At the restaurant in Bordeaux: mussels with sauerkraut – Panorama

In the middle of… Bordeaux

Bordeaux is only about 45 kilometers from the Atlantic, but why is it that the restaurants here only serve burgers and limp coq au vin? Nowhere affordable seafood spaghetti. But then: The restaurant with the red awning! “Chouchoute de la mer” reads on the map. Wonderful! The translation program on the cell phone knows: “Darling of the sea.” The waitress grins – probably because of my terrible pronunciation. Regardless, the best of the ocean is about to come. But the woman puts a plate of sauerkraut and some mussels on the table for me. “Chouchoute?” I ask again. The waitress snorts and points to the sign. She says: “Choucroute de la mer, mon chouchou.” A regional specialty, apparently. Well then, sauerkraut. Southern France is somehow not that far away from Bavaria. Martin Zips

In the middle of … Westerland

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Sylt in the off-season: the strollers on the beach promenade are older, the souvenir shops are well stocked with everything that says “Moin!” can be printed, the seagulls circle greedy eyes over the valuable matjes rolls. One looks in vain for the punks who disturbed the quiet of the upscale clientele a little bit during the summer nine-euro ticket invasion and unsuccessfully tried to storm Christian Lindner’s bachelorette party. So everything is back to normal on the island? Not quite! Starboard behind the empty music shell, “Queer Punx Unite!” is scrawled in permanent marker on the concrete parapet. A pensive greeting that will remind of Westerland’s short anarchist phase, until the rough North Sea wind or the hard-working city cleaning have sanded it down. Alexander Menden

In the middle of… Venice

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A visit to the impressive exhibition by Anselm Kiefer in Venice is combined with a tour of the Doge’s Palace. After so much monumentality – the exhibition alone covers 800 square meters – the notorious dungeons seem all the more cramped. Passing the lead chambers under the roof, in which Casanova once lived out his existence in unbearable heat, it goes down into the Pozzi. It’s scary to imagine the prisoners holding out on their bunks at Acqua Alta while the water rose and the rats tried to swim to their rescue. Beyond the Bridge of Sighs, in the newer part of the prisons, the cells are also small, but not so sparse because of the wooden paneling. At the sight of her, a tourist nudges her husband and happily crows: “Here was first class!” Evelyn Vogel

You can find more episodes of the “In the middle of …” column here.