Last spring, when an eerie quiet spread over Berlin, I found myself spending a lot of time in cemeteries. As with everywhere, the lockdown came on abruptly. Over the course of one week, I went from packing for a transatlantic flight to waking up in a shadow of the city I knew.
Staying put has never been a personal strength and taking long daily walks was the only way to keep the claustrophobia at bay. Since I like to have at least the feeling of a destination, I gravitated towards the banks of the Landwehr Canal, the looming Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, and Friedrichswerderscher Friedhof, the lovely, leafy cemetery around the corner from my home. German is often an absurdly literal language. “Friedhof” is a combination of the words for “peaceful” and a court or open space—a far more pleasant vision of a resting place than the English “graveyard.”
It’s a fitting image for this particular space, where the paths are immaculately maintained and there are always fresh flowers. An especially majestic cat stalks the grounds like some ancient guardian sphinx. There’s a floral shop on the corner for anyone who would like to leave a bouquet, as well as a tombstone mason across the street that’s been in business since 1883. Carved offerings range from tastefully understated slabs to a lifesize marble astronaut.
I still come here when I need some alone time, only now instead of camping on the grass, I go to Café Strauss. Although the Friedrichswerderscher Friedhof dates back to 1844, it was only 2013 when Olga and Martin Strauss decided to open the modest café in order to help pay for upkeep. If the concept sounds morbid, the cozy space tucked into the arches of an old chapel is far from it. While the neighbors initially had their doubts, the café has since become so popular that locals have begun to request plots that can be seen from its sunny terrace.
As one might expect, Café Strauss isn’t a place for raucous groups. Instead, it’s best in the early morning hours, when elderly locals come to read the paper over an oversized Milchkaffee or in the early evening, when a syrupy golden light spills over the place. In the afternoon, it’s a wonderful place for Kaffee und Kuchen, a ritualistic catch-up over a slice of Käsekuchen (German cheesecake made with quark) still held sacred by members of the older generation. Outside, the city is stirring back to some sense of normalcy, but I’m grateful to have this place of stillness.
What I’m Reading
Gary He is one of the best photojournalists in the business and the fact that he happens to focus on restaurants has been a real boon over the last few months. ‘Not what it used to be’: in New York, Flushing’s Asian residents brace against gentrification (The Guardian) is a critical examination of a neighborhood under siege by all sorts of forces, while NYC Restaurant Workers Pushed to Food Pantries and Homelessness While Jobs Remain Scarce (Eater) is a haunting documentation of our current grim reality.
The Strange and Gruesome Story of the Greenland Shark, the Longest-Living Vertebrate on Earth (The New Yorker) by M. R. O’Connor isn’t new, but it is wild. It involves a case of infanticide in Germany, harvesting shark eyes, and creatures that have been swimming these icy waters for six centuries.
I love a deep-dive into something so mundane that most of us fail to think critically about it. In The Convenient Truth of Rotisserie Chicken (Taste), Cathy Erway explores how on earth the United States consumes 1 billion of these birds a year, as well as the dubious decisions necessary to keep the prices so low.
Although there are a great many excellent restaurants that didn’t make it into Pete Wells’ roundup, Chinatown Is Coming Back, One Noodle at a Time (The New York Times) still warmed my soul. I miss this extraordinary, resilient neighborhood.
“In a moment when the very nature of physical space is being redefined, where and how we choose to spend our time has taken an even more pronounced role in our lives: that decision not only affects your immediate situation, but the reverberations conjure third- and fourth-order consequences,” writes Bryan Washington in A Lesson Acceptance, a thoughtful piece for Oxford American on redefining our relationship with dining spaces.