I now regret buying a VW:
Reichstag rallies to gastro-nationalist banner
John Hooper in Berlin
Friday April 18, 2003
The Guardian
After the storming by countless anti-American demonstrators at McDonald's, mass defections to Mecca Cola and the rechristening of french fries as freedom fries, comes an eruption of nutritional nationalism in, of all sensitive places, the Reichstag.
The caterers for Berlin's hyper-bombastic parliament building - long associated with the rise of Prussian imperialism and later of the Nazis - have decided to ban foreign food and drink.
From May 1, all drinks - with the exceptions of tea and coffee - are to be German. Schnapps will replace grappa and wein brand will be offered instead of cognac. And, starting with the terrace garden restaurant, the caterers are to begin an ethnic cleansing of the food.
"In the German Bundestag, the gastronomy, too, ought to represent the German federal republic," Jan Becker, the caterers' buyer told Der Spiegel magazine.
As a first step, the beef will be bought from Brandenburg rather than Argentina.
It will soon become impossible to end your meal with anything so dubiously exotic as pineapple. Good old German apples will have to do instead.
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