Kaffe und Kuchen

This evening, or rather late afternoon, I was able to partake of the traditional German Kaffe und Kuchen- or in English, Coffee and Cake/Pie. My very sweet new roommate, Melanie, invited her boyfriend and his visiting sister over. Partly to see me and partly as his sister (from Wiesbaden) was in Berlin. They came around 4pm , the traditional time for such a ritual, and stayed till about 9.45pm. It was great! Good conversations all around, all in German- and all of them quite complimentary of my German- what more could I want? Well maybe not the rainy Berlin day, but even then it didn't rain too hard...

It seems Claus (her boyfriend) is very interested in Utopian societies- we talked at length about Quakers (as some of you may know, a favorite topic of mine), those crazy Shakers and back to Quakers: the difference between Programmed and Un-programmed meetings, Quakers and tolerance, and even touched on William Penn.

His sister (Claudia) is an animal scientist of some sort- especially interested in reptiles. As Melanie's sister lives in Australia, and she will soon visit her there, we discussed the numerous poisonous snakes in Australia and animals there in general. When thinking of Australia, I go almost immediately to marsupials. I then felt obligated to mention the lone marsupial of the Northern Hemisphere- The deadly and terrible opossum. I hate opossums. They were under the impression that opossums were sweet little rodents- not the case I explained- they are deadly, disgusting, terrible animals. Should they ever encounter one, now they know- watch out!

After they left, I sang Melanie some Yiddish folk songs and mentioned a few films I had seen in Yiddish. One, Yidl mitn Fidl, she recognized. Not because she had seen the film, but rather a Polish singer had sang a Polish version of the title song, her name is Justyna Steczkowska- very interesting!

Always something new, and truly a great beginning.