Day 8 – Nein Brot!

So the cheese engorged bratwursts were so good, we (I) had to go back for another – Zwei fromage! (hey – it worked). This time it was a bloke serving and he grabbed a bread roll to jam two cheezy monsters into from the grill. I pointed to his left hand (holding the bread roll) and said, ‘nein roti!’. He dropped the two cheese snags from his right tong-hand, misunderstanding (in hindsight not surprisingly), and picked up two ham ones – looking quizzically at me. I pointed to his left hand again and said, ‘nein roti!’ And so it went, he pointing each new sausage flavour at me threateningly then slapping it down with a ‘WTF’ look every time I said ‘nein roti’, each of us getting more and more frustrated in a kind of sausage-arms escalation. It all ended when I reached over the counter to point more decidedly at the bread-roll and Helga lunged in yelling ‘nein, don’t touch!’ Somehow, two breadroll free, cheese-stuffed, monster sausages were dragged from the carnage…and I Iearnt that roti is the english word for an Indian flat bread.

Interesting contrasts today. Our attic room sits atop a traditional two story apartment in Karl Marx Haus Strasser. Turn left and you hit St Peter’s cathedral Germany’s oldest church (commissioned by Constantine with rebuilt sections dating back to the eleventh century) and then the Bassilica also built by Constantine, in 310, and rebuilt many times since – both now functioning churches serving the people and serving God. Turn right and you hit the 007 table dancing mens’ club, the erotica adult toy shop and the tattoo parlour – also serving the people – in an entirely different fashion.

We turned left today and enjoyed Cathedrals. Brevity of stay, amongst other things, will prevent us turning right, but the cathedrals were awesome! We also dropped into the roman baths (Barbara and Kaiserthermen) and the main Roman city gates ‘porta nigra’. It’s incredible to think they had such opulence and sophistication 2000 odd years ago; underfloor heating, heated pools, marbled floors and columns etc etc.

We ended the gorgeous afternoon with a coffee and cake in a nice little coffee place on the edge of the markets (best Swedish chocolate tart and German apple strudel ever) then completed our stay with a final kirsch spiked gluhwein (and cheese filled bratwurst) in the thick of the Christmas merriment, spruce and fairy lights.

The stars sparkled above, and we walked the cobbled streets home, arm-in-arm, against the cold.