If you travel a lot or even if you don’t, you may have noticed that Germans are everywhere. They are probably some of the best traveled people. No matter how off the beaten track you think you’re going, they’re there. We’ve come across them in Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and they were probably in China too. They’re certainly in Tokyo.

In Bali, the Germans got up really early in the morning to reserve beach chairs. It actually even turned out that the resort we stayed at was owned by Germans. We didn’t meet many Germans in Sri Lanka, but that was apparently a coincidence because there was a Sri Lanka student in one of my language classes who was in Germany to learn the language because they got so many German tourists. Peter, my language teacher, even joked in a class that Majorca is part of Germany.

Now that I’ve spent some time here the national obsession with travel is quite clear. I’ve never been anywhere where there are so many Reiseburos, or travel agencies. There are as many travel agencies in Berlin as there are probably McDonald’s in New York City. Maybe more.

(Note:For the German speakers out there (that would be you PMK), I do realize that there is an umlaut on top of the O in Reiseburos, but I’ve given up a long time ago trying to put proper accents in foreign words.)

We have now revised our record for eating the most expensive ice cream ever. For those who do not remember or have not read my last blog entry on this subject, I refer you to the Babbi entry in the food section. Babbi in Tokyo sells a “piccolo” size” ice cream for 600 yen, which according to my very rough calculation is probably about $8.

The picture you see here is the one we had in Paris that topped that price. For two scoops of ice cream and a tuile cookie – albeit very delicious scoops of banana and salty caramel – we paid 8 euros. Yes, that would be about $10-12. I don’t remember the name of this place, but if you’re in Paris and curious, it’s the little corner cafe near Notre Dame across the Seine. You can also get ice cream to go, but I might think twice about that. When we were there, we saw pigeons landing on the stack of cones and picking at it while the server was serving customers. It could also be that the server noticed and didn’t care but either way, you’re probably safest if you go in and sit down. I can recommend the salty caramel. The cafe has a great view, but they reserve the outside tables for people having real meals.

I’m a little behind on blogging, but before we left for Paris last week, PMK and I paid a visit to a beekeeper’s store that we spotted in our neighborhood. You may ask what a beekeeper’s store would have — it’s got everything you need to start beekeeping minus the bees.

The lady there told us that this was the only beekeeper’s store in Berlin, and most people who buy stuff are hobbyists. That is they are regular people that keep a little beehive as you would a garden. A little beehive is defined as a few thousand bees, by the way. Apparently people come from miles around to shop at this store, and there’s even a person that keeps bees on her apartment balcony.

We bought two kinds of honey there. The white one on the right is supposedly the best for your health. The other on the left is also good for lungs and breathing however.

We’re in Paris for the weekend visiting some friends. Paris — you might think culture, history, museums, or even shopping. But no. Today we broke a new record. Starting with oysters and white wine for lunch, we went through five bottles of wine plus 2-4 glasses of other alcohol. We blame it on the rain. If it didn’t rain as we were coming out of the restaurant after lunch, we wouldn’t have had to force ourselves to seek shelter at a wine bar for 4 hours before dinner.

If you’ve never had currywurst, it’s basically a sausage that’s cut up, drenched with ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder.

Hamburg apparently claims to have invented them in 1947 as have Germans from the Ruhr area, but it’s a Berlin invention. The story is that a woman named Herta Heuwer grew bored waiting for customers at her sausage stand and began to experiment. Its patented under number 721319. Its now practically the official Berlin snack.

I had to try this because it comes up all the time in my German textbook. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have tried currywurst in three places in two days. I had two yesterday because I’d meant to go to Konnopke’s Imbiss in Eberwalder Strasse station and first went to the wrong place. I can honestly say my first was terrible.

Konnopke’s was THE currywurst place to go to in East Germany, but to be honest I wasn’t too impressed though it may have had to do with the fact that I was on my second sausage in the span of, oh let’s say, five minutes.

Today, I made a special stop at Wittenberg Platz on my way home from language class in part to stop at Witty’s (see picture), an organic sausage stand that my Time Out guidebook swears by. I can’t tell you if it’s because I aquired a taste for it, but it was pretty good. I think it was good in part because the curry was sprinkled before the ketchup. You could actually taste the curry even if you tried to get rid of as much ketchup as possible.

My conclusion: Witty’s is the place to go — it’s right across from KaDeWe on the square.

In Wittenbergplatz, right across from where the Jewish were gathered to be sent to concentration camps in Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and other places, one can find “the largest department store in continental Europe.” This was also the largest store in East Germany before the Wall came down. I can attest that the place is large. I spent about an hour in there including 15 minutes trying to figure out where Level LG. I never got there, but I did buy salami on their famous sixth floor food hall and got to look at Mont Blanc’s priceless pens and watches that were covered with hundreds of diamonds.

 

Is there anything more I can say about this? It’s so cliche but oh so true — a picture is worth a thousand words.

The frog on top was having a regular orgy in the middle of the day in a pond at one of the chateaux we visited near Oberhausen. This frog when on to copulate with another frog nearby right after this.

I’ve been in Germany for almost a week now as hard as that is to believe, and I have to say that the general lack of minorities in the country has been striking. As much as the thought makes me uncomfortable, there is no getting around thinking of the country’s history, especially the Nazi experience.

This is my third time in Germany, and my personal experience has been nothing but positive. I find people here to be generally very warm and friendly. But at the same time, I can’t help but think about what it must have been like during the war. There is enough of a feel of an old city to  set my imagination going. I walk around the city and wonder where the Jewish people were rounded up to be sent to camps. When I’m on the train or walking among a crowd of people, a part of me can’t help but think about the fact that many of these people probably had parents or grandparents who participated in the horrors of the past. And I wonder what they think of me as an Asian minority.

Of course, at the same time, I wonder what I would have done if I was a German back then. The Japanese have done many horrible things as well, and I wonder whether I would have had the courage to stand up against the government at the risk of my own life even if I didn’t agree with the policies. Hopefully, I would’ve done what I can, but in all likelihood, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to openly stand up against them.

I’m in Germany right now with PMK. I’m in between jobs right now, so I took the opportunity to study German, and today was my first day at a school in Berlin called Die Neue Schule. I’m in a class with 10 others — Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Brazilian, Argentinian… it’s a very diverse group, but I’d forgotten how slow people can be and how tedious it is to sit in a classroom. My teacher told me that the class was probably too easy for me, but they have no room in the level above until next week so I’m stuck in the meantime. The instructor is great though. He’s quite gifted in chalkboard drawing and pantomime with a flair for theater mixed in. I suppose those are two essential skills for teaching beginning German. So far, I’ve amused him by saying that “I’m looking at a television” instead of “I’m watching television.”