Eating Berliners in Grand Style

I'm sorry:  2 months since my last blog post.  I blame the total lack of Berliner jelly donuts in my diet.  It really is difficult to get my fix:  wake up with bars of light burning through the slats in the window shades into my red eyes.  Check the clock:  DAMN.  Missed the window.  If you don't hit the window of donut opportunity you are SCREWED.  Nothing worse than walking bleary-eyed and bed-headed several blocks to your donut dealer--only to find they are completely out of Berliners.  This happens sometime between 10am and 11am.  Bastards.  "Would Herr Berlinermunchenmensch like a piece of cake instead?" the nice donut lady might ask.  "Would you like me to rip your lungs out through your NOSE?"  I might reply.  No, really:  if you are hooked on Coca-Cola (or some other evil chemical substance), would you settle for DIET?  Didn't think so, Sunshine.

So without my donut panacea to sooth my violent tendencies, I've fallen into different/normal patterns and rituals.  Like work.  Suddenly, as if getting up before 10am mattered for an Artiste, I suddenly got a pile of photography work.  And by a pile, I mean one of those types of months wherein I work every day without pause for a donut day off.  Hence the lack of my favorite drug.

So you can imagine my surprise when, upon finishing the morning sessions of a Berlin conference in a fancy-shmancy hotel (Grand Westin), I saw a beam of light pierce the hotel skylight, miss my bleary red eyes and light up the biggest slice of Heaven a donut muncher can behold:  pristine plates FULL of little mini-Berliners.  Sure, this was a French company holding the conference, but NO, the hotel wasn't going to give them croissants.  When in Berlin, do as the Berliners do:  roll up them there sleeves and dig into the donuts.  Yes, in the photo you may see some OTD (other than donuts), some kinda Fancee Frawnch FrittAIRS or something, but fret not:  the Berliners outnumbered the fritters 2 to 1.

While these hotel mini-drugs weren't the same as the lard peddled by my local pusher at Siebert (There are no better jelly donuts on the planet.  Really), at least I could take as many as I wanted for free and not be forced to stand in a queue and be told that there was No Joy in Donutville and have to be jailed for ripping a nice woman's lungs out through her nose.

I'll try to get back to y'all soon with more violent, drug-and-donuts-addled stories soon.  In the meantime, I also got paid to write about Berlin beach bars.  Well ain't that a hoot?