For the homesick or those Thais in Germany who just yearn to hear their language again, a Berlin park is the place to go.

Preussen Park, west of the city centre in the Wilmersdorf neighborhood, is Berlin's Little Thailand, with Thai food cooking in the open air and giving off the unmistakable scents of coriander and peanut sauce with Thai-style chicken.

Families of Thais and other Southeast Asians spread their picnic rugs on the broad lawns amid German sunbathers in summertime or on a warm fall day.

Some of the women have even adapted the practices of Asian rural markets to this foreign climate, putting up little mobile food stands on the grass and selling Asian snacks such as balut -- a boiled egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside popular in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines -- for a few coins.

Filipinos and Vietnamese take part of the fun, with hundreds of Asians on the lawns on weekends, when Berlin's many parks, with their clusters of trees and clean air, are the place to enjoy the blue skies.

Other culinary delights on offer include spring rolls and papaya salad and snacks wrapped in leaves, such as chili peppers, nuts, shrimps and chunks of ginger.

The visitor might just get invited to join in a poker game. Even Thai-style massages are available.

This being Germany, everyone has been counted. The city's registry for foreign nationals says nearly 6,000 Thai nationals live inside the city boundaries.

In Preussen Park, their presence is acknowledged by an extra notice containing the park by-laws ... translated into Thai.

Nobody can precisely remember why Preussen Park, which is situated in a middle-class neighborhood, became dear to the hearts of Germany's Thais during the 1990s.

"It just kind of happened," said one man.

"We just say, 'I'll see you at the park,'" said another, Ed, 51, a masseuse who works in a Berlin gym.

Many sit on little plastic stools, Southeast Asian style, and unzip their cool bags to extract bottles of chilled water, beer and rice wine.

Ed says many of the Thai women here work in Berlin's restaurants and hospitals, and there is always a sympathetic ear to listen to the tales of woe about awful German husbands.

Many of the women just come down to the park to see and be seen.

"It's developed into a community really," said Mario, a German man who used to have a Thai girlfriend and cannot let go of Thai ways. "I've made a lot of friends here."

Many Thai-German marriages remain durable.

Nuan and Harald have been married for 25 years. She is busy dipping a mixture of cabbage, carrot, chicken and morel in batter. The rolls are then fried and served with lettuce, dill and basil for 1 euro (1.60 dollars) apiece.

"Some people only come here to eat my wife's rolls," Harald says proudly as he sits on a beach chair and watches her work.

Food vending, particularly with nowhere to wash one's hands, is not strictly legal.

Harald asserts that no one will haul them into court on account of a 1-euro roll, even if they do not have a license.

A ward official, Klaus-Dieter Groehler, says officers do stop by from time to time to prevent hawking and unlicensed gambling and close soup stalls on the grass.

But as the inspectors all wear uniforms and are visible far off, they never to seem to catch anyone.

Nearby German residents grumble that "their" park is getting crowded and too like a market.

After a busy weekend, municipal refuse workers say they have to pick up 50 to 70 bags of scraps and other rubbish in the park.

"We only want to ensure it does not get out of hand," Groehler says. "We've had reports of prostitution in the park and of food poisoning from shellfish that had spoiled." "We don't want any trouble," he added. "There are also legal cafes in the vicinity of the park who say that the food hawkers are unfair competition."

-- Caroline Bock/DPA/Expatica