I'd like to buy the world a döner kebab ...
I was mostly kidding when I said that a döner kebab van in Leesburg, Va., represented deep truths about globalization. But then I got this comment, from one Michael Pöppelmann:
I am an exchange student from Germany and currently in the United States. Doener is my most favorite food. Sometimes I even dream about eating it, just because it is really filling and healthy!
There you have it, a German exchange student, desperately homesick not for bratwurst but for ... döner. And come to think of it, when I was an exchange student in the Netherlands 25 years ago, tacos were the food I missed most.
Now I realize that döner and tacos are trivializations of long-established culinary traditions, and I'm not going so far as to proclaim that nations with döner kebab vans have never fought a war against each other. But I guess I am enough of a stateless cosmopolitan that I am cheered by the sight of Turkish food by way of Germany being served in a parking lot in Loudoun County, Va.
Also, I'd like to share with Michael and the rest of the world an important piece of information: The html coding for umlauts. To write an ö, you start with an ampersand (&) and then (with no spaces) type ouml, followed (again with no spaces) by a semicolon. For a ü it's uuml, for ä it's auml. One need never write "doener," or worse, "doner," again. What's more, no two nations that use umlauts have ever fought a war against each other! (Well, actually, that's probably not true.)
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ö
ä
üIt works!
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It is really amazing, the first time you go on http://www.time.com in a long while you (accidentally) find an interesting article about d(umlaut)ner, something you just thought about a few minutes ago and deicide to make a nice comment, as a person who has actually experienced the beauty of d(umlaut)ner many times, who comes from the country where d(umlaut)ner is the most popular fast food dish and where it was made perfect, who has experienced the unique after taste of the soft, or sometimes baked bread, onions,…. and tzatziki (and of course the smell of your clothes after you leave the diner).
Then a few days later, searching for d(umlaut)ner again, your quickly written comment was quoted in the next blog. A great honor. But it is true I, as a German citizen confess that I am longing for the taste of d(umlaut)ner more than for the taste of a German Bratwurst. But isn't it amazing how globalization starts in restaurants and diners all over the world and brings different cultures together establishing a relationship. We should all be cheered that the Turkish-German d(umlaut)ner is finally conquering America. (Hurray!)
But I would also like to thank Mr. Fox that he taught me how to honor the umlaut (ü, ä, ö) written by an English keyboard. Thank you very much! I will never try to write Döner or even my own name without an umlaut.( Sorry, I just did it in my email address. English, the language of internet, capitalism and globalization makes me to do it.) -
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