Ah, I remember this one! It's still not a black beer, but it's something special - Oso Brewing's Frutal III, a Berliner Weisse with strawberry and blackcurrant. You'd expect something on the sweet side, but the sour of the weisse really dominates. I got my first taste this summer at Gaztambirra, impressing, although not quite inspiring, my drinking/debating buddies.
The first pick was Bilder (M)Einer Mutter/Imágenes de mi/una madre, a memoir film about the sacrifices made by a German woman in the late 20th century for her family. The filmmaker was there to talk a little about the film afterwards, and there were a few Germans in the audience, so I guess everything is back to normal. The film starts about when her parents started their relationship and when her father started to film her mother on Super 8. They were from small-town Bavaria and her mother's parents were on the conservative side, so her mother was not very happy at home. The family wasn't well-off, and two children had to sleep in the living room. With no privacy, the (future) mother never felt like she could develop into her own person in her house, and her parents certainly didn't encourage it. When she started to go out with her children's father, she wrote in her diary about how much she loved him and enjoyed their time together, but there is also a sense that she saw a relationship as an escape from her traditional family. The filmmaker says the last time she smiled on film was shortly before the filmmaker's birth, but even then it seems that she was unsatisfied with her married life. In her diary she writes about being unhappy with everything she tries, studies, hobbies, jobs, although once she has children she doesn't have a lot of job opportunities. The filmmaker's father says when she interviews him that he gladly paid for courses and took care of the children when his wife was in class, but nothing was ever enough. The filmmaker suggests that her mother might have wanted to have a professional life and asks if her father would have chosen to have only hobbies in her place. The father says, vehemently, that if he had had to make the choice he wouldn't have had children, but he had been the one who was expecting to have children in the marriage. At first I thought the mother had gotten sick of everything and abandoned the family, but it turns out she was diagnosed with cancer in the '80s and finally died of it in 1993. Interspersed with the family story are snippets of feminist politics moving forward in Germany from the '50s to the '70s, underlining the changes that were happening in society, and the hope that people should have had in those times. And yet, so many remained hopeless, without knowing why, like her mother. In the Q&A afterwards, the filmmaker said she and her family had worked through their feelings of guilt before she even started on the project, but people working with her did have some quite negative emotions come up. She also mentioned that it wasn't until they were finishing with editing that she realized she had been trying to bring her mother back to life. Although the story actually leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the mother, it is a reflection of people living through a certain era, and the filmmaker said herself that it was only a story, not the story.
Second, I chose Je Suis Karl, which to my surprise was produced by Netflix and in fact still available to watch on the platform. I don't have Netflix, so biggie that I bought a ticket for the festival. I was expecting a story of a somewhat confused young woman who gets suckered into far-right ideology without any trigger, but that's not the story at all. We begin with a couple who turn out to be the protagonist's parents smuggling a Syrian refugee from Hungary (I think) into Germany. A few years later they are living their normal lives in Berlin when a package arrives for a neighbor and the husband takes it into their apartment as a favor to her, since she's 80 something years old. The package turns out to be a bomb which explodes, blows up a good chunk of the building and kills a dozen or so people, including the wife and two young sons of the man who accepted the package. Everyone assumes immediately that it is an Islamic terror attack, although we never see any actual reasoning behind this, and the man's daughter, our main character, has a lot of trouble accepting what has happened. She also gets hounded by the press, which does her mental health no favors. She gets rescued from a couple of reporters by a nice-looking young man who seems sympathetic to her and her situation and invites her to a youth conference in Prague, where the future of Europe will be discussed and "saved". She hesitates, but in the end she goes, without telling her father anything. It turns out the conference is a gathering of right wingers, strategizing to take over as much public space with populist slogans as possible. They even coopt a number of feminist talking points by giving them a heavily xenophobic twist, as if the only men who don't respect women are non-Europeans. After the conference, where the main character has become close to her savior, the titular Karl, they travel to Strasbourg to offer support to a far-right candidate in upcoming elections. The top of the group have decided that they need a big event to kick off a sort of revolution, a call to action for all of their followers across the continent, and that event is a murder. More of a suicide really, although another person will pull the trigger, but they decide that Karl will be "assassinated" after giving a moving speech in favor of this French politician, but it will be his own comrades who do the deed. Total false flag - just like the package bomb, which was delivered by Karl in disguise to stimulate anti-immigrant feeling in Berlin. All goes according to plan for them, the speeches, the murder, the ensuing riots. The main character's father has come to Strasbourg to find her, with the refugee he smuggled years before, who he sought out after the bombing. It isn't clear whether he thought this man might have information about the bomb, or if he is just afraid that his old friend might be having trouble with all the growing anti-foreigner sentiment. As violence explodes all around them in the city, and others as we see on the news, they hide in the sewers, planning to escape, although we don't know where they can go safely now.
The last film for this year was Bornehomer Straße, the story of the first border control to open after the East German government declared free travel for its citizens. The guards hear the announcement on the TV one night and are confused, thinking it can't be a serious change in policy, and their direct supervisors give them no guidance. People show up at the gate, expecting to be allowed to cross, and are told to bring visas as usual or to go home. The crowd grows bigger and more unruly and the guards get more and more nervous. Finally, the head of the control point decides to release some pressure by letting people cross, but the trouble-makers won't be allowed back in, although nobody informs them, of course. When the first people are told they can't re-enter East Berlin, there are more protests and pleading, which the head guard finally gives in to, allowing people to come back without any problems. In the end, he just opens the gate and lets people cross with out any sorting or marking of good or bad on their passports, something that almost seems like treason to his colleagues. So strange a choice is it, that when he returns home and tells his wife about his night at work, she takes it as a joke. I did not know this story before seeing the movie, and while there were some funny moments, like the dog "infiltrating" the DDR, it didn't seem to be the comedy that it was described as. It has the same director as Je Suis Karl in fact, so maybe we should have expected a little bit of misdirection.
One thing I noticed this year was the amount of errors in the subtitles. It's not too weird to see things that don't seem to be exactly what the actors are saying, due to space and time concerns, but these were straight up mistakes. You don't excuse changing "the 20th century" to "8 o'clock" with any bullshit about formatting needs.
And now the dessert beer - Berliner Kindl Himbeer. If the Waldmeister looked like a St. Patrick's treat, raspberry looks like Valentine's. It has the same aroma as Mort Subité, very fruity but a little bit sharp and with warning of syrup. It's much more delicate than cherry and raspberry Belgian beers actually, with more of a hint of fruit over a mouthful of...very mildly sour candy. There is a little bit of that candy feel that was in the Waldmeister, but not quite as much. It's actually a bit lighter in feel. I'm finding the raspberry to be less sticky and more refreshing than the Waldmeister, which is not how I expected it to go, but I'm happy with the experience.
I don't tend to think of Berliner wiesse as a cold weather beer, much more for the summer months (see this August, in fact). Here it is, though, Guineu's Lovin' Fruit.
Dark orange and icy-looking, it makes me think of a frothy iced tea. Especially those with a little fruit in them, since there's a mandariny scent that puffs up from it. The taste is juicy and rich, although I wouldn't call it sweet even with the fruit essence. I actually think that makes it more appropriate for the cold weather, a sweet fruity drink would be too summery probably. The delicate balance of sour fruits and weisse beer feels a little warmer, kinder to the stomach in the near-winter. As I've heard recently, pineapple has a certain link to the end of year holidays, and it whispers out of the beer quietly, one of the Christmas ghosts. Which one, I wouldn't know. Maybe past, since future doesn't actually whisper and Marley only brings warnings, not fuzzy memories.
Two days in a row without a stout by choice? Sometimes things happen. Rest assured there is one waiting, but while it isn't raining I might partake of snappier things. I poked around Cerevisia for some fruit sour besides the hoppy IPA and came across Lovin' Fruit Berliner Weisse, something I have not seen from Guineu before. It has 0 IBU, so practically the opposite of Aker, in theory. A weisse should be more sour than bitter anyway, so it ought to work out.
I'm mildly shocked by the dark, rusty color. I was definitely expecting something with a more golden hue. The head dies back pretty quickly but there is a tiny cap left. The aroma is deeply fruity, with apple and peach being the most obvious to me, although it's probably my imagination since neither of those are listed as ingredients. The flavor is cidery, again a lot of apple, but there's a sort of soft banana that comes out towards the end of the sip. There isn't much bitter, or even sweet here, it earns its sour label with honors. It's not a candy sour either, it's something natural and kind, like good fruit themselves.
Price: €5.70
Everything comes to an end, even pandemics. This one is still hanging around, though, and it showed in the German Film Festival this year - few people in the audience, and hardly any Germans, if any at all. Also fewer films than last year, but more than enough for the three movie pass, and this was the third movie. Walchensee Forever is a biopic of a family primarily consisting of women and their experiences over the 20th century. At first I thought they had some very good effects with films of the family in the '40s and '50s, especially the interview style film, but it seems the family has had interest and talent in photography and art since the grandfather married the grandmother. He was an art student and eventually became a photographer in Munich, while her parents had a cafe/inn on the Walchensee which she carried on with all her life. The filmmaker's mother says her mother only worked in the cafe out of a sense of duty to her parents, who were very happy with their profession, and in a short clip the filmmaker took after mother and grandmother argue about running the cafe, the grandmother says she would enjoy being young at the end of the 20th century instead of the beginning. She could be a computer geek, she says. A lot of the film focuses on the mother's younger sister, who killed herself after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The two had been a duo performing traditional Bavarian music in the 60's and had fallen into a lot of the other cultural trappings of the time, including drugs and Indian spirituality. The mother met the filmmaker's at a peace conference in Mexico City after her sister's death, and went to live with him in San Francisco. The films of them together during her pregnancy are very of the time, being naked in nature, living in a sort of half-wild area and having a homebirth. Eventually the mother goes back to Walchensee to help her mother with the cafe, the relationship with the filmmaker's father having run its course basically as soon as she was born. The filmmaker seems to be on a quest to define home and belonging with the interviews. At the end she has her own child and goes with her mother to San Francisco to visit her father, giving the impression of their acceptance of the wheel of life turning, since the grandmother had passed away a while before at age 104.
I have another Berliner Weisse today, although the movie doesn't take place in or near Berlin at all. Still a German style, dammit! And it's not a German beer again, I admit, but it's Spanish and it's good to support local industry. Maglia Rosa, with raspberries, comes from Cierzo, and it was a hard decision between that and some nice black beers. They weren't as German, though. La Buena Cerveza is packing up to move to a new location, so I have an excuse to go back for one or two stouts next month.
Much rosier than the strawberry weisse, with a party pink head of foam that quickly vanishes. It gives the visual impression of a red berry soda. It smells more like Mort Subité than Fanta, though, to my relief. While there is a touch of sweetness and raspberry pokes here and there, the beer is definitely not sweet overall. Now it's more like that strawberry one! It's especially tangy at the back of the tongue, giving a little kick on its way down. It has a champagne-like dryness that keeps it from any kind of fruit beer sticky, although I don't tend to find dry drinks especially refreshing.
Supplier: La Buena Cerveza
Price: €5.55
I had some time to kill before my movie yesterday and I thought I could hit up Fábrica Maravillas, where I haven't been for more than a year. I got delivery from them during lockdown, but now they are allowed to serve beer in the establishment and again, and even got some outside tables to expand their seating. The Beer Garden also has a small street garden now. Weirdly, FM is not allowed to run the projector to show the tap menu or play music. Maybe the projector blows viruses around and music encourages them to come in? Who knows these days. The NEIPA I had isn't the beer for this movie, however; I found a strawberry Berliner Weisse at La Buena Cerveza that ought to do the job very nicely. It's not a German beer, actually, it's Polish, but it's the style that counts I say.
It doesn't have a strawberry drink look at all really, more of a grapefruit soda. The aroma is heavy on the strawberry to make up for that I guess. The flavor is much more acidic than the scent suggests, very clearly a Berliner Weisse, but a little fruity softness comes out later. It's a bit more like strawberry flavoring than real strawberries, though. The beer demands your attention when drinking, so it's not an especially good conversation beer, unless you want to talk about it specifically. It has a touch of salt swimming around, so it feels like a good summer drink, replacing your reserves of sweated out minerals.
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| Surprise! |
My Saturday movie was Cortex, listed as a thriller. The synopsis makes it sound like a man with a sleep disorder starts to doubt whether he's hallucinating or whether strange things are really happening around him, and while there's a little bit of that, it's more like a non-funny version of Freaky Friday. Hagen, the man with the sleep disorder, seems to change bodies with Nico, a man he has seen in his dreams, who has been having an affair with Hagen's wife. It confuses both of them, and it's hard for the audience to tell whether it's the truth or not. At first you think both of them are just having some kind of breakdown, but later the movie pushes you to believe that they really have switched bodies somehow. Hagen as Nico visits a doctor asking for medication to help with his "delusion" of having become Nico and the doctor prescribes some kind of sedative and suggests a visit to a psychiatrist. It turns out he is Hagen's doctor, and he calls Hagen's wife to tell her a young man was just in his office impersonating her husband. She urges Nico as Hagen to go back to the doctor and he says he would rather wait, to which she replies that she doesn't want him to end up like the baby seal. The baby seal was something that Hagen had told her about from the day he proposed to her, a lost baby that probably died soon after they saw it swimming around near the beach. Nico as Hagen has no idea what she's talking about, although he tries to feign that he understands. Hagen as Nico sees more information about Nico's life in his dreams, but Nico as Hagen has to go through the house looking for information to be a better Hagen. Hagen as Nico gets his prescription filled and the pharmacist warns him about the strength of the medication. Later, after Hagen as Nico has had to flee his house before a trio of gangsters with business with Nico's brother come in to kill him, the pharmacist finds him in an U-bahn station. They start talking about dreams on the train and the pharmacist turns out to be kind of a mystic on dreams. He takes Hagen as Nico to his house and gives him tea to help him enter the dreamworld and find out what he is supposed to do. He also tells him that dying in a dream isn't death at all, but the sign of a new beginning in life. Hagen as Nico sees the gangsters track down his family after Nico as Hagen tries to save his brother by returning some goods he stole from them, and he races to his house to stop them. He kills all three gangsters and wanders out into the rain after seeing how upset his daughter is. Not far from the house he crosses a police blockade and when they see the pistol in his hand they yell for him to drop it. He remembers the pharmacist saying that death is only a new beginning and he raises the gun, provoking the police into shooting him. Coincidentally, behind him Nico as Hagen has run up on the curb as he is dying from a gunshot wound given to him by his own brother, who came looking for the stolen goods. We see Hagen in a field of tall grass, calling for his wife, and then his wife and daughter come out of the grass to meet him, reminiscent of a reunion in heaven, although we saw Hagen as Nico shoot the gangsters and save his family. At the last second, in the car, Hagen's eye flies open. The movie has a Lynchian quality to it with the dream sequences zipping in and out and the weird, upsetting sounds that accompany them and Hagen's attempts to understand them. But, while Lynch only hints that the movie might be a dream, Cortex is actually supposed to contain dreams, so more like Inception in that way. It does seem to try to trick you a few times; in the beginning Hagen and his wife wonder if he has depression, and he looks sadly at a family photo where he's holding a child. We haven't seen any sign of a child yet, so maybe the child died and they are still getting over it? No, the daughter is alive and well, just somewhere else for the first half or so of the movie. One might also wonder if Nico is some kind of manifestation of multiple personalities for Hagen, since we don't have any assurance that he and his life really exist other than Hagen dreaming him for a while. It seems like that isn't the case, though, since the gangsters really exist and show up to threaten Hagen's family after he meets them, and since they don't recognize him it can't be a Fight Club kind of situation. I guess the question at the end is who gets to stay in Hagen's body, since his awakening makes it look like he might survive.
Supplier: La Buena Cerveza
Price: €3.99
After a couple of splendidly seasonal stouts, I'll try something a little more colorful. Nib Brewing is a local gypsy brewer, connected to our friends at La Tienda de la Cerveza. Their Berliner Weisse Cherry Bomb certainly has the look of a Christmas beer. Well, maybe only halfway since it's only red. But, it is a light, fun, and different beer to try, one that I was told would be a very easy drink and pleasant to hang with. It's maybe less flexible than Glotona, the beer for every single activity, but as a refreshing weisse it won't weigh you down or fill you up before food or another beer. Let's see how it goes.
It's just like a glass of cherry 7-Up, although it's probably less bubbly. Also, it doesn't smell at all like 7-Up, or any other soda that I'm aware of. I was expecting something with a fruity kick, but it's really more of a bready aroma. There is sort of a heavy sweetness in the background, not like candied cherries might be. It is quite dry, neither especially sour or especially sweet, but with a roundness to the flavor. It's kind of like a cranberry muffin. A very organic one.
Patience, patience, something will happen eventually...
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| Not quite a bear calvary |
