Translation: Good morning.
My bus from Amsterdam left at 11pm and arrived into Hamburg at 7am. This meant no sleep for Geoffy boy. About an hour and a half into our journey, we stopped off at a little petrol station for what I thought was going to be a 10 minute break, or maybe we were going to pick up some more passengers. This wasn't the case. Instead, we stopped for over an hour and the bus driver went for a walk. To me, this seemed like a complete waste of time and I was pretty pissed off because of it. Maybe it's the European ways rubbing off on me that you always have to be on the move and in a rush, or maybe sitting on a bus for an hour not able to do anything or go anywhere is a valid reason to be annoyed. Especially at 1am in the morning.
After setting off again, we arrived early in the morning and stepping off the bus I heard the words "You must be Geoff". I turned around and Sonja's (my German friend from Australia) stepfather was standing there with a huge grin on his face. The plan for my arrival in Hamburg was a secret from Sonja and for weeks, her stepfather had been contacting me sorting out when I should arrive. Sonja told me quite often neither her mother, father or stepfather knew any English and that it would be very weird when I came to visit. Yes, well, unbeknownst to her, Rainer (pronounced like Ryan-er), her stepfather, had reasonable English, enough to hold an intellectual conversation about music, politics, war and embarrassing stories of Sonja.
We arrived at the apartment and her Mum (Gina - Short for Grazyna) ran up to me and gave me a big fat hug. She pointed at Sonja’s door, gave me a huge grin and thumbs up and pushed me towards it. I opened the door and gave Sonja a huge hug. She knew I was coming one day, but because I was in her face right then, I think she was pretty surprised. The four of us had what I know now as a typical German breakfast. Contrary to what I thought they would have for breakfast (Sausages and a litre of beer) we sat down and ate fresh rolls and strange bread with all sorts of toppings.
When you set a breakfast table for Germans, you need coffee (Real coffee, it’s pretty uncommon to find instant coffee in Germany, let alone catch a German drinking the stuff) cheese, salami, ham (a couple kinds), tomato, fruit, Philadelphia, jams, Nutella, butter, a couple kinds of bread (I’ll explain the bread thing later) and a couple kinds of rolls. They are the normal things, and then come the things I was not accustomed to. Also on the table is teewurst, or leberwurst, a kind of meaty paste that looks, smells and probably tastes a lot like that sausage dog meat you can buy in Oz. Sometimes, salty gherkins are on the table, whole gherkins. When you bite into them, there is usually a hole somewhere else on the gherkin and the liquid in it squirts out into someone‘s eye. Then there are a few kinds of salads, known in German as salat. I can’t recall the others, because they weren’t anywhere near as good, but I discovered my most loved breakfast item on the earth. Despite the awful name they’ve chosen, Fleischsalat is by far the best thing I could ever have stumbled across. On normal toast (Our bread is called toast, and children usually only eat it.) Fleischsalat is nothing special, but still pretty good if you were sick of all the crappy sweet stuff you would usually put on it. On German bread (Again, I’ll explain soon), it’s magical, like the first time you drive by yourself after getting your P’s, like the first time you ever heard Stairway to Heaven in it’s entirety, or like putting on an awesome new shirt for the first time. I should probably explain exactly what it is, and I’m sure it doesn’t sound too appealing, it didn’t to me the first time.
Translation:
Fleischsalat = Meat salad.
Fleisch is the German word for meat. That alone scared me. The word fleish sort of looks and sounds like flesh, not a particularly nice or pleasant word, especially when it involves something you’ll be eating. Every time the word comes up, I have an imagine of someone out in the back yard tearing some flesh off a bone of some poor beast. It’s barbaric and terrifying. To make matters worse, the word for mince meat is…You guessed it, Hackfleisch. Ewwwwww!! My imagination goes into overdrive when I hear that word too. I picture Gina hacking up the flesh of a cow when she’s cooking with mince.
I’m getting off topic - Fleischsalat is basically a really good mayonnaise, finely chopped gherkin and finely chopped/shredded ham/speck. There are more little and finer things which I don’t know, and they’re probably what makes the difference as to why it’s so good. I eat Fleischsalat every morning, and I’m sure my cholesterol is through the roof because of it, but I DO NOT CARE. We have a personal joke in the house that it is now called Flesh Salad, rather than the German Fleischsalat (Pronounced like Fl-eye-sh salat) because of my disgust in the name.
Moving on with the breakfast table, we arrive at German bread. I have no idea what the names for the bread is except pumpernickel and toast, because we have these in Australia. Pumpernickel is a kind of bread you’ll find on the lowest shelf in the supermarket, or in health food stores. To, it’s a heap of seeds and rye squashed together to make a very dry and hard to eat substance. This is the base of most German bread. Sometimes there are more seeds, or more rye, but most of it is similar to that. Toast, as I mentioned before is not commonly eaten, among adults anyway. Where we have white, wholemeal or wholegrain, to a German, it’s all just toast. Another bread that sticks in my mind is a really dense and REALLY hard to eat bread, I can’t think of it’s name, but when you buy a loaf, it is literally as heavy as a brick and if you threw it at someone, you would give them a concussion. To cut it, you almost need a chainsaw, or in the case of a knife, huge biceps. The crust is where most of the weight lies I believe, it’s really tough and babies or old people would have no hope getting through it. I don’t know why, I should hate the stuff, it doesn’t even taste that good, but I’m growing awfully fond of it. To eat it you have to smother it in something, something like flesh salad ;) I think I’ve just discovered why I like it so much…
Another thing I found pretty cool about the country is that instead of having one or two big chopping boards for the whole house, they have a mini chopping board for each person, so instead of having a plate, you just take the little chopping board. Oh they have a couple big chopping boards too for big chops, like the brick bread.
Moving on from breakfast, Sonja took me for a walk around her area, around her city centre and we just chilled for the day I suppose.
At lunch time (The main meal of the day), Gina had cooked Sonja’s favorite dish. They were just meatball things in this kind of sauce with potatoes. Gina is a brilliant cook and would never do something from a can or packet, everything is fresh.
Another fundamental for German cuisine is potatoes. With every main meal you have to have potatoes and to the Germans, potatoes aren’t considered a vegetable. I think they think of potatoes rather as Gods than food, they love ‘em! Their food is more about the flavours in the sauce and meat rather than the nutrition it seems. The potatoes are used more like rice or noodles, to soak up the flavours. Vegetables are a bizarre idea. If vegetables were in a meal (there were many occasions where they just simply weren’t present), they were prepared a bit different. Sauerkraut, a vegetable I don’t think many Australians are familiar with is pretty good if prepared properly, and in this case, it was cooked in the juices and fats of the meat that was the main part of the meal. Of course it tastes brilliant. Steaming vegetables is out of the question and I think I saw it once for the duration of my stay. Even then, the vegetables were then drowned in butter. How Australia is the fattest (Or 2nd, I keep losing track) nation in the world, I have no idea.
So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about two months behind in my blogs, and for this whole time, I’ve been in Germany. For the next couple blogs, I’ll just tell a couple stories about my time in Hamburg and then eventually I’ll catch up. I apologise profusely.
In the next edition, Sonja and myself find ourselves struggling for our lives in the lake Alsta with burger patties, beer and The Beatles.
Ciao!
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