1.15.2012


The streets of a city host many street vendors a place to sell whatever you can think of; homeless selling their newspapers desperate to have enough money for some food, charity funds hopelessly try to convince people to regularly donate money, bored busters bring music to the numerous people in the shopping streets. But there’s one kind of vendor which is always welcome; He who sells sausages.

The romantic view we Europeans get from New York (for example through movies) is that people can get food on every corner of the street. In films this is symbolized by the fast food restaurants, take away coffees and hot dog stalls. The latter will be discussed here. Hot dogs, or Frankfurters, are sold in parks or just around the corner of one of the avenues and gives the New Yorker – whether he works on the 21st floor of a large office or as a garbage collector – a heated hot sausage on a long white bun.

This sausage in fact has its origin in Germany. As many foods are named after its cities – for example a Berliner (a bun filled with pudding or jam) and a Hamburger (this meat seems of have its origin in the North German harbor city) - the famous sausages come from Frankfurt am Main. Typical German food stuff seems to find its way to America easily.

The Frankfurters have been invented back in the 18th in the German town of Frankfurt am Main. It has been brought to America by German immigrants who started to sell water heated or grilled Frankfurters during big sports event. Like the hamburger, the sausages were once food eaten by ‘homesick food’ Germans but now completely accepted and even seen as something typical American.

But the Germans strike back. The German immigrant selling hot dogs in America has finds its way back to its home country. And he even improved himself! The clever German made a so called grill walker. The seller wears a construction which enables him to store sausages, buns and sauces on his back. On his front a grill is attached. While walking through the city he spreads out a perfect smell of grilled meat, thereby making everyone passing by hungry. And although it looks ridiculous, he can expect more smiling faces than any other street seller around.