Sunday, January 31, 2016

Deutsches Currywurst Museum, Berlin (Schützenstraße 70)

Currywurst is to Germans what Hamburgers are to Americans. It´s been a popular fast food of our street culture since the 1950s, the kind of „blue collar snack“ former Chancelor Gerhard Schröder used to eat in public at Ku´Damm, whenever he wanted to demonstrate to the people, that he´s one of them. And although there have been funny rumors of the Currywurst originating in Hamburg or the best sausages supposedly being served in the Ruhrgebiet, Berlin has always been the capital and the home of Currywurst. Some 70 million Currywürste (!) are devoured in Berlin every year, quite a bite of those total 800 million spiced up-sausages consumed all over Germany. Small surprise, that this city even houses a museum, entirely devoted to this very specific snack culture and it´s origins.

Located just a few steps away from former Checkpoint Charlie, a Spy Museum and the Trabbi-Car Museum, this privately owned (fast)food lover´s attraction is surprisingly well designed and packed with interesting information around curry, ketchup, the sausage success story and – not to be missed –  a food tasting booth near the exit. The friendly and helpful lady at the entrance informs me there are even organized tours in English and you can pick up English audioguides here for your museum tour.

Martin Lower, the initiator of this venture, got the idea for this museum while traveling in Thailand, so the legend goes. Impressed by a local museum devoted entirely on the history of a certain spice, this entrepreneur started thinking about German food and museum culture. And that´s when he came up with this Currywurst Museum idea. So in summer 2009 this extraordinary place has opened.

The first impression you´ll get entering the museum, is of some kind of surreal ketchup heaven lounge area, which makes design lovers think, it could have been the brainchild of Danish design legend Verner Panton: Huge red sauce drops frozen in plastic, dripping from the ceiling. This looks like fun and makes you curious right away.

It´s also setting the stage: Yes, this is an event place, not just your ordinary museum. It´s probably not of too much importance to you, but this museum has indeed collected five awards for its design and communications concept over the past five years. So you certainly won´t be bored by by dry facts here, you´ll by entertained, picking up a ketchup bottle-formed headset, listening to pop music with a currywurst theme, you´ll be sniffing at stuff, looking and most likely eating food.

Along the way, you´ll learn about Herta Heuwer, the Berlin Lady who has invented that special sauce, mixing her special ketchup ingredients and curry spices as add-on to the sausages. For further excursions in town, there´s a map of wurststands to visit in Berlin. I won´t tell you all the fun facts about this place now. Come and eat and learn about Germany favorite sausage here and its favorite sauce. This is worth a visit, most likely you´ll be in the area anyway, as a Berlin tourist.


Photographs: Views of the exhibition. Copyright: Deutsches Currywurst Museum



Finally a few remarks on the actual food being served here: If you should have vegetarians traveling with you: They are serving Veggie-Currrywurst here, following the general trend of Berlin´s Wurstbuden (the sausage booths). I recommend the sausage variation offer here with three different sauces (I liked the fruity ketchup best) and different three kinds of sausage. Don´t worry, all those are served on mini-plates, eating those is no big challenge. You may even like the experience that much, that you´ll decided to buy a book the Currywurst´s history afterwards here at the museum store.

How to get there: Take the U-Bahn to Stadtmitte (U2 or U6) or Kochstraße (U6)