The Doner Kebab, to all who have never experienced the joy of this sandwich, ubiquitous on Berlin's streets, is the main product of almost every Middle Eastern restaurant in the city (or at least every Middle Eastern restaurant cheap enough for me to eat on my college-student budget). A shop generally advertises its doners through the presence of a dondurmek in the window.
The Reichstag's rain cone looks to me just like the meat on a dondurmek:
Doner kebab is, by now, one of the most popular foods in Germany. It's also common in the rest of Europe (the first dondurmek I ever saw was in Paris.) But as Turkish as doner kebab looks and tastes, it's as German as the Reichstag, invented by a Berlin fast food vendor in 1971. Since that time, doner kebab had migrated across Europe back to Istanbul, where it's almost as popular as it is in Berlin, proving once again that the world is far stranger than we could ever hope to imagine.
Next week: a slightly more serious look at the Reichstag building.
No comments:
Post a Comment