Berlin Trip Highlights

After a couple of days in London, we headed to Berlin to spend the next four days.

- One of the things we were most looking forward to in Berlin was having some delicious, authentic Turkish food. It probably seems odd to want to go to Berlin for Turkish food, but Germany actually has the largest Turkish population outside of Turkey. Katie and I did some research and found a wonderful Turkish restaurant called Hasir. We started off with some Turkish flatbread accompanied with butter, yogurt sauce, feta, and a pepper relish. We also had two other appetizers (not pictured): grilled eggplant in a tomato and garlic sauce and fried spinach.

I had the lamb kebob for my entrée, which was served over pieces of bread and with a side of yogurt sauce. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it was the best lamb kebob I’ve ever had. We were too stuffed to try dessert, but our server gave us some complimentary Turkish tea at the end of our meal.

In fact, all of the servers were awfully chatty the whole time. We thought they were just being nice and trying to welcome us to Berlin, but we realized they had other intentions when we found this note folded up with our bill…


- It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but Katie and I ended up at a McDonalds ordering chicken nuggets one night in Berlin. Granted, this was after our noodle mishap and before, we anticipated, a long night at the club. We were hungry and decided to see what it was like. We were happily surprised to see that the German McDonalds offers a curry dipping sauce!



- We spent one afternoon at KaDaWe, an enormous, upscale department store with a gourmet food hall on the top floor. I came here with the intention of trying head cheese (pictured below), but my stomach was feeling a little queasy (having nothing to do with the prospect of trying head cheese) so I had to pass. However, I have promised myself that I will try it sometime in the near future.




Aside from the head cheese, I was fascinated with the selection of meats available at KaDaWe. The picture below on the left is of chicken stomachs, hearts, and livers. I think the picture on the right is of whole rabbits. I need to find a place in Chicago where I can find rabbit like that!

- We had some great schnitzel at a restaurant next to KaDaWe. I had the wiener schnitzel (left) and Katie had chicken schnitzel with a mushroom cream sauce (right).

- In true Berlin fashion, Katie and I enjoyed a late night (well, early morning) doner sandwich. I know that pretty much anything would have tasted amazing at that hour, but I’m confident in saying that this would have tasted amazing at any time of day. It was a fabulous end to a fabulous night in Berlin.