Spandau

Last night I was so exhausted that we went to our room after being at the bakery, we turned on the tv and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was on, then the next thing I know it’s 11pm and I’m waking up with my clothes on. I didn’t eat dinner and instead rolled over and changed into my pajamas and went back to sleep. We had class this morning at 10am and learned about the minerals in brewing water and about the mashing process and enzymes. I’m glad that some of the things we’ve been learning about I have in my brain somewhere from chemistry in high school or nutrition or physiology last year; I was worried that a lot of the technical stuff would go over my head. After the lessons, Amanda and Jenna did their presentations. Amanda’s presentation was about brewing behind the Iron Curtain. I had heard of that phrase before, but wasn’t completely sure what it was. The Iron Curtain was essentially the division between Eastern Europe and Western Europe—behind it would be the Eastern side. The Eastern side was the side run by Communism and was only allowed to brew the beer that the Soviets said was ok—which was mostly the same cheap Pilsner everywhere. This beer died out once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 because people were able to get better beer. Jenna taught us a little more about Gose, a type of beer from Goslar. I haven’t tried it but from her description—sour, salty, fermented with yeast and lactic bacteria, and some people add raspberry or woodruff syrup because of the taste—it sounded similar to Berliner Weisse, the beer that Emma presented on yesterday. I hope I am able to try it to see if I can find a difference between the two.

After class we took a train to Spandau to visit a brewery. We went to the Brau Haus Braueri in Spandau and took a tour of their facilities and had lunch. The brewery was set up very similarly to the one we toured yesterday that has been turned into a museum, except this one was obviously in use. * They started at the top and ended at the bottom, but the Brau Haus doesn’t bottle their beer—it goes straight into the tap at their bar. We got to try both types of their beer—the Helles and the Dunkel (light and dark). I’m still developing my beer skills, but the Helles was not filtered and was a little cloudy but generally a golden yellow color. Since it wasn’t filtered, it tasted a little yeasty. The Dunkel was super dark and had almost a coffee-taste—not my favorite since I’m not a fan of coffee, but it was pretty tasty overall since the coffee-flavor wasn’t overpowering. We were also served a pretzel that was good and lunch of cooked carrots, potatoes, and a hamburger-esque beef with some sauce that kind of reminded me of Salisbury steak. Overall I was way too full to eat it all but it was all so delicious.

The rest of our day was a free day so most of us chose to go to the Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum). It was only 5 Euros to get in or only 2.50 if you had a student id—which I didn’t because I left it in the hotel, who would’ve thought I would need it. The museum was designed by Daniel Libeskind and was all sorts of zig-zag craziness. The whole museum was disorienting because you could walk around and have no clue where you were and windows were sparse—and many of them just went into the middle of the building and you could really only see a concrete wall. We went through a door into a room that we later found out was called the “Holocaust Tower”. The room was freezing and dark—the only light came from a slight opening at the top where some natural light fell through. It was probably what I liked most about the museum—I mean the personal stories from the holocaust and the history of Judaism were interesting, but this was something where you could interpret it yourself. There was also “The Garden of Exile” and “Fallen Leaves” which were exhibits that I found particularly fascinating. “The Garden of Exile” was made of columns filled with earth and was outside on slanted ground to show how even escaping could still not feel right. “Fallen Leaves” was an area containing tons of faces made out of metal covering the floor to honor the innocent victims of war and violence. Overall the museum was really interesting but so disorienting because of the sloping and zigging and zagging. I don’t think I had ever been to a museum before that put so much thought and effort into the architecture and layout to match the content.

*The brewmaster who led the tour didn’t speak English so everything was translated through a couple of people, but I was told that he used to work for the Coca Cola Company earlier in his life, and we were told that beer is healthier than Coke—it only has water, hops, grains, and yeast whereas Coke has tons of chemicals (Remember this for future referenceJ)