[zalew]

> the lack of anything remotely resembling a mountain near Berlin

Bavaria and Switzerland are not that far. Polish Sudety even closer and much cheaper.

> most importantly, the lack of good Mexican food.

Tex-mex is an American obsession. In Europe we have mediterranean. A doner-kebab is for us what a taco is to you, and say what you want, but kebab is a snack there's no shortage of in Berlin.

[davidw]

Perhaps I've been conditioned by living in Europe, but my definition of "not far" means I can ride my bike to it!

Kebabs are great (we have them here too in Italy), but sorry, I'll take good Mexican food any day:-)

[zalew]

> but my definition of "not far" means I can ride my bike to it

haha, well... I thought of going for a weekend, not after work. There are a few nice Mexican restaurants in Warsaw, so I know the deal, still sadly mex didn't somehow fall into the 'grab a taco and walk' category as I see on American movies, this space is totally occoupied by kebabs.

(btw, HN could display a country next to the nickname, so there's no "oh, you're not from the US too".)

[derrida]

The kebabs are something else in Berlin. Much more like a Taco than those greasy things you see elsewhere in the world.

[zalew]

Greesy kebabs with a lot of sauce 'spicy, mild or mix?' are a European invention I think. I've been to a few middle-eastern countries including Turkey and haven't seen sauce in kebab ever (still they give sauce in Berlin).

[derrida]

That is because they are Shwarma's and are completely different again. The kebab is a Berlin invention (according to TimeOut Berlin). Which makes sense, a marriage of the German sausage + bread culture with some dish from the middle east.

[zalew]

> The kebab is a Berlin invention

Wait, wat? Kebab is middle-eastern food with hundreds of years of history. 'Doner kebab' (the popular one in a bread) is Turkish. German sausage has nothing to do with it.

There are lots of ways you can serve kebab/shoarma and none of them are 'wrong' per se. The popularity of doner and roll is probably just a matter of convenience for customers and business owners. The sauce thing was just an observation, and frankly I don't know how what local influence made it served that way in Europe.

[derrida]

according to Time-Out Berlin. Yeah, according to Wikipedia, I'm wrong. Never trust a travel guide. I've been to the Emirates and what they have there is entirely different to what they have in Germany. Australia, France and the Czech Republic have something different, which is 'the greasy thing'.

[nir]

The word "Kebab" describes a different dish in the Middle East and in Germany.

[leon_]

Döner - not Kebap - is a german (berlin) invention.

[zalew]

yeeeah riiiiiiiiight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab

Before taking its modern form, as mentioned in Ottoman travel books of the 18th century,[6][7] the doner used to be a horizontal stack of meat rather than vertical, probably sharing common ancestors with the Cağ Kebabı of the Eastern Turkish province of Erzurum.

In his own family biography, İskender Efendi of 19th century Bursa writes that "he and his grandfather had the idea of roasting the lamb vertically rather than horizontally, and invented for that purpose a vertical mangal".[8] With time, the meat took a different marinade, got leaner, and eventually took its modern shape.[7] The Greek gyro, along with the similar Middle Eastern shawarma and Mexican tacos al pastor, are derived from this dish.[9] There are several stories regarding the origins of gyros in Greece: One says that the first "gyrádiko" was "Giorgos" who brought gyros to Thessaloniki in 1900[citation needed]; another legend from a meat production company states that döner was first introduced in the 1950s in Piraeus by a cook from Istanbul.

[yxhuvud]

If nothing else, putting kebab on pizza is pretty European ..

(Yes, including the sauce!)

[erikabele]

though not really Mexican we have Dolores here in Berlin - as good as calimex can get!