Greetings from Germany

We’ve been in Deutschland for two days now and the differences between this country and the previous two we’ve visited on this trip are strikingly apparent.

For starters, Germans operate by the book. I’m not saying they’re, um, uptight, just very much more formal and reserved than the French or the Italians. Gone are the friendly smiles on the streets, the pats on the head and high-fives for the toddler, and the casual sense of ease. These people mean serious business, not monkey business. Not that there aren’t exceptions to every rule, of course. The young man at hotel reception who checked us in couldn’t have been more accommodating, and there have been a few random offers to help me carry the stroller up and down public stairs.

I must fess up and say that the language barrier is really wearing on me at this point in the trip. I know enough French to get by in basic interactions and social situations, but I’m totally at a loss when it comes to German. I can say hello, goodbye, please and thank you, another beer and where is fill-in-the-blank. That’s about it. If someone starts speaking to me in French, I can probably deduce enough to figure out the gist of what he or she is getting at. In German? Not a clue. In some cases, this is probably not such a bad thing.

For instance, the waitress at the restaurant last night blasted me for the collapsed baby stroller accidentally falling into the busy main service aisle for about two seconds before I could grab it out of the way. Or the dirty backpacker at the Dom who made some sort of lewd comments about me hefting the stroller and carrying it up a small flight of stairs (without offering to help). It sounded like the German equivalent of “oh yeah, baby.” Whatever it was, he was NOT on the up and up. I contemplated telling him to F off, but he probably wouldn’t have understood anyway.

Our hotel room here is tiny compared to our previous accommodations – three single beds crammed into a room with a cramped bathroom, slow wifi connection and no fridge (fortunately, it’s cold enough outside that we can keep milk, yogurt and beer on the window ledge). The hotel does offer a pretty impressive breakfast buffet that includes stuffed crepes, scrambled eggs, a mélange of fried meats, fresh fruit, nuts, cheese/cold cut platters, and something that looks suspiciously like sushi. It’s a buzzkill that the food doesn’t taste as good as it looks, and the coffee sucks.

Even hubby prefers to get his morning fix at the Starbucks around the corner, and you know he wouldn’t set foot in that place unless he was really desperate. The toddler and I actually ducked in there ourselves yesterday – they offer some interestingly flavored seasonal lattes, and I’m intent on trying all of them. The lebkuchen version was yummy with a hint of honey and spice, and the toffee nut I enjoyed today was equally good. Hubby brought back a cup of steamed milk for the toddler; he wasn’t interested at first, but got pretty excited once we started calling it “Michael’s coffee.”

I guess I’m making Germany out to sound pretty bad, which is unfair. Really, Cologne is a lovely city. Very picturesque with the gigantic Dom cathedral as the centerpiece of the city, hyper clean, lots of charming pedestrian shopping streets, and an entirely different kind of good food than France or Italy.

Cologne Dom

For our first dinner in town, we revisited a place we found and liked during our trip last year. Bier Esel is an old-style traditional German brauhaus not far from where we’re staying. I had my heart set on schnitzel, and that’s what I got. The place was packed, though, and service was slow as a wet week in Wales (another classic hubby-ism). It felt like we had to wait forever for our food and drinks, not a pretty picture when you’re exhausted from a daylong train journey and trying to wrangle a cranky, overtired, hungry toddler. At last, our dinners arrived. If you enjoy Hoosier-style pork tenderloin, trust me, you’d like schnitzel. My pounded, breaded pork cutlet was absolutely enormous, served Jager-style with a creamy mushroom sauce and a mountain of fries. I chewed my way through half of it and cried uncle.

What I really love about German cuisine are the snack stands and backereis (bakeries) on every corner. German baked goods are every bit as good as those you find in France, but in a completely different way. The breads are heartier — hefty pretzel rolls and chewy buns, but there are also fabulous butter cookies, strudels, cakes, huge doughy gingerbread-like men, and donut-ish Berliners. It’s all good. My usual lunch here is a tomato mozzarella sandwich on a crusty hard roll, perhaps with a smear of butter or basil oil and a slice of salami. Yum, yum, yum.

a typical backerei window

One of the first things I ate during my first trip to German six years ago was a bowl of warming, delicious gulaschesuppe, and it’s still something I seek out when we’re here. You can also find a thicker gulasche on its own served over noodles, and that’s what I ate last night. In its basic form, gulasche is a beef stew made with peppers and onions in a spicy tomato sauce. The suppe is the same thing in more watery soup form. Either way, it’s the perfect thing to warm your bones and your tummy on a cold night, and the version I had last night during our return trip to Bier Esel was fantastic. So good that hubby ended up eating half of it, despite the fact that he’d already had gulasche earlier in the day somewhere else.

On the Cologne agenda this week – a couple of coffees with the American Women’s Club and a trip to the local Chocolate Museum. Stay tuned for a full report.

Auf weidersehn, dear Cologne

Currently catching up aboard a train, somewhere between Mannheim and the Swiss border, en route to Zurich, Lugano and ultimately, Milan. The train ride coming out of Cologne down to Mainz is like something out of a fairy tale. It’s no wonder, as I think I remember hearing that the Brothers Grimm actually hail from somewhere around these parts, and Heidelburg Castle just south of Mainz is the real-life original model for the Disney version.

The train hugs the beautiful Rhine River for the first two hours down from Cologne, gorgeous mountains rising up on the far side of the water, adorned with scatterings of ancient picture-postcard villages and the frequent sight of castle ruins perched on top of the hills. Throw in the occasional vineyard climbing its way up the rocky face and you start to get the picture.

Myriad images and impressions of Cologne are still fresh in mind after a lovely, lovely week. Hubby and I often end up coming home from business trips like this saying, “What were we thinking? Never again.” This is not one of those times. Our visit to Cologne seemed to work out very well for the most part.

A few random interesting Cologne anecdotes: two days ago, I hauled four small bags of dirty clothes into the laundromat across the street from the hotel to do some much-needed washing. As I stood in front of the pay station with a clueless look on my face, a friendly older gentleman approached and asked if I needed help. Turns out he was American, had lived in Cologne for more than 40 years and seen the likes of naïve tourists like me many times in just such a circumstance, I’m sure. After he gave me a brief tutorial in the ways of German laundry systems, we made small talk. I asked where he was from originally, and it turned out he was born and raised in Elkhart, Indiana, just a few short hours away from Indianapolis. We marveled over the fact that the world truly is quickly becoming a much smaller place.

Yesterday morning was the kaffee klatsch (coffee meeting) with the American Women’s Group of Cologne back at Bastian’s Cafe. It was a small turnout due to the fact that there was a bigger event last night that many of the women would be attending instead. Still, three ladies showed up and I found their impressions of living in Germany very enlightening. One has lived here for four years; another just six months. I found their advice and stories comforting; it’s nice to know that should we end up living in Europe at some point, there are support networks, opportunities for camaraderie and potential new friends just waiting to be discovered.

Hubby wrapped up his last day at the trade show early, due in no small part to an oncoming cold, and we were able to pack at a fairly leisurely pace. It’s funny how luggage contents seem to expand from one stop to the next, even though we actually have less material to work with now than we did coming over.

For our last dinner in Cologne, we returned to Bier Esel, banking on once again getting a truly stellar traditional German meal. I hoped the food would live up to the sauerbraten I enjoyed there the other night, and I’m thrilled to say it did and then some.

Hubby ordered the jagerschnitzel, a slightly odd choice for him because he doesn’t like mushrooms and the cutlet came absolutely smothered with them. He said he liked the sauce, just not the fungi itself. I was on the verge of ordering the gulaschesuppe I’d been craving all week when I noticed an actual gulasche entree listing. Bingo. Decision made.

Each of us got a mixed vegetable salad to start — a bed of lettuce filled with shredded carrot, cabbage, cucumber and some thin slices of a crunchy whitish vegetable we couldn’t place (the waitress would later tell us it was pickled radish). Hubby notes that salads in Germany are usually brought to the table swimming in dressing. No problem for me, being the condiment queen that I am, but hubby would prefer a little more restraint. Ranch dressing, of course, doesn’t exist anywhere outside the U.S., but the yogurt dressing versions in Germany are pretty close in flavor and appearance.

The jagerschnitzel was delicious (I did my best to make a small dent in the pile of mushrooms hubby ended up scraping off), but again, I got the better end of the bargain with my choice. My gulasche filled half of a huge pasta bowl alongside a pile of buttered penne. The noodles were a nice base, but really, they needn’t have bothered. All I really wanted to focus on was that fantastic stew of tender beef and spicy, peppery, paprika-spiked tomato sauce. The serving was enormous and hubby had to help me out with finishing the meat, which he did very gladly, onions and all. It was that good. We stuffed ourselves silly. One last kolsche beer and we were outta there. A post-dinner stroll through the shopping district was definitely in order on the way back to the hotel.

jagerschnitzel, the sequel

gulasche with penne pasta

All packed up and ready to go this morning, we bid a fond farewell to an older Asian gentleman on the hotel staff who’d all but adopted our son. He sought him out and chased him around the lobby trying to pick him up any chance he got, and even snuck me a clandestine candy bar as we left. I don’t know if I’m getting more familiar with German customs and language efforts or what, but it seemed to me that the residents were much friendlier this time than they have been in my two previous visits to the country. Hubby and I were both genuinely a little sad to leave Cologne.

A quick taxi ride later, we were at the “hauptbanhof,” or train station. I remember this word with a little mnemonic device – to me, it sounds like “hop on and off,” appropriate for a train, don’t you think? Another German word I get a secret kick out of is “ausfahrt,” which, somehow appropriately, means “exit.”

I was in shock/awe at the number of people bellying up to the bar at 8 a.m. with glasses of kolsche beer. We grabbed machine coffee and insanely good “schoko-croissants” (chocolate croissants) at a station cafe before boarding the train for the start of our ten-hour, two-transfer journey to Italy.

To the wonderful city of Cologne, danke schoen. And cheers!

Walk this way

When I was online researching what to do during our time in Germany, I came across the American Women’s Club of Cologne, a group of English-speaking ladies that organizes regular meetings, coffees, playdates and such. I emailed for more information and got the goods on this week’s coffee, as well as a couple of mommy and me gatherings. After finding the address for the coffee, hubby offered to help me suss out the location ahead of time so I’d know where I’m going come Thursday’s event. The destination? An upscale coffee shop/bakery called Bastian’s Cafe, within an easy walk of our hotel.

Quick digression: everything is within a quick walk of our hotel. We have not used a car once since getting to Germany. From the airport in Frankfurt, we took the train up to Cologne, then a taxi to our hotel. That’s the only time we’ve been in a car this whole trip. Cologne, like the vast majority of European cities and towns, is extremely walkable, which I love. Everything you need is just a quick stroll away – groceries, restaurants, shops, whatnot. And if it’s not accessible by foot for whatever reason, all you have to do is hop on the tram and get to wherever you need to go that much more quickly.

From our hotel, we can walk to the Dom in the center of town in about 15-20 minutes. There’s so much to see along the way, the journey itself flies by. The streets are built as much for pedestrian traffic as they are for cars. Since the roads here are not laid out in grids as they are in many American cities, finding your way around can be confusing at first. Streets and alleys shoot off of other streets in crazy directions like a maze and it’s easy to get quickly disoriented. I find the best way to go is to simply memorize a few major landmarks. Fortunately, there are city maps posted on kiosks every few blocks or so just in case you hopelessly lose your bearings.

Bikes are also serious business here. You see all sorts of people riding them, from crunchy granola types to well-dressed women in the latest fashions. There is a bike lane alongside the streets and you’d better stay out of it if you know what’s good for you. We were almost run over a couple of times for not paying attention.

In short, the public transport (especially the train system) and the general walkability of European cities is awesome. If only America could get with the program and realize this, I daresay our obesity problem would quickly diminish. Germans eat some heavy food and drink a LOT of beer, but not many are overweight because exercise is so ingrained in the lifestyle here. I could go on, but that would be a whole other blog entry entirely…

Let’s get back to Bastian’s. This is one of those trendy-bordering-on-snooty coffee shops – a big, light, wide-open space full of heavy wood tables, chrome trim, a spotlessly clean glass counter full of cakes and pastries, and jazzy music playing in the background. The wait staff is all young, attractive and dressed in black. For Indy residents, it was kinda like Taste before the remodel, only much bigger.

We found a seat (table-service only) and checked out the menu of breakfast and lunch fare. Hubby ordered a croissant that came with jam, cheese and butter. I recounted and realized I’d eaten pretty much nothing but bread and sweets the day before, so I ordered the omelet of the day to get some protein and fiber – three eggs with diced zucchini, peppers and feta. It came with a small side salad; hubby and I shared a big basket of fresh-baked bread and rolls. They make their own coffee, too – no machine java here, thank God!

After a horrendous night’s sleep marred by a three-hour stretch of crying, the baby didn’t want to cooperate very much and much to our dismay, started tuning up just as the waiter set our plates down in front of us. Efforts to distract him didn’t help, and we knew our time was limited. Hubby always eats faster than I do, so he ended up wheeling our son out in his stroller, leaving me to finish my omelet and pay the bill.

As soon as hubby exited, I realized I didn’t have any change for a tip (we feel the need to tip generously anytime the baby is involved), so I texted him to come back. Tipping isn’t as big a deal here as it is in America because servers’ wages are so much better, but it is still customary to round up or leave a euro or two. Hubby returned, tossed me a few coins to pass over when the time came and left again.

I finished my food, asked for the bill, (in German no less! Right on!), and started to hand the waiter my credit card to pay when he informed me the place is cash-only. Great. I only had ten euro on me in cash and the bill was 20. Out came the phone and I texted hubby again. A few minutes later, here he came, wheeling back in like a broken record. I’ll bet those people thought they were never going to be rid of us.

Hubby dug through his pockets, found the extra cash we needed and we were finally good to go. Or so I thought… no sooner did we get out the door and down the block when I realized we’d left my son’s “Wonder Pets” book sitting on the table. Hubby flat out refused to go back again, so I returned to pick it up. We thus dubbed Bastian’s the Bermuda Triangle of cafes; once you get in, you just can’t ever get away.

The late breakfast tided us over until dinner. In the mood for more traditional German fare, we were disappointed when we discovered the pub/restaurant hubby keeps trying to take us to is closed on Mondays. A few other false starts later, hubby remembered a place called Bier-Esel that seemed worth a try. Lo and behold, it was open and could accommodate us with the stroller in tow.

Our server was a lovely older woman who paid us just enough attention and played along with our botched attempts to speak German. Most servers and store clerks immediately switch over to English the second they realize you’re American. I was pleased that she didn’t.

The restaurant itself is pretty old-school. Nothing fancy, just a bunch of tables, a few German tchotckes lining timbered shelves and mantels, and a bunch of locals drinking beer. Mussels seemed to be a featured item, as many diners were sharing huge bowls of the critters.

My first choice for dinner was going to be gulaschesuppe, but I worried a serving of soup wouldn’t be enough to fill me up and considered the full dinner choices as well. Hubby ordered a chopped steak with gravy, french fries and a small salad. I opted for the sauerbraten, another traditional German dish I’ve been meaning to try. This seemed as good a place as I’d be likely to find.

Hubby’s food looked ok, but mine was fabulous. The sauerbraten is a plate of extremely tender roast beef slices drenched in a rich brown raisin sauce. I know what you’re thinking right now. Raisins!?!? Ew! Ok, before you start judging, let me ask you this. Ever had A-1 sauce on your steak? Enjoyed it? Guess what one of the ingredients of A-1 is. Raisin paste. So there ya go.

My sauce wasn’t anything like A-1, though. It was thicker than a jus, but not as thick as a gravy, with a sweet and sour vinegary tang. It was DELICIOUS. The meat melted in my mouth; I didn’t even have to use a knife. If you like pot roast, you would like this dish. Hubby’s fork kept wandering over to my plate again and again. The dinner also came with a bowl of homemade chunky applesauce and two large potato dumplings, which confused me a little bit at first. I saw them and expected them to be creamy mashed potatoes, but when I tasted them and realized they were doughy, I couldn’t get my brain around it. When I realized they were actually dumplings, hubby pointed out that they served as a perfect vessel for all that yummy sauce. He was right.

Sauerbraten with potato dumplings and applesauce

We tried a different tactic with the baby for this meal and brought his dinner along with us instead of feeding him first before going out, which seemed to work well. He was happy enough to nibble away and let us actually enjoy our meal at a leisurely pace for once.

We strolled back to the hotel, full of fantastic German food and beer. Still keeping my eyes open for that gulaschesuppe, though…