“German-Vietnamese Friendship”
Joana Breidenbach (excerpt)

She really wanted to name her restaurant, located in the Friedrichshain section of Berlin, “Vietnamesisch-Deutsche-Freundschaft,” or Vietnamese-German Friendship. A tribute to her feeling so at home in Germany and the fact that her family has lived in here now for almost 20 years. But then she thought her place too small for such a name and her German too broken, so she decided to call it “Asia-Euro Imbiss.” An Imbiss is a place to get “a bite to eat”; “Asia-Euro” refers to the menu, which contains a lively mix of Asian and European, “everything Germans like to eat”: spring rolls, sweet and sour soup, and, of course, the ever-popular Chinapfanne, or stir-fry platter. There are over 600 Asian take-out restaurants in Berlin, not counting scads of sushi-bars and sit-down places, from Thai to Chinese and pan-Asian. An El Dorado of culinary diversity?

More here:
http://stefanie-buerkle.de/buerkle/home/4/text.php

Joana Breidenbach’s text also appeared in the HOME : SWEET : CITY, by Stefanie B?rkle (2007).


Two Stories of Exploitation and Integration
Double lecture on Korean and Vietnamese work migration in Germany
Jan Creutzenberg, May 22, 2007

Nowadays, Asian people belong to the ethnic diversity of Berlin, and not only as tourists. There are sushi restaurants, noodle shacks, and Asian shops on virtually every corner. But it has not always been like that. True, in 1966 Korean nurses arriving in Germany were hailed by TV-reporters as “angels of morning calm.” But in reality workers from East Asia suffered severe restrictions in their personal lives—in both East and West Germany.
A double lecture yesterday night in Berlin contrasted the cases of work migration from South Korea to West Germany with that from North Vietnam to East Germany.

More here:
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=362707&rel_no=1