Saniye's First Birthday

No, Saniye is not turning one.  But this was the first time she was able to celebrate her birthday on the date of her birth according to my best guess based on novice astrological calculations.  

Let's back up a few steps.  Who is Saniye?  Well, she was essentially the first person we met in Berlin, and she has become one of our best friends here.  She owns the fantastic café, Bitter Süß (roughly pronounced Bitter Zoo-s), that we live above so we see her daily.  She and I have passed many afternoons chatting about life, human nature, love, travel, religion, and the stars while sipping latte macchiatos in her shop.  

Here she is opening up her shop first thing in the morning.  Her locally painted sign and colorful handmade pillows are like a welcoming beacon to all who live on the block. 

When we walked in on the first day, Saniye was playing Devendra Banhart's "At the Hop" (one of my favorite songs) and she had The New York Review of Books (Fritz's favorite periodical) displayed on one of her coffee tables.  Surrounded by cozy 1950s decor and newspapers hanging from a rack on the wall, listening to one good song after the next, and sniffing the sweet smells of freshly baked scones wafting through the air, I took one bite of her heavenly chocolate cake and felt like we had struck gold!

The regulars who frequent Saniye's shop have lovingly started to refer to Bitter Süß as "the living room".  I have met many of our neighbors here and have made several good friends because of the wonderful environment Saniye has created.  She knows just about everyone who enters her shop and often hugs most of her visitors.

Fritz, Allie, and Ben during their visit to Berlin

Fritz and I always bring visitors to Saniye's shop for her delicious brunch or a slice the most amazing chocolate cake I could ever dream of. 

Saniye and her little duck, a birthday gift from Fritz's parents

It didn't take long for Fritz and me to figure out that Saniye was a very special person.  In one of our early interactions with her, we learned that she can speak 5 languages fluently.  She was quite humble about this fact and then she said, "And I want to learn 5 more before I die.  I think if I could speak 10 languages, then I would be rich."  With this kind of life perspective and ideas about where true wealth lies, I knew that Saniye was someone I needed to get to know.  

She was born in a small village in Turkey but came to Berlin with her parents as a little girl.  She went to university in Scotland and spent a year in Chile teaching English.  So as you can see, she is quite the international woman!  Still she dreams of moving back to the Turkish village where she was born to connect with the land and lifestyle of her ancestors, learning from the richness that would come from such an experience.  

Over the months, Saniye has generously shared many stories from her life.  The quiet conversations we have had together, or occasionally in the company of another "living room visitor," has enriched my life as I have absorbed her unique perspective and tried to soak up the incredible openness with which she greets the world.  

So as I mentioned, Saniye has never known her exact birthday since she was born in a rural Turkish village.  Her mom can only remember that she was born just after sunset at the end of April or early May based on the farming cycles of the village.  As a young student of Astrology (just starting my 3rd year), figuring out Saniye's birthday based on the location of the sun and moon during the month of her birth was a challenge I was excited to tackle.  

Our many conversations that dove into the depths of Saniye's life, purspective, and purpose, resulted in, not only a date but the exact time of Saniye's birth.  April 27th at 9:11pm, and I won't tell you the year out of respect for Saniye... though she seems like the kind of person who doesn't really mind if people know how old she is.

Now, you may or may not believe that anchient Astrological principals hold any relevence to todays modern world, but somehow the universe brought Fritz and I to Bitter Süß where we met Saniye.  And she told me her story, and I am a richer person because of it.  

For that reason, on April 27th Fritz and I held a small birhtday party for Saniye in our apartment.  Our beautiful friend Laura came too, bringing a colorful assorment of the best macarons in Berlin, and the four of us talked, and laughed, and shared our memories until we were all yawning and too sleepy to utter another coherent sentence.  

So Happy 1st Birthday Saniye!  You have made our time in Berlin so special, you give this neighborhood a shelter full of warmth and welcomeness, and because of you, the world is a better place!

Becca's Berlin Birthday Party

This is the first time the three of us have been together for one of our birthdays in a very long time!  We went to this awesome store called Kochhaus (Cook House), which sells groceries organized in individually portioned recipes.  Jarrod, Becca and I each picked one recipe that we wanted to make and share with the group and these three dishes collectively created our dinner for 5!  

The birthday girl has recently gone gluten-free so we made her a flourless chocolate mousse cake made from a secret ingredient that you will never guess!

Avocados!  

6 Avocados

3 Teaspoon of Vanilla

1 Teaspoon of Salt

1 1/2 Cups of Melted Chocolate Chips (or more if you want)

3/4 Cups of Sugar (or more to taste)

Whisk it up, then refrigerate for 3 hours.  Jarrod made fresh whipped cream to top it off.  It tasted great with raspberries and apples! 

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Becca.

Happy Birthday to you!

Thanks for coming all the way to Germany so we could celebrate the start of year 27 with you!

Birthday Photography and Life

Photo by Karin

Three years ago, my thoughtful fiancée gave me an awesome Christmas present: a Fujifilm X20 camera.  Basically, it has been glued to my side since he gave it to me and it is what I have been using to take all of our Germany Adventure photos.

It's awesome because it's light and little, but the optics are really good and it has all the manual options that a huge, heavy SLR (single lens reflex) camera would have.  Since I got the camera, I've been learning by trial-and-error how to use the manual settings as well as some of the other fun features (like when I take double exposures).  Still, my photography knowledge was a random hodge-podge of information acquired by reading the camera manual and soaking up as much information as possible  from my wise photographer friends.

Once again, my thoughtful fiancée struck with yet another gift that keeps on giving... for my 30th birthday he enrolled me in a Photography Workshop where I could formally learn the ins and outs of photography.  

We met on a Sunday morning at a funky cafe in East Berlin.  You can see the cafe ceiling in the picture above.  

Here Paul spent 3 hours breaking down the elements of exposure and how to control them using our respective cameras.  There were 6 people in our aspiring crew and we represented at least 5 different countries.  I was the only American in the group.  I was also the one asking most of the questions.  I'm not sure if these two factors have anything to do with one another, but hopefully I didn't come off as being too obnoxious with my inquisitive nature.  I just wanted to learn!

Paul was a wealth of knowledge touching on the mechanics of photography as well as artistic composition, and he even discussed the ethics of being a photographer.  Considering my current lifestyle, it was good to hear about the ethics of "street photography" and how to approach a stranger if you are hoping to take their portrait.  I'm not sure if I have the nerve to approach a stranger on the streets of Berlin, but at least now I know how to do it politely.  

After our instructional period, Paul led us out to the streets where we were able to practice everything.  We paired up and Karin from Austria, pictured above, became my partner.  We practiced taking each other's portraits using a shallow depth of field.  This is what happens when you make your subject very clear and sharp while the background is blurred out.  It's one of my favorite photography techniques.  I think it makes photos so interesting and portraits so beautiful!

Photo by Karin

Karin took this one of me.  I think she made me laugh about something but I don't remember what exactly. 

Here is another fellow in my class.  

Peace Karin!

We also experimented with shutter speed, which has to do with how long the digital sensor (or the film in the old days) is exposed to the light.  If you leave the shutter open for a long time, it would cause a photo of a moving figured to look very blurry.  So if you have someone jumping, like Paul here, you want the shutter to be open for a very short period of time.  

Paul's final advice to us, so that we might all become better photographers, was simply to get up and go outside.  "Go take pictures," he said.  You are never going to get that great photo if you weren't there to take it.  Carpe Photo 'em!  And really, isn't that how we should live our lives every day?  I'm glad I have my little Fujifilm to push me to experience the world around me and to give me an excuse to leave the couch and soak up my surroundings. But I hope I never forget that living my life is a choice I get to make every morning when I wake up, and I don't always need a camera to do it.  I will turn 30 years old this evening at exactly 6:34 and 19 seconds.  That isn't a ton of years, but it is long enough to look back and feel proud of all the living I have done so far and feel excited about all the living I have yet to do!  

I stood and watched this street performer sing "Stand By Me" under a bridge at a bustling intersection in East Berlin.  Thanks to my camera and all the thoughtful gifts that Fritz has given me, I will always have this image to help me remember the feelings that filled me on this day as well as the commitment I have made to live every day of my life on purpose.