Some are raw (Rohwurst), some are grilled (Kochwurst), some are boiled (Brühwurst). Some are named after an ingredient: Bierwurst (beer), Fleischwurst (meat), Blutwurst (blood), Currywurst. Some are named after places – Frankfurter, Regensburger. Some are named after the people who (presumably) ate a lot of them – Zigeuner (gypsy) or Landjäger (hunter). A lot of them are regional specialities – Weisswurst, (white sausage. So named because it is, er, white) is a speciality of Bavaria. It’s hardly eaten in Northern Germany, so its consumption marks a symbolic North/South divide, the Weisswurstäquator (white sausage equator). And there’s even a museum dedicated to a sausage. The German Currywurst Museum in Berlin was opened on the 60th birthday of the invention of this staple, first made by one of the women who worked to clear the rubble in Berlin after World War II. She added whatever she could find, including curry powder and tomato paste, into the mixture to make it tasty. 800 million Currywurst are sold in Germany every year.

What’s not so clear (to me, anyway) is why ‘Das ist mir Wurst’ (literally ‘it’s a sausage to me’) means ‘it’s all the same to me’. Or how ‘Es geht um die Wurst’ (‘it’s about the sausage’) came to mean ‘it’s do or die’/’now or never’/’the moment of truth’.