Fish with Whiskey

There are many great things about life in Australia, and being Australian.

You get to lie to inform people about drop bears. You get to surprise your foreign friends with Vegemite (and now, even Vegemite chocolate). You rarely have to cancel holidays because of rain.

But one of the crappiest things about being Aussie, is how far Aussie-land is from everywhere else.

Add to the 24 hours+ of plane travel to europe, a 7 hour time difference, and crippling fare prices, and you- the Aussie expat living in Berlin- will have a somewhat difficult time convincing friends and family to just 'drop by for a weekend'.

Which is why we're always grateful when friends and family manage to make their way across oceans to keep us company...

And to help us discover some of the great things about life in Germany.

One of those things being, as my uncle quickly discovered, the cheapness and abundance of raspberries:


Before I get onto the furious blogging about our trips to Poznan and Warsaw, I thought I'd share with you some photos of us frolicking, and of course- eating, with the family, at our local farmers market in Berlin.


^I actually am not sure if these are sold as bird feeders or people feeders. I guess the former?













^Here's looking at you, kids.


^Great food in Berlin often is Turkish Food in Berlin... and let's not forget the Turkish Coffee:










^You guys, Cheese! Convincing enough to lure you for a visit yet?


Ok, so I'm going to end with Andy and my aunt looking swanky as anything in front of one of Berlin's most famous tourist sites- the East Side Gallery.

I've had these photos floating around in an unpublished post for some time now. You can probably tell from my messy hair and the light sheen on everyone's faces that they were taken during 'That Berlin Heat-Wave' of a month or so back.

They've been hanging around in purgatory because the quality of the photos themselves is lacking, and, to be honest, Ethiopian cuisine doesn't seem to exactly sparkle for the camera.



But I didn't want to delete the shots, because, when it comes to food, aesthetics have to take second place to taste.

We visited Bejte Ethiopian, which is just around the corner of Noellendorfplatz U-bahn station, because it's close to us, because we like using our guests as an excuse to try new food, and because none of us really had any idea what Ethiopian food would be like.

Turns out, pretty darn good!

It started out well, in that the beer came out in a bowl.



Which Andy seemed to be into.




And then it got a whole lot better, when suddenly, a massive saucer descended upon the table.



My family is a lover of the 'try it all, share with friends' way of eating, so we had decided to go with a mixed platter, which was actually a mating of a two-person vegetarian tasting plate, with a two-person meaty delight plate.

It was... quite large.



As you can hopefully see from the photos, we ended up with 15 or so small curry- or stew-like mixtures, all sitting on a slightly lemon-y crepe.



Mix and match, smack lips, grin, repeat, until your stomach is stuffed, and the plate is (mostly) empty.


I have to admit that we didn't make it entirely though the whole lot.

Not for want of trying.

But even if we had, I suspect it is impossible to leave this place without a healthy level of satisfaction: the owners kept on reassuring us that they were more than happy to bring us a top up if our tummies so desired.




To be honest, I'm still not sure how to describe Ethiopian food, or define its place in the continuum of world flavours.

But if you head over to Bejte, I guess it's going to be pretty good!