Munich

Munich was really great! Actually, Munich itself was really cold and wet, but we had some really great hosts in Munich, particularly our now friend, Louis! He was hosting a few other Americans and we all chipped in and cooked meals together, conducted by Louis (he was way out of our league in terms of cooking, so we mostly learned from him). We had a ragout (ragoo?) made from scratch, a traditional Bavarian breakfast (which is mostly meat, bread, and cheese, like all the other meals, haha), a Lindsor torte, and more. He taught me a trick to cooking more seasonally and getting better at experimenting: when you make something, you look at 5-6 different recipes for the same thing and compare it to what you have and what is in season and what you like. This is probably the best bit of advice I have gotten, because usually I just follow recipes. Louis graduated in philosophy and is interested in the philosophy of food so we had some good talks. I plan to follow his blog, which is about all that stuff.
We really loved getting to spend time with people, much better than seeing all the sites and eating expensive food. Couch surfing has proved itself a great thing already.
I started reading another food book, called Eating Animals by Jonathan Saffran Foer. Another interesting book on the ethics of eating animals and how, mostly critiquing the American factory farm system. I didn't have time to finish it before I left. Sad.
So we are going to be here in Berlin as long as it takes to find the contemporary art that we can, move onto Prague for a couple days, Vienna for a couple, and hopefully spend the last week and a half in Italy before heading over to Greece. But we still are not sure if the ferry is running from Italy to Greece yet...