Berlin: Hazelnuts, hazelnuts, everywhere!

There are so many Turkish hazelnuts showering down onto Berlin’s streets and sidewalks these days, I just don’t know how I overlooked them before reading Berlin Plants’ informative hazelnut article. Now I see them everywhere!

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Berlin: Hazelnuts via New Blog on the Block

Yes, you heard right – there’s a new blog on the urban plant-lined block here in Berlin. It’s written in English by some adventurous urban foragers who have already taught me about several edible plants here, my favorite so far being the Turkish hazelnuts that I found, above. Looking curiously squashed compared to common, round hazelnuts but tasting just as good, these funny little nuts are currently raining down from street trees all over Berlin!

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Berlin: Elderflower cocktail recipe (Italian Hugo)

I’ve arrived in Berlin… and so has the elderflower-syrup-filled Hugo cocktail! As I observed in my earlier post on foraged elderflower syrup, this bubbly summer treat has been working its way up through Europe from its birthplace in Italy.

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Berlin, Entry 24: Landscaping, Prenzlauer Allee

Bit of land between the sidewalk and the bike path.
Prenzlauer Allee 241, corner of Wörther Straße, Prenzlauer Berg.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008, 11:30.

Four workers – an older man, a younger man, an older woman, a younger woman – are standing waist-deep in scratchy hedges, hoeing tall dried weeds out from between them. There’s a fair amount of bald dirt getting exposed between the somewhat scraggly bushes, which wear bright rose hips and some green, but are fairly bare brown twiggy below. Four hoes move, scrape, chop. Red and wood-colored poles swing, baseball-capped heads bow and rise.

I ask and am told, yes, the little piece of land is city property, “Gehört zum Amt.” The workers are sent by the city. Three times a year. Each public piece of green in Berlin gets care thre times a year – whether park or traffic island. Not very often, but still it must add up to an incredible amount of work.

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