Chocolate: A Cautionary Tale

When we were in Berlin last month, Paul and I discovered a magical place called Fassbender and Rausch.  Well, I say "discovered" but it was actually more of a "sought desperately to find" since we had read in a travel guide that good old F&R had an exploding chocolate volcano and a "truffle bar with the largest selection in Europe."**

True Truffles.  None of that silly "a fancy mushroom" malarky.

Well, it was amazing.  We even went upstairs to the chocolate restaurant (wasn't made of chocolate, though I wouldn't have been surprised) where we got to choose from about 12 different kinds of basic hot chocolate options, excluding the toppings/flavor infusions.  And they served the hot chocolate with a glass of cold water--which was the best idea anyone ever had.

Side note:  I never could actually use hot chocolate as a meal's sole beverage.  I've seen people do it, and I just don't get it.  It made me feel validated that it was simply understood that cold water had to be served on the same plate as a mug of hot chocolate.

On our way out the door, we caved and decided to take advantage of their "select your own 8 truffles for 5 euro" deal from their massive display cases.  After walking up and down and up and down and realizing I couldn't possibly actually remember which ones I would want, I just decided to wing it.  Paul, on the other hand, had selected a single truffle that he wanted for his own--a "Lady Hamilton."

Sounds really good, doesn't it?  All decadent and mistress-of-Lord-Nelson-later-died-of-dysentery-y, huh?

So, I walk down the display cases randomly saying, "Aaaaaaaaand, I'll take that passionfruit thing aaaaaaaaaand that hazelnut thing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that pink one right there because it just looks weird."  Meanwhile, Paul just stood in front of his Lady Hamiltons and triumphantly selected one as our magnificent souvenir finale--the last thing we bought in Germany.

We ate one truffle once a day and each day we'd set aside the Lady Hamilton because it was the chosen, cherished one.  I was pretty much convinced that the weird, pink mystery truffle was the greatest thing ever created, but of course...there was still the Lady Hamilton to try...

The great pink truffle, in native habitat

Finally, the day came when we only had our final chocolate left.  By this time, we had almost become reverential about it--this was the last of our German chocolate for four months!

I turned to Paul and said, "You take the first half of it since you chose it."  So I put it on a velvet pillow and paraded it down a cathedral nave toward Paul with a very serious expression on my face and there was incense and a boys choir and Kate Middleton--okay not really, but pretty much.

And with an equally serious expression on his face, Paul picked up the Lady Hamilton, bit straight through the middle of it, and immediately spit it right back into his hand as water exploded everywhere.

But it wasn't water...and I am not even joking when I say that we about asphyxiated from rubbing alcohol fumes.

Whatever was in that chocolate was not meant to be consumed by human beings--it was meant to be oven cleaner.

So let this be a lesson to you all:

1.  Never make deliberate decisions about anything--just go crazy and pick the weirdest stuff.
2.  Never think that being "fluent in German" will keep you from mistranslating the contents of elegantly named mini chocolate packages.  The prettier the name, the higher the alcohol percentage.


**I will never cease to be amazed at how travel books can point you to the "largest" or "biggest" anything, anywhere.  But, I don't really have any way to disprove their claims, so I just roll with it.  But, I mean, wouldn't you be skeptical if you were in a city with restaurants that had both the largest chocolate selection and largest dessert selection in the entirety of Europe?  I'd think that France would have something to say about that...