Friday, August 15, 2008

In Berlin, No One Starves



My friend Michael and I were walking back to his apartment yesterday evening. He says to me excitedly, “Hey, free bread.” Being a bit confused, I asked him what he was talking about. He pointed to a bakery we had just walked past, and said, “It’s free bread.”
He went on to explain that very often when bakeries don’t or can’t sell the days bread they’ll but it out at closing time for people to take home. No, not in the dumpster in the ally, or a 50 gallon garbage bin — they put it in front so people can see and take it home.

We grabbed a few loaves for ourselves and kept walking. There was no shame in it. No one gave us dirty looks, or looked down their noses at us — everything was cool. Michael went on to say to me, "In Berlin, no one starves."

What a concept, the people taking care of the people, businesses taking care of the people — the government taking care of its people. It’s embarrassing to admit, as an American, it feels like a foreign concept.

The bread was pretty good too, it came from a Turkish bakery. Now, how cool is that?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That sounds awesome. I'm jealous.

Tamra Wallace said...

As much as restaurants throw out unused food in America, it should be mandatory that they give it out to the hungry. No human being should ever go hungry when they dont have to, its criminal.