Brandy samples German food.

1) German food: what surprised you? What tasted good/bad. What would you recommend to your American family and friends?

 Talking about German food is like talking about roller coasters. The first time you ride one, it's an amazing experience because it's so different than the ground-based life we're used to. However, if you ride the same roller coaster all day long you begin to miss the variety! In America, we have a large variety, for the most part, due to our generally multicultural background. Admittedly, everything's "americanized" but it still provides for a large variety! When you go to another country, you tend to feel drawn to try the local specialties, but after ten days of eating mostly one "genre" of food, you start to miss the familiarity of variety. 

And so with that, I went after variety! As someone who has been to Berlin twice before, and already had the specialties, I wanted this time to see just how American their "American" dishes were, such as the hamburger and fries duet that most Americans know and love, topped as the Americans would have it. I couldn't get a photo of the burger I ate, prepared at an Irish pub (funny, right?) because it really was that good... slathered in BBQ sauce, made me feel right at home, so much so that I couldn't hit the button on the camera before I'd devoured the entire thing. And trust me, there was a lot of burger. Even to a Man vs. Food extent, they know how to do burgers over at Kilkenny's Irish Pub under S-Bahn Station Hackescher Markt, which lies just north of Unter den Linden and Northwest of the infamous Alexanderplatz. (We also went on St. Paddy's day (I bet you can guess which picture was taken that night.). Naturally the atmosphere was a little more vivacious that night than the average, sleepy pub. It was interesting to compare how the Germans celebrate a holiday that has little to nothing to do with their nation, much like Americans celebrating Oktoberfest.)

Again in my hunt for comparison, I decided to take a sampling of the McDonald's classic, the McRib. It was actually not quite as good as the one prepared here, but that may just be because I live in the south and people, even in a corporate setting, take their ribs incredibly seriously. However, believe it or not, I decided to do the unheard of and order Pommes mit Majo, which, precisely as the name suggests, means "fries with mayonnaise." Truth be told, this German adaptation to our traditional methodology on eating fries was actually something that I preferred to eating them with ketchup, as is more common stateside.

On our mid-voyage voyage to Hamburg, I didn't have a single hamburger. However, it was strongly recommended before I left that if I did one thing in Hamburg, it would be to try the fish. This is what I ordered, and I was not disappointed. How good was the fish? So good that I couldn't really put it into words. I'll never have my fish fried again, I don't think. I also would have never thought to put it in mustard, but again, the people of Hamburg didn't let me, or my palate, down. (It should be noted, the glass above the meal was only there for decoration. As it was local, I felt the picture wouldn't have been complete without it... The things I do for academia.)

Finally, on a return to Berlin, I tried the famous Berliner Currywurst, a spicy testament to the multicultural element that a city like Berlin has to offer. To drink, a nice glass bottle of freedom- i mean- Coke. The currywurst was delicious, as I expected, and the coke was even better than it is here, both because it was bottled in glass and because the Germans serve their coke with real sugar. You'd think that in the land of obesity, the least you could do would be to give us a little sugar in our coke, right? Regardless, currywurst is a fast-food-type-thing that I would order again in a heartbeat, even at the risk of my own heartbeat.