Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Germany is Mighty German

Ok, clearly we're not in Kansas anymore.

Every single day from the time I get out of bed until the time I go to sleep, it is altogether clear that we are not in America.

Sure, the giant obvious stuff you would expect. The locals all speak in German. The television is in German. The cereal, the toilet paper, the books, the maps, the .. anyways you get the idea. Everything is in German, and considering my German language capabilities rival that of a five year old child, that's kind of a daunting place to start.

Still, it is not actually terrible. I am learning, and I feel like I'm doing so at a reasonable rate. At least until I try to talk on the phone. German phones kick my ass. I'm never sure how many digits to dial. I know you're supposed to put a zero on the front (usually), but when they give you 12-15 digits of phone number, the actual location where you're supposed to put that zero can be anywhere from the first to the ninth number. We've got a phone in our house but it laughs at me. I can call the local pizza place with it, and not much else. For anything more complicated I have to use my disposable cell phone. It works exactly like you'd expect. You dial zero and ALL of whatever the horrible garble of digits are that compose the phone number, and it magically calls the right person. Maybe someday I will master the German phone, but that someday has not yet come.

Oh, and for bonus aggravation when I first moved in here my house phone used to ring every night at 1 am. Since every phone call I ever answered was a wrong number I wondered who would be calling me at such an hour. It turns out the sadistic soul in question was the actual phone, which apparently had a built in alarm clock that was set to 1 am. I eventually figured this out, but only after an embarrassing number of having to tromp downstairs at 1 am to make the darn phone be quiet. Cursed device!

If you have been reading Stephanie's blog you've probably already seen our excursions to the local sights, confusing shopping experiences, and amazingly small Everything. If you haven't though, go read it now. Lots of good stuff there, and unlike this, it has nice pictures. Enjoy: http://americanparisadventures.blogspot.com/

However, while the wife and kids have the advantage of time and a car to do their exploring with, I do have the advantage of spending day in and day out with a bunch of actual Germans, and apparently, of eating a lot more German food.

One of the things I decided to make a point of when I came, was that I was going to go out of my way to just try new stuff. We're here for new experiences after all, let's eat some weird new things and see what is good. I started this from my very first trip over, through London, where I made a point of eating some of the British food while waiting for my next flight. My advice to any who may follow in my path: Don't bother. I swear the English are the only people in the world who can screw up a simple biscuit, ham, and egg. I don't know how they did it, but I'm going to try hard not to give them the opportunity to do it again!

So, escaping the clutches of the evil proper-English-speaking food mutilators, I arrived in Germany and commenced trying out the local cuisine. On my first night one of my co-workers showed up to escort me to my hotel and then took me out for pizza. It turns out there is a lot of pizza in Germany. Its one of the easiest foods to find here, mostly because it is largely made by the Turkish people who seem to have an awful lot of local eating establishments. The pizza is pretty ordinary by American standards, so its safe to eat. Just make sure never to order it with Pepperoni. It turns out this translates to 'scary large green peppers' which are plopped on top of the pizza in question like some giant green grub. Avoid it if you can.


Your best bet of course is anything 'mit Käse' (cheese), or 'schinken' (ham). For some reason Germans are really big on ham, and it shows up everywhere. They eat it breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a whole range of products. Germany is a terrible place to be a pig. Cows on the other hand, must like it just fine here, since they seem to be eaten far far less. Pizza doesn't come with sausage or beef, pretty much ever. Though you can get some reasonable looking salami that does a decent pepperoni (our style) imitation if you have the urge.
Anyways, there are an awful lot of Turkish places around. Usually selling both pizza and döner kebaps which are big meaty gyros like you'd see in the US. Not bad and fairly cost effective for a quick meal out.

Now one place Germany has clearly got the US beat is its ubiquitous snack food store. Instead of a Starbuck's on every corner (which for all I know, they might have in bigger cities), Germany has a bakery on every corner. Although small bakeries exist (frequently with woefully inadequate stocks and only open for some gruesomely stifled amount of time), the bulk of the bakery locations seem to be dominated by two chains - Dreher's and Armbruster. Each of these sells a variety of bread and pastries that are pretty good. I've spent some time sampling the contents just in the interests of science of course!


The Salzbrezel - This German standard is found at every bakery and is universally tasty. Simple, salt + firm bread and it is a winner. They're great snack food and always welcome.





Quarkini - Similar to beignets, these are small round donut hole-like items with a cinnamon sugar coating. Somewhat rare, but worth eating when found.


Yeah ok, I was going to give German names for the rest of the stuff but darned if I know them. There are a variety of ordinary croissants, danish-type items including some with a vanilla filling that I quite liked, some wonderful firm yet fluffy rabbit cookies (I think those were for Easter, but fresh ones are great), loaves of bread (usually somewhat grainy but fine tasting), and an assortment of other smallish pastries. You can also get quite ordinary pre-made sandwiches on bread, with cheese or meats similar to pre-made sandwiches in America but with better bread.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Two of my absolute favorites German bakery goods:





Apfeltorte- Kind of an apple pie with a creamy topping. Not something you see all the time, but yummy regardless.





And... (drumroll please)....


Strueselkuchen!! I love this stuff! Firm bready interior with a crumb topping. It is more substantial than it looks and makes a great snack or breakfast accessory. It isn't nearly as sweet as you would expect when looking at it, but once you get used to that you realize it tastes great regardless.




Anyways, that's probably enough about German bakeries. They're good, not hugely expensive, and plentiful. Thumbs up from this reviewer.

With that in mind, how about the 'real German food' you ask (wait, I already gave you Streuselkuchen, go be happy!). Sure, there are no shortage of 'Gasthof's around advertising schnitzels with schinken (I swear the German pork industry must be as strong as the US corn industry, it is in Everything!) but at about 15-20 EU/plate, four of us to feed, and a tiny salary to work with, such places are just going to have to remain unexplored for the time being. If I'm going to spend a lot on food, I want it to at least be French food (which in my so far somewhat limited experience, is the best stuff around).

However... work actually provides an opportunity here. You see, in the interest of keeping us all there for more hours every day (probably a good investment), my employer hires a regular caterer. The food is heavy, usually no more enjoyable than it has to be, and well.. just the right price. But they definitely provide resoundingly German food. Which is perhaps why I kind of unfairly associate German food with prison-quality grub.

Anyways, in the efforts to both conserve money and to try a bunch of weird German stuff, I make a point of eating the free lunch when I can. The menus are generally in German, but Google Translate does a surprisingly good job of deciphering them.

Daily options generally include some sort of meat buried in a large pool of brown sauce with spetzle. If you're really lucky the meat is breaded as well (though still buried in brown sauce). There's sometimes a noodle option (spaghetti in tomato sauce with a large hard slab of parmesan cheese stuck to the top), or fish fillet (buried in brown sauce), or some sort of salad with stuff in it. These are all regular offerings that come back a lot, and most of them are edible if not exactly something to write home about.

However, there's also some weirder stuff thrown into the mix as well. So our adventure-seeking explorer (whoops, that's me) will order those as well. I admit I'm a little more gun-shy these days after some early bad experiences. I tried the 'sausage salad' one day thinking "Well, I can eat most forms of sausage just fine so it should be ok", and then opened my tinfoil box to view the abomination within. Tiny strips of baloney like substance were mixed into a large heaping of onions and various plant stuff and then doused in a huge vat of grease. My boss looked over at it and said "Yeah, I could see how that might not be quite what you were expecting."

I've ordered dumplings with vanilla sauce, and been pleased to discover they were exactly that - two large squashy dumplings in a tin of vanilla cream sauce. I don't know why it qualifies as a lunch, but it tasted pretty good. The dumpling with soup was a bit less desirable (the soup wasn't good), and had jam in the middle.

I wish I had managed to catch the apple strudel so I'm hoping it makes another pass. This week I also declined the 'housewife herring', which the menu assured me was 'made in housewife style!' I think I will have to try that at some point though, but instead I went for the 'helen toast', which largely was unexplained on the menu. I mean, shouldn't we already know what that is? Heck, not me. I'll let you know.

*Follow up* Ok, so the helen toast turned out to be a large slab of cheese browned and melted over a warm slice of ham, warm peaches, another slice of ham, and stacked on top of two soggy pieces of white bread. I think perhaps sitting in the tin for a few hours didn't do it any favors, and the bread really seemed sad to be thusly abused, but overall relatively harmless.

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