Where Not to Walk in Germany

As a teenager, I highly esteemed my friend’s deodorant.

Just like her, it was from the sophisticated, exotic, ancestral lands of Europe!

This young, German exchange-student and I connected  immediately over a shared love of sugar-free  communication, theater interests, mutual friends, and algebra battles. She introduced me to chocolate on toast for breakfast and avant garde wardrobe pieces that fascinated this small-town Wyomingite. The bonds we made riding the waves of teenage life have endured for fifteen years already.

Go back and tell the young-me that I’d spend a week of my adult life in Germany living in her second apartment (she works in two cities), and my jaw would hit the floor.

Although it would be another week until I got to see her, walking into a space full of her art and furniture and clothes still induced that wonderful wave of nostalgia that is “coming home” and a delightful resurrection of the past.

The apartment provided a much needed space to wage the uphill battle of recovering from a  six-month grueling work schedule and five weeks of international travel.  Boyfriend and I spent plenty of “evenings in” drinking mulled wine and hot tea.  We also explored the surrounding area, to include the iconic Heidelberg Castle, hikes in the Odenwald, a ferry trip up a  Rhine tributary to Neckarsteinach, walks through the forest to abandoned castles, and a bike ride through the woods to a famous village ice cream shop. Boyfriend got his longed for pork knuckle and schnitzel (my man is a  chicken-fried-steak lover! *smh*), as well as glasses of wine and coffees on quaint plazas where cafe-provided blankets battled the spring chill.

And our  evening experiencing the small-town, weekend bar-scene?  Check this out:

I knew the first time I walked past the Country Oldie Rock bar, a storefront resembling a 1990, mid-west thrift-shop, it would be impossible to leave town without having a pint there. The joint did not disappoint. The owner, a self-described, American-loving, biker-woman, had long, mullet-ish blonde hair and ample flesh. She welcomed us with beers, a thick German accent, and free peanuts. Following the American saloon tradition, shells from said peanuts were to be cast upon the floor. Incredible regalia, ranging from 80’s rock to Native American velour prints, and hologram posters to American flags made the place more “living room” and less “commercial establishment.” Indeed, snapshots of the owner’s partying friends and guests graced the walls and ceiling nets, along with fake flowers and Christmas lights. The enormous ashtrays looked straight out of a Mexican cantina. The relic in the corner — a Flinstone’s pinball machine — was icing on the cake!

We’d walked into some lost decade in the American West. Being as I was about to reunite with the previously mentioned German friend whose acquaintance I’d made in the American West, the odd little establishment was strangely appropriate.

The trip  to my friend’s second (and main) home in Cologne was constant eye candy. As serendipity would have it, our  train journey  approached our destination via the stunning Rhine river valley. Castles perched high on the canyon-valley walls, overlooking pastoral scenes. Boyfriend and I  raised a toast as the train raced along (legal, acceptable, and sometimes over-exploited by Jager-drinking teens) to the treacherously steep vineyards clinging to the hillsides.

Upon arrival, my high-school-friend embarrassed us with her fantastic hostessing: she had an amazing anti-pasta dinner lined up and a plethora of plans and possibilities to fill the approaching holiday weekend. Easter sees most German business close for three out of four days. (Friday, Sunday, and Monday). Thankfully, the neighborhood pub had a few business hours, as did a  Nazi museum, Lindt Chocolate Factory, and the infamous Nurburgring.

What did I learn? Heaps!

First of all — over-inflated balloons explode loudly.  Nearby patrons  and their dogs do not enjoy this part of sneaking down to the pub early to decorate for your friend’s birthday dinner. Also, birthdays are a congratulatory occasion in Germany. People shake your hand and congratulate you for having a birthday! Really!

Other lessons:

• 

  Fierce competition. Winner-take-all, Loser-drink-all.

  Loopin Louie is the best drinking game ever invented, requiring slightly more than just luck to win. Using a children’s game apparatus, you must keep the electronically circumnavigating aviator from knocking your three discs off their tracks.  Required: your individual catapult, hand-eye coordination, and a bit of luck!

• Texas Hold ‘Em is anyone’s game. Did I win?  I’ll let my smug smile do the talking.

• 

  Nope. Not a neighborhood mailbox. A cigarette vending machine. Because you shouldn’t have to go all the way to the store to get your nicotine/cancer fix.

  Germany loves smoking. They vend affordable cigarettes from neighborhood machines appearing at intervals comparable to  conglomerated mailboxes in America. And every single public trashcan  has a cigarette disposal section on top.

• Those cute red sections of sidewalk? They’re actually bike lanes, I sheepishly discovered. Move over, slow poke!

• How many bars of chocolate does one tree make? 100 to 300 a year!

• Why do Lindt truffle centers melt in your mouth? Coconut fat in the outer shell gives it a higher melting point.

• 

  Like eating mini-muffins – feels like each one barely counts and suddenly you’ve eaten the whole batch!

  Want the waiter to stop filling your little beer glass when visiting Cologne (Koln)? Put your coaster atop. Otherwise, a server delivers  a new glass on  every patrol!  200mL x’s how-many-have-I-had?! adds up quick!

• Want to be a waiter? Start saving for chiropractor bills. Every server  I saw carried a GIANT accordion wallet in their back pocket, ready to make change for every possible check.

• Wi-fi desires? Get a life! Thanks to a law requiring public wi-fi to jump through expensive hoops, local coffee shops do not offer free access. Perhaps as a consequence, Germans are the least-phone-addicted first-world nation I’ve ever experienced. How refreshing to be in public with peers who aren’t glued to their screens 24/7! Even our couchsurfing acquaintance, although  awaiting communication from his friends and wife, didn’t check his phone a single time in the hour he spent conversing with us!  Stunning. Appluadable!

• 

  Allegedly, this is this (living) comedian’s stage name – hence the reason it’s allowed in this historical, public place.

  Keen to exercise your freedom of speech? Adopt a cemetery plot in the save-our-German-cemeteries-program, and you can put whatever you want on the headstone. They didn’t anticipate German comedians getting in on the action:

• It’s not springtime without white Spargel –  This albino asparagus is prepared a multitude of ways, considered a delicacy, and comes from  the same region as my amiga! Yum, yum, yum!

• Is your significant other  an auto/driving aficionado? A few laps on the Nurburgring (Germany’s public race-track that is technically a public highway) requires one’s own car or a rental from the track program reserved far in advance. Especially if it’s Easter weekend.

Of course, a foreigner’s visit to Deutschland wouldn’t be complete without some Nazi education. We didn’t make it to any of the concentrations camps, but we found a city-prison-turned-museum that  compassionately captured very poignant histories. I learned tons of fascinating facts  about the rise of Nazi-ism.

While it seems to me the rest of the world has largely moved on from the German atrocities of the 1940’s, German’s themselves still take it very seriously. My aforementioned high-school friend told me one can easily be arrested for performing the famous Nazi salute in public in Deutschland! She also explained the deep horror it evokes when foreigners she meets internationally will casually give the salute after discovering  she is  German.

Given Germany’s Nazi-pure-Aryan-race history, it’s fascinating to me that Germany is full of immigrants. Every sizable town has a patchwork of nationalities gracing its streets, right down to the Romanian beggars outside of every church — including the stunning Koln (Cologne) gothic cathedral. After a wander through the gorgeous structure, we ambled down to the street to watch the $1 silhouette man from the balcony of Dunkin Donuts before returning home.

The final highlight of our visit with my high-school-mate was Easter breakfast — complete with amazing bread, meat, cheeses (common German brekkie)… and giant chocolate Easter bunnies! Oh wait — and having a much-needed night of girl talk late into the night with a friend of many years. K — cant’ wait to see you again!  â™£

Want to know what Germans will eat by the gallon at the first post-winter glimmer of sunlight?  Curious how many euros you’ll pay for  a cheap pint of whiskey?  Lookie here!

How many cocoa farmers have never tried a piece of chocolate?  Is it possible for blood sausage to look appetizing?  Find out here.