20 Jul 2016

Anything on pretzel bread with a little butter is amazing.

In the US, restaurant meals comes with water (with ice), and all almost all soft drinks (sodas, or pop, or soda pop depending on where you live in the US) have free refills.  In Germany, I’ve found myself getting used to having no drinks with a meal (or maybe some still water (non-bubbly), but not much.   I suspect that I’m saving hundreds of calories by not having unlimited sprite refills.

I find that I don’t miss old food favorites much, or I can find something equivalent here.  There are a lot of places that have good hamburgers, and heaven knows that I love sausage, and this is the sausage capital of the world (and by that, I mean ground meat.)  I suppose I miss good Mexican food, and to a degree, Japanese food. 

I certainly have a lot of new favorites:  Goulash, schnitzel (of any kind.) Brotkartoffel (actually, it should be Bratkartoffeln) (like home fries in the US), potato taschen (like filled hash browns), Maultaschen (like ravioli), 

The days are feeling more and more normal.  It no longer bothers me to go out to stores and speak with people.  My German is getting better.  I can say “Ich spreche ein bisschen deutsch” (I speak a little German) to match most Germans who say they speak a little English too.

I’m taking weekly language classes, which are going well, if too slowly for me, but my problem is still in parsing spoken German. It doesn’t help that sometimes you can’t figure out the meaning of a sentence until later in the sentence.

Knoppers are these amazing little treats with sweet cream and wafers.  In theory, I think they’re supposed to be meal replacements, but I can’t eat just one, so I think I eat all my meals in one sitting.

Ok, this is a k

The German medical system, while pretty amazing, has its issues.  Doctor visits seem to have very long delays before you can be seen.  It’s partly endemic to the system, as sick people are allowed to walk in any time (as far as I can tell.)  The best advice I had was to get the first appt of the day if possible. Or go to private insurance, but once you go private, you can’t go back to public insurance.