“I can still remember when doner kebabs were sold for €3.50,” reminisced one teenager amid calls for a price brake to stop rising kebab costs.

The German capital is the birthplace of that ubiquitous European fast food, the doner kebab, and it shows.

Kebab shops line streets of many German cities, particularly in Berlin, and the scent of roasting, skewered meat is never far off.

Some two-million doner kebabs — meat wrapped in bread, topped with sauces and vegetables — are consumed a day in Germany, according to an industry association, quite a lot for a country of 83 million people. And the doner kebab has even supplanted the old stalwart, the currywurst — fried veal sausage topped with ketchup and curry powder — as the most popular fast-food dish in the country, according to a 2022 survey.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    5 months ago

    On the other hand, feeling angst is part of being German, isn’t it?

    You guys came up with the word.

    • G14D0S@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      You don’t have a word in your language that has a similar meaning? (like “fear” for example)

      • raef@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The word “angst” was taken over as a part of the language. It’s a specific type of fear, sort of mixed with anxiety. Fear and angst aren’t interchangable

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Kierkegaard:

          For Kierkegaard, anxiety/dread/angst is “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.” Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences an aversion to the possibility of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our “dizziness of freedom.”

          Nietzsche later picked it up, himself using Angst as that’s basically the same word as Danish angst (shocking, I know). Danish also has frygt, German Furcht, English fright, which is immediate and not apprehensive. Reactive, not agentive. Fright is something that happens to you, dread is something you do. At least in theory people don’t always make a clear distinction, they’re blending into each other.

          Do note how angst is translated as anxiety or dread, here, which is correct. In psychology English uses anxiety where German uses Angst, both existentialists were talking about psychology, which leaves us with the question on why English philosophers felt the need to import the Danish, or German, or whatever, word, when they had two perfectly fine words of their own.

          • raef@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I feel like “angst” has a competition of uncomfortableness. It’s maybe more specific than anxiety and not as oppressive. Like teenage angst, it’s temporary

          • freebee@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Dutch has the same word: angst. In my experience it’s not as “heavy” as Angst in German, but rather interchangeable with “schrik hebben” or “bang zijn”. Though “angstig zijn” might be more of longer duration, like a character trait of a person.

    • norimee@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      “Angst” in german is just the translation of normal fear. It doesn’t has the implication of existential threat it has in english.

      I think you guys got the word from Sigmund Freud and gave it a very loaded meaning it doesnt have in german.