Curried sausage? It’s not the wurst...

I HAVE been working in Berlin for some of the week and it was delightful to discover that when the city got caught under an unseasonable heat bubble, Berliners reacted in much the same way as Scots.

Namely, they unveiled ivory limbs, dug out beachwear and hit the parks in ‘taps aff’ mode.

The city is also the home of currywurst: a large pork and veal sausage smothered in curry-flavoured ketchup.

New Yorkers have the bagel, Parisians have the croissant, we have haggis but Berlin has adopted a banger as its culinary emblem.

I’m not sure why Scotland hasn’t embraced currywurst, since it ticks most of our taste boxes: it’s cheap and cheerful, spicy yet familiar, and the combination of grease and carbs makes it a perfect hangover food.

Songs have been written about the dish. Politicians are photographed posing with it. It even has its own museum, where it is claimed that in post-war Berlin, a woman traded British soldiers bottles of booze for curry powder, and used it to make a spicy sausage sensation that flew off her food stall.

The local delicacy been going strong here ever since. In Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, previously synonymous with Cold War assignations with glum spies, I was offered a Currywurst pizza.

Not the best thing I’ve ever tasted but not the wurst.