Map of Germany, published by Reichsamt fur Landesaufnahme, 1893
courtesy of David Rumsey

In this image the canal is clearly visible (click on it for the full size image) and even has a name, Weinsdorf Canal. North of Zalewo it connects with the Elblag Canal and extends all the way to the North Sea at Elblag.

A complete album of photos resides on the Picasaweb server at Dobrzyki Scenes. My Couchsurfing host, a lovely lady named Ewa, with much patience told me how to pronounce that name but I failed completely. The best I can come up with is DUB-zhuk-ee for a phonetic approximation. But the zhuk part is spoken with a slight roll of the tongue. Tricky, very tricky.

The shot above is from Google Earth. My GPS track and dates is shown in red. I added the historical town names when I edited the screenshot. The two photos below are aerial photos of the countryside that surrounds Dobrzyki. I "borrowed" these from the Google Earth community.

It's obvious why this area is such a draw for outdoor recreation. Below are two scenes from Zalewo.

 

After Zalewo I turned south on the only road that goes to Dobrzyki. The countryside around here reminded me of certain parts of New York State; gently rolling hills, dairy farms, and small towns close together. Coincidentally, the area grandma lived for most of her life after immigrating was very similar to this. The roads all around are lined with big oak trees, old trees, trees that I'm certain were here when my grandparents walked, drove a wagon(?), to Saalfeld on shopping days over this very road. The mental image I had of them walking alongside these same fields and wooded areas, seeing the same farmhouses I was now seeing, catching glimpses of the church steeple in Saalfeld through breaks in the forest, was very powerful.

Suddenly I came round a bend in the road and saw some houses up ahead and noted a little bridge with a road sign on it; DOBRZYKI. At the same time I spotted a cemetery on the right hand side of the road. I immediately pulled over to look at the names on the gravestones hoping to find a Schwede or a Gunther. No luck, it was a Polish cemetery, beautifully decorated with flowers and oil lanterns for almost every grave. At night you can easily see the Polish cemeteries on the surrounding hillsides because they're all lit up. Apparently, relatives of the deceased go there every night to light the oil lamps. (I later learned that November is a special month for honoring the dead.) I looked all around. I saw no German names nor did I see any older headstones of any sort. Before going back to the car I had the realization that this little bridge just ahead must cross grandmother's "river." Not wanting to rush into the town and wanting to savor my discovery, I began to look more closely at the little waterway below me.

Grandma's "river" looking north

I thought, this is it, one of the stronger images that had been playing in my mind for years; the river that I now see is actually a canal. Grandma had told me, "we lived near a river." But how near? I wondered. Was it one of those first houses in the town just across the bridge? Or did she consider the entire town to be close to the river, which of course it is? These are questions for which I'll never have an answer. But the waterway in the photo is most certainly the river she told me about.  (The map below shows the locations of the cemeteries relative to the canal.)


Note- May 20, 2012: Google Earth has new imagery of this area so I updated the blog with the image below. The center of this map is at approximately N53.811563 and E19.585230 if you want to explore the neighborhood in Google Earth.

The town of Dobrzyki was known as Weinsdorf in 1907

Despite the damp chill in the air I went back to the car to retrieve the lunch I had packed for a picnic. As I reached into the car for my daypack I felt a muscle in my back tense up and a pain shoot through it. Damn! My back can't go out now! I thought. I gingerly crossed the road and spotted an overgrown path leading north alongside the canal. I began to follow it. Right away I noticed a grave marker, and on it was a German name! One Karl Herold (1874-1929), Schmiedemeister, lies here, a blacksmith (one possible translation of Schmiedemeister), who was presumably here at the same time as my grandmother. 

Further along the path I saw buried in vegetation and fallen leaves what must have been stone bases to put over graves and some low upright posts made of stone, delineators of this old cemetery. I surmise that headstones attached to the bases in some way. By dumb luck I had stumbled across an old German cemetery! I looked all over the area as best I could and at first could find no other headstones. In reviewing my photos weeks later I saw that there was actually a German headstone in those ruins that I had missed before. Below is a photo of that headstone. (Click on the photo for an enlarged version.)

Single German headstone in the abandoned German cemetery

Now I'm only guessing but I'd be willing to bet that when Germany lost WWII the German residents of this town left in droves trying to escape the Russian Army. All of Europe was in chaos, thousands were stuck many miles from home, some had been in prison camps or been worked like slaves by the Nazi regime, the roads were filled with refugees for months; in some cases entire cities and towns were utterly destroyed and there was strong anti-German sentiment in lands that had been occupied during WWII or colonized earlier by Germany. At any rate there were no other German headstones in evidence. Yet we know Germans inhabited Weinsdorf for centuries. Were the headstones removed for some legitimate reason? Were they stolen or destroyed and, if that was indeed the case, were the perpetrators the invading Russians or the returning Poles? Were the bodies disinterred and moved or simply left to lie ignominiously? More questions without any easy answers.

I had my lunch on what might have been the old towpath alongside the canal. While I ate I listened to the sounds of dogs barking and roosters crowing in the town just a few yards distant— probably the same sounds Grandma used to hear when she was fetching water from near where I was sitting. I reckon nothing much has changed in the hundred years since she left. After my lunch, I headed into town.
Dobrzyki is a tiny little town. One main street, the highway I drove coming from Zalewo, a couple of unpaved roads going to some smaller towns on nearby Lake Jeziorak (Geserich See in grandmother's day), no grocery store, no gas station, just a few old homes and farmhouses, a few restored homes sprinkled into the mix, a newer school building, and that's about it. I imagine the residents still drive to Zalewo to do their shopping. After all I had done to get here, I must admit it was a bit of a letdown. The gray skies and November chill didn't help any. But I walked back and forth on the street shooting photos of practically every house along the way. Again, those photos, which will be of interest mostly to family members, are in a Picasaweb album called Dobryzki Scenes. Here's my favorite house photo from that album. One wonders if my Grandmother knew this house, perhaps even lived in it.

Next I drove to the tiny town of Matyty (Motitten on my map) on Lake Jeziorak and almost got stuck in mud when I attempted to reach another little town, Kiemiany. So I turned the car around and headed to the next town on my list, Boreczno or Schnellwalde, which is where my family members were baptized. At the time it was an Evangelical Lutheran church but I would think it's Roman Catholic now. This town is even smaller than Dobrzyki. The church, a small school, and a few houses comprise the town proper. A plaque on the parsonage labeled it as a historical site and that the church was built in 1730. I peeked inside but I couldn't get in as there was a wrought iron gate barring entrance. At this point, there was a chill wind blowing and although I had wanted to do more exploring, my back was killing me so I headed back to Elblag. Unfortunately, when  I tweak my back and it "goes out" like it did earlier it's extremely painful and can put me down for days or even weeks. The absolute last thing I want to be doing when that happens is driving a car. Reluctantly I turned around, took one last look at Weinsdorf, and then headed back to Elblag with my curiosity reasonably satisfied and my back screaming, lay down, lay down!

I'm writing this sitting in a too small chair and will probably pay for it later. Tomorrow I return to Berlin and am looking forward to a chamber music concert on Saturday. Luckily I have some powerful pain pills with me as well as a muscle relaxant from my last back problem this spring. I'm betting, perhaps hoping is a better term, that I can nip this in the bud. Sans back injury I would have liked to ask around, see if anyone spoke English, ask about the history of the town. But, I was in acute pain. It was with great reluctance that I took leave of Dobrzyki after only a few hours.

This morning I drove back to Gdansk to return the car. It took about 15 minutes before I could walk fully upright. I want to tell you about the Avis agent, a very nice guy by the name of Konrad, who was so very nice to me. He apologized after he calculated the total I was supposed to pay because it was so expensive. He tried different ways to figure my bill to lower the total. I had the car for less than two days and drove about 300 km. The bill came to 900 zlotys or about $360 USD, an astronomical amount, especially if you consider that the price I paid to fly from Anchorage to NYC was only $250! So Konrad typed and he tabbed and he made some sort of corrections that brought the bill down to 866 zlotys. He said, "That's not very much difference. Let's try this." So he typed and tabbed and typed again for a while. This time he came up with a figure of 700 zlotys. What a guy! Yet even after all he did, and if the 71 zlotys to fill the tank are included, this 2-day car rental came to approximately $312 USD. I'm damn glad I didn't ask up front how much money was involved because I wouldn't have done it, which is exactly why I didn't ask. It’s no mystery why most people in Poland don’t rent cars. Ouch!
 Anyway, it’s more or less Mission Accomplished as I head back to Berlin for a few more days. After that it’s on to Amsterdam.
 
Friday, November 20

I’m riding the Berlin Express from Poznan, Poland, to the Berlin HBH. (HauptBahnHof=main station) Thanks to my GPS I found that this train was running at 100 mph, slowing down only when it passes stations at which it isn’t stopping, and then it only slows to 80-85 mph. We’re racing along. Going to Elblag I had a 4-leg trip, one of which was on a cramped and crowded bus, the others on slow commuter trains that made frequent stops. My return trip involves 3 separate trains but they are moving faster and making fewer stops, especially this last one. I’ll be glad to get back to Berlin I guess. I have those tickets to the chamber music concert for tomorrow night and seeing as this is the last leg of my return it looks like I’ll make it just fine. 

A few more notes about Poland. Lots of homes burn coal. One sees piles of it in the towns and in people's yards. Although it’s warm today many chimneys are belching clouds of black smoke. Smells much like the coal we burn in Homer. (Observed as I write: a good looking young woman in the station at Tczew (pronounced t’chef ) who is wearing dark nylons with low-cut athletic sox like I wear for tennis.  But unlike me she's wearing high heel shoes to complete her outfit.) Today has been sunny and the areas we’re moving through are nice looking farmland. The winter wheat is greening many of the plowed fields and in some areas the last of the feed corn is being harvested. It’s not all that different from what you might see in my home state of New York; the gently rolling hills and plowed fields interspersed with pastures and fields of corn looked mighty familiar. In fact, in an email exchange with my cousin Roger we discussed how Grandma must have thought the area where she spent a lot of time, the gentle hills south of Buffalo, looked much like the neighborhood in East Prussia she'd left behind.

In closing I must again mention my wonderful Elblag Couchsurfing hosts, Ewa and Daniel. They made my stay in Poland very enjoyable despite the fact that Ewa commutes to Gdansk every day, 1.5 hours each way by train or bus, to work for Lufthansa. She loves traveling and can get great reductions in airfare with this job. But the trade off is this very long commute. Despite her long day Ewa is very curious about Alaska and spent precious hours of her time at home chatting with me. Both of them were gracious, warm, and very generous with their time and small apartment space. Thank you, thank you, Ewa.

The guest room Ewa and Daniel's kitchen

Oh, and I’m happy to report that my back appears to be better today after a few minutes of stiffness and discomfort this morning. Thanks to my friend Kevin who advised me to take ibuprofen immediately upon tweaking my back. I did that and added a 10 mg tablet of cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) and 10 mg of Percocet left over from my last back attack. Three rounds of those pills seem to have caught it. Thanks to Kevin's advice (and those strong drugs), I'm walking upright today.

---

Notes on the David Rumsey map:

Published by Reichsamt fur Landesaufnahme, 1893

Publisher's Note :

In an agreement dated March 4, 1878, the states of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurttemberg (the areas of modern day Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, and Kaliningrad, and part of Lithuania) agreed to map their areas on a 1:100,000 scale in a common topographic grid survey consisting of 674 sheets. Each sheet covers about 30 minutes in longitude and 15 minutes in latitude. One centimeter on a map is equivalent to1 kilometer on the ground. Average sheet size is about 35 cm x 28 cm. Each sheet covers about 1000 square kilometers and was engraved on copper.

The map is a composite of Sheets 1 to 674. Date estimated based on the apparent library acquisition date usually stamped on the back of the map sheet. This map series is remarkable for the level of fine detail. As a consequence, it was scanned at 800 PPI providing four times the resolution of the typical detailed map scan of 400 PPI. At least ten separate symbols for special buildings were utilized, a method enhanced by placing an abbreviation next to the symbol. Structures with special symbols include: churches, chapels, monuments, windmills, water mills, stamp mills, forester's lodges, watchtowers, ruins, forts, quarries, clay pits, lime kilns, and coke-ovens. Factories, brick works, powder magazines electric power plants, and many other important buildings are differentiated by means of abbreviation. Houses appear as black blocks, either rectangular or shaped like the ground plan of the building. Many other features are differentiated, for example there are four different qualities of roads plus bridle paths and footpaths. Vegetation is minutely classified including separate symbols for broadleaf trees, evergreens, underbrush, heather, dry meadows, wet meadows, swamps, orchards, gardens, vineyards, and parks. Relief is shown by hachures. Spot elevations are given in meters above sea level.

Into the hinterlands of Poland

I took a 90 minute train-ride back to Gdansk today to rent a car. The only way to get to Dobrzyki is to walk, hitchhike or drive. Seeing as I want to explore a couple of other places nearby and I only have two more days here I opted for the rent a car scenario. Luckily Avis tries harder and as a result they have some English speaking reps in Gdansk, among them  a woman named Marcelina who assured me that despite my lack of an international driver's license, they would be happy to rent me a car. After getting off the train and asking everyone in the main station, Gdansk Glowny, where the Avis agency was and drawing only confused looks I got on my cell phone and called Marcelina back and asked where was the Avis office. She gave me directions and within a half hour I was on the road struggling through heavy, slowly moving Gdansk traffic on my way back to Elblag. Nobody rents cars in Poland, Ewa tells me, which is why the word Avis means nothing to the average person on the street.

The Polish drivers have some awful habits. For starters, they all speed. What's worse is that they pass even if there is a car coming in the opposing lane! That's right. Both the car being overtaken and the oncoming car pull onto the shoulders to let the passing car by. Pretty unnerving - reminds me of Mexico. At least people drive on the right here so it's pretty easy after you get used to the passing weirdness. My trusty GPS led me out of  downtown Gdansk and into open country where I drove the 50 odd kilometers back to Ewa's uneventfully.

Anyway, the car is huge. I wanted a station wagon so I could sleep in it if I chose. This thing is some sort of European Ford, a diesel, and is larger than most other cars hereabouts. But it's quite roomy and will definitely get me there. I have no idea how much it's costing and I don't want to know. I've come a long way to get this close and I simply must get to Dobrzyki no matter the cost.

I listened to the radio for a while and guess what, many of the songs I heard are by American and English groups and are sung in English. The announcers are Polish, of course, so it's quite a contrast to the ear to hear him come on and talk quite unintelligibly during the segues. But imagine if all the pop music we heard in Alaska was in Spanish, or German. How strange would that be?

As I was discussing my plans with Ewa and Daniel they began offering me camping gear which I think might come in handy. So now I have two camping mattresses, extra blankets, a pillow, and a butane stove. I bought a bunch of bread, cheese, hard sausage, and beer and stashed it in the car for an early departure. I'll stop and get some more of those Kortland apples and maybe some of that smoked eel before heading out.

On my schedule is a visit to Dobrzyki, of course, as this is the only reason I'm in Poland at all.  I also want to visit the place from which Hitler ran his disastrous Russian campaign, a bunker called the Wolf's Lair, and the Bialowieza Forest (a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve) that is reputed to be a piece of the primeval woods that covered this country before the time of the Romans. After calculating the route with my Europe Roadmap software it turns out to be over 230 miles to the forest so I'm not sure I'll make it all that way in the amount of time I have. The Wolf's Lair is 100 miles beyond Dobrzyki so I might try that one.

I'll go back to Berlin on he 20th mostly because I have good tickets for a chamber music concert in the Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Auditorium on the 21st. I'll be listening to a Haydn String Quartet, a Brahms Piano Quintet, and something by Shostakovich. I'll be listening to works by two German composers IN GERMANY. Imagine that!

As there will likely be no Internet in the hinterlands you might not hear from me for a while. I'll be in touch as soon as possible.

Poland

I finally made it to Poland. I'm at Ewa and Daniel's flat with a rainy day in progress. Time to do some journaling and blogging.  After an all day train ride yesterday (Sunday) from Berlin, starting at 7:59 am (German trains run on time, exactly), arriving in Elblag, about 35 miles ESE of Gdansk, at around 7:30 pm. Ewa was at the train station to meet me, bless her heart. We went to their flat and she pulled my dinner out of the oven where she'd been keeping it warm. They have a very nice situation here for Couchsurfers. I have the office with a comfortable bed and desk for my use while I'm staying with them. They got me set up with their wireless Internet connection right away too. At first we couldn't get it working but Daniel is a geek and he reconfigured his router passphrase to allow me to get on. Thank you Daniel.

So far my Couchsurfing experiences have been abundantly, fantastically successful. Jana knows Berlin well and in addition is an artist and graphical designer so she's very familiar with the art and museum scene in Berlin. Staying with her was a terrific experience. Oh, and did I forget to mention she is also a fantastic cook? Now, here with Ewa, my quarters are extremely nice and both hosts extremely welcoming and friendly. Ewa was full of questions about Alaska. Daniel doesn't speak any English but they were both highly entertained when I showed them my videos of brown bears at Chenik last summer. And she asked, Does it take some special skills to live without running water? I replied, No, you just have to want to live on less. That's mostly true I think although I explained that I also have high speed Internet, satellite TV and oil heat. They're both off at work today so I have the place to myself and am enjoying my morning tea with fried eggs and toast.

BTW, I learned today that sour cream can be used in place of sweet cream in tea if you're willing to add a little extra sugar. I am and I did. Finding stuff in the supermarkets has been interesting, especially here, so today after searching the dairy isle I bought a container of what I thought was sweet cream for my tea. It was not -- it was sour cream. Rather than walk up and down the four flights of stairs again to get the right stuff, I merely dumped in another half a spoonful of sugar. Not bad. And I bought a couple of bottles of beer, one is a Polish brand, Specjal Jasny Pelny, the other a Czech brand, Starovar. French wine here is fairly expensive (80 or 90 PLN) so I will wait for Berlin or Paris to resume my search for the perfect Cote du Rhone. Poland doesn't use euros, by the way. They use the Zlotych (current exchange rate is $1 USD = 2.73 Zlotych or PLN). So the Polish beer cost 76 cents while the Czech one was 91 cents (0.5 liter bottle).

This town is a small city actually and appears a bit down on its luck especially compared with central Berlin. Of course I haven't spent any time in the hinterlands of Germany so my evaluation is conditional. Buildings throughout Poland are in need of repair, the train stations run down with lots of dirty windows, many broken, etc. I passed through farm country on the way here and noted that the farmhouses look old, very old. Most are made of brick or stone with tile or shingle roofs and many of those roofs are sagging and moss covered. The farms themselves look nice though and the dairy cows look like, well, the dairy cows in New York State. Another interesting thing I noticed again and again from the trains and Metros I rode both here and in Germany and France is that folks often have a tiny plot of land in the suburbs where they hang out on weekends. Alongside the garden is a small structure, a shed, or in some cases a tiny cabin or house, where people can spend time tending their gardens and getting away from the daily grind. Some of these little places are pretty cool looking. I'll include some pics later on.

Yesterday during my train ride I actually walked around in the sun for while during a one-hour changeover in Szczecin (German: Stettin), a city on the Odra River (German: Oder) which forms the modern border between Germany and Poland. (I've included the German names for those of you who learned geography when I did ;-)) Fishermen were out in force on such a sunny, mild Sunday.

Here is a shot of the fishermen on one of the canals that hook up with the Odra River. Notice the length of the pole this guy is using. It's got to be over 20 feet long! These long ones don't have a reel -- the length makes it possible to get the lure or bait, mostly canned corn or lures, out to where the fish are. And the fish? Tiny little silvery things no longer than about 6-8 inches, maybe some sort of smelt or alewife, I dunno. But one fellow had a whole string net full of them. I'm pretty sure bringing in a large salmon using one of these would be difficult, if not impossible.

Above is the wheelhouse of one of the many barges tied up alongside the walk on this Sunday. Reminds me of the barges on the Erie Canal in NY State except these are considerably bigger.

And this last one is an old station house I found out behind the Szczecin Glowny. Glowny is Polish for "main station", the same as Germany's Hauptbahnhof or HBF. At first I thought glowny meant some sort of city or suburb. Silly me.

Later: 5:30 pm

I took a little walk about in the main part of town earlier. It's a drizzly, gray day so I didn't take any photos. Except for one of a tiny market that sells veggies and, somewhat improbably, smoked fish. I bought one of the ones named "ewak" in the photo below. It was delicious and reminiscent of the smoked Lake Erie whitefish, we called them smoked ciscoes, that we used to get once in a while when I was a boy in Buffalo. Oily and flavorful, the newspaper it always came wrapped in would soon become translucent. Ciscoes didn't last long at our house. (I learned later from Ewa that the fish I bought is a zuwak or butterfish.) Ewa says they like the smoked mackeral, the ones in the lower right in the photo. All the salmon I've seen here, even in the gourmet shop at KaDeWe in Berlin are Atlantic salmon from Norway and are farmed. I had some in Paris (accidentally) and thought it not very good. In the photo below that longish, dark colored  "fish" up above everything else is a smoked eel. I'm gonna buy a hunk of that tomorrow.

And in a similar tiny market a few steps away they had several varieties of apples on display. There were some labeled Kortland. I couldn't believe it! Those are one of my favorite apples and I assume they're native to New York, named after the city of Cortland. I bought one and eagerly bit into it -- perfect white flesh inside, snappy and slightly tart, unlike those, at least in my mind, awful, cloyingly sweet New Zealand apples that seem to be everywhere these days-- in Alaska, even in Berlin and Paris-- almost as bad as the mistakenly named Delicious apples whch are IMHO best used for horse fodder or pig food. The apples were wonderful, a special treat.

The Wall

It's late - I've no time to write at the moment - these pictures will tell the story better than I can.

The Wall

I leave Berlin for Poland early tomorrow. Later....

The Pergamon Museum

I visited another superb museum yesterday, the Pergamon. I've come across mentions of this museum many times in various articles and books I've read over the years. I'm going to insert a few photos now and come back later to flesh out this entry better when I have more time. I bought my tickets to Elblag, Poland, and will depart Berlin early tomorrow morning. Because I don't know what sort of Internet Daniel & Ewa have, I might not get the chance to upload everything I want to share immediately. The other thing that has impressed me greatly is a visit to what Jana termed "The East Side Gallery." I think she purposely withheld the true meaning of that term because it was the most incredible thing I've seen on this trip so far. Read on... But first, pictures of some of the early art and sculpture from the Pergamon:

This first is the roman Emperor Caracalla (AD 212-217). Remember, this head has been carved out of marble! It's utterly fantastic to see  the details closeup.

Here is another Roman emperor's likeness:

The artists for both of these used similar devices to make their subjects appear fierce and strong: the determined mouth, the furrowed brow, the eyes staring into the distance, the strong chin treatment. The ideal in these times was Alexander the Great. Many sculptors used a portrait of him as inspiration for their stylistic treatment of these important subjects.

Next I show a portion of a carved frieze of some sort. I'm not sure where it was found or what its provenance is but the carving details are pretty amazing.

Above we see a grave stele relief from the 4th century BC Athens. The married couple portrayed here are deceased. The figures in the background are a servant (on the left and incompletely rendered) and a relative. Both are shown in mourning postures.

This sculpture is amazing also - the draped robe clearly reveals the goddesses body beneath. Below is shown a detail of her left foot. The workmanship is of exceptional quality.

There is much art and sculpture from Babylonian times in the Pergamon and it's quite impressive. Below are some samples that particularly impressed me. I'm not going to comment much because I'm simply not qualified to be your guide here. But check out the fine details, the power of the imagery, the colored enamels preserved over the millennia since the time of the kingdom of Urok.

 

Below is a detailed view of one of the warriors:

And lastly I include a couple of samples of ancient art just because they are so impressive. The first is a glass flask with fine gold filigree and the other a line drawing, colored in some manner unknown to me, of an elephant and driver. Simply stunning.

 

There's so much more that I saw and that impressed me. But that's enough for now. I think supper is about ready. Jana is working away in the kitchen making Quiche Lorraine for dinner. She says I can take a couple of pieces along with me on the train tomorrow. Sounds like a plan.

Berlin

Tuesday Nov 11, 2009
Okay! There's so much to say and it's already 11 pm after a busy day. I'm in Berlin. I need to get some writing done.

Recapping events up to now: The flight from Paris was uneventful if I don't count the fact that I almost missed it. I booked a flight on EasyJet and when I checked my bags I thought the clerk said to go to gate B-5. So I'm sitting there for almost 2 hours at gate B-5 and about 20 minutes before take-off they announced that we could start boarding Section A, my section. I got into line but soon realized with a shock that my boarding pass was orange while everyone else's was blue. Oooops! I raced around asking people where my EasyJet flight was but drew only blank stares. I finally spotted a TV that displayed gates and flight numbers and learned that my flight was departing from gate B-15. I raced down there and promptly boarded my flight. All I can say is it's a damn lucky thing the plane at gate B-5 had the same departing time as my flight. What a dufus I am at times! Of course, the German women acting as clerks for EasyJet were stunning creatures. Dressed beautifully and so deeply tanned it appeared as if they had just stepped off a plane from a visit to the tropics. Maybe I wasn't listening carefully enough.

Anyway, I arrived in Berlin at about 9 am. I checked in with Jana, my Couchsurfing host, and told her I would be arriving in about an hour if I didn't screw anything else up.  After a 30 minute train ride and a short bus ride I reached her building and walked up to her flat. She greeted me warmly and asked if I'd care to have a breakfast of bacon and eggs, coffee and toast. Er, sure, I replied. After a fantastic breakfast she said, "I know you must be tired. Let me show you your room and you can catch up on some sleep." I had not slept much all night because I had caught a cab to Orly at 4:00 am. (I wanted plenty of leeway on my 6:30 departure time.) I needed no further convincing. I promptly settled into a blissful three hour slumber.

We went for a walk around her neighborhood after dinner.  I got my first look at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche) on the Kurfürstendamm (Berliners shorten that to Ku'damm, and it's one of Berlin's most famous streets), that night. The church was mostly destroyed in an air raid in November of 1943 (about a month after my birth). Its remains were left standing to serve as a memorial of WWII , a war in which 50 million people perished. I was deeply moved at the sight of the bullet holes and bomb damage plainly visible in the stone walls of the building. For many of you World War II is only faintly familiar, recalled from your high school history lessons perhaps, but for a person born in September of 1943 whose father was in France serving in the Army Air Corps, it has an almost palpable presence, a significance that can't be fully comprehended. For me it was a very emotional experience. Below are a few photos of the church along with a few scenes from a short  walk around Jana's neighborhood at night:

The picture directly above shows the dedication by Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia from when the church was built. The top one shows the damage sustained during the bombing - part of the mosaic is missing. I might post a few more pics as I find time. These were actually taken next day.

Below are a few shots taken that first night during our walk along the Kurfürstendamm. This first is an actual piece of the Wall, covered with graffiti as it was when the wall fell. There isn't much left of the old Berlin Wall. Parts were carried away as souvenirs, parts were probably reused in new construction and basically in the 20 years since, it has all but disappeared from the scene. It's so over. But of course, it will never be forgotten. And I just learned from Jana that there is a section of it still standing a few miles from here. I'll visit it later.

Above is an interesting, all glass faced building and below a shot of a performing arts center, the Theater des Westens, nicely lit up for me. When we got back to Jana's flat she served a delicious meal of schnitzel with mashed potatoes, and cauliflower with cheese sauce, a true German supper.

Next day, Wednesday, November 12, I visited  Potsdam with the intention to visit the several historic buildings, palaces actually, that are now museums. I strolled through the charming old town along the Brandenburger Strasse stopping in stores and as usual, checking out the eating places. Eventually I made my way to the Park Sanssouci and had a grand time enjoying the grounds, especially the beech and maple trees some of which were still exhibiting vibrant fall colors, skipping along kicking up dead leaves off the ground like I used to do when I lived in Buffalo and New England. That's one thing I really miss in Alaska.
When I reached the first museum, the Neues Palais, I learned  that the only way to see it is to go on a guided tour and that the next tour was almost an hour off. Furthermore, all the museums nearby were only accessible through the guided tour scenario. I decided to skip the museums. I like to see things at my own pace, stop and take photos, and skip things that don't appeal to me. So I wandered the park's many trails instead. Again I wished I had my bike along. Fantastic riding possibilities abound in Europe. I'm sure Amsterdam will delight in the same way. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Majestic beech trees

Here's one of the featured buildings in the park, the Chinese House, which was unfortunately closed for the season.

Chinesisches Haus

And I spotted this boldly colored little duck in the small pond just in front of the Chinese House. He's a beauty but without my trusty bird book I don't have a clue as to his common name or species. (Jana posted a comment in March 2010 in which she identified them as Mandarin ducks.)

Mandarin drake and hens

I headed back to town to get a coffee and lunch. Spotted these crazy kids fooling around on a bike. Wild hair on the (male) driver....

After coffee (an espresso macchiato for about 2 euros)  of course it was time for lunch. I checked out a bunch of places before finally settling on Maximilian's right on the Brandenburger Strasse. Of course I started out with a big old beer, a Berliner Kindl, and then gave the menu a good look. A goal on this trip is to eat foods I wouldn't see in the states so when I came to the Turkey livers in apple gravy with mashed potatoes (Putenleber mit Kartoffelpüree), I said, Oh yeah, that's the one. Uncommonly good, and served in an appealing presentation don't you think? A couple of beers and 9.20 euros for the putenleber came to €14.4, or about 20 bucks. Berlin is definitely more affordable than Paris, where I paid $15 for frickin' beer in Montmartre.

I've been a little surprised at the beer situation here. The Berliner brands, Berliner Kindl and Berliner Pilsner, are both fairly good but nothing I've had yet in Europe can compare to those tasty IPAs from Oregon that I've been drinking this summer in little old Homer, Alaska. The DesChutes Inversion, Widmer's Broken Halo, and Sierra Nevada's Torpedo, are fantastic IPAs. There are plenty of "light" beers, Hefeweizen, available here but I love the hoppy bite of those ales. Then too there are some weird mixtures available either in bottles or mixed at the bar: diesel (beer and coke), radler, which is beer mixed with orange or lemon Fanta or Sprite (ugh!), and Berliner Weisse,  a raspberry liqueur-beer mix that Jana told me about. These drinks are quite popular here. You know how athletes will drink Powerade or Gatorade in the states - here runners and bicyclists will often drink a tall glass of radler as a refreshing and electrolyte restoring drink after a workout.

And, while I'm doing comparisons, I might as well talk about coffee, more particularly espresso. I was expecting to find good espresso in Europe. When I visited New Zealand in 2004 I was pleasantly surprised to learn that almost everywhere except in the tiniest towns excellent espressos and lattes were readily available. My buddy Kirk had toured NZ twice before that trip and had told me to expect terrible coffee. Apparently hings have changed for the better in NZ.

Now that I've had espressos in Paris and Berlin I am here to tell you that nothing I've had yet can begin to compare to what Michael McGuire serves out at KBay Caffe in Homer. Restaurants here use semi-automatic machines to brew the coffee and heat the milk. I think most of them grind the beans on site but the coffee is weaker and decidedly less flavorful than what I've come to expect every day at KBay. I'll admit to being very fussy about coffee, spoiled as I have been since I quit drinking Folgers or Maxwell House 40 odd years ago and started buying custom roasted beans at the Coffee Connection in Harvard Square, so many of you would not be as critical as I am (Mako, are you listening?), but I must call a spade a spade. So there you have it--KBay Caffe rules!