LUNCH WILHELMSTRASSE
by Ntando Ximba

Beethoven is ringing in my ear and I'm sitting in Cafe
Lieb down Wilhelmstraße, there are many more
cafes around but I've chosen this one deliberately
because it makes me seem fancier than I really am. Before
me are 4 croissants and a coffee, the croissants
are stale and the coffee bitter and all of this is costing
me exactly 9.50€ but I don't mind. I have little money
in the bank and spending it makes me feel good.
Bitter coffee and stale croissants are not the worst
thing I've tasted since I got to Germany. Just a weekend
ago I found myself at the local Blaue Brücke movie
theater eating popcorn coated in a sugary syrup which
made it wholly inedible, needless to say I left the whole
bag untouched on the theater chair. I still wonder what
became of it. Most of my meals come from the nearby
student cafeteria otherwise known as the Mensa.
A quick Google search claims that Mensa is a Spanish
word for stupid but it's also Latin for table, I'm more
convinced it's the latter; it makes a little bit more
sense (in my mind at least).The Mensa like all student
cafeterias the world over serves horrendous and
borderline inedible food, it's almost as bad as the food
on the Etihad flights (economy of course). If there
were two words to describe the food at the Mensa
they'd be "soggy" and "unpalatable".
I haven't had any good food cooked by the Germans
yet unfortunately, there's a "perfectly" logical reason
for this. You see on the my first day here my lovely
host family offered me some "typical" German food
and I was quite flabbergasted to learn that they keep their pots filled with cooked food in their front yard (it's that cold) and they have a cat, so I must confess that my appetite for the food disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
Miss Barbara Owen's always gave me special vegan Ritter-Sport chocolate and I have to admit it's the best chocolate I've ever had, I think I'll miss it the most. It's the one thing the Germans got right. There is a restaurant up Wilhelmstraße called the Turkish-Bar, they serve the best vegan falafel and fried chips I've ever tasted. It's my favourite restaurant here and I recommend highly. The food is good and the staff lovely and sometimes if they like you they'll give you free Ketchup which usually costs 0.30€. So whether the Turkish-bar counts as a German or Turkish food restaurant is entirely up to you to decide. And so my overall German food experience hasn't really been that great. The food is basic and unremarkable to say the least, but the chocolate is fantastic and so I give it a lovely 2/10.