A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
As a traveler, snooping is my distinguishing characteristic. Without it, I lack motivation to leave my warm and comfy hotel, brave busy city streets, poke into museums, read the tiny print on monument plaques or try out strange foods.
On holiday, I am nonstop curious—and hungry. My name is Noah.
Confronted with a challenging, unfamiliar, slightly mysterious menu, I’ll eat almost any local specialty—at least once. I’m more a man of petty preferences than culinary convictions.
This morning, I awoke to crisp, clear, blued-eyed Germanic skies. The kind of day that overpromises. The kind of day that tricks my feet into sightseeing way past their physical comfort zone.
In Berlin is home to the Currywurst Museum. Eight hundred million currywurst orders are consumed annually in Germany. For Berliners, it is described as a comfort food much like tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches in American households. I was fixated on feeding myself with this iconic fast food.
One museum too many, an extra cathedral visit, a long climb to a vista point and, by dusk, I can be like a dehydrated runner with leg cramps. Today was no different. Depleted by late afternoon, I needed refreshment.
Trudging along a tree-lined, residential boulevard enjoying Berlin’s urban planning, but half lost and very hungry, I inhaled the warm, fatty smell of sizzling meat wafting from a curbside shack placed next to a jumble of scruffy dumpsters. Inside, a rather handsome woman in blue-checked pants and a pink top, maybe 50 years old, was grilling sausages.
My nostrils flared. My mouth watered. My first currywurst awaited.
Wetting my lips, nearly drooling, I placed my order for one currywurst and the local beer Berliner Weisse.
In minutes, pork sausage links sawed into chunks and smothered with a red sauce appeared on a six-inch, canoe-shaped paper plate. Currywurst looks like twisted pig iron unevenly cut with a hacksaw handled by a six-year-old with tremors, then slopped with a florid sauce the ruddy color of fake blood from a cheap wartime movie. French fries doused with globs of mayonnaise are the usual side dish.
Following the local custom, enforced by the absence of any seating, I ate standing up on the hard pavement. The soles of my feet and my calves kept up a steady complaint. Poking the currywurst into my mouth with a flimsy wooden fork, my heart skipped an arteriosclerotic beat.
The age-old traveler’s adage that “travel teaches tolerance” is not always a truth I depend on. If anything, currywurst teaches intolerance.
Currywurst coats the tongue with a cloying residue. I imagined an amputated human thumb marinated in its own juices. A spongy, soggy, slimy texture. My tastebuds reverted to memories of hospital trays provisioned with grayish, brownish foodstuffs.
Like the Berlin Wall, currywurst is a post-WWII relic. In 1949, an enterprising housewife, Herta Heuwer, traded bootleg booze for ketchup to which she added curry powder. She slathered the concoction on sausages and, thus, invented currywurst.
The heaviness in my legs and stomach yanked me back to bombed out Berlin. Between spongy, slippery bites, I tried to imagine the desperation and despair after years of wartime survival.
When Berliners were reduced to eating anything they could scavenge, Ms. Heuwer did her creative best to feed people. Good for her.
Under threat of species extinction, currywurst is a palatable, even digestible, option. Barely.