Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum

This weekend I went with my good friend Heather on a trip to Leipzig, Sachsen’s second-largest city, about an hour from Dresden. After a late start, we got into the city around one in the afternoon, and began being tourists. We wandered around the Nikolai Church, saw Auerbach’s Cellar (made famous in Goethe’s play Faust), and went to the market place (where it was market day and I wanted to buy up all the fresh fruit and veggies I saw). The highlights, however, involved two of my past-times: music and food. The first was that Leipzig is where J.S. Bach worked in the Thomaskirche for 25-odd years. The Thomanerchor, the still-active boy’s choir, is world famous and as we walked into the church we discovered that they were rehearsing. So we got to listen to their rehearsal for a good twenty minutes. It was beautiful to hear such an amazing choir sing Bach’s music and stand right next to his grave.

The second highlight is perhaps more appropriate for this blog. Leipzig has a large coffee scene and is home to one of Europe’s oldest coffee houses, “Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum” (transl: “To the Arabic Coffee Tree”). Ever since working in a coffeehouse and writing a term paper on Viennese coffeehouses at the turn of the 19^th/20^th centuries I have been fascinated and in love with the café scene. Heather, also being a fan of literature and coffee, was one hundred percent behind me and so we made our way to the café. When we arrived, the first thing we found was a case full of the various cakes and tarts they were offering that day. We chose which ones we wanted before even having found the café room (there were several different venues in the building, including a couple restaurants). We finally found the café, on the second floor of the building, and it was packed. There was an Arabic café room, a Viennese room, and a French room. We sat down at a table in the French room that had just cleared, and as we did so a group of two retired couples joined us, as there was no other table free. So we were six people around a teeny table.

The Kaffee und Kuchen arrived and filled up our small table completely. Needless to say, both were delicious. My pear cake was topped with caramel and had a layer of chocolate cake in the middle and was the perfect moisture and fluffiness a pear cake, or any cake, should have. The coffee was, to sum it up in one word, simplydivine. (I know, I cheated!)

At first Heather and I had our conversation and the two couples had theirs, but the more time we spent together at the table, the more we began being intrigued by each other. By the time we all left the café, Heather and I had been treated to our fabulous coffee and cakes by one of the couples, and were given an address and invitation to stay with the other couple in their home in Jena, a couple of hours from Leipzig. We were flying higher than a kite as we stepped back out into the drizzly afternoon and headed back toward the Thomaskirche in the gathering dusk for an organ concert. And as if that experience wasn’t enough, as we rounded the church towards the entrance, we heard, then saw, a violist playing a movement from one of Bach’s cello sonatas. It turned out to be one of our Fulbright friends who supplements his stipend, and makes many interesting friends, by playing on the weekends by the church. His music was beautiful and it was wonderful to see how the various Fulbrighters have started to find their own niches in Germany.

One of the men at the café had said not to forget our experience at the café, not only because he was very impressed to meet such “intelligent and open-minded American women,” but because it’s moments and experiences like this that can change your life. I fully agree with him and know that this afternoon is an afternoon I will treasure always.

Zum Coffe Baum is located on Kleine Fleischergasse 4, 04109 Leipzig. Tel. : (0341) 96 100 60/61 http://www.coffe-baum.de/

The Sächsische Schweiz

When German romantic artists discovered the sandstone cliff formations outside of Dresden in the 19^th century it started a movement back toward nature at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Caspar David Friedrich is one of the many well-known artists who got their inspiration from the fairytale-like forests and viewpoints along the Elbe river. The story goes that some Swiss artists who were among the first to discover this area were so reminded of home that they dubbed the area the Sächsische Schweiz.

I was very happy to discover this area after I found out I would be living near Dresden this year, as hiking is something I really would like to do more often. A Fulbright friend of mine stationed in Hamburg, Andrew, was chatting with me on Friday and I told him about the area. He grew up in Minnesota and went to the University of Puget Sound in Washington, and because he missed hills and forests (Hamburg’s pretty much as flat as you can get), he decided to spontaneously come down for a visit. It was a great weekend, and included a fabulous hike.

We hopped on the regional train into Dresden from Radeberg, switched into an S-Bahn (commuter train) and were out in the Sächsische Schweiz within an hour. Having struggled through admissions at the Technische Universität Dresden I have finally received my Semester Ticket, which allows me to use all Dresden public transportation, including out to Radeberg and, amazingly, all the way to the Sächsische Schweiz. So, for a mere 73 Euros a semester, I have beautiful hiking, and all of Dresden, at my fingertips!

Andrew and I got off the S-Bahn in Wehlen, a sleepy town that is cut in half by the Elbe. The only way you can get across is by passenger ferry boat, and since the information office in the Rathaus was on the opposite side of the train station, we decided to hop on it. The river was actually very narrow, and Andrew pointed out that when the boat pointed its nose to the opposite riverbank to cross, it had already crossed a third of the river. Once we found the information office we bought a hiking map, bought some rolls at a bakery, and were off on our hike. After I navigated incorrectly and we had to ask a local for the right way, we finally found ourselves in the middle of a beautiful forest.

Throughout our walk, as we were engrossed in conversation, we would frequently stop and gasp at the amazing rock formations around us that seemed to grow, like the trees surrounding them, out of the earth. After about a two hour walk we arrived at the Bastei. We weren’t really sure what it was, but it appeared to be a major tourist attraction. There was a parking lot, which added to the amount tourism of course, a “Panorama Restaurant,” lots of kiosks, and some viewpoints that would have offered fantastic views (see picture), if the other tourists hadn’t been there to annoy us. It took us a good half hour of wandering around the tourist kitsch before we actually found the attraction: it turned out to be a bridge that spanned quite a few of the sandstone cliffs. It was built in the 19^th century and was architecturally quite impressive, but again, the tourists distracted from the enjoyment factor.

We were both beginning to get hungry, so we decided to continue on our hike and go to the next town, Rathen (pronounced: Rah-ten), for dinner. Andrew claimed he hadn’t had a “traditional German” meal yet, and that’s almost blasphemy for me if you’ve lived in Germany two months already, so we picked the one that looked most traditional and tasty and went for it. It was incredibly good. He had a Bauernfrühstück (farmer’s breakfast), which was different from what I’d expected. It was basically an omelet, though it tasted pretty good. I ordered a wild game goulash with Knödel (dumplings) and a cranberry sauce. It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Neither of us had a watch, which was actually really nice as we could leisurely enjoy the area in a timeless fashion. It turned out we were quite early for dinner, but it worked out perfectly as we had a unhurried dinner and still had plenty of time to walk back to Wehlen along the riverfront before it got dark.

We boarded the passenger ferry once more, missed the S-Bahn by two minutes, and had to wait another half hour in the station for the next one. When we arrived home we were tired but refreshed and in good spirits. The day had been a bit misty and had drizzled every now and then, but we were lucky because Andrew left the next day in the pouring rain. My legs being (embarrassingly) a bit sore, it was nice to just curl up in my apartment with a hot pot of tea and Fabian by Erich Kästner and read the afternoon away.

And on the 42nd Day there was an Oven…

When I got the description of my apartment, two days before I moved into it, it said “2 Zimmer mit Küchennutzung” (two rooms and use of kitchen). Usually, this means the kitchen is shared with other people who live on the same floor, or you have access to someone else’s kitchen. However, upon arrival I discovered I do have a kitchen of my own, but I share it with the house owner’s guests: their guest room is in my apartment. So, while most of the time the kitchen is mine, and I can keep it to the clean standards I require of myself (as one of the Fulbrighters here mentioned, I’m a “neat-freak” when it comes to the kitchen), I do have to share the kitchen every once in a while. So far this has happened once, and it was a very pleasant experience. I’m glad, because whenever someone comes and stays in the guest room, I have company and am not living entirely alone. I’m still getting used to the silence that seems to creep in with the setting sun.

There are two major draw-backs to my lovely Amelie kitchen: 1) the stove is a double hot plate that I plug into the wall when I want to use it, and 2) there is no oven. I’ve been able to adapt to the “stove” and have created very good meals, despite my lack of frying pans (which I’m working on). The oven, however, has been a different story. The teachers at the school have been very helpful in giving me items I need – I got an iron from one teacher, another is letting me borrow a television for the year, and a third has given me the mini toaster-oven the language assistant before me had (she stayed in the same apartment as I am in). I just got the oven this past week, and have been very excited to try it out. The teacher who gave me the iron also brought in an entire bucket of plums to school on Friday, after bringing in a plum tart on Wednesday. She threatened that if we teachers didn’t take the plums home, there would never be any more plums or plum tarts for us to enjoy. Being excited about free fresh fruit, and a bit afraid of the wrath that could ensue if I didn’t help myself, I took a bowlful home with me. I gave a good third of them to the visitor who was staying in the guest room, as she was leaving that day and I wanted to give her something for the train ride, and the rest I ate on my own. They have been a really good healthy snack alternative to the pieces of chocolate I’ve been eating lately, even though I have to admit they don’t quite replace the cocoa goodness!

I ate all of them except for about twenty, which I turned into a mini plum tart of my own, after my mother’s, and grandmother’s, recipe. I eye-balled the measurements (I didn’t bring any American measuring devices with me and have yet to buy a kitchen scale) and managed to make some sort of a dough, placed the plums on top, sprinkled it with a tasty streusel, and went to my oven to bake it. It was then that I realized that my beautiful, shiny, silver oven only has one temperature setting: and I have no idea what it is. I can only set the top or bottom heating elements to be on and how long it should bake.

Rather than break down in tears, which a part of me threatened to do, I decided to hope it was the standard 180 degrees centigrade (about 350 degrees farenheit), stuck my tart in, and crossed my fingers. I’m not sure if it was because the tart was a quarter the size it usually should be, or if the oven is a lot hotter than I had hoped, but the tart was done in about twelve minutes. I haven’t tasted it yet – I’m getting company today and was hoping to have a traditional German Sunday “Kaffee und Kuchen” – so I have no idea how it came out. My poor guest will have to be the guinea pig!

I think I am going to have to invest in an oven thermometer, just so I know what temperature at which I’m actually baking things. In the meantime, I’m already scheming how I’m going to fit a mini-turkey into my mini oven at Thanksgiving…

Zwetschgenkuchen

Note: I actually prefer this kuchen with fresh, tart apples, thinly sliced and placed in rows on top of the tart dough, then also sprinkled with streusel. Either way it’s very good served with a bit of whipped cream (sweetened or not, as you like) and coffee or tea.

1 3/4 cups flour
ca. 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup + a couple Tbsp (unsalted!) butter
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract (the real stuff folks, not the imitation!)
1 egg

Measure the flour, sugar, and baking powder into a pile on a clean counter or cutting board. Cut the butter into the flour mixture, making small pea-sized pieces. Add vanilla and egg and knead into a dough with your hands. If it is too dry, add a bit more butter.

For the streusel:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
ca. 1 stick (unsalted!) butter
ca. 1/2 tsp cinnammon (can be more if you like)

Again, cut the butter into the flour/sugar mixture and then mix the cinnammon in with your fingertips until there are loose, small clumps.

Roll the dough out thinly on a clean surface and place onto a baking sheet (the kind that has edges, not the flat cookie sheet kind). Cut plums down the edge of one side, open and remove the pit. Place plums in rows onto the dough, then top with streusel. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for about 30 minutes (checking regularly). The tart should not get browned, but should be done all the way.