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Automatic for the People

Shop hours in Europe are abbreviated by American standards. Workers have the state-given rights to rest on Sundays, evenings, and dozens of holidays. Of course, this clashes with the consumer’s demands for basic foodstuffs. The answer? Automats.

We’ve been noticing automats across Europe and how they seem to meet some fundamental cultural need. In Belgium one sleepy Sunday morning, an automat was busy dispensing fresh bread to the villagers. Slide in a couple euro coins and out came sustenance for breakfast.

In Amsterdam, a little snack shop off a busy street had a wall of tiny windows that contained an assortment of fried snacks like croquettes, small hamburgers, and frites. The snacks were being replaced by a worker frying in the back of the shop, but the automat had replaced the step of ordering. What you saw in the little window, was what you got. (In Amsterdam, they further this concept to entirely other areas of needs gratification).

Automats are like the snack machine in the company lunchroom, except the food tends to be fresh and/or heated and in some cases can be counted as full meals. They are the original fast food of Europe, although their popularity seems to be dwindling. There are still functioning remnants in old towns like Lviv, Ukraine, which sports a Soviet-era soda machine painted a battleship gray. One glass is shared by all customers, who toss in a few coins and fill it up to drink on the spot. When finished, the communal glass is turned over and a jet of water squirts up to sort of clean it.

My personal favorite was a pasta automat in Pisa, Italy. A multi course meal could be had within minutes. We could imagine the appeal. It’s maybe not the best of food, but you don’t have to go home to your Italian mama.

Football Fever

Football fever has taken a hold of Germany.

So much so, that the U.S. embassy issued a travel advisory against venturing too far into the land of bratwursts and biersteins.

The advisory was issued for last night’s semi-final game between Deutschland and Turkey, warning Americans about “violent disturbances” that may occur before or after the mid evening match. Particularly in the “public viewing” areas where hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands in the case of the Brandenburg Gate — gather to booze the night away with their eyes glued on giant t.v. screens.

And don’t go anywhere near the demonstrations afterward when streets get blocked and vehicles rocked, the advisory goes on to say.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what we found out on our own. Only, after all the travelling we’ve done in Asia, Africa, and South America, we never thought to subscribe to the travel warning feed for Germany. I mean, this is a place where a lone woman like myself can feel quite comfortable jogging along down a deserted bike path at night.

Despite all the hype — from the U.S. embassy and the German media — the Germany vs. Turkey square-off in the Euro Cup turned out to be quite peaceful. Not a whole lot more eventful than the party scene around Karnaval — at least in the Rhineland. The songs may have been different, but even the clown wigs were the same, albeit in the German colors of black, yellow, and red.

The tensions between Germans and the sizable Turkish community concerning everything from the building of mosques and wearing of headscarves to immigration laws, for the most part did not carry over to the football fans. Though the story could have been different had Turkey won.

We saw lots of good will gestures in Bonn. Hand-slapping between Germans and Turks after the game ended with Germany’s close 3-2 victory. A number of Turkish eateries unfurled both German and Turkish flags, as if not to take sides.

What was most surprising to us as football fever became pitched starting a month or so ago was just how overt the signs of German patriotism have become. The flag waving only started two years ago when the World Cup descended on Germany and German patriotism came out of the closet for the first time since 1945. This year’s game, being held abroad in Austria and Switzerland, cemented those sentiments.

For the first time since World War II, people here can proudly fly their flag, wear the colors on an armband or hair scrunchie or skirt or painted across their faces … and not feel guilt. They can even sing their anthem — although hardly anyone knows the words — or scream from the top of their lungs chants like “Super Deutschland.”

The so-called “public viewing” events — yes, they use the phrase in English — have also helped normalize the patriotism. People, mostly the youth, gather in parks and watch the game together and the energy of the crowd helps carry the high.

In other words, you don’t have to quietly root for Germany behind your stone walls with the iron shutters closed anymore.

Doing so might have actually killed a lot football fever fans last night, when a thunderstorm shut down the broadcast signal from Switzerland a couple times during the game. The German fans had each other for support.

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If you look carefully you can find Tony in both of these videos.

Going Dutch

Dutch food? We were thinking nothing fancier than croquettes, fresh herring, or some delightfully aged Gouda. What a pleasant surprise then that on a weekend trip to Amsterdam recently, we found De Kas.

The restaurant is a converted greenhouse that used to be an abandoned municipal nursery. You dine under a glass ceiling in the middle of the greenery of Frankendael Park. And the food is freshly picked from the De Kas gardens.

We must admit that with press credentials, we got the royal treatment. This included a tour of the gardens by the manager and box seats in the kitchen to watch our food cooking. But in the full interest of disclosure, we paid our own way and the set menu ensured that the whole restaurant was eating alike.

Here’s our story, broadcast on Deutsche Welle in June.

Many thanks to johnnymobasher for the great photo of the De Kas kitchen, and sonicwalker for the food and champaigne pics.

Witches’ Onion

One of the first spring herbs in Germany has become familiar to us this year. Bärlauch is a strong garlicky-tasting leaf that’s been all over the markets and on menus since February when it made its first debut.

Bärlauch is not for the faint of heart. Think of chives but so strong it can hold its own when cooked. We’ve seen it in bratwurst, as an early spring replacement for basil in pesto, and on its own as bärlauch soup.

This long flat leaf grows natively in shady meadows across Europe and has been enjoying somewhat of a revival in recent years. Perhaps, that’s because Germans are beginning to feel comfortable reveling in all things German, including traditional ingredients to the German kitchen.

It’s history dates back to the Early Stone Age, according to German Wikipedia. It still has a kind of pagan reputation with nicknames like Witches’ Onion, Gypsy Garlic and Forest Army. Folk medicine prescribed it for all kinds of maladies: indigestion, high blood pressure, an antibiotic, and even as a tonic going into battle.

We can kind of believe the last one. We came to realize that eating bärlauch must be a communal activity because bärlauch-breath should not be forced on others.

We appreciate it’s power in dishes like omelettes and as a pesto for spätzle with bacon (recipe bellow). Tony’s even tried it in an Asian stir-fry. We can imagine it as well mixed with sour cream on a baked potato.

It’s such a nice spark to early spring when, as every cook knows, the options are very limited. It’ll be hard to say good-bye to bärlauch when we come home … but maybe we’ll smuggle back some seeds and find a shady patch of garden for our Witches Onions.

Bärlauch Spätzle

Here’s the recipe for the Bärlauch dish shown above. In Germany you can buy spätzle premade in most supermarkets. While not as good as homemade we like to keep it onhand for a quick evening meal as an alternative to regular pasta. To make Bärlauch pesto follow any recipe for pesto substituting bärlauch for the basil and leaving out or going easy on the garlic.

Edit: After doing a little further digging I’ve discovered that Bärlauch is more commonly known as “ramp” in the US.

1 lb. Spätzle
1/4 cup Bärlauch Pesto
5 slices Thick Bacon
2 Tbl. Butter
1 Handful Arugula
Black Pepper

(1) Cut the bacon into bite-sized pieces (not too small) and fry until crispy. Drain the fat and set aside the bacon pieces.

(2) Fry the Spätzle in butter and black pepper until browned. I like to add quite a bit of black pepper.

(3) Add the bärlauch pesto, arugula and bacon pieces. Continue cooking until the arugula wilts.

Serve with beer or a German white wine such as Riesling.

Spectacle on the Rhine

Everyone loves a spectacle. A 121-foot Russian space shuttle traveling up the Rhine drew much of Bonn to the riverbanks yesterday.

I happened to be biking to work at the time when I noticed the traffic jams and gathering crowds, peering north towards Cologne in excited anticipation of the river novelty. The Rhine is typically brimming with river traffic: barges bringing coal and other raw materials to and from Germany’s industrial heartland, ferries of ogling tourists, and sometimes joyriders. The extremely swift current and deep waters make it a formidable river.

But a Russian space shuttle was something new. Once the pride and joy of the Russian space program, the long-ago decommissioned Buran (“blizzard” in Russian) spent years languishing in a Bahrain junkyard until the Technik Museum Speyer in southwest Germany snapped it up. Thus began it’s long journey through the Suez Canal, the Straight of Gibraltar, and around the coast to Rotterdam.

It seems the best way to ship it from there to its new home was the path much else goes these days: the Rhine.

I have to say that I always groaned about being dragged into the Air and Space Museum on trips to Washington with my brothers. I am not a big fan of arcane technology. But the excitement of the crowd was contagious as the banged up object sailed under the Kennedy Bridge and then south, the picturesque outline of the Seven Hills in the background.

According to the papers, the Buran 002 was a copycat of the American space program and made 25 suborbital flights in the 1980s before being abandoned. It’s due to arrive at its new home on Saturday.

The Most Incoherent City

A break from the winter doldrums in Germany led us to Genoa, a city on the Italian Riviera. For a week, we trod its narrow alleyways, saddled up to coffee bars and focaccerias, and explored the stunning coastline of craggy cliffs that tumble into the turquoise Mediterranean.

Check out the video of our adventure below, on our blog.

The Candy Man

“Kamelle!” We screamed for candy at the top of our lungs for three days. Successfully, I might add. We have a rather large bowl of chocolate bars, gummy bears, lollipops, popcorn, marshmallow twists and other delights sitting on our living room table.

Carnival is, in some ways, much easier than Halloween. No tromping from house to house in the dark. At Carnival the candies came to us. All we had to do was put a reasonable effort into looking silly and then showed up along one of the numerous parade routes in the area to scream for candy. It would literally rain down on us from horseback and floats. Old ladies would claw like little children to pick up the sweets. Sometimes there were full length chocolate bars. Also oddities like pens and plastic piggy banks, bracelets, and single roses. Tony was even handed a mini bottle of hard alcohol (proof that the event is not just for children).

The last five days are Carnival’s most lavish. But the holiday really begins on November 11 (A big theme is 11-11. That’s the hour and minute when events get underway, too). It’s the German equivalent to Mardi Gras and only takes place in Catholic regions of the country as a prelude to the start of Lent. The Rhineland puts on the best show with Cologne as Carnival central. Even a special and highly localized vocabulary is used. In Cologne and Bonn, people drink to “Alaaf!” which is absolutely not to be confused with the Dusseldorfer “Helau!” Every little village runs a parade (called a ‘train). And many of the staged events are highly programmed. There’s a prince and princess of ceremony, and their guards dress up like colonial soldiers on horseback.

Our section of Bonn, a town called Beuel, hosts a famous tradition of women empowerment. It hearkens back to the days when Beuel was the center of the laundry industry along the banks of the Rhine. One day a year, the kick off to the last harrah of Carnival, the washing women would quit work and storm City Hall to take over the reigns of power. Any man on the street wearing a tie is emasculated with a snip of the scissors. The tradition still exists in ceremonial form.

Despite all the chaos of drinking and funny costumes, Carnival is, in many ways, a highly choreographed event. One German guy I spoke to (now living in London) said he hates Carnival. “Too f%^#ing German,” he said. “Everyone acts like they’re going crazy but they don’t even start drinking before they’re supposed to at 11:11.” I will give him one thing. One of Bonn’s featured events was five hours of pronouncements, processions, and stage-led singing and dancing by the town politicos. Yawn. Needless to say, the average age there was over 60. Even a whole-roasted ox on a spit didn’t keep us for long.

Half the fun of Carnival is the costumes. Many are store bought, which might explain why there seemed too be an inordinate number of lions, broccoli, striped prisoners, nuns, and monks in the crowds. Also, we noticed that the Germans don’t seem to be operating under the same sensitivities towards race. Popular costumes were a Rasta hat with sewn-in dreadlocks and an afro wig with accompanying black face. Brown-skinned Native Americans were all over the place too and we are pretty sure the color washed off at the end of the evening. It’s also OK to go as a “Chinese” with black-slanted eyes. Some people also went as “German” in lederhosen, though for sure they weren’t poking fun of themselves since the Bavarians are foreigners to the Rhinelanders.

We felt a little like war survivors as we shouted for candy and scrambled for it underfoot. There was something deliciously unseemly to our begging. But who cares. What other occasion is there in the year when adults can behave like children? We’re waiting to see if everyone sobers up when Lent starts this week. Somehow, though, we suspect that’s the one tradition that gets dropped.

Next Door Neighbor

We’ve been eying the country to the west ever since we got to Germany. Only a 45 minute drive away is Belgium, in all its beer-drinking glory. So close and yet it might as well be on the other side of the planet as far as the Germans are concerned. It’s easier to find Belgian beer in the United States than in German stores and bars.

Twice now we have rented a car with friends and driven westward with the morning sun to our backs. In Belgium we squirreled around country roads in search of small breweries and, if all fails, the local pubs selling the specialized brew. We’ve parked ourselves in smoke-filled rooms (Belgium is one of the few countries in Western Europe still allowing patrons to light up) and surrounded ourselves with frothy glasses of nutty brown and amber-colored drinks. Why all the fuss?

Belgium produces probably the biggest variety of beers in the world and many of them are not available anywhere except on the spot of production. The beers have robust flavors, varied ingredients including spices, fruit, and herbs, and enough alcohol (some up to 10 percent) to knock your socks off. There’s even a special yeast used that can survive in such high alcohol concentration. The tastes range from sour-lemony to sweet like a cola.

We found out the hard way — by glancing in dark windows — that most of the breweries are not open to the public. Or if they are, only to organized groups or just one day a year. Most of them are not looking to be anything grandiose. The owners, sometimes an abbey seeking to supplement its religious operations, produce just enough to make ends meet and don’t bother maximizing profit, though they could.

A good example of this is the Trappist abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in southwestern Belgium in the hop producing area of Poperinge (an area also packed with British and American war cemeteries). Saint Sixtus beer is rated as the “best beer in the world” by some beer hounds. Thirty monks live in seclusion behind the abbey’s 180-year-old walls and make beer out of sight. There’s no getting into the abbey, but there are several options to purchase its beer. It doesn’t even have a label, but it’s so popular the abbey rations it. A rather large and modern restaurant next door, In de Vrede, sells two six-packs per adult for takeaway, as well as all-you-can-drink from the table. On a recent Saturday we happened to run into a very long line of cars waiting to pick up the one-crate-per-month of beer allowed, available only by reservation. The monks enforce it by tracking license plate numbers. There’s something that feels very special about drinking beer in the only place in which it can be officially purchased, although in the restaurant we found we were hardly the only international visitors who had “discovered” the place.

W e bought the only beer available in six-pack at the time, a blonde. After tasting the two other varieties the abbey produces — the dark 8 and 12 — we wished we weren’t so restricted. We tried to get our fill at the table. Two glasses was enough to require some cooling off time before driving away. We stumbled happily out of the restaurant and spent the next hour wandering along a path through the woods to a grotto and then into a muddy farm field where brussel sprouts had recently been harvested.

It was getting dark and we knew we weren’t going to make it far. Fortunately, the manager of the restaurant pointed out a hostel where we could stay the night only a couple miles down the road. We stopped by a frituur (a french fry shop) and then turned into the “hostel.” We were confused. Our place to sleep was an elementary school building with a packed parking lot. We walked in and found a long line of people waiting to purchase tickets into the gymnasium where a stage had been erected for what we soon found out was a school play.

It took a while for the ticket collectors to confirm that there was, indeed, a hostel on premises and who was the person in charge. When she finally came, she took us past the front of the stage, then back into the changing rooms where we stepped around little girls in flower costumes getting their paint makeup done. Up a flight of stairs and into the attic was a humongous but completely empty hostel, which not so mysteriously had been de-listed from the hosteling association. It could have been for any number of reasons: lack of windows, outside doors that weren’t locked, or maybe even its occasional use for school plays.

We set down our stuff, ate our fries, and went downstairs to check out the free entertainment. For the record, school plays in Belgium sell beer for the parents (though unfortunately not Saint Sixtus beer). We, of course, understood hardly any of the Flemish. But that was fine. The kids were adorable singing and prancing around stage as ladybugs, trees, and forest animals, and we were giddy from the day at the abbey.

The next morning we left, looking at a trunk full of Belgian beer from Saint Sixtus and various supermarkets we had stopped at along the way. We ended up with close to 100 bottles of beer. We didn’t put them on the wall. But they filled up about half the landing in front of our door where they are now being steadily consumed.

Residue of our Lives

I woke up this morning and staggered into the kitchen to make coffee, only for the mess on the floor to finally get to me. It reminded me of the streets of Naples during this month’s trash collector strike: a stack of shin-high egg cartons and bottles next to the trash and under the sink a clutter of empty alcohol, yogurt, and drink bottles. Sigh. The residue of our lives.

What on Earth do we do with the recycling? It’s a question we’ve been pondering since we got here. We have to admit that recycling hasn’t been on our minds in a long time. Coming, that is, from Philadelphia where recycling is a joke. The practice is much more serious here — law, even. Somehow, though, it’s much too complicated.

If it was just a matter of separating trash into different bins, we could easily handle such a system. What really gets us is that all the bottles we accumulate with a 10 to 25-cent deposit have to be returned to the store of purchase. Which leaves us trying to remember where particular bottles came from and then running recycling errands all over town. Who can bother? Except that in sum, it comes to serious money.

One water company has skirted the law by producing a boxed still water. It’s main advertising promo is that the buyer doesn’t have to pay a deposit. Ha! Even the Germans apparently get fed up with the recycling system.

One perk is that our local grocery store has made it fun to recycle. Aldi, our regular shopping spot for discount foodstuffs, has a cool machine next to the candy and chips aisle that sucks in plastic bottles and crushes them out of sight. Then you get a credit slip to put towards your purchases. All of a sudden, recycling makes shopping seem cheaper!

I pointed to the mound of bottles under the sink when Tony walked in and he set to work separating them. Some would go downstairs for our landlord to deal with, others would come with us on our Saturday morning shopping run.

“This makes us look like a bunch of alcoholics,” Tony said as he pulled out a month and a half’s supply of beer, wine, and mini-sparking wine bottles.