Raw in Berlin

Raw around the world.

Well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration. Not like I’m in Sri Lanka. And not like I’m traveling around the world with the purpose of spreading the raw gospel. More like, my lifestyle and my work take me around the world (for which I am grateful) and I’m going to blog about the adventures and challenges about being raw when away from home.

So, here we are. I’ve been in Berlin since June 12, and have been about 50% raw during this time. I guess. I’ve only been keeping a consistent food journal for the last 6 weeks, and within that time, it’s 50%. Which is quite a joy for me to realize, actually. When I’m not 100% raw, I have a habit of thinking that I’m not raw enough – or at all. But 50% is quantifiable, and a starting place, At least.

I’ve been reading Raw blogs and websites a lot since I’ve been here. Angela Stokes and Philip McClusky, and We Like It Raw and Raw Divas and Pear Magazine. Just yesterday, though, I was turned onto Heidi and Justin’s Raw Food Right Now blog, and was simply inspired with their honesty and imperfection (and I mean that in a really positive, loving way). I want to be raw. I am raw. Imperfectly. And though I admire and love reading about people who are 100% raw and seemingly perfect at it, that’s not my path right now. Being able to read about people who I identify with, their struggles with cooked food and weight gain/loss, and the joys of new raw recipes and a raw life, that’s what is accessible to me. That is why I love Raw Food Right Now.

Back to Berlin. Germany? Though I’ve spent quite a bit of time here in the past, it still conjures up images of wurst and potatoes (not necessarily inaccurately). I remember being in the south about 5 years ago, a vegetarian, and explaining to a waiter in my shoddy German that I just wanted potatoes. No meat. Eventually, we understood each other, and out came a giant plate of about half of a dozen potatoes, boiled, sliced in half, and slathered in butter. I think that I was surprised, but happy enough to eat it at the time.

Berlin, though, is a very international city, with restaurants and food from all over the world. Quite a big handful of traditional vegetarian restaurants, plus zillions of Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern places as well. But not so much raw food, actually.

What I have found here, raw-eating-out-wise: My favorite salad is at Assel (Oranienburgerstrasse 41, Mitte). Really beautiful, lush greens, crispy vibrant crunchy veggies, and depending on the season, juicy strawberries and kumquats thrown in. Nothing else raw on the menu there, but I’ve had some other delicious meals there.

I also really like a couple of the juice bars here: Grasshopper (on Oranienburgerstrasse also, close to Hackescher Markt) is beautiful and green inside, cute people behind the counter, and they make this terrific juice with dandelion greens, kiwi, grapefruit and lemon. I also like London Juice Co., in Prenzlauerberg. I had a kiwi-cucumber juice there a few weeks ago and loved the beverage, the presentation, and the Molten Brown soap and hand lotion in the bathroom.

Now, during the week, I work, and there is an excellent caterer who serves breakfast and lunch buffet. It’s almost all cooked, but it is certainly possible to eat raw. But right now, I am still very tempted by cooked food. And I can walk into the catering tent with the best intentions of heading directly to the salad bar, and making up a pretty salad of greens and cucumber and tomato with a squirt of lemon, but sometimes it’s like an invisible set of hands actually propel me to the cooked food line and I eat it. Oy.

I’ve realized that I need to take my rawness into my own hands. First, that means staying out of the catering tent. Until I’m in such an emotional/spiritual/physical place that I’m not aggressively tempted to eat cooked food in mass quantities, I’d best avoid it (particularly if it’s free – another trigger for me). So, where does that leave me?

About six weeks ago, I bought a juicer. I had been thinking about it for months, since I arrived here, but hadn’t. Didn’t want to spend the money when I had a perfectly good one waiting for me when I got back to NY. And felt like a jerk juicing in the super fancy hotel that I’ve been living in. Then I did it, and have been pretty psyched about it. I found one at Galleria at Alexanderplatz for about 35 euros. So, most days (well, at least some), I wake up 10 minutes early (well, 5, and then scramble around to get out the door) and make some juice from the bounty that I’ve bought at the farmer’s market in Hackerscher Markt or by Wortherstrasse in Prenzlauerberg, or at the bio store.

This morning, I woke up early (-ish) and made apple-celery-lettuce juice, put it in an empty glass bottle that originally had sparkling water in it, and now it waits in the mini-fridge in my trailer to be an afternoon pick-me-up. Yay on me.

Coming next time: My adventures making green smoothies with no blender!

Love,
Marissa