You know that feeling when you haven’t really done enough study and you’ve got assignments due, and then your mother and stepfather announce that they’re arriving in Berlin 3 weeks earlier than expected (yes, tonight!) and your flatmate hasn’t been around to help clean the flat and it’s May Day tomorrow so all the stores are closed and you woke up with a tight back and headache as a result of the anxiety and almost threw up from the pain?

Well, maybe you don’t know that exact feeling, but I’m going to place great faith in your ability to feel for me in this situation. So once I’d had returned to sleep away the headache, and then made a token cleaning of my flat it was time to head to the Turkish Market to buy ingredients for dinner tomorrow (quiche and salad).

So I bought food and fabric and wandered back via the Glogauer Str bridge area to look in a junk shop which is conveniently sited opposite my favourite icecream store.

Fraulein Frost have some really amazing icecream flavours – including a great Cucumber, Mint and Lemon ice (Gu-Zi-Mi) that is perfect for really hot days. It was pleasantly warm today, not hot and I’ve already had Gu-Zi-Mi on several visits – so I took the chance to try the Buttermilch-Orange eis.

I mentioned in my last icecream post about quark and ricotta based icecreams – the inclusion of non-traditional dairy usually changes the texture and adds a certain acidity to the mix. I like sweet things, but I prefer the tang or bite that comes with bittersweet chocolate, fruit-based cakes and tart apples.

So buttermilch-orange had to be tried. The orange flavour was restrained and very natural, the buttermilk gave a lovely tang and slightly changed the texture away from being creamy or crystallised, but was more smooth.

And luckily, the walk and the icecream have helped ease the crazy of the day. Thank goodness – now I’m more capable of making pastry and heading off to collect the parentals.

It’s spring in Berlin.

That means a return to amazing icecream, beautiful green budding on the trees, sunshine streaming into my bedroom every morning, early waking as a result of all that sunshine and a feeling of achievement from waking up early.

So feeling energetic and inspired this morning I made rhubarb cake, because spring also means rhubarb. It was an easy, Finnish-style rhubarb cake based on a recipe from Nami-nami. It’s good to note that the cake is egg free, not for any diet related reasons, but so often I feel like baking after the shops are closed and am foiled in my plans by a lack of eggs in the flat. So, as long as I have rhubarb, or some other juicy fruit (berries, pears, plums and peaches come to mind) I can imagine that my evening and Sunday baking urges are going to be fulfilled.

But it was so sunny and lovely and the proper first day of tshirt weather that just making a cake wasn’t enough fun. I had to get outside and so I met up with Sabrina of Food And Footage to get some healthy walking and talking done. Then as we walked past the Brazilian/French hairsalon/patisserie on Gorlitzer Str I mentioned that they’re rumoured to have the best pastries in the neighbourhood. And we walked past another cafe and another which we’d never seen before (cafes seem to sprout like spring crocus in Berlin) and eventually all this walking and talking past cafes got to me. We needed to eat ice cream, or else we’d eat cake.

I have a theory that as long as you walk to get icecream, and walk while you’re eating your waffle cone containing only one scoop of icecream, you’re mostly healthy. And considering that good icecream goes for about 90c a scoop in my Kiez (hood), compared to cake and coffee and sitting down, it’s by far the healthier and cheaper choice.

Oh and the choice of icecream! There are some really weird sounding icecream flavours out there, and usually they taste amazing. I’m betting that the cucumber and mint ice I had last summer is going to be hard to beat, and I once had some amazing mung bean icecream in China.

So anyway, we’re walking and we know that Gemelli is nearby. And we detour because by detouring to get icecream we are actually walking away from our intended path and therefore getting more exercise.

I’d eaten my first ice of the season while in Vienna from one of the eissalon on Schwedenplatz, and only the day before had eaten my first Berlin ice of 2010 from Isabel over by the Admiralstr Bridge (Sesame with honey and toffee krokante pieces). I probably could have missed out on more icecream, but Gemelli’s is one of my favourite icecream cafes in Berlin and they usually do some type of quark based icecream that I love. Instead they had a ricotta plum flavour that I willingly chose and Sabrina went for a rosepetal dairy free ice.

Delicious. The ricotta kept the icecream really creamy and the plum provided a tart taste with a backdrop of plum brandy. Sabrina’s rose petal was delicate and clear and is what I imagine fairies eating. So yes, early waking, sunshine, walking, friends, icecream and talking.

Thank goodness it’s Spring in Berlin.

Over the next 6 weeks there’s a whole lot of visitors coming to see me in Berlin. I figured I’d make them little welcome/survival kits of German things.

Sauerkraut does not fit well in a backpack, so I’m sticking with Ritter chocolate, tiny Elmex and Aronal toothpastes, Nivea cream and Tempo tissues.