Guadeloupe: Nur die Strasse ist anders

The Caribbean is seriously underrepresented in Berlin, so I was excited to discover the Karibikmarkt stand at the Winterfeldplatz market (Wednesdays and Saturdays) specializing in products from Guadaloupe. You can buy yourself a bottle of Guadaloupean rum, some guava jam, or coconut vinegar, among other treats. If you go on a warm day like I did, you can first enjoy a grilled fish sandwich (having nothing to do with Guadaloupe, but tasting delicious -- anyway, sorbet alone isn't a proper lunch) sitting on a picnic bench in the sun. My favorite is a mackerel sandwich, but they always have trout as well, and sometimes squid and other "fancier" bits. For 3.50 Euros, the grill guy prepares the fish to order, smears a fresh roll with mayonnaise (somehow it's not the icky sweet German stuff) and horseradish, adds chopped onion and this last time he used some samphire. Once done with your sandwich, you can wander about, admiring the rhubarb and eying the baked goods. Finally, you can get a cup of mango and/or coconut sorbet from Frau Mokros (the coconut, creamy and not too sweet, is her mother's recipe). I recommend getting a little of each with the mango on the bottom, so you can pull it up through the coconut with your spoon. The sorbet is quite soft; it's obviously made fresh on market days. A perfectionist, might find it too soft, but I loved this homemade quality. It reminded me of something you might buy on the street when vacationing on a Caribbean island. Now (just three days later!) that the weather has turned cold, gray, and rainy, the sorbet feels almost like a memory from a long-ago vacation....