Rice pudding has officially made my list of top comfort foods, along with chocolate, wine and popcorn. It's creamy, sweet, rich, simply ahhmazing.

I never thought rice pudding could get better than Kozy Shack's famous brand. Well, not until a few days ago when I stepped foot inside the raved-about Rice to Riches for the first time. Rice to Riches' rice pudding is on a whole other level - heaven.

We walked into a modern, futuristic oasis of oranges, browns, creams and whites, all part of the rice pudding color family. Giant fruits decorated the walls of the seating area, clever indulging signs hung all around, and several play on words were seen throughout: "off the eaten path" and "rice to riches," of course. The entire shop mocked the epic diet craze going on in the world. It was ironic seeing such a place exist and be successful in image-driven, skinny New York City.

I spotted the assortment of rice pudding flavors and didn't know where to start. The two girls behind the counter were generous in letting us sample almost every single one. There are seasonal rice pudding flavors for the summer, winter and holidays, and all-year-'round flavors, such as Coconut Coma, Take Me to Tiramisu, Sex Drugs and Rocky Road, and Fluent in French Toast. I chose to go simple and try a Solo size of the Cinnamon Sling with Raisins, but then topped it off with the "Spirit" topping of Oatmeal Coconut Crumble. Wow, is all I can say.

What makes the experience even better is that you eat the rice pudding out of a container shaped like a mini spaceship, with what seems like an over-sized plastic Italian ice spoon that's designed to slide perfectly into your mouth. There are even directions for eating your dessert! Step 1. Take a spoonful, Step 2. Count to four: One...Rice to Riches...Two...Rice to Riches...Three...Rice to Riches...Four...Rice to Riches...

Rice to Riches is definitely an out-of-this-world rice pudding experience. You can be more daring than I was and try the Epic, Sumo and Moby sizes that serve up to 10! And if you're too lazy to pick it up, the store offers domestic shipping to anywhere in NYC and overnight shipping to anywhere in the USA, allowing you to enjoy the perfect comfort food in the comfort of your own home.

RICE TO RICHES; 37 Spring Street, NYC

In the fall of 1971 a group of young locals climb through the fences overtaking an abandoned military site and proclaimed it the Free Town of Christiania in protest against the acute housing shortage in Copenhagen. Christiania is in that sense a product of the sixties revolutionary youth and squatter movement. The government was somewhat baffled about the whole situation, but in 1973 Christiania was labeled a ‘social experiment’. During the years Christiania has been an arena of contest between supporters and opponents, but somehow it has managed to survive for more than 30 years, in no small part because of a wide support from the public.

Christiania 

Photo by Morteno

Written by Ulla Sauerberg, editor of the book The CPH Guide

For two years I worked as a tourist guide showing visitors all the splendors that Copenhagen has to offer. The blockbuster of the tour was never The Little Mermaid or New Harbour, but Christiania: A place (in)famous for being a social experiment of alternative lifestyle but especially for its main attraction, Pusher Street, due to the hundreds of stalls openly selling hash.

Photo by Morteno

Nowadays Pusher Street no longer exists. The hash stands were torn down in January 2004, and Pusher Street has been sarcastically renamed Copper Street because of the many raids and the number of police men present. That’s not to say that you can’t buy cannabis, the market has just become much less open.

Although the character of its main street has completely changed, Christiania is still well worth a visit because it is - and always has been - so much more than Pusher Street.

Photo by Ulla Sauerberg

In Christiania you’ll find everything from the minimal wooden shack to circus wagons built together and even a house built like a UFO. Unsurprisingly you can buy several books on Christiania’s alternative architecture, its “shabby chic” interior design and plenty of information on its long and colorful history.

Photo by Ulla Sauerberg

When going to Christiania, just remember that it isn’t Disneyland. It wasn’t built to satisfy tourists. This is a place where people actually live and work. On my guided tours I’ve experienced visitors complaining that the locals are unfriendly and unaccommodating. But it’s important to understand that sometimes the locals get slightly annoyed with tourists invading their private space or taking their pictures as if they were animals in a zoo.

Photo by Ulla Sauerberg

Please don’t take photographs in Christiania, at least not around the main streets or of the people without at least having the common decency to ask for permission. As one Christianite put it, it’s not so terribly fun coming out of the communal showers only to find 15 tourists taking pictures through the windows …

Is it safe? That’s a question I’ve been asked a lot. Yes, in my humble opinion. At least I’ve never experienced any unpleasantness as long as you respect the given boundaries. If anything, people are just stoned and thereby pretty harmless.

Photo by Morteno

It is important to stress that Christiania has always been highly controversial. To the supporters the community is a symbol of social latitude, creativity, openness and an alternative way of life. To the opponents Christiania mocks the rules of society (and many are perhaps displeased with the fact that it sits on such a prime piece of Copenhagen real estate?).

Photo by Ulla Sauerberg

In the spring 2004 the Danish Parliament passed a bill stating that Christiania should be “normalized”, which among other things means that many of the odd self-built houses on the embankments are to be torn down. The negotiations between Christiania and the state have been going on for more than four years now, and nobody knows exactly what the future will bring and how many houses are to be cleared.

Photo by Morteno

One thing is for sure though: If you want to experience Christiania before it becomes too ‘normalized’, then take a day off to explore the area.

There is an official guided tour every Sat-Sun at 3pm, daily in the summer period, that leave from the main entrance. The tour costs 30 DKK (approx.4 EUR) and is mostly concentrated around down-town Christiania.

www.christiania.org 

Extract from the book The CPH Guide edited by Ulla Sauerberg and published by Nyt Nordisk Forlag. 

Dilara Sabra Cadabra is a food magician living in Istanbul.  Recently she opened a new restaurant that she calls Abracadabra, right on the Bosphorus water front. She has previously run her own restaurants along with doing consulting and creative styling for kitchens all over the city.

Dilara is know for her traditional Turkish cousine with a mashup of flavors she found on her many trips around the world. She travelled and lived in India, South America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and did a apprenticeship at the Tribecca Grill Restaurant in New York in 2001.

Dilara Erbay's lovely personality and charm shines out over the delightful restaurant as she roams the kitchen with a loud laughter.

The food is displayed and served on large wooden paddles, placed right on the table. Each board gets a small food installation with a variety of dishes, snacks, sauces and drinks.

Located right by the water with an outdoor terras, the combination of the breeze from the Bosphorus, the hot Istanbul summer and the magic dishes served from Cadabra's kitchen is pure joy.

One can almost smell the garlic oil from the above snails and with the local beer Efes, some cheese, some nuts and a Raki on the side makes a tear come to the eye. 

View from the top window of the restaurant overlooking Bosphorus and the bridge, connecting the East to the West.

Dilara Erbay also has a degree from the Economical and Management Sciences from the Galatasaray University. Her thesis was on “The Role of Non-Government Organizations in Turkish Political Life, and the Bergama Event”. In other words, if you come to visit Dilara at her place, you will be able to talk to her about other things than the spectacular view and what you are eating.

Links:

www.abracadabra-ist.com

www.dilaraerbay.com 

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Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery

While wandering about a huge, weedy cemetery on a damp Autumn day may not be everyone's cup of tea, it certainly has its fans, as I found this past Sunday, making my way along the stony paths of Berlin's Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery. Opened in 1909 the cemetery was a response to the rapid growth of the urban population following Berlin's emergence as the capital of a unified Germany and a major industrial center.

Unlike many older European cities Berlin had never arranged for a central cemetery, and Stahnsdorf was opened to relieve the burden on the many smaller graveyards dotted around town. These days it’s a popular destination with families and sightseeing groups who enjoy the quiet tree-lined walkways and parklike ambience. I was impressed by the number of visitors even on this chilly, late afternoon.

I first chanced across the 156 hectare memorial park last summer, having lost my bearings bicycling back from the small town of Potsdam, once home to the summer retreats of Prussian royalty. As I pedaled along a sandy trail through the piney scrubs, I found myself cycling along a tall fence and soon began spying mossy mausoleums and ancient crypts overgrown with ivy.

I was approaching the cemetery from the backend and it was a good fifteen minutes before I finally reached its public entrance, which gives you an idea of its vast size. The discovery aroused my morbid curiosity but I had to postpone that first visit, as an out-of-town friend was waiting for me back in Berlin. Since then I've visited Stahnsdorf several times, each time finding something new and notable along its winding pathways.

As an enthusiast of German Expressionism I was particularly excited to find the resting place of filmmaker F.W. Murnau, director of “Faust” and “Nosferatu” – one of cinema’s earliest vampire tales, the film remains unsurpassed in its evocation of dread and decay. While it can’t be seen in the photo, behind the Murnau memorial is a stairway leading downward into the family’s crypt, accessible through a gate which, when pulled open, makes an appropriately eerie groan.

Farther along is the cemetery’s large mourning chapel, completed in 1911 in the fashion of a traditional Norwegian wooden church by then Prussian royal building surveyor Gustav Meyer.  Its dark pine paneling and austere design fit peaceably into the deep, green Brandenburg landscape, but also lend the chapel a spooky quality – despite the number of couples pushing prams through its wooden doors.

Nearby is another notable grave, remarkable for its designer instead of its occupant, that of Julius Wissinger, a successful German merchant. The concrete memorial, whose shape recalls the ribs of a ship or the vault of a cathedral, was designed by Expressionist architect Max Taut, who played a leading role in Berlin’s early 20th century development.

The weak sun was dropping through the dark pines as I continued meandering and marveling at the beautiful memorials and somber stones. Some have been lovingly maintained or carefully restored, while many others are overgrown and half forgotten. The cemetery’s guardians have even put together an audio tour (in German of course) guiding interested visitors to the resting places of the cemetery’s thirty most celebrated occupants. But that will have to wait until my next visit - the cemetery closes just after sundown, and soon I was cycling back into the city – leaving the famous and not-so-famous to rest in peace beneath a starlit Stahnsdorf sky.

My darling and I had a night off so we decided to go out and, instead of dropping into something familiar, visit something new. Not that Kamer 401 opened recently – it’s just that I don’t normally frequent bars in Amsterdam, but rather spend my time in cafés. As I later concluded, there’s a good reason for this.

 

Intrigued by the name, I found Kamer 401 on Marnixstraat 401 to be a pretty dull place where a homogeneous crowd of students and beautiful kids meets. It was all easy - the lounge music, the relaxed interior, the overall ambiance, but for me a bar should be slightly different. Thus after a couple of drinks we choose to look for something less tedious elsewhere.

Knowing the building only as the former headquarters of the newspaper I used to read (de Volkskrant), I was pretty curious when I heard that since the editorial department moved, a restaurant and club opened in their former canteen. So after the dull evening in Kamer 401, I thought it a perfect occasion to sample this new place on Wibautstraat 150. Some people compare this street with the Karl Marx Allee in Berlin. I don’t completely agree, but it’s true both streets have heavy traffic and ugly buildings – including Canvas op de zevende (on the 7th).

As the name indicates, Canvas op de zevende, is located on the seventh and top floor. While I was walking around in the entrance hall searching for the lift I heard shocked mutterings: “she did it herself… she strangled her cat with her bare hands”. Not much of a hero I didn’t dare to have a look at the murdered animal even though it was supposed to be art. Finally in the lift, with evident traces of a cat’s existence (food containers) I reflected on what next in the name of arts should be killed.

Photo: Bravoure Media

After this dodgy experience we arrived on the seventh floor. I stepped into a space with grey concrete, graffiti on the walls, vintage sofas, white tables and chairs, and a marvelous view. My first impression was that I had stumbled into a garage - a place where teenagers have their hangout - but the second glance convinced me I had to stay a little more. The interior decorator has left Canvas to deliberately like an off location. That seems a huge trend in Amsterdam, but since I am living in Berlin it displays a watery copy of the original.

Canvas' terrace on a summer day                                                                                     Photo: Pr1001

However I liked the mixed crowd, the great cocktails, and the heavenly view. On our night the terrace was closed but the windows enabled a panoramic view over the city.