It's all quiche to me

Photo by Timothy Muza on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

On my way back from an appointment in the west of Berlin this afternoon, I dropped into a fairly anonymous looking cafe to grab a bite to eat. My order: a slice of vegetarian quiche and a cappuccino. 

While the food and coffee were perfectly agreeable, I’m not writing to recommend it to you. The bill for this fairly meagre lunch (including tip) was €15.

Now, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by such a bill on a street just a stone’s throw from the Kurfürstendamm. But, even in Berlin’s luxury west end, the prices never used to be quite so exorbitant.

The reason is inflation, with figures published this week for February making for depressing reading.

They show an overall increase in the price of goods at 8.7 percent in comparison with February of last year. And in the realm of food, prices have surged by an incredible 22 percent.

That is all the more sobering for the fact that it was in February of last year that the price surge really star…