Today we will eat lunch at a café. It will be Kell’s first re-introduction to civilization from the wilderness of hospital food and personnel. Not that Berlin café food truly ranks as civilization, and as the for the coffee, I wake having dreamt of Latteria to the nightmare of over-watered swill made with UHT milk. A macciato in Berlin is served in a very tall glass. I shudder as a write.
My apartment is opposite Hasenheide Volkspark, a huge rolling parkland with forests and sports fields and playgrounds. On my first morning I went running and saw one red squirrel, one dog being walked, no joggers, no boxercise class, no tai-chi and about twenty five groundsmen raking leaves and trimming edges. It was a surreal comparison to Rushcutters Bay park where they are considering putting in lane ropes for the joggers. I guess Berliners don’t need to jog when they cycle everywhere, on real cycle lanes.
I chose Kreuzberg only because it was close to the hospital, but it is a fortunate choice. It’s a very cosmopolitan part of town with a very strong Turkish flavour. Lots of students, lots of music, lots of cheap food and life on the streets. However, now Kell has been moved to the Auguste-Victoria Klinikum which specializes in infectious diseases and is more appropriate for step-down care. It took me over an hour to get there by public transport yesterday. Admittedly there were a few backtracks and some unnecessary walks, but it is no longer an easy stroll through Kreuzberg to the Klinikum Am Urban.
I have discovered where all the joggers went. They have been tapering for the Berlin marathon. As I write the marathon is pouring along the road in front of my apartment building. If I have actually sent this, I must been able to make a break. The marathon runs between me and the internet café and it is a fast flowing stream. There is a breakfast café on this side of the marathon, but it serves only ice-cream and cake so I am having one of the more disgusting breakfasts of my life. And my breakfast habits are pretty disgusting at the best of times.
It is not my most disgusting culinary experience in Berlin. Last night, a beautiful couple, Florian and Tini, took me to Curry 36, a Kreuzberg institution for the locals as yet undiscovered by tourists. It was the type of food that should only be eaten after midnight, fortunately it was 2am. Currywurst is a Berlin specialty. A wurst sausage sliced up and smothered in a processed ketchup-like sauce and sprinkled with powdered spices. It is served with pommes rot-weiss – chips completely hidden beneath a mound of mayonnaise and another of tomato sauce. In defence of curry wurst at Curry 36, it was accompanied by a lecture in Dinglish (Deutsch/English) about Bauhaus, given by a very drunk Berliner whose front teeth grew sideways and whose beard started at his eyebrows. It was surprisingly informative.
My Bauhaus lecurer was definitely the most incongruous person to perform the traditional Berlin response to meeting an Australian. The custom is to put two hands in front like a kangaroo and do a Skippy impersonation. It does make it difficult to shake hands, and had a known in advance I would have brought along some gum-leaf whistles.
