This has become a regular sight these days. I have no idea why I haven’t started making my own pizza dough earlier, it’s so ridiculously easy. It all started with an innocent, but insanely delicious shaved asparagus pizza. It was so ridiculously easy to make, well except for shaving the asparagus, I facepalmed myself that we haven’t made our own [pizza dough]( before.

These days, it’s pizza at least once on the weekend. I can live with that, happily.

When I was um, let’s just say younger, I used to spend almost every New Year’s in Prague. Obviously there was lots of drinking and partying involved and, looking back, we didn’t spend too much time really exploring this true gem of a European city.

But heck, we were young, right? We always took the train from Berlin to Prague, which was about 4 hours and 30 minutes. When I was invited to speak at a conference in Prague and looked for tickets, I was surprised to find that the travel time still hasn’t changed much. I could’ve booked a flight, but figured, for old times’ sake I just gotta take the train.

No regrets here. The train ride is not spectacular really, at least not until you go past Dresden where the train curls through the Elb Sandstone Mountains, an incredibly beautiful part of Eastern Germany. I spent a lot of my childhood here too, since a big part of my family lives in Dresden.

Anyhoo, the weather in Prague was splendid, but I spent most of the remaining day (I departed in Berlin around 8:15 a.m.) at the conference and the hotel. It wasn’t until the next day that I started exploring. Right after I finished my talk I figured I’d ditch the rest of the conference and head out to enjoy the weather and this beautiful city.

And my word, Prague is beautiful. Quite a few things have changed, but I also had a lot of occasions where I recognized something from back in the day. My last visit to Prague was in 1998, and being back made me really happy, very happy.

I’m a coffee lover, that’s for sure. And even though Berlin is in any other way a great city we have a lack of really good locally roasted beans. There’s a lot of roasters in the area, but compared to the beans of e.g. Four Barrel, Ritual Coffee, Square Mile, Intelligentsia, and the like, they’re pretty boring. I like good beans, but I don’t like that I can’t get them here. So, I’m gonna have to do something about that. Just asking people to send me beans is not really fair, they should get something in return. Sure, I could give them money in return, but why not make it interesting? Why not swap coffee beans for photo prints?

So, without much further ado, I announce my personal International Photo Prints For Coffee Beans Swap. The idea is simple. You send me a bag of coffee beans from a local roaster, I send you a print of one of my photos. Your choice of course. Each bag you send warrants one print, so three bags make for three prints. The idea is not the more the better, I’m already more than thankful for just one bag of great beans, but if you want to send more than one bag, you should obviously get the appropriate reward.

How does it work? Go to your local roaster, buy a fresh pack of beans, send me an email with the photo you’d like as a print, and off we go. I don’t want to sound picky, but it’s also about supporting your local roaster, so please buy them there, and not in a supermarket. Beans in supermarkets usually are a lot older than the ones you can buy fresh. Any kind of origin is cool, but no weird mixes of beans and herbs please. The pure bean is what it’s all about.

The prints will be 18×18 cm for squares, and 15×20 cm for rectangular photos. That’s roughly 7×7 and 6×8 inches respectively, for you non-metrical peeps. They’ll be printed on Silk Fuji Crystal Archive paper. If you’re left wondering which ones to get, I put together a small photo set to get you going. Preferably, pick photos that don’t have people in them. If you really want one in particular, feel free to ask and I’ll see what I can do. Please send a bag only if you find a photo you’d like to have printed.

My postal address is as follows:

Mathias Meyer
Gabriel-Max-Str. 3
10245 Berlin
Germany

When you send me an email, let me know yours, so I can send off the prints.

How about that?

The wild being Berlin. Molly visited Berlin, and obviously we had to give her the grand tour of the eastern part of Berlin. There was currywurst, there was good coffee, and there was schnitzel. The Wednesday Chef was in there too every now and then. And boy, they’re both pretty awesome. Molly even approved of my mushroom risotto!

Yes!

In other news, I’m spending this and next week taking care of Mari until J comes back home from work, because the kindergarten is closed for summer holiday. And I’m loving it. It’s nice to spend some quality time with my daughter, it really is. I get the feeling she enjoys that too.

But man, it’s still frickin hot. We had around 37 degrees Celsius over the weekend, and around 35 degrees today. Our apartment just never really cools down, staying close to 30 degrees even during the night. That is some heat wave bitch, I’m telling ya.

The heat wave in Berlin continues. We’ve been having temperatures around 37-38 degrees Celcius for the last couple of days. As long as we’re not walking around much and steer clear of public transport (usually > 40 degrees on subway and city train) it’s bearable.

We spent most of Sunday out on the balcony, regularly dipping little Mari into a tiny tub so she can cool off.

As for ourselves, I’m making two things: chilled tap water with lemon or lime in it, and iced coffee. Oh, iced coffee, you’re such a good treat on hot days like these. One kind of iced coffee I’ve grown very fond of quite quickly I discovered in London. Mr. Ferry ordered an iced filter coffee at Dose Espresso, and the barista used an AeroPress to make it. As it so happens, I have an AeroPress at home myself, so I started resorting to that trick immediately as soon as it got warm enough in Berlin. Of course I don’t want to deprive you of the joy of making it, and you should be able to get the same results with e.g. a single-drip filter.

The trick is simple: Put a lot of ice into a glass, and then simply let the coffee drip directly onto the ice cubes. They’ll completely melt along the way, but in the end you’ll have a freshly brewed, iced filter coffee. Throw in some excellent beans like Square Mile or Four Barrel, and you’re good to go for a hot summer day.

With a french press you’ll probably need a lot more ice because you’re not dripping but pouring the pressed coffee on the ice cubes, but it’d probably work too. Dripping it directly has the nice advantages of immediately chilling the drops of coffee the instance they hit the ice.

Of course you can do it the traditional way and put freshly brewed coffee into the fridge to let it cool down, but I really like the freshness of the coffee. Chilled coffee tends to taste a bit stale after a couple of hours, and hopefully it didn’t also take on some of the aroma of other foods in your fridge.

The other kind of iced coffee I like is a simple iced flat white. Use a double shot of espresso, pour it on a bunch of ice cubes, add cold milk. Easy! Of course you can stretch it to be an iced latte, but I prefer the shortness of the flat white.

Just got some freshly developed film back from the lab, and there’s really no reason why I shouldn’t write some more about last weekend, right? I stuffed some Kodak Portra 160NC (expired in 2001, courtesy of Four Corner Store) in my Pentacon Six, because it’s simply a nice camera for a summer weekend like that. Fun fact: the glue lid on the 220 film roll tasted very fruity, almost like cherries.

We hung out in J’s parents’ garden a lot, in the shade of a nice pear tree which unfortunately, doesn’t bear any fruit this year. But the cherry tree sure made up for that. I really couldn’t stop eating cherries that weekend. Mari spend a lot of time in her tiny pool, but I really can’t blame her for that. It was nice to even just dip in my feet.

Germany was playing in the world cup on Saturday, but I really didn’t feel like hanging out inside, watching tv. So I grabbed Mari and camera, and we headed out exploring the tiny town J used to live in. Sure, I do know the place already, but still, you discover something new every time. Plus, the town was practically empty, and even walking around, I didn’t miss a single goal. It was freaking hot, but I much prefer being outside, even in heat like that.

On Sunday J and I took a little bike ride around the lakes and woods in the area, just the two of us, leaving Mari napping at her parents. Of course she slept until we got back, but what’s a baby to do?

Even though it was pretty hot again on Sunday, the bike ride was nice and relaxing. It rained a tiny bit, but that didn’t really bother us. We stopped at the Havel river for a short dip in the water (mostly feet though), and to lie around on the water for a bit. With a baby, you almost forget to cherish and appreciate these moments with just the two of you. It’s almost taken for granted that there’s always a kid around or in the next room. So even though they’re still short moments, I very much enjoy them, just being with J.

Was so relaxed, incredibly hot, and full of cherries. J and Mari took the train out to her parents’ on Friday, I followed on Saturday and Sunday, taking care of Mr. T in between, poor guy can’t be left alone and needs some feeding.

Anyway, was so nice to just hang out, take some photos, and watch Mari enjoy cooling down in her new, tiny pool. I ate a lot of cherries, as J’s parents’ tree was incredibly heavy with these delicious, irresistible and sometimes stomach-ache causing fruit. There was heaps of other food, there was taking the bikes out for a Sunday ride and there was some football world cup too.

I was pretty happy we got away from the city for this weekend, as temperatures were around 36 degrees C. I do enjoy a hot summer in the city, but sometimes it’s just nice to get out.

But enough about our weekend, how was yours?

Some time towards the end of May I got a very excited email from one Mr. Ferry. He told me about a new coffee shop that just opened in London, courtesy of the dudes and dudettes from Square Mile. It’s neatly called Penny University, is Square Mile’s first retail outlet, and they only serve brewed coffee, no milk and espresso beverages.

Somehow, even with brewed coffee, I still associate giant thermos jugs filled with coffee that’s already hours old. Thankfully I don’t work in environments like that anymore. But being a frequent enjoyer of a french press, the Clover and lately, an AeroPress (post on that forthcoming) I know there’s a very different world to it than just my espresso machine at home, and I was very much looking forward to getting a good Saturday morning coffee tasting at Penny University.

I got there a little early, but by 10 am we sat down at the bar being told nice stories on the square mile coffee by noone less than James Hoffman, 2007 World Barista Champion. When you order the tasting set you get three different kinds of coffee, brewed in three different ways, one with the Hario V60, one with the woodneck and a syphon. All that is accompanied by three pieces of chocolate, each meaning to be a good match in taste to the particular beans. To say it upfront, the chocolates were an uncanny match to the coffee beans they went along with.

The shop itself is nice and simple, a bar with six stools lined up. If you get in too late, don’t be surprised that there’s no spot available for you. Of course you can buy the whole line of Square Mile beans and equipment, pretty much everything you can find on their shop. The beans are as fresh as it gets. The four packs I bought were roasted the day before.

The attention to detail at Penny U. is astounding. If something doesn’t feel right, they’ll start from scratch. There’s full attention to every detail, but the message is pretty clear: Great coffee doesn’t have to be hard, and you don’t need a fancy espresso machine to get it. Filtered coffee can be a real treat if you want to. Every coffee bean comes with a little story, and the baristas at Penny U. take their time telling it. It’s not just about the coffee, it’s about the whole story surrounding it. The coffee geek in me approves. A lot.

As a coffee fan, next time you’re in London, do yourself a favor and pay Penny U. a visit. There’s a couple of really good coffee shops in terms of espresso beverages in London too, but I’ll get to those in another post. You can (and should) read Mr. Ferry’s take on Penny U. while you’re at it.

After a nice and beautiful day out in London we were about ready to get into a more comfortable pace with drinks and dinner. We met up with Charlotte and Brian at the Princess Louise Pub for drinks. That pub is seriously old school, with little walled-off chambers for small groups of people all around the bar.

Afterwards we went on to Great Queen Street, which is conveniently located in Great Queen Street, no confusion here. We had artichokes as a pre-dinner snack. My vegetarian options were a bit limited, but I wouldn’t expect it any other way in the UK, to be honest. Not a bad thing, it just didn’t surprise me.

Unfortunately I started to get a little bit tired, must’ve been the enormous jet lag. Astrid managed to power through like a champ, even though she got up at 4:45 am. In all, it was a great day. Always great to meet new and old Flickr friends in other cities. The following day I spent most of the time conferencing, but managed to walk around a bit in the venue’s neighborhood.

To be continued…

Two weeks ago I visited London for the first time. I was invited to speak at a conference, but being the Flickr nerd I am, I planned in a little extra time for walking around with my camera. As chance had it my friend Astrid was in town on the very same day, so obviously we had to meet up to experience a good number of Flickr moments together. There was a whole lot of coffee involved, but more on that in a later blog post.

If you care for this kind of information, I brought my Canon Canonet QL17, a Polaroid SX-70 and a Holga, which I never used on this trip. It was mostly the Canonet, and I went through four rolls of cross-processed cheap film goodness in total.

We first met up with famapa. Getting there from my hotel was no easy feat, since apparently some 15 bus lines have to squeeze through Oxford Street at some point, so that it took me about 20 minutes to move for about 100 meters. Oxford Street itself must be avoided at all costs too, it’s just crowded with what feels like millions of people. No idea what they’re all doing there, but there you go.

We headed down into Soho, where we took a first little break at Fernandez & Wells, part bakery and part coffee shop. Good stuff in there, both in coffee and food. We walked around Soho and then Covent Garden for a whole lot, taking a break here and there, as it was quite a beautiful and warm day in London.

To be continued…