Schnitzel

'N Ᾱmd Dear Reader,

Last night I sampled one of the stereotypical German-speaking-world delicacies – the humble schnitzel. We went as a large group to Joh Albrecht (yes, the same place as last week) to attend their “Schitzelparade” (schnitzel parade). In my head I had images of schnitzels walking along the table, waiting for us to spear our chosen schnitzel – I think the illness may have given me a more wild imagination! Luckily it was more humane than this, with a huge list of different schnitzel toppings and accompaniments from which to order. The schnitzel is like an escalope, usually made of veal in Austria, although we had the pork version, which is then breaded and fried up.

I selected the Kupfenbierschnitzel, which is a normal schnitzel topped with a beer sauce, Speck (bacon), roast onions and Bratkartoffeln (a special form of fried potato). It was delicious and the sauce was rich and not as  beer-y as it might have been, with ‘proper’ potatoes done in an animal fat giving them a much better flavour, as well as ‘proper’ pieces of bacon, unlike the usual little diced variety that you normally get here…yum yum yum!

As in all these situations, looking at other people’s schnitzel selections meant you wondered whether you should have ordered them instead. I think I shall have to return to try some of the other varieties, including a Braumeisterschnitzel, which had a malt crust rather than the normal bread crumbs, or the typical “Weiner Art” (Vienna style) schnitzel, which is the original in all its glory. Suffice to say no one talked for a good 20-30minutes while we all savoured our respective schnitzels (or Rosti for the vegetarian) – the universal mark of a good meal!

Here is a picture of my yummy schnitzel:

Spätzle und Strudel

Grüezi Dear Reader!

This weekend my mother came to visit me in Konstanz, and we happily munched our way through various different delicacies from the surrounding region.

Our food-fest began with trying Spätzle, which is thought to be a Swabian speciality and comes from the Baden-Wüttemberg Bundesland, which is where I live! It is an alternative carbohydrate source in German cuisine, formed from special noodle dough, and then quite often served with meat. The variety we tried was Käsespätzle, which is the Spätzle mixed with grated cheese (according to wiki, this is usually Emmenthaler). It tasted a lot like fried pasta and is relatively filling.

Next we moved on to Strudel with vanilla sauce, filled with delicious stewed apples, making it an Apfelstrudel, which is one of the most popular versions in the world. Although I acknowledge that this an Austrian speciality rather than a German one, Konstanz once belonged to Austria for over 200 years as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the influence does seem to have carried on here!

Today’s discovery was of a wonderfully quirky café (seriously, they had bird call serenading you in the lavatory) called Das Voglhaus in the Altstadt. Here we sampled Linzertorte – another Austrian traditional cake – which is made from a spiced dough with huge dollops of raspberry jam. Usually the top is a lattice pattern, but as you can see from the picture, this place decided to do it a little differently. The Linzertorte reminded me of Lebkuchen, a Christmas gingerbread here in Germany, and was most delicious. I think I will have to return back for more; just to ensure that each cake comes out the same, of course!

Other than chomping through Konstanz, we also visited the Rosgarten museum, which is filled with middle-age paintings and the history of the town. However, the sheer delight came from a visiting exhibition of hats…First one had to walk along a pathway with a mixture of hats suspended from the ceiling, for people to try on and giggle at. We then went into the main exhibition room to see all the various designs for hats of famous people from around the world – a few of the ladies hats boggle your mind as to what on earth was fashionable at the time! Here are our top three:

Hat Number One is definitely for those of festive spirit! Decorated with tiny Christmas baubles, there will be no need for a Tannenbaum this year...

Hat Number Two is for the man who likes to look good in a fight, but also likes to be seen by the enemy! Well an eagle beats a pigeon for image any day...

Hat Number Three is a natty little number right from the heart of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), complete with handy padding for falling cuckoo clocks...

In all seriousness though, this is part of the Schwarzwald Tracht - the traditional clothing - for women in the Black Forest. I'm afraid my Dirndl wearing has not yet reached this level of commitment...

This was one last unexpected joy right at the end of the exhibition. I'd have played for hours and hours with it as a little girl, despite the lack of Barbie Pink-tastic-ness!

Flammkuchen

Grüß Gott Dear Reader!

For those who think I have been a bit quiet recently, it is because I managed to catch some form of chest infection, which successfully managed to knock me sideways for most of this week (conveniently my one free week between my language course ending and my introduction to law course beginning on Monday). As a result I have spent most of the past week in bed, but managed to drag myself outside, after increasingly getting cabin fever!

In the afternoon, I ventured into the Altstadt on the search for ice cream with a good friend from back at my home university, who is doing exactly the same course as me. Apparently, this is a very big deal in Konstanz and other tourist resorts where the weather actually gets warm enough to justify eating them - unlike many childhood memories of my lips going blue with cold eating my 99 on the British coast, or just having picnics inside the car due to the rain whilst facing what would be a beautiful view only we couldn't see it! Having explored around, I am delighted to say that myself and a friend managed to find a very reasonably priced, claimed to be Italian, ice cream parlour and happily licked our way through three large scoops. For myself, I recreated the Neopolitan idea, with Melon, Wildberry and Nutella ice creams, which was definitely worth me escaping from my nest for a couple of hours.

In the evening, I went out to dinner at Joh Albrecht - a German Brauhaus - with some new friends, and was introduced to various different types of beer, by an American who seemed to be something of a conisseur, having lived in München and taught himself German by learning the Bairisch Dialekt. Most out of character for myself, I did not automatically reach for the non-alcoholic drinks list, and instead ordered a Kupfur, which is a much milder and less bitter tasting beer, due to having more malt and less hops (from my awful memory of the explanation). I admit I did not make it through the glass, and was helped out by my American and Ukrainian friends, who were more than happy to oblige - even if I had warmed it up by cuddling the glass, in an effort to look like I was actually drinking it at a normal rate (rather than superbly slowly!). The Brauhaus has offers on a Monday, for all you can eat Schweinshaxen (pigs knuckles, which are actually surprisingly tasty), and a "große Schnitzelparade" on a Tuesday, so I am more than confident that I shall be returning at least twice more in the coming few months!

I decided to order a Flammkuchen, a delicacy which I believe is very popular in the Black Forest region. However, I was not expecting the change in base which occurs between the more northern areas, such as Strasbourg and the Alsace Region, and the southern version in Konstanz. The traditional topping remained the same - Speck, Zweibel and Quark (bacon, onion and sour cream cheese). However, in the northern parts of the Black Forest (also found in Baden-Baden I seem to remember), the base is more a savory pancake-pizza sort of base, which is light and spongy - more in line with what you would expect for a product named Flammkuchen: lit. Flamed Cake. However, in the Brauhaus here, the base is more a thin cracker, which is tougher and more difficult to cut through with normal cutlery. The size still remain impressive - about the size of a medium pizza, though in France it was served to be as a circle, and in Germany in a rectangle. However, I am told by my American Beer-Lover that in other areas, it is possible to get smaller, more dense Flammkuchen, served almost on thick bread! I shall clearly have to explore more closely into the world of Flammkuchen...

After dinner we ventured to the Niederburg Weinstube; a Weinstube (pronouced Wine-stew-blee, though this may be the Swabisch dialect) is like a pub/bar which is dedicated solely to serving wines. Despite having been advised to order the white wines of the region (these being better and more drinkable for those of us who have not built up a wine palette), I ordered something called Weißherbst which is made by one of the local vineyards in Meersburg, Staatsweingut. From memory, I recalled friends drinking (and enjoying) this at the Meersburg Wine Festival and with white (weiß) in the name, surely I couldn't go wrong. It turned up with a very pinkish colour and surpassed all of our expectations (the rest of the group having clearly gone for whites of a more obviously white-grape type, such as Risling and Pinot Grigio). Still now, with a Chilean who knew a lot about wine, an American whose parents grow their own wine, and a Brit who seems to know all the local vineyards around Konstanz, we are mystified as to what sort of wine it was! Automatically ruled out was the idea that in any form could it be a white - the colour was just wrong. Rosé was a possibility, but a very light red wine was another (looking it up now, it comes from the Spätburgunder, which I belive is a red grape - although I still don't know what that really means in terms of whether it must be a red wine or not), but with a fruity aftertaste that the other drinkers on the table marvelled about. I was just happy that I'd finally managed to find a wine that didn't taste like vinegar or alcoholic scrub to me (clearly, viticulture is never going to be my calling), and that maybe I could imagine ordering to try and make myself appear more adult than my usual lemonade, whilst still finding the experience of drinking it vaguely pleasant. This is high praise indeed from a girl who will normally feel ill after just smelling even the smallest amount of alcohol in a beverage. So if you come to the Lake Constance region, that is one wine I can recommend with some degree of confidence, and hopefully a bottle or two will be making its way home for Christmas Day...

Oktoberfest

Hä Dear Reader!

This weekend I went on my first trip away from Konstanz – a road trip to München (Munich) to visit the Oktoberfest with my German friend and an American girl. To get to München from Konstanz we had to drive through Switzerland and Austria, giving us a good view of the other major German-speaking countries.

On Friday, we had a look around München city-centre and visited the Rathaus, to get the obligatory tourist photo, plus the struggle to fit the whole building one frame! I’d like to go back for a better explore at some point, when there are less tourists, and at a time when I can watch the Glockenspiel carillon moving around.

After our site-seeing, we went to the Augustiner-Grossgaststätte, one of the traditional Bier Kellers in München, for a Weiβwurst Frühstück – a Bavarian speciality consisting of white sausages, sweet mustard, Brezel (pretzel) and beer. According to the Bavarians, you should not eat the skin on the white sausage, as only the tourists eat it – it should either be sliced off or the innards sucked out, leaving the skin on the plate.

In the afternoon we went Lederhose shopping for my friend – we spent two hours in the shop trying to get the right fit and colour for him. Eventually we managed to get some which looked really good – but only after the shop’s owner, “der Meister”, had sufficiently touched him up and made me look at various men’s bottoms to give my opinion on how fitted the Lederhose were: the tighter around the bottom the better apparently! It is possible to spend a fortune on Lederhose as they can cost anything from around 100Euro upwards; one Brewer that we met spent over 1,000Euro on his Tracht!

In the evening, I was given my first view of the Oktoberfest – a huge funfair stretching out across the Theresienwiese (or Wies’n for short) – not at all what I was expecting! Naïvely, I was thinking of a more traditional Oktoberfest – as though it had never changed from the original celebrations of the October 1810 of the wedding of the Bavarian Crown Prince and Princess Therese. On this day, the happy couple celebrated their marriage by hosting a huge party and horse race on the Theresienwiese, named after the Princess; the party has been repeated ever since, but was extended into September for the better weather. In my head I was imagining a glorified street party in multiple tents, with lots of beer and traditional music, and though this does occur, it was the sheer modernity of festival which shocked me!

Dressed in my mother’s old dirndl, which she has gifted to me for my German knowledge development, we wondered around the carnival watching people dressed in their finest Tracht – Dirndls, Lederhose and anything in-between! There are so many varieties of Dirndls for ladies to wear; it seems that anything goes in terms of length, style and colour – so long as the top is low-cut-ish; there is ribbon cross-hatched across the front; and an apron, with the bow tied so as to indicate the marital status of the wearer. We happily munched our way through chocolate covered fruit and caramelised nuts, staples of German festival food, and got lost in the crowds swarming around and going on rides.

Early on Saturday, we headed back to the Oktoberfest to arrive at the beer tents for 9am, which is when the tents open at weekends. We decided to go to the Spatenbräu Ochsenbraterei, as our new Brewer friend brews beer for Spaten, so we felt we should sample his efforts. By five past nine the tent was heaving, and we struggled to find a table amid the throng of around 5,000 Tracht-ers. Luckily we managed to grab a bench, and by ten past were happily slurping at our Maβs of beer (or Radler, given it was still early!). The beer itself is brewed specially for the Oktoberfest, so that it is less gassy and so it is possible to pour out a full litre without too much of a frothy head on it.

The Oktoberfest was soon in full swing, with a traditional oompa band leading us through traditional German drinking songs, such as “Ein Prostit, Ein Prostit, Der Gemütlichkeit” during which one must raise their Maβ and then Prost with all the people on the table with you; as well as more modern songs like Sweet Caroline. Needless to say we were quickly all up on the benches dancing joyfully, as though we had all been long-lost friends from years gone by…

Sleeping Companions

Ach Dear Reader!

Despite sleeping with the window firmly closed, I have managed to acquire some new sleeping companions, leaving me with more bites than face at the moment. My body is covered in bumps and bites, but at least I have stopped waking up in the middle of the night due to itching.

Apparently it is normal to have lots of biting insects around in September because of the lake, and as soon as the weather changes for winter they will no longer be around. Although I have been very much enjoying the beautiful sunny weather, I'm ready to lose my new facial and body decorations! My fellow internationals do not appear to be as affected as I have been - perhaps I am acting as the bait so that they don't get bitten...

It seems though that the temperature is changing - each day it is getting colder and I've started having to wear a coat in the daytime. I've even resorted to walking to uni because it is too cold to wait at the bus-stop for the same amount as it takes to walk.

Yet, do not worry dear friends, I have not swollen or frozen so badly that I am unrecognisable - nothing a nice mug of tea and some Photoshop cannot sort out!

Rothaus Brewery

Liebe Grüβe Dear Reader!

Today (Wednesday) I visited one of the many German breweries in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest): Die Badischen Staatsbrauereit Rothaus; known as Rothaus for short. The Rothaus brewery is the highest brewery in Germany, lying high up in the mountains, with very little around it! It was started in 1791 by a monk, but the original buildings are no longer still standing due to a large fire and it had to be rebuilt in 1905. Apparently, since Rothaus began the beer recipe has not changed and, though the technology has advanced, the process has remained mostly the same.

Our visit began with a tour around the brewery, in the same order that the beer also travels. The smell of beer accompanies you around the trip, though it does change slightly as you venture around. Unfortunately, I cannot remember all the processes, so I’ll just give you some of the highlights from my own understanding and memory. According to the Rheinheitsgebot (German purity laws for beer) there are only three main ingredients to make beer: water, malt and hops. Yeast is also added at some point during the process to act as an enzyme, but is removed later on in the beer making.

To start we were shown some huge copper vats, which is used to mix, heat, separate and generally serve as a multi-purpose for the beginning stages of beer. If anyone would like to (re-)explain the process to me, then feel free to post in the comments section below! It is here that the malt is broken down into malt sugars, ready for the yeast to do its work at helping the beer to ferment.

We then stood beneath some of the storage silos where the beer is kept for fermenting – they were huge, containing 180,000litres of beer each! The beer is kept there for roughly a week at 8-10°C for normal beer or 3-4days at 15-20°C for Hefeweizen, which is another type of beer that tastes a bit different. It is here that the yeast is added, from either the top or the bottom, depending on what type of beer is being brewed.

Next we went to see the packing place for the Zäpfle, the 33cl bottles of beer – filled at a rate of roughly 55,000-60,000 bottles per hour! I quite enjoyed watching thousands of little bottles speeding around the room at breakneck speed, but I’m not sure how well I would cope going quite that fast round so many tight bends…

Interestingly, the non-alcoholic beer is made in the same way, but is then sent to a special place in Germany to have the alcohol removed. There is only one place in the whole of Germany that does this, and still manages to keep the taste of the beer intact. Now I can understand why Alkoholfrei Bier (alcohol-free beer) is as expensive as the real thing!

After the tour, we were given the opportunity to try as many of the beers as we wanted, accompanied by freshly baked bread and sausage-meat-spheres. As a result we tried all the types of beer that Rothaus makes; though I am still not enamoured with the taste of beer (perhaps I should try out a few more breweries), I feel I can at least now distinguish some of the types of beer from the others, even if I’m not quite sure what the various names are!

PROST!

Prost Dear Reader!

This weekend I have warmed up for my visit to the original Oktoberfest in München, by going to the Deutsch-Schweizer Oktoberfest am Bodensee in Konstanz. The Konstanz Oktoberfest claims to be the third largest in Germany, with the other being Stuttgart. However, with only two beer tents and an eerily deserted fairground, one has to wonder how little the rest of Germany celebrates! Perhaps they have their own beer festivals at another time of year…

My Konstanz Oktoberfest experience was split into two very distinctive halves (I hope at some point to rectify this and have the proper experience altogether): Saturday evening and Sunday evening.

Saturday was madness and, having followed Tracht-wearing people (i.e. Dirndls and Lederhose) to the right place, we queued up to get an entrance pin. As many of us are newly registered official Konstanz residents, we were given a Gutschein by the nice people at the foreign office for the pin, which has given us free entry for the whole festival. There were people streaming everywhere and I did feel rather out of place not dressed in traditional clothing. We decided to try out the Paulaner Festhalle/Bierzelt (Beer Tent), which was jam-packed full of people dressed appropriately. Suffice to say that in jeans, we stood out like a sore thumb. Any attempt to make it near to a table was met with a cry of “NE!” as people desperately tried to save seats either for their friends or for people rightly clad. We ended up standing between the crepe stand and the toilets – possibly not the most glamorous location, but we could observe the German (and Swiss) people having a whale of a time, while we sedately drank our München-brewed beer (or apple juice if you were me).

Determined to get into the full Oktoberfest spirit for ourselves, we went again on Sunday night. The contrast could not have been more different – the place was empty, save for a few tables in the middle of the room. We sat (note, we had a whole table to ourselves – something which is unheard of at the München Oktoberfest) nervously and order a Maβ: a litre of beer served in a special glass, known as a Stein. I ordered a Radler – a mixture of beer and lemonade – and though I made very little headway with it, probably less than a wine-glass-worth, it was good fun to have around. A litre of liquid is surprisingly heavy, but despite this the Germans seem intent on waving it in the air whilst singing drunkenly to traditional Volksleider/drinking songs. Here, I was slowly initiated into the ways of Maβ drinking:
Firstly, whenever you get a new Maβ at the table, you must all chink glasses and cry “Prost!” before drinking.

Secondly, every time the music stops, you must shout “Prost!”, cheers again and then drink.
Thirdly, there are special songs devoted to yelling “Prost!” and then drinking – it is obligatory to join in with this.
Fourthly, if someone challenges you to a drinking race, you must accept. The race starts with “Prost!” and the winner is the person who drinks the segment first. The glasses are patterned with grooves, with four in each glass – thus making up the segments.
Fifthly, if you are bored/drunk/keeping time of the music/in need of attention, bang your Stein upon the table. Continue this for as long as necessary, along with rhythmic swaying, raising your hands/glasses in the air and foot banging as directed by the conductor of the band.

To further my rehearsal for the München Oktoberfest, I have also now stood on a bench and bobbed up and down a bit. In full embracing of the stereotype, Germans really do dance on their tables in Lederhose whilst drinking beer.

All I need to do now is the get the costume sorted, plus find a man willing to dance with me donned in Lederhosen, and I will achieved one of my “aims” for this year!