{"id":90,"date":"2026-09-27T23:16:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T23:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging-welcome-121a408.netsolhost.com\/?page_id=90"},"modified":"2026-09-27T23:29:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T23:29:57","slug":"maothai-index","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/?page_id=90","title":{"rendered":"PROLOG"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"skip\" href=\"#content\">Skip to content<\/a><\/p>\n<header class=\"hero prolog\" style=\"--cover:url('assets\/fd4a76718225bb.jpg')\">\n<div class=\"top\">\n<div class=\"heading\">\n<h1>PROLOG<\/h1>\n<div class=\"intro\">\n<p>&#8220;La vida es sue\u00f1o&#8221; \u2013 Life is a Dream, wrote Calder\u00f3n de la Barca nearly four hundred years ago. Looking back, the past three decades also seem like a dream: the emergence of a small group of Thai restaurants in Berlin and Spain, their golden years, their struggles, their disappearance.<\/p>\n<p>The restaurants no longer exist today. Yet for many people they remain bound up with memories: of long nights in post-reunification Berlin, of conversations between artists, diplomats, students, chefs and travellers, of the scent of fresh herbs from Thailand, of a piece of the wide world that suddenly became possible after the fall of the Wall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"identity\">\n<p class=\"brand-story\">The Story of a Group of Thai Restaurants in Berlin and Palma<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"brand\" href=\"index.html\">THAI FOOD MAGIC<br \/>MAOTHAI<\/a><\/p>\n<nav class=\"language-switch\" aria-label=\"Language\"><a href=\"index-de.html\" hreflang=\"de\" lang=\"de\">DE<\/a><a href=\"index.html\" hreflang=\"en\" lang=\"en\" aria-current=\"true\">ENG<\/a><a href=\"index-es.html\" hreflang=\"es\" lang=\"es\">ES<\/a><a href=\"index-th.html\" hreflang=\"th\" lang=\"th\">THAI<\/a><a href=\"index-ja.html\" hreflang=\"ja\" lang=\"ja\">JAP<\/a><\/nav>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"hero-bottom\">\n<nav aria-label=\"Main navigation\"><a href=\"story.html\">STORY<\/a><a href=\"restaurants.html\">THE RESTAURANTS<\/a><a href=\"thai-food.html\">THAI FOOD<\/a><a href=\"people.html\">PEOPLE<\/a><a href=\"press.html\">PRESS COVERAGE<\/a><a href=\"establishing.html\">ESTABLISHING THAI AS INTERNATIONAL CUISINE<\/a><a href=\"videos.html\">VIDEOS<\/a><a href=\"print-shop.html\">PRINT SHOP<\/a><a href=\"contact.html\">NEWS &amp; CONTACT<\/a><\/nav>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<p><main id=\"content\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"breadcrumb\"><a href=\"index.html\">PROLOG<\/a><\/div>\n<article class=\"prose\">\n<p>This account wishes to lift a little of the veil of forgetting that time draws over everything. It is meant to remember places that have vanished, the people who made them possible, and a time when Berlin was in a state of awakening \u2014 raw, improvised, and full of unimagined possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, it is an expression of gratitude to the guests who remained loyal to us for decades, to friends and supporters, to all those from politics and public life who helped, but above all to the staff and chefs from Thailand, without whose dedication and skill this story could never have been possible.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<section class=\"documents\">\n<h2>From the archive<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"assets\/5270b00381c176.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Original narrative \u00b7 Deutsch \u00b7 PDF \u2197<\/a><a href=\"assets\/72184da18306c6.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Original narrative \u00b7 English \u00b7 PDF \u2197<\/a><a href=\"assets\/b35b2972734025.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Original narrative \u00b7 Espa\u00f1ol \u00b7 PDF \u2197<\/a><a href=\"assets\/29ece3b6c76162.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Original narrative \u00b7 \u0e20\u0e32\u0e29\u0e32\u0e44\u0e17\u0e22 \u00b7 PDF \u2197<\/a><a href=\"assets\/480c498cc0a96a.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Original narrative \u00b7 \u65e5\u672c\u8a9e \u00b7 PDF \u2197<\/a><\/section>\n<div class=\"sequence\"><span><\/span><a href=\"story.html\">BERLIN AFTER THE WALL \u2192<\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/main><\/p>\n<footer><a href=\"index.html\">THAI FOOD MAGIC \u00b7 MAOTHAI<\/a><span>Berlin &amp; Palma \u00b7 A personal archive<\/span><a href=\"#\">Back to top \u2191<\/a><\/footer>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skip to content PROLOG &#8220;La vida es sue\u00f1o&#8221; \u2013 Life is a Dream, wrote Calder\u00f3n de la Barca nearly four hundred years ago. Looking back, the past three decades also seem like a dream: the emergence of a small group of Thai restaurants in Berlin and Spain, their golden years, their struggles, their disappearance. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-90","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90\/revisions\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}