The Girl Who Ate Everything

For an overview of my trip to Berlin that took place from April 5 to 12, check out this introductory post. I'm a total noob when it comes to Berlin and German history, and all German translations I've presented are done with Google Translate; if I've written anything that's wrong, please let me know!

I split day four of my trip into two posts because the two parts are...very different. Also, one post would've been crazy long. Here's part II.

"Arbeit macht frei" ("work sets you free"), the message in Sachsenhausen's entrance, among other concentration camps.

Numbers and symbols assigned to Sachsenhausen prisoners.

From 1936 to 1945, over 200,000 people from all over Europe—criminals, Communists, gays, Jews, political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, anyone deemed racially or biologically inferior, and then some—were imprisoned at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, significant for being built as a prototype for other concentration camps (you can get a good look at its design in this map) and for being the closest concentration camp to Berlin at only 35 kilometers north in Oranienburg. An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people died*, which to me sounds surprisingly low—even if Sachsenhausen wasn't an extermination camp, but a labor camp—considering all the numerous and easy ways people could die there.

* Source; I've also read the death toll as being around 100,000, but some sources call that an overestimation.

For an overview of my trip to Berlin that took place from April 5 to 12, check out this introductory post. I'm a total noob when it comes to Berlin and German history, and all German translations I've presented are done with Google Translate; if I've written anything that's wrong, please let me know!

Read part I of this post here.

Schnitzel. My reward. Eventually.

"Do you need any help finding your way?" asked our Sachsenhausen guide Paul as he walked down the aisle of the train car, making sure the members of his tour group knew how to get to their final destinations. "It's easy, just a straight shot to the center."

"Yup, we're good!"

[BZZT] Wrong. We thought we were good. But in the land of BVG service advisories, especially on a weekend holiday (it was Easter Sunday), you can't be sure. In this case, we thought getting to Greifswalder station—near the restaurant I picked for dinner—would be easy, until we found out after one two um, three transfers later there was no train service to that station. Because that's how long it took for us to look at one of the service advisory boards on the platforms.

IN CONCLUSION: Pay close attention to service advisories. They might mess with ya.

But instead of shaking my fist at the BVG gods, I'll thank them. If we had actually been able to get to my first choice for dinner, we wouldn't have gone to my backup, Schnitzelei. Overall it was one of the best meals of the week, thanks to a combination of a warm and friendly atmosphere and, you know, fried meat cutlets.

If you've sent me a friend request on Facebook but never got a response, I should probably explain why...

"This can represents the green slashes, silver blotches design introduced in 1995."

"It's from 1995?"

"Not so fast. Please. See, this can design ran until 1998."

"So we'll never know how old it is."

"Well, now, as you can see it does not have the wide mouth, which Mountain Dew introduced in January of 1996. So that means we can pinpoint this can's date to 1995." [resounding slam of appraisal manual]

"How much do you think it's worth?"

"Two cents. Course, it's worth five cents if the deposit machine accepts it, but it may not, and I have to remain conservative in my appraisals."

"Sure."

I am oddly smitten by this episode of The Onion's Antiques Roadshow parody/spoof appraisal show, Lake Dredge Appraisal. So much so that I felt compelled to transcribe some of it. But not all of it. Because if I gave it all away, I'd be denying you the pleasure of unraveling the video's joys on your own time.

Also, it's 3 a.m. and I'm tired.

ENJOY!!!

For an overview of my trip to Berlin that took place from April 5 to 12, check out this introductory post. I'm a total noob when it comes to Berlin and German history, and all German translations I've presented are done with Google Translate; if I've written anything that's wrong, please let me know!

The time has finally come! The time for me to eat Berlin's most beloved doner kebap! All I've gotta do is mosey up to Mustafa's and...

Post-Easter line.

AHHHHHHHHhhhhrrrrgg

The line doesn't look very long—it's not as daunting as Shake Shack on a sun-soaked summer's day—but at the much smaller Mustafa's, this line (perhaps lengthened by people off work for the Easter holiday) is about an hour's wait. Which would normally be okay on vacation...if Kåre and I hadn't done the seemingly responsible thing of already buying timed tickets to the Pergamon for 3:15 p.m. to avoid the Pergamon-visiting fail we encountered two days prior.

Sigh. Let's try that again.

The time has finally come! The time for me to eat one of Berlin's most beloved currywursts! All I've gotta do is mosey up to Curry 36 and...

Curry 36 crowd.

BLLLUUURRGgggghhuuh

Meat logs galore.

Actually, this mobscene of ketchup-slathered-meatlog-hungry people is perfectly manageable. Unlike at the neighboring Mustafa's where each sandwich takes a few steps to assemble—carving the meat, stuffing the meat into bread, adding the multiple toppings, doing everything fairly neatly—currywurst assembly kind of just goes plop (meat log), plop (ketchup), sprinkle (cayenne/curry powder?). By the time I receive my food at Curry 36, Kåre—who's been holding down the fort at Mustafa's—has covered about the same distance as a lethargic inchworm would in the same timespan.

We ate the goods while waiting in line. I wondered why everyone else waiting for Mustafa's wasn't doing this. Maybe they didn't like currywurst. Maybe they weren't gluttons. I'd say attempting to eat from two food stands at the same time is just good time management, ignoring that we only successfully ate at one, and that if we were truly good at time management we would've woken up earlier and/or already visited the Pergamon. ...Nevermind.