Driving 18 Hours for a Pizza Party
May 12-16, 2021
The first spring of the pandemic was marked by fear and uncertainty: How long is this going to last? Is it even safe to go outside? Is anything safe at all? The second spring of the pandemic was just long - seemingly unending - still unable to travel and now deeply tired of the same routine stuck inside our apartment for over a year. With the exception of Kirb’s one-night jaunt to sleep in the frozen woods of Brandenburg, neither one of us had left the city for eight consecutive months, by far the longest stretch we had ever stayed put in Berlin. Unsurprisingly, we both started to go a little stir crazy.
We started paying exceptionally close attention to the trees on our daily walks, watching the buds and waiting eagerly for the leaves to start blooming. Berlin is a much different place when everything is green and lush around the canals, and the wait for spring to hit felt interminable. The city comes alive when the plants do, and this year was no exception, especially since everything indoors was still closed down. Once it started to warm up, the canals were swarmed with locals drinking beer and socializing, thrilled to finally be able to get out of their apartments and change up the routine. Free COVID testing centers opened up on seemingly every block, and getting inside any store required a negative test. With all the active testing and a strong push to vaccinate, the infection numbers started to plummet, and it didn’t seem quite so dangerous to enjoy simple pleasures anymore, if you enjoyed them responsibly.
Being able to hang out outside was a welcome change, but we were itching for a little bigger change of scenery than just the same neighborhood with leaves on the trees. We wanted to go somewhere - anywhere - but the possibilities were still severely limited. So we sorted through our meager options and realized that perhaps our only viable option for leaving Berlin was actually a really good one: we could rent a car and drive to Spritzboi and Jess’ place in Luxembourg for a long weekend. We could all get tested before meeting up, drive straight there, and basically spend a couple days doing isolation stuff with our friends, in their apartment instead of ours.
It’s a nine-hour drive from our place to Luxembourg, which is long, but that time flew by knowing that we were on our way to have fun with friends. It was strange how thrilling the simple prospect of not being in our apartment for a few days felt, even if all we were doing was going to hang out in someone else’s apartment. Our weekend itinerary was so simple and yet so perfect: We were going to eat good food. Barbecue. Drink wine. Go hiking. Have a pizza party. Play games. Pet kitties. Crack jokes. What more do you really need? We both had some work to finish up during that time too, but the idea of getting to do it in someone else’s living room made it seem almost exotic.
Spritzboi has become an expert baker over the course of the pandemic. Lots of people took up making sourdough, but I doubt many took it as far as he did. It’s become the thing that gets him up in the morning, his white whale, his quest for perfection. He’d been sending us loaf pictures for months, and we were very excited to finally get an opportunity to taste them. Because he and Jess are sweethearts and amazing hosts, they stocked the fridge with the delicious Luxembourgish specialties we love: spreadable kochkäse cheese and filet américain (essentially steak tartar). And now we had fresh baked bread to spread it all on, and we knew for certain that Spritzboi’s loaves don’t just look pretty. They’re delicious.
It was supposed to rain all weekend, not only in Luxembourg but all across Europe. We took our opportunity on Thursday to get outside for a hike before the rain was supposed to come in full force, starting in a small village called Berdorf on a trail that would take us through an area called “Little Switzerland.” We usually come to Luxembourg in November for Thanksgiving, and because we were already so hyper aware of the leaves this year, both of us immediately noticed how green and lush everything was when we arrived. The forests were shimmering with the new growth of light green leaves, and everything felt vibrant and alive. The simple reality of not only being able to go hiking again after so many months locked inside, but being able to do it with friends, was like sensation overload.
The trail Jess picked was a beauty, taking us down into a valley with big, interesting rock formations and lush vegetation. At the end, you pass through a cavern called the “Huel Lee” which was dug out in the Middle Ages to make millstones, and you can see the ridges in the stone from where they were carved.
For a number of reasons, we don’t get to have barbecues on our terrace. Mainly, it’s because all the smoke would just go up into our neighbors’ apartments and they would undoubtedly yell at us in German, which is awful. But it’s also because our terrace is sinking into the ground from all the rat tunnels beneath it, so it’s not a great place to put barbecues or tables or food of any kind. We really enjoy barbecuing, and boy it was fun sitting around the grill like a small fire and drinking beers and then cooking meat and then eating it. Honestly, just barbecuing for a few days could have been our whole vacation and we would have been fine with that.
The next morning was still bright and sunny, though the forecast said storms were closing in fast, so we quickly checked our hosts’ hiking book and found a loop trail in the area. We scarfed some food and took our coffee in to-go cups and Spritzboi drove us out to the trailhead like a cool dad, telling us to call him when we needed a ride back. The trail took us though some very pleasant woods, down into town and then right back up a big hill, before turning into a workout course with numbered exercise stations, most of which strangely required you to crawl around in the dirt. It felt lovely to walk around in a place that was not the loop around the canal we have walked several hundred times in the last year.
Spritzboi was very excited to try out his new toy: a fancy-pants propane pizza oven that gets hot enough to cook Neapolitan-style pizzas in about a minute. We followed along to the hardware store to buy gas, happy just to be hanging out. We particularly liked that they were selling wine barrels in the front of the store, like an impulse buy item (they were not already filled with wine, or else we might have impulsively bought one).
The inclement weather was finally happening in full force now, with crazy sideways windstorms making everything shake outside, so we set up the pizza oven on the balcony instead of out in the exposed garden. By the time everything was prepped and ready to cook, the storm had blown away and there were sunny skies. True to its claims, the Roccbox pizza oven got incredibly hot inside, though there was almost no heat coming off the sides. The first pizza cooked surprisingly fast - so fast that it was already burning after just one full rotation of the pie. We had loaded up on our favorite toppings and a bunch of Belgian beer at the store, so we spent the evening leisurely drinking and fixing up and firing pizza after pizza, and by the end we figured we had it down to a science. The Muff Stuff is now a proper bakery, Thanksgiving haven, and pizza parlor.
It was sad to pack up and drive the nine hours back to Berlin that Sunday, but we all felt recharged after far too long without any kind of reset. With vaccination appointments set for early summer and restrictions loosening, it looks like we’ll finally be able to travel again this year. While we wait for our old, freewheeling lives to resume in any tangible way, it’s a comfort to know that we always have the option of a Luxembourgish retreat when another weekend in our tiny apartment is simply too much to bear.