8:37 p.m. (36 minutes into the game) Iran and Portugal are level; neither has scored a goal. Now the free kick after a foul by the Portuguese team... ends in nothing because the Portuguese goalkeeper Rui Patricio catches the ball.
I've never heard of Saransk; per Wikipedia it is the "capital city of the Republic of Mordovia, Russia, [. . .] located in the Volga basin at the confluence of the Saranka and Insar Rivers, about 630 kilometers (390 mi) east of Moscow."
8:39 p.m. (38 minutes into the game) Cristiano Ronaldo is noblemindedly giving away the ball to a teammate as he nears the Iranian goal. I'm touched, impressed, and not a little surprised.
8:41 p.m. (40 minutes into the game) A Portuguese player tackles an Iranian player by grasping both sides of his back from behind as if he were a 4th-grader about to play leapfrog in the classroom. While it looks highly unorthodox to me, the referee doesn't care.
8:44 p.m. (43 minutes into the game) Although I am hardly an expert on the Portuguese team, the levels of cooperation and cohesion here are rather creeping me out. It's like seeing a rather knavish lad piously sitting in front of his homework.
8:46 p.m. (45 minutes into the game) Quaresma, of the Portuguese team, has scored 1-0.
8:49 p.m. Halftime!
9:19 p.m. (60 minutes into the game) Eloquent gesturing, expressive to me of 'What the hell was that?', of the Portuguese coach toward the playing field. The game is still tense; Portugal doesn't seem to have strengthened its lead enough.
9:23 p.m. (63 minutes into the game) A Portuguese player throws in the ball from the side of the field, in front of the politely interested faces of Iranian fans.
9:25 p.m. (65 minutes into the game) Another strong, but inaccurate, shot on the Iranian goal from a fairly large distance by Cristiano Ronaldo.
9:29 p.m. (69 minutes into the game) Quaresma leaves the field, perhaps (I imagine) to prevent his getting a second yellow card in addition to his first. From past World Cups I remember him as being not averse to fouling now and then.
9:32 p.m. (72 minutes into the game) An Iranian player has just fired a good shot a foot or two to the side of the Portuguese goal.
9:35 p.m. (75 minutes into the game) The Iranian coach demanded a video replay of a supposed foul that didn't look too foul-y. The referee jogged over to reprimand the coach.
9:42 p.m. (82 minutes into the game) After replaying one or two different video recordings again, and again, (ad nauseam) on the review device, to determine the truth of events, the referee thrusts a yellow card on Cristiano Ronaldo. He had lashed out his arm toward an Iranian player behind him. It looked impatient, not vicious, and I think he aimed at the chest and not the face. So he didn't get a red card.
9:45 p.m. (85 minutes into the game) Morocco leads Spain 2-1. Awkward.
9:50 p.m. (90+ minutes into the game) The referee investigates if there was a handball. 6 minutes of extra play time. To be ungrateful, I think I've already had enough joy.
9:52 p.m. (90+ 2 minutes into the game) It was, it seems, a handball. 11-metre penalty for Iran. No pressure. Iran equalizes 1-1.
9:54 p.m. (90+ 4 minutes into the game) Iran had another good chance at a goal. Portugal is playing for time, apparently, and switching in a player.
9:55 p.m. (90+ 5 minutes into the game) 2-2 for Spain and Morocco after Spain's goal is dramatically revealed not to be offside.
9:58 p.m. The end of the game. The Iranian players are, partly, exhausted and depressed. The Portuguese players don't look happy. But the two coaches have embraced in a brotherly gesture.
Monday, June 25, 2018
Saturday, June 23, 2018
Live Blog: Korea and Mexico in Rostov
Although World Cup games often happen while I am working, the obstacles are now removed and I can watch them as much as I want to until Monday.
6:16 p.m. (58 minutes into the game) South Korea vs. Mexico is a highly entertaining game. Mexico: The billiard-like passes between the teammates; their lack of the listless passivity that has dragged down most of the best teams in the Cup; the brilliant goalkeeping of Guillermo Ochoa; the ease with which they run at the South Korean goal with three or four opposing players thronging around them, successfully preventing the ball from being taken away... All of this left me starry-eyed after the first half. The South Koreans aren't lousy either, just not the same type of 'soccer gods' who seem to have been playing soccer from their cradles and kicked a ball as soon as they could drink from a baby's bottle.
6:20 p.m. (62 minutes into the game) Hirving Lozano just sprang what looked like 4 feet into the air to catch a pass from a teammate with his feet, in front of the South Korean goal. It didn't bring any advantage for Mexico as far as I could tell, but it was truly beautiful. ..sigh.. But now he's been injured and, although he is no longer getting medical attention, he was hobbling around on the field for a while — and just looked terribly young.
6:23 p.m. (65 minutes into the game) Chicharrito has scored a goal for Mexico, so it's 2-0. This time it wasn't an 11-metre penalty. Apparently there was fouling going on, so it's an 'unclean' goal, per the television commentator, which is sad — I missed that scene.
6:30 p.m. (72 minutes into the game) I wonder if South Korea has had many more shots on Mexico's goal than vice versa. In the first half it looked like the Mexican team was purposely letting the Korean team do a lot of the running. ... Another yellow card after another foul, this time by the Korean team. (I don't remember the Mexican team getting yellow cards, but perhaps I missed one.)
6:34 p.m. (76 minutes into the game) Guillermo Ochoa to the goaltending rescue again... I admire his skills so much, although he just nearly gave the ball away with a too-complacent pass to a teammate at his goal. He has clashed knees with a Korean player and doesn't look very happy.
6:37 p.m. (79 minutes into the game) Yet another handball, a few minutes ago. Another yellow card as a Mexican player lies on the ground, again — a Korean player 'clotheslined' him across the throat...
6:47 p.m. (89 minutes into the game) It looks like a Mexican player has been bonked in the nose by a Korean player's arm... I will say that on the whole the Korean players seem friendly enough before, during and after their teammates' fouls. Speaking of which...
6:50 p.m. (90 +2 minutes into the game) The Korean team has now scored a goal against Mexico. 1-2. I guess it's well-deserved after all their effort. But admittedly I still yelled 'Noooo.'
6:53 p.m. Game ended. The Korean team looks sad, but they didn't do badly — at least in this game; I haven't seen their others.
6:16 p.m. (58 minutes into the game) South Korea vs. Mexico is a highly entertaining game. Mexico: The billiard-like passes between the teammates; their lack of the listless passivity that has dragged down most of the best teams in the Cup; the brilliant goalkeeping of Guillermo Ochoa; the ease with which they run at the South Korean goal with three or four opposing players thronging around them, successfully preventing the ball from being taken away... All of this left me starry-eyed after the first half. The South Koreans aren't lousy either, just not the same type of 'soccer gods' who seem to have been playing soccer from their cradles and kicked a ball as soon as they could drink from a baby's bottle.
6:20 p.m. (62 minutes into the game) Hirving Lozano just sprang what looked like 4 feet into the air to catch a pass from a teammate with his feet, in front of the South Korean goal. It didn't bring any advantage for Mexico as far as I could tell, but it was truly beautiful. ..sigh.. But now he's been injured and, although he is no longer getting medical attention, he was hobbling around on the field for a while — and just looked terribly young.
6:23 p.m. (65 minutes into the game) Chicharrito has scored a goal for Mexico, so it's 2-0. This time it wasn't an 11-metre penalty. Apparently there was fouling going on, so it's an 'unclean' goal, per the television commentator, which is sad — I missed that scene.
6:30 p.m. (72 minutes into the game) I wonder if South Korea has had many more shots on Mexico's goal than vice versa. In the first half it looked like the Mexican team was purposely letting the Korean team do a lot of the running. ... Another yellow card after another foul, this time by the Korean team. (I don't remember the Mexican team getting yellow cards, but perhaps I missed one.)
6:34 p.m. (76 minutes into the game) Guillermo Ochoa to the goaltending rescue again... I admire his skills so much, although he just nearly gave the ball away with a too-complacent pass to a teammate at his goal. He has clashed knees with a Korean player and doesn't look very happy.
6:37 p.m. (79 minutes into the game) Yet another handball, a few minutes ago. Another yellow card as a Mexican player lies on the ground, again — a Korean player 'clotheslined' him across the throat...
6:47 p.m. (89 minutes into the game) It looks like a Mexican player has been bonked in the nose by a Korean player's arm... I will say that on the whole the Korean players seem friendly enough before, during and after their teammates' fouls. Speaking of which...
6:50 p.m. (90 +2 minutes into the game) The Korean team has now scored a goal against Mexico. 1-2. I guess it's well-deserved after all their effort. But admittedly I still yelled 'Noooo.'
6:53 p.m. Game ended. The Korean team looks sad, but they didn't do badly — at least in this game; I haven't seen their others.
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Stravinsky, Tagliatelle, and World Cup Fever
The leaf-petals of linden trees have turned golden and are being swept from the trees in an early harbinger of autumn. It was the perfect time to go to Unter den Linden for the free open-air concert, Staatsoper für Alle, led by Daniel Barenboim as always and played by the Staatskapelle. This year the programme spread over two days, and today it was the overture from Rossini's Barber of Seville, Claude Debussy's Iberia, and Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps. I leaned against the stone façade of the hotel beside St. Hedwig's Cathedral, and observed all I could from about four car-lengths behind the raised stage. It was covered by a barn-like shape of a transparent roof that let the blue sky and white piling clouds through the front, and the (literally) stately buildings of the State Opera Unter den Linden and the Humboldt University Faculty of Law to the right and left. The percussionists' black rolly chairs at the back of the orchestra were more than six feet above the ground.
***
After I returned home, Ge. and I went shopping and brought back, amongst other things, chocolate-covered popsicles. And he made ice cream milkshakes with seasonal strawberries and peaches. I tried a recipe from The Naked Chef: tagliatelle with zucchini, lemon and basil. I did not, sadly, hand-make the tagliatelle.
***
The FIFA World Cup is afoot, but I don't think I have watched a whole game yet. The best ones I partly watched were Spain vs. Portugal yesterday, and today's Argentina vs. Iceland, which was also a corker. I liked the thoughtful approach that Spain and Iceland had.
In Canada I never knew when the World Cup was happening. But I do like the general celebration here, and the internationalism. On Friday, the public viewing amenities were packed outside restaurants and bars — roaring televised crowds and pontificating commentators, groups of engaged fans talking and watching large screens in agog clusters, drinks in tall glasses, strings of flags from dozens of nationalities fluttering over the sidewalk. The faces of German's best and brightest soccer stars are plastered on billboards for a large sports apparel company, all along the Alexanderplatz train platform that I use to get home. A few German-Turkish fans seem to be celebrating Germany enthusiastically, too; Turkey isn't in the tournament, as far as I know.
Today the restaurant terraces were emptier. But plastic leis in Germany's red, gold and black were sold outside a dollar store. People walked by at the concert in Argentinian team jerseys with Messi's 10 on the back. A black SUV parked near the Mall of Berlin had German flags beside the windshield. A display board near Potsdamer Platz mentioned that traffic was shut off around the Street of the 17th of June, for the huge fan area near Brandenburg Gate, which I believe can hold over a million people. (The area will open tomorrow for our game vs. Mexico.) And I heard a few howls of euphoria coming from the street beneath our apartment when Denmark scored against Peru this evening.
***
In the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, and before the concert today, I have been re-reading a story in modern Greek and remembering with increasing vividness how much and why I regretted it before. As a fishmonger might become an expert in several variants of fish stink the more often he is around fish that meets the date of expiry, I feel that my amateur attempts at writing fiction have made me an expert in several variants of writing that stinks. I've learned by doing. And I feel that my expertise is pertinent here.
Also, I've struggled with another page or so of the astrophysics book, which was about calculating properties of different depths of stars that have radiative cores and convective envelopes. But I had an easier time with the Voltaire Philosophical Dictionary that I quoted from in the last blog entry. Aristotle's Politics I haven't continued yet after my singleminded immersions into Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Wolff's Fire and Fury (good companion reads), but I have slipped Tariq Ali's Dilemmas of Lenin into the work bag and hope to read it after Voltaire. The Voltaire is an abridged translation, so I won't count it as part of my paper-books-read-this-year tally, which is doing well. On Friday I roamed a bookshop I'd never been in before, and ended up splurging on a black leather-bound, gilt-edged 19th-century edition of Montaigne's essays, fourth volume. I feel that I should read it soon, as well, but perhaps not in trains for fear of damaging it.
But I wish to relax tomorrow. I feel overstimulated, hypercritical, and a little grumpy, likely because of the long walks to and from the concert, the excitement of the concert itself and of the World Cup, and the shopping and cooking on top of that. I played the piano — Spanish Dances by Granados — but not long enough to mellow me. On Monday I'll take part in a meeting at 9:45 a.m., which (I've just realized) means that I must be at work earlier. But I'll also be confronting the bad showing I'll have made in the World Cup office betting pool that a human resources colleague has set up — I thought Peru and Spain would win their games, and would never have dreamed that Iceland would tie Argentina. After reading the American statistician Nate Silver's website, it looks like my predictions for tomorrow were also way off. My bad World Cup guesses are the least of my worries, and in fact the resulting discussions should be quite fun.
***
Having gone on at self-indulgent length, I think I'll stop here.
After I returned home, Ge. and I went shopping and brought back, amongst other things, chocolate-covered popsicles. And he made ice cream milkshakes with seasonal strawberries and peaches. I tried a recipe from The Naked Chef: tagliatelle with zucchini, lemon and basil. I did not, sadly, hand-make the tagliatelle.
***
The FIFA World Cup is afoot, but I don't think I have watched a whole game yet. The best ones I partly watched were Spain vs. Portugal yesterday, and today's Argentina vs. Iceland, which was also a corker. I liked the thoughtful approach that Spain and Iceland had.
In Canada I never knew when the World Cup was happening. But I do like the general celebration here, and the internationalism. On Friday, the public viewing amenities were packed outside restaurants and bars — roaring televised crowds and pontificating commentators, groups of engaged fans talking and watching large screens in agog clusters, drinks in tall glasses, strings of flags from dozens of nationalities fluttering over the sidewalk. The faces of German's best and brightest soccer stars are plastered on billboards for a large sports apparel company, all along the Alexanderplatz train platform that I use to get home. A few German-Turkish fans seem to be celebrating Germany enthusiastically, too; Turkey isn't in the tournament, as far as I know.
Today the restaurant terraces were emptier. But plastic leis in Germany's red, gold and black were sold outside a dollar store. People walked by at the concert in Argentinian team jerseys with Messi's 10 on the back. A black SUV parked near the Mall of Berlin had German flags beside the windshield. A display board near Potsdamer Platz mentioned that traffic was shut off around the Street of the 17th of June, for the huge fan area near Brandenburg Gate, which I believe can hold over a million people. (The area will open tomorrow for our game vs. Mexico.) And I heard a few howls of euphoria coming from the street beneath our apartment when Denmark scored against Peru this evening.
***
In the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, and before the concert today, I have been re-reading a story in modern Greek and remembering with increasing vividness how much and why I regretted it before. As a fishmonger might become an expert in several variants of fish stink the more often he is around fish that meets the date of expiry, I feel that my amateur attempts at writing fiction have made me an expert in several variants of writing that stinks. I've learned by doing. And I feel that my expertise is pertinent here.
Also, I've struggled with another page or so of the astrophysics book, which was about calculating properties of different depths of stars that have radiative cores and convective envelopes. But I had an easier time with the Voltaire Philosophical Dictionary that I quoted from in the last blog entry. Aristotle's Politics I haven't continued yet after my singleminded immersions into Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Wolff's Fire and Fury (good companion reads), but I have slipped Tariq Ali's Dilemmas of Lenin into the work bag and hope to read it after Voltaire. The Voltaire is an abridged translation, so I won't count it as part of my paper-books-read-this-year tally, which is doing well. On Friday I roamed a bookshop I'd never been in before, and ended up splurging on a black leather-bound, gilt-edged 19th-century edition of Montaigne's essays, fourth volume. I feel that I should read it soon, as well, but perhaps not in trains for fear of damaging it.
But I wish to relax tomorrow. I feel overstimulated, hypercritical, and a little grumpy, likely because of the long walks to and from the concert, the excitement of the concert itself and of the World Cup, and the shopping and cooking on top of that. I played the piano — Spanish Dances by Granados — but not long enough to mellow me. On Monday I'll take part in a meeting at 9:45 a.m., which (I've just realized) means that I must be at work earlier. But I'll also be confronting the bad showing I'll have made in the World Cup office betting pool that a human resources colleague has set up — I thought Peru and Spain would win their games, and would never have dreamed that Iceland would tie Argentina. After reading the American statistician Nate Silver's website, it looks like my predictions for tomorrow were also way off. My bad World Cup guesses are the least of my worries, and in fact the resulting discussions should be quite fun.
***
Having gone on at self-indulgent length, I think I'll stop here.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Voltaire on England's Protector and on Relief From Remorse
 |
| Newton, Emilie du Chatelet (the Muse) and Voltaire Frontispiece from Elémens de la philosophie de Newton (ca. 1738) via Wikimedia Commons |
Because I have already 'spammed' the Lighthouse blog with Voltaire quotations, I thought that I would vary the entertainment and offer the quotations here instead.
For whichever reason, I adore Voltaire's one-sided feud with the historical figure of Oliver Cromwell. One of the French philosopher's greatest flaws from a philosophical standpoint is, in my view, his belittling attitude toward every foreign religion. But I did enjoy this paragraph:
Nearly all the officers of his army were enthusiasts who carried the New Testament at their saddle-bow: in the army as in the parliament men spoke only of making Babylon fall, of establishing the religion in Jerusalem, of shattering the colossus. Among so many madmen Cromwell ceased to be mad"Cromwell I" in Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, H.I. Woolf, ed. and transl. (New York: Knopf, 1924) [Hanover College]
I also found the first sentence of Voltaire's essay on "Expiation" deeply touching and poetic, as I believe he calculatingly intended it should be.
Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for their transgressions by penitences.It wasn't the punishment part that struck me, but of course the part about healing the harm that has been inflicted on one's soul, through true expiation.
(Side note: I don't sympathize with Voltaire's adulation of Sir Isaac Newton. Bertrand Russell — if I remember rightly — and my father both believed that Newton was a bit of a jerk, and I've read nothing that persuades me otherwise. The illustration above is also pretty saccharine. I wonder if Voltaire was smoking something whenever he read or wrote of the Englishman.)
Fire and Fury, in June
Yesterday I read the last page of Fire and Fury, the memoir by Michael Wolff of all the competition for positions for one's self, favours for allies or friends, and success for one's own ideas and initiatives, of the White House during the first months of the Trump administration.
It is a bit dated already, but although I've read it half a year after the publication date there was gossip in it that I'd missed. There was mention of John Bolton's escapade in a hotel, for example — John Bolton, of course, being the heavily mustached individual whom George W. Bush appointed as Ambassador to the UN after Bolton had said that if a few levels of the UN Building were taken off, no one would care. Now he is the National Security Adviser.
(I see that even Jimmy Carter has aired his opinion of the National Security Adviser appointment:
Wolff mentions few details, but the episode became part of the government hearing when John Bolton was being considered as the UN Ambassador. In Kyrgyzstan two decades ago, an American public relations expert had written a letter to her employers at USAID saying that the company that Bolton worked for wasn't providing enough money. Bolton took it personally; he
"Bolton 'would bang on my door and shout'" [The Independent] (April 24, 2005)
In Fire and Fury's White House, such behaviour, temperamental unreliability, and perhaps incompetence for the job a person is given, are quite the ordinary course of things.
It's described in Wolff's zippy, anecdotal, and, on occasion, quite witty and epigrammatical prose.
It is a bit dated already, but although I've read it half a year after the publication date there was gossip in it that I'd missed. There was mention of John Bolton's escapade in a hotel, for example — John Bolton, of course, being the heavily mustached individual whom George W. Bush appointed as Ambassador to the UN after Bolton had said that if a few levels of the UN Building were taken off, no one would care. Now he is the National Security Adviser.
(I see that even Jimmy Carter has aired his opinion of the National Security Adviser appointment:
When USA Today's Washington bureau chief Susan Page asked the Georgia Democrat and former president what advice he would give to Trump on North Korea, Carter replied: "You mean, other than fire John Bolton? That would be my first advice.""Jimmy Carter: Trump's John Bolton pick one of his 'worst mistakes'" [CNN] (March 26, 2018))
Wolff mentions few details, but the episode became part of the government hearing when John Bolton was being considered as the UN Ambassador. In Kyrgyzstan two decades ago, an American public relations expert had written a letter to her employers at USAID saying that the company that Bolton worked for wasn't providing enough money. Bolton took it personally; he
banged on her hotel room door and ranted at her over a two-week period in 1994. He also made disparaging remarks about her weight, accused her of theft and even questioned her sexuality.Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, was also worried about Bolton being disagreeable toward his subordinates at other workplaces.
"I was alone in the hotel room. It was easy for him to drop by and bang on the door, trying to pressure me until I broke," she said.
"Bolton 'would bang on my door and shout'" [The Independent] (April 24, 2005)
In Fire and Fury's White House, such behaviour, temperamental unreliability, and perhaps incompetence for the job a person is given, are quite the ordinary course of things.
It's described in Wolff's zippy, anecdotal, and, on occasion, quite witty and epigrammatical prose.
Sunday, June 03, 2018
A Cloudy, Lazy Summer's Saturday
Yesterday felt like one of the longest days of my life, although not in a bad way. I woke up before 10 a.m., and at some point ate breakfast with the family. On the weekends we generally have a bag of three croissants, two raisin buns (these are a recent development), a pumpkin seed bun and perhaps one or two other whole grain buns, a poppy seed bun, and two or three plain oval buns with the cut on top which the Berliner calls Schrippen. At present we have orange marmalade, rose hip jam, honey, pepper salami, hams and cheeses to put on top.
***
***
In the early afternoon my sister and I went to the Viktoriapark in Kreuzberg, enjoying the cloudy weather after the heat of the past week, and conversed while perched on a wooden fence that overlooks the waterfall. Since she had her bike along, it would have been more trouble to reach the top of the Kreuzberg hill, with its monument to the Napoleonic Wars at the head of a double staircase, but there were many tourists and residents (speaking Australian-accented English, Turkish, etc.) who did go to the trouble. A dog was standing at the side of the waterfall on its owner's leash, and three or so people sat and read books on the rocky landings, as twin ranks of green trees stretched at the foot of the hill, along a little-trafficked boulevard where cyclists rode down the centres of their lanes.
I have rarely seen happier plant growth in Berlin: a round-leafed plantain grew large in the gravelly soil, fresh paler green leaves at the tips of a large boxwood were thriving, and a yew was shedding scraps of golden plant matter into the frothing brown water. And the late-leafed plane trees were spread out to the finest extent of their crowns. The lawns were tall and misty and pleasingly mysterious, and one could imagine gnats dreaming and wandering in the shadows at their edges.
Now and then my sister and I would move to the side, so that people could take pictures of themselves, families, and friends, in front of this backdrop.
***
After that exercise both of us felt uncomfortably warm after all, and (to perpetrate a pun) warmed to the idea of visiting the Schlachtensee. We prodded a brother to come along, and then rode a train out more and more into the southwestern edge of Berlin.
At the lake, we padded along the trail, amongst the white-flowering jasmine bushes and the joggers and the cyclists, before we found a nook at the earthy banks.
There we hung up our towels and clothing. And we trod out into the water, passed a beach ball to and fro until we were happy enough with the water temperature to be submerged up to the neck, and practiced beginners' breast strokes and doggy-paddling and underwater handstands. Ducklings above the water surface and fish (not much longer than a sardine) beneath the water surface frolicked nearby. Far away a white dead tree trunk leaned against the masses of evergreen and deciduous trees, above lighter contingents of reeds at the water's edge.
It was grey weather. The water felt cold at first, too, in the absence of direct sunshine. But despite what felt like a threat of thunder, lightning, or torrents of rain, the conditions were mild even long after a cool breeze arose and we decided to take the train home.
***
Aside from being in the mood to venture outside, I was in the frame of mind to cook, specifically 'Italian' food. I prepared two salads: one a fennel and radish salad with a lemon juice and olive oil vinaigrette after Jamie Oliver, the other, an inaccurate caprese salad of lamb's lettuce, mozzarella and tomato with a darker vinaigrette. We ate these with leftover baked things from breakfast. Then I made white Beelitz asparagus, topped with melted butter and salt and pepper; that, I admit, is not Italian at all. Lastly, I mixed mascarpone together with vanilla sugar and orange peel to eat with the blueberries, raspberries and strawberries that we had.
It was the first time I've knowingly eaten mascarpone, which I did not much like until I had added a lot of the orange peel. It has made me less enthusiastic about making a traditional tirami su, which I've thought in any case might be tastier although less noble if it had a semolina pudding lightened with vanilla custard in it instead of mascarpone or whipped cream. But, to be frank, I've bored my family horribly with my longing for a traditional tirami su for at least two decades, so I should take the plunge, try it and 'get it out of my system' soon.
I also bought white wine (from Italy, a soave) and cooled it in one side of the sink. Perhaps that was pretentious; if it was, I was horribly punished for it when family members (who shall go unnamed) put a used bowl and two dirty spoons in the basin, and mascarpone scum bobbed merrily alongside. I gave up, retrieved the bottle from the sink and put it back in the refrigerator. And we drank it with take-out pizza and sorbet in the late evening, and although I've found it both useless and expensive to even consider becoming the least bit precious about wines, I think it tasted rather good with the lemon sorbet.
I have rarely seen happier plant growth in Berlin: a round-leafed plantain grew large in the gravelly soil, fresh paler green leaves at the tips of a large boxwood were thriving, and a yew was shedding scraps of golden plant matter into the frothing brown water. And the late-leafed plane trees were spread out to the finest extent of their crowns. The lawns were tall and misty and pleasingly mysterious, and one could imagine gnats dreaming and wandering in the shadows at their edges.
Now and then my sister and I would move to the side, so that people could take pictures of themselves, families, and friends, in front of this backdrop.
***
After that exercise both of us felt uncomfortably warm after all, and (to perpetrate a pun) warmed to the idea of visiting the Schlachtensee. We prodded a brother to come along, and then rode a train out more and more into the southwestern edge of Berlin.
At the lake, we padded along the trail, amongst the white-flowering jasmine bushes and the joggers and the cyclists, before we found a nook at the earthy banks.
There we hung up our towels and clothing. And we trod out into the water, passed a beach ball to and fro until we were happy enough with the water temperature to be submerged up to the neck, and practiced beginners' breast strokes and doggy-paddling and underwater handstands. Ducklings above the water surface and fish (not much longer than a sardine) beneath the water surface frolicked nearby. Far away a white dead tree trunk leaned against the masses of evergreen and deciduous trees, above lighter contingents of reeds at the water's edge.
It was grey weather. The water felt cold at first, too, in the absence of direct sunshine. But despite what felt like a threat of thunder, lightning, or torrents of rain, the conditions were mild even long after a cool breeze arose and we decided to take the train home.
***
Aside from being in the mood to venture outside, I was in the frame of mind to cook, specifically 'Italian' food. I prepared two salads: one a fennel and radish salad with a lemon juice and olive oil vinaigrette after Jamie Oliver, the other, an inaccurate caprese salad of lamb's lettuce, mozzarella and tomato with a darker vinaigrette. We ate these with leftover baked things from breakfast. Then I made white Beelitz asparagus, topped with melted butter and salt and pepper; that, I admit, is not Italian at all. Lastly, I mixed mascarpone together with vanilla sugar and orange peel to eat with the blueberries, raspberries and strawberries that we had.
It was the first time I've knowingly eaten mascarpone, which I did not much like until I had added a lot of the orange peel. It has made me less enthusiastic about making a traditional tirami su, which I've thought in any case might be tastier although less noble if it had a semolina pudding lightened with vanilla custard in it instead of mascarpone or whipped cream. But, to be frank, I've bored my family horribly with my longing for a traditional tirami su for at least two decades, so I should take the plunge, try it and 'get it out of my system' soon.
I also bought white wine (from Italy, a soave) and cooled it in one side of the sink. Perhaps that was pretentious; if it was, I was horribly punished for it when family members (who shall go unnamed) put a used bowl and two dirty spoons in the basin, and mascarpone scum bobbed merrily alongside. I gave up, retrieved the bottle from the sink and put it back in the refrigerator. And we drank it with take-out pizza and sorbet in the late evening, and although I've found it both useless and expensive to even consider becoming the least bit precious about wines, I think it tasted rather good with the lemon sorbet.
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