Currywurst-The Berliner Delicacy

Currywurst is another of Berlin’s most common fast foods. Unlike Döner Kebap, however, it is one of a few foods unique to Berlin. And it is also served in Berlin with style, exemplified by the Currywurst stand on Kurfürstendamm that will also sell you a 450€ bottle of Rosé.

Its creation is actually very simple, probably an important part of why it is so popular. It is made up of a sausage(with or without the intestine), sliced into half-inch sized chunks, and then smothered in a tomato-based sauce (usually ketchup). A special blend of curry powder is then generously sprinkled on top, giving the dish its name and part its flavor. It is most commonly served with fries and either mayo or more Currywurst-sauce.

The flavor is surprisingly mild. Depending on the stand, you can find a pretty good variety of taste. Personally, I have to add to the most common recommendation of Curry 36, probably the best-known Currywurst stand among Berliners. Serving their house-made sauce covering sausage with a little extra TLC, it’s pretty hard to beat. The currywurst here retains a good deal of flavor from the Ketchup, but the curry adds tang and a surprising heat to the sauce. And, of course, the price is pretty good too.

But it’s not just limited to the confines of Berlin, as we observed advertising for the supposedly famous Volkswagen-Currywurst during our visit to Wolfsburg. I do think, however, that it must have originated in Berlin.

Word for the Post: lecker
Definition: Delicious, tasty
Pronunciation: LECK-er

The Geschlecht-Debate

Gender is a very important part of the German language. Every noun in German is assigned one of three genders through the use of definite articles: der for masculine, die for feminine, or das for neutrum (neutral, neither). Of course, not everything in the world has a specific gender, but for some reason, those that decided to create their language of German also wanted to determine that dogs were male, cats were female, and babies should have no specific sex. However, there are also constructions within the language, like the diminutives -chen and -lein which lead to the Mark Twain quote:

"In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has"

Specifically, what he is referencing is the word Mädchen, which means literally 'young maid' and because of the -chen is neutrum, or without gender.

But this assigning of gender also becomes problematic for specific Germans who are overly concerned with political correctness, as specific words are also interpreted as inherently male. An telling example of this comes from Switzerland, where women received the right to vote in 1971. Prior to the momentous occasion, their constitution read "Stimmberechtigt ist jeder Schweizer", which translates to "every Swiss is given voting rights" but really, this only means the men. It wasn't until they changed the passage to include Jede Schweizerinnen that women also received this right. This list of words with this assumed masculinity includes pretty much every profession, most of which used to be male-dominated but are now balancing out. Examples: der Artz meaning the (male) doctor, der Kanzler meaning the (male) chancellor, and also der Student, meaning the (male) college student. Since women also practice these (and numerous other) professions, Germans came up with a solution: Simply at -in onto every male word to make it female. Brilliant! Now we have die Ärtzin, die Kanzlerin, and die Studentin. But the gender problems creep back up when we turn to the plural. Because there are different words for males and females of a specific profession, how do you address them together?

Normally, to pluralize something in German, one of a variety of endings is added, depending on the word and its gender. For example, der Student becomes die Studenten. But because another word exists for female students, die Studenten doesn't officially refer to them. The proper way to pluralize die Studentin is instead die Studentinnen. So when an official document is published that wants to say something like "Dear Students", it would probably read like:

Lieber/e StudentInnen

This is officially fair to all parties. Unfortunately, it's also terribly unattractive when writing legal documents or statements to large groups of people. Therefore, we come upon the solution, which applies at least to students, that I mentioned last week: die Studierende, meaning "the studying". Unfortunately, this does not really solve the problem, because a Studierende is not actually always studying, as the name implies. The solution works out fine for die Jugendliche, because they are constantly youthful. Personally, I think this debate is laughable, because I have found that even in the US, where such inherent gender assignments do not exist in our language, we have trouble with stereotypes. We can't solve this problem because it is really part of our way of thinking.
Word for the Post: das Geschlecht
Pronunciation: ge-SHLECHT
Definition: Gender

The Berlin Institute of Technology (Part I)

It's where I study. At least, for the next 3 months or so. Specifically, it is clustered around Ernst-Reuter Platz in the western part of Berlin, but there could be other satellite locations of which I am not aware.
Anyway, I just want to discuss a few aspects of it to start off with. First of all, it is huge. Something on the order of 35,000 students study here, which is almost 3 times as large as what I'm used to at Duke (and half of those are grad students in the US, so we never see them anyway). I have class in a lecture hall here that could seat upwards of 1,000! But even so, I've only seen it filled once, and that was for a Colloquium from a Nobel Prize winner(I think he won the Nobel Prize). It is so enormous that it is visible from Google Earth (52º35'40.08" N, 13º19'39.47" E) And one of the things I found a little strange (but understandable, in light of the size of the university) is that you don't have to register for most of the classes taken here. Instead, you just show up on the first day. If there is an associated tutorial or recitation, you are expected to register for those, depending on whether or not the space is limited in them. For example, with my Signals and Systems course, aside from my registration for the online content, the professor/administrators would have no idea whether or not I were in the course. And when you compare this with registration at Duke, where it sometimes feels impossible to get the class you want, it's just kind of incredible to be able to theoretically take whatever. You do have to register for the final test as well, but I believe that it's possible to do so without being in the course.

Then again, this system does have its drawbacks, namely impersonal relations between lecturers and students. Because much of the information is available elsewhere (lecture slides online, review of important problems in recitations, textbooks etc.), many students will simply not attend classes in which the lecturer is particularly uninteresting. I can also imagine there being very little sympathy on the part of the instructor for those students whose grades are particularly borderline.

Word for the Post: die Studierende
Pronunciation: Stu-DEER-in-duh
Translation: literally, 'Studying', not in the sense of the gerund as in English, but rather as a noun. Refers primarily to university students, but also broaches an interesting facet of the German language which has recently come up for debate. More on that in the next post!