Erlangen, Germany – August 12-15
We left Amsterdam on Saturday and took the train
into the waiting arms of our dear friends Markus and Uli. They live in
the village of Uttenreuth, which is near the smallish city (“a
non-city,” as Markus describes it) of Erlangen, which is near the
larger, famous city or Nuremberg. We met Markus and Uli on our honeymoon
in Tuscany two years ago, and we’ve remained in touch ever since. They
visited us in Seattle in the fall 1998, so we were eager to include a
stop with them in our travels.
Our visit was a very nice change of pace from the
city-center pace we’d been keeping. The first night was utterly
magical. M & U took us to a beer garden in the forest near their
house. We sat under a linden tree watching the sun set over the
fairy-tale landscape. That night I drank the biggest single beer I’ve
ever had (1 litre—which is apparently No Big Deal for most Bavarians),
downed a “mixed fruit” schnapps, and began the culinary adventure
that is the German wurst.
The main difference between the wursts I ate in
Germany, and the “German-style” sausages I’ve had in the states is
that the ones in Germany actually don’t suck. In the three days we
were in the care of Markus and Uli, we ate more sausage than we had in
the last three years. The pious, health-conscious Seattlite in me wants
to complain about what an ordeal it was, but…all of them were
absolutely delicious.
That first night, we sampled the following wursts.
They were served cold in slices on a big “farmer’s platter.”
-Leberwurst: in the US, we know this as
liverwurst, but what I ate bore very scant resemblance to the pinkish
paste you buy in the grocery store.
-Röterpressack: OK, this is little bits of
cured pork suspended in blood sausage. Markus and Uli wisely neglected
to tell me until I had tasted it, otherwise I never would have. Again,
it was yummy, and I was able to finish my portion with the aid of a
litre or so of beer.
-Wesserpressack: same as above, only the
pork bits are suspended in…a mystery white substance. It was getting
dark by the time I got to this one, so can’t really distinguish it
from the two below, but it was yummy.
-Göttengnger & Sülze: I was getting
overwhelmed at this point, so I had only a thumbnail-sized taste of
these. It’s clear that when it comes to ground pork pressed into
casings, the Germans can pretty much do no wrong.
Additionally, we were treated to…
-Bratwurst: These are served hot, usually
with sauerkraut. They aren’t anything like what you might have had at
a ball game, where as far as I can tell , “bratwurst” just means
“big hot dog.” You wouldn’t think that you’d be able to eat a
hot bratwurst (let alone three) outside in the middle of a hot day, but
somehow we did.
-Nürnburg Bratwurst: Same as above, but
they’re much smaller. The specialty of Nürnburg. They come in
“racks” of six, eight, ten, and twelve. Yes, twelve. I actually saw
someone eat twelve. In the middle of a 90-degree day. Washed down with a
giant beer. Whew.
One evening, depending on how you looked at it, Uli
either gave us the special opportunity to go into the cool of the woods
to gather blueberries for dessert or marched us out into the forest and
forced us to pick berries until all the boxes were full. I had never
picked blueberries before, so I was utterly charmed. I kept saying
“Oh, this is so great!” Markus, for whom berry-picking was
apparently an all-too-common chore, kept shouting “I hate this!”
Rob’s reaction fell somewhere in the middle. He, characteristically,
kept quiet. Berry-picking proved to be very meditative, and after about
a half-hour, I looked up and saw I had drifted a hundred yards or so
away from the others. Instantly, I understood how so many fairy tales
begin with people in the forest who stop paying attention, lose their
way, and end up fighting trolls or imprisoned by witches. Fortunately,
neither happened. And the blueberry crumble was delicious.
A Random
Observation: Traveling = Math Problems
You don’t really anticipate just how much
arithmetic you’ll end up doing as an American traveling in Europe, but
sometimes it seems that the day is made up of hundreds of small math
problems, and since I am less than adept at performing small math
problems quickly and without pencil and paper, it may explain why I’m
so tired at the end of the day.
Currency: The easiest thing to do, I’ve
found, is find a simple equation that will give you the roughest idea,
and not really worry about it. This worked very well in the Netherlands
and in Germany, where the guilder and the mark are both worth about half
a dollar. Other places, such as the Czech Republic (where the dollar is
worth about 37 crowns) are quite a bit more challenging. If all goes
well, in 2002 this problem goes away with the introduction of the Euro
(unless of course, you’re in England or some other country where they
won’t play), too late to help us.
Weights and measures: Once you’ve got your
finances down, you can move on to the metric system. When I was in about
the 5th grade, the US was going to finally catch up with the
rest of the world and go completely metric any second. Well, I guess we
all know what happened to that. It’s hard not to have a heart
attack when you step on a scale or look at how far it is to the next
town, and purchasing food in quantities of kilos or grams always makes
me think I’m buying drugs.
Temperature: Yes, I know that 0 degrees
Celsius is freezing and 100 is boiling, but that doesn’t help much
when you’re deciding what to wear. When the nice lady on CNN points to
the city you’re in and says it’s going to be 33 degrees, it is hard
to realize that you are going to be sweating profusely and cursing
Europeans for not sharing the red-blooded American passion for
meat-locker level air-conditioning for days and days and days. But you
are, Blanche, you are.
Time: In Europe, they use the 24-hour clock,
so any time after one gets confusing to an AM/PMster like me. Think this
is funny? Think I’m stupid? OK, buddy, think fast: It’s 33 degrees
out, you have no cash, you can’t find a bathroom where you don’t
have to pay 3 crowns, and your spouse clearly hates you. Your watch says
it’s 3:55. If the museum
you walked three kilometers to find closes at 16:00, what time will it
be before s/he speaks to you again?
--Lisa
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Mmmmm....wurst!
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Germany
