Skip to main content

About Germany

Recent visit to the Deutschland for a few days had me hopping with energy.  What with so much brew ha ha as in Beer at every turn and mostly good.  Had to get in to the spirit.

So here are some observations while trying to keep the eyelids open....

1.  There are more Germans with facial hair than not - perhaps beats India in this matter now what with many a wannabe MBA getting rid of their hirsute characteristics...quite a few of those Rhinelanders also sport a handlebar

2. Service does not exist - at least in the restaurants and even the famous beer gardens where you have the privilege to be yelled at by the servers and cooks - What?  This is Bratwurst and This is Frittes...yaaa - you pay thear!

3.  Beer Gardens or Bier Gartens as they are colloquially referred are more than mushrooms after a rain...it is the equivalent of a pav bhaji stall in Pune neighborhoods - most serve decent lager which is local to the area and standard fare includes some sausage and a pretzel (which I could not like after several attempts at it)

4.  Northerners are different from Southerners - while the country is not too big - I think it is the size of Wisconsin or thereabouts there is still a cultural divide between the northern half vs. the Bavarians and Swabians in the south.  The Swabians are the cool inventors - think Mercedes Benz and the like - are a language unto themselves auch! as in also.

5. Kebab is also king in this land of Mercedes and BMW - as in the version called a Doner -not sure who is donating what or if you are Done after consuming one with everything on it..it is the shaved meat from a turning spit of chicken or beef or pork meat that is piled into a warm pita like bread and topped with salad and a creamy yoghurt to give this wonderful medley of tastes in the mouth.

6.  A local delicacy?  Perhaps a street food that has gained traction was the 'curry wurst' which I was convinced was the worst version of sausage I had in the entire trip .. It has some kind of sauce that is supposed to resemble spicy curry but it tastes like a salty ketchup with pieces of brat thrown in.


Comments

  1. interesting observations..you have the best and the wurst coming together ..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...