On June 26th 1963 President John F Kennedy gave a famous speech in West Berlin in which he declared “Ich bin ein Berliner”. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War. Of course there is some view that he was referencing a doughnut, well let’s go to Wikipedia and see what that says about this.
There is a widespread misconception that Kennedy accidentally said a malapropism that he was a Berliner, a German doughnut specialty. This is an urban legend which emerged several decades after the speech, and it is not true that residents of Berlin in 1963 would have mainly understood the word “Berliner” to refer to a jelly doughnut or that the audience laughed at Kennedy’s use of this expression.
Despite that on my recent trip to Berlin I did remember that speech and I did have a few doughnuts.
Close to my hotel there was a doughnut shop close to my hotel and looking through the window these did look like really nice doughnuts. However at €4.50 each they were a little expensive for me. In the supermarket next door they had a selection of doughnuts roughly €1 each, much more in my price bracket for a snack and better value for money. Not that I could actually compare as I never bought one of the €4.50 doughnuts.
I did enjoy my doughnuts, usually with a cup of coffee.