Why do the Germans have those odd toilet bowls, the one with a flat shelf which leaves one’s deposits readily available for immediate inspection, like an early morning roll call for der stuhls?

I’ve heard various descriptions of the toilet: “Viewing platform”, “the lay and display”, “the flush and brush”; or “the continental shelf.” (the word continental applies, I’m sure, to European geography, not the medical condition)

Immediate inspection may hold the key. When I asked mein Deutsche friend, wondering whether the shelf allows immediate assessment as to your state of health, she replied: “Ja, I guess so. Never really thought about it.”

Marcus implied it was down to the lack of splash, and therefore more hygienic. Another chum suggested it was down to the amount of water the flush conserved.

Not every toilet has this shelf life, of course, and it seems das bogs are being slowly replaced with the Anglo pot, but most Deutsche bogs still do. Without going into details, it’s quite irksome, espceially for the senses, albeit sometimes engaging, depending on one’s deposit.

There’s nothing quite like leaving the toilet and thinking, “Well done fellah, still on course for a good innings, you’ve been a good boy.”

The again, there’s nicht worse than leaving thinking, “Easy Tiger!”

For more on this subject, and it may need parental guidance, click here.

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If there’s one thing liable to put you off smoking, it’s waking up in the morning, ambling onto the balcony, lighting up a tab and staring at a funeral parlour, full-on in the face. The coffins, all oak and mahogany, almost rubbing their handles gleefully as they stare blankly at you.

It’s depressing, though not as depressing as waking up at 7.30am each day to the sound of drilling and banging, and a balcony on Falkensteinstrasse, Kreuzberg, that resembles a war zone; albeit a war zone ensconced in scaffolding.

Not just scaffolding. It seems the works does not involve repainting, per se, but insulation. The Turkish builders are lining the facier with six-inch thick mottled grey and white polystyrene, cemented to the wall and then cut away, before facing with plaster and filling with some sort of insulating goo. I wonder what colour they will eventually paint it. I rather like the mottled hue; it’s rather now, so textile.

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I’ve danced in an old public toilet converted into a club; I’ve visited a flat converted from an old public crapper, I’ve even taken a leak inside a public toilet (yes, so wow, like I so have!)

But there was one dream I had not fulfilled, I had never eaten organic food cooked and served from inside a public toilet. Until now, that is.

BurgerMeister in Schlesische Strasse (try pronouncing that when you are drunk, especially given the context) is no ordinary ex-public lavvy.

For one, it’s an old, Prussian green-timber framed former pissoir sat smack bang underneath the U-Bahn tracks at Schlesische Tor. Just to remind you of its former use as one guzzles a cheeseburger, there’s an authentic sign that shouts “Manner” (which I think means urinals).

It’s set on a traffic island too; so it’s not just the yellow New York-style subway trains racketing overhead as you sink your teeth into a chilliburger mitt pommer, but cars flying past at 40mph, too. All that’s missing are the pigeons bombing back and forth between the steel rafters, dropping reminders of their presence onto your meal. Actually, there are no pigeons here.

The seats at BurgerMeister are old metal bicycle stands, covered in padded leather, to keep one comfy, though not too comfy that you loiter around the table for too long (erm, hello, perhaps the trains hurtling overhead and the cars whizzing by might sort that!)

The food is rather good, too. as you’d expect in Kreuzberg, the famously leftwing, alternative and now increasingly trendy multicultural district south of the Spree, the very west of old West Berlin. It was here in Kreuzberg, a district surrounded by the Wall on three sides that only punks, ravers and Turkish immigrants prefered to settle. It’s why there are scores of kebab shops and fast-food places and such a leftwing, laidback vibe.

Fast food here means independent fast food, as it is largely all over town. There are no chains.  Well, there is a McDonald’s, albeit hidden away, off the main street of Skalitzer Strasse. When Ronald M opened up here in late 2007, the riot police were on standby. Kreuzberg punks – famous for torching cars each May Day – once threw a handgrenade into a fine dining room to help thwart gentrification. (”th steamed lobster, sir, comes served with a handgrenade?”)

There’s a Subway sandwich chain here too on Schlesische Strasse, but it, too, seems redundant. Each day that I have passed, often at peak times, it has stood empty. When I did spot a queue it was not for the food but for the cash machine outside. Well, why not, it’s a good cash machine.

Few here frequent such chains here. There’s no need. There’s too much good cheap food anyhow. There’s Baghdad Cafe, for starters; the fabled 24hour kebab shop which for many east Berliners was their first port of call when the wall came crashing down almost 20 years ago this November, letting them stream across the nearby am Oberbaum bridge.

Gawd, they must have been deprived; you’d think a chicken doner would be the last thing on their mind after finally being freed from the social shackles of a paranoid one-party police state.

Of course, BurgerMeister wasn’t open back then. But if it had have been, I wonder how many Ossies would have dreamt of taking their first taste of the west, from a burger shop, on a traffic island, under a dank U-Bahn bridge, where the food is cooked inside a former Prussian public lavvy?

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Rather artful snazzy snaps of Berlin… courtesy of Lucy Hull

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