Every culture has their nuances, idiosyncrasies, oddities, and pure weirdness. While our Saxon brethren across the pond are similar to many in the US in genealogy (in central PA specifically!), they have some habits that made me scratch my head. This post displays just a few of the many "things Germans do" that I found interesting, cool, strange, or downright weird.
Parking on the sidewalk:
Yeah, the Germans would park half their cars on the sidewalks because their streets are too thin for streets. But just ONE side of the car, as demonstrated by this sign.
Mixing white wine with sparkling water. It's refreshing, but basically a watered down spritzer. I liked it in general, especially since it was 100 degrees the entire time we were there.
LIVE WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING. Record degree temps made us ECSTATIC to see this sign. Anywhere with this sign we basically were into. It's so rare in Germany to have aircon, but those that did made a killing this summer!
Eating weird sausages covered in mayonnaise and onions. We were not opposed. Apparently this is a dutch thing.
Eating late night food (the pic below was taken past 1AM), especially d
öner kebab. Again, not opposed. My favorite part of this picture is Tim's evil glare on the right - MY PRECIOUSSSSSS
Eating vineyard slugs in garlic sauce. Or baked.
EATING RAW PIG. The first night we had this I thought it was beef, which, you know, Americans would know as carpaccio or something similar. We eat rare beef, we get it, we aren't scared of it. When I heard it was pig, I admittedly freaked out a bit, but this actually turned out to be our favorite German cuisine - it's called mette. Our first encounter was after midnight at K&C's wedding. At 12:01 they rolled out a huge platter with a mountain of meat. The meat had onions sticking out of it from all over and was shaped in the form of a hedgehog. They called it mette eagle (sp?). This term became a phrase that we could not shut up about for the rest of the trip.
The mette comes in cute little packages like this:
BREAKFAST. They have breakfast unlike any other I have seen. They eat pate, meats, cheeses, and all kind of spreads (including mette of course!) on various rolls for breakfast. Or at least Kathy and Carsten do. Our last morning in Schwelm we made breakfast - I am pretty proud of this one. We even went to the local butcher, baker, and candlestick maker and grunted through all the orders correctly!
Use weird first response vehicles.
Display my my favorite German word, Ausfahrt, everywhere. I am a 12 year old boy, I know.
Eat pig. Lots of it. And name stores after it, twice.
Drink beer!They actually don't have a word for beer - they get much more specific. They have alst, pils, k
ölsch, lager, etc., but would never call it just beer. Why would you when each beer has a specific name? You don't want to offend the beer now, do you??
DRIVE FAST. We broke several personal best speed limits in Germany. While the picture below is blurry, believe me when I tell you we went 230km/hr. That's faster than our trains go in the states! It actually rivaled some of the other trains we took in Europe as well. It was just fast. Like, fear for your life fast. But it actually seems to work - the rule-based Germans had procedures for every aspect of driving to keep the system safe.
Eating McDonalds. It's an odd late-night European pastime. One they don't feel guilty about because the meals are like 7-10 Euros and use only grass-fed, non-GMO beef. Or whatever. We ate this at midnight because it was the only thing open on our way home from K
öln!
Speak in German dialects. These two menus have the same selections, but they are written in different dialects. The one is high German and the other is D
üsseldorf-ian?
We had a wonderful time in Germany. I foresee us returning, especially so we can go to other large towns like Berlin and Münich. It was very sad to leave Kathy and Carsten, but we will see them again in November for our wedding. Here's to good friends, good beer, good fun, and a lovely country!
