Bloody Germans

4. German Products

For the Germans, meat is an essential part of their meal. Pork being the most popular, closely followed by beef and veal. Though beef has gone down considerably in the food preferences, due to the past ‘Mad Cow Disease’ scare.

Food, you might believe, is the same the world over. I mean, a cow is a cow, a sheep a sheep and a lamb a lamb. But this is not so in Germany. When I first went out shopping and looked around the fresh meat counter, I hardly recognised anything beyond a pork chop.

The cut it so different out here!

I went out hoping to get a nice piece of pork, boned and rolled for the Sunday lunch but I couldn’t find any. I came home with so many separate bits -- I had to glue them all together to make a decent pork joint.

It frightened the life out of Rolf -- he’d never seen a pig before that once ever ran around on a turkey leg!

I must have got it mixed up with my Monday’s lunch.

And bacon!

In UK, everybody just goes berserk for a bacon ‘buttie’. Even vegetarians would dribble at the sight of someone eating one of them; though they might not admit it. If I go to any large Supermarket in England, I can find rows and rows of bacon. It comes in so many different colours, shapes and sizes; smoked and unsmoked, that I could devote a whole morning’s shopping excursion just to pick out my breakfast bacon.

 In Germany, the choices are by far less exhaustive. I would either get one big solid lump of it or an excessively thin one-brand singular choice of bacon, unjustly named ‘English Breakfast’.

The German breakfast bacon packs contain a slice that is about equal the size of one slice of typical English bacon, but has been miserly sliced up again turning it into six pieces; probably by using some intricate medical instrument. It is so thin, that if I threw it into a very hot frying pan, it would dissolve into nothing right before my very eyes.

And bread..,

That’s another weird substance. Out here, they stock more selections of bread than one could ever imagine; from soft fluffy white to solid dark lumps. A good few varieties will contain wholemeal and a mountain of others, will be bombarded with poppy, sesame and caraway seeds -- or whatever else they can find to shove on top or inside of it. But try to get a nice packet of white sliced to toast and dump my bacon and eggs on -- again, just two choices and for some odd reason, they’re both called ‘American Style’ Bread.

 

America? 

I couldn’t even get it up the road and home before it starts to go off and turn into black cardboard.

The Germans have this one type of bread that is very dark and extremely heavy in weight. I would imagine that if I had a few too many slices of this mould of bread, I’d not be able to get up from the table. One more, and I’d fall through the floor into the cellar! I once bought a loaf of it just to try it out. I still have it somewhere as I use it to crack my Christmas nuts and chase off any unwanted intruders.

While I am into breakfast -- let’s consider the German egg.

They are so tiny. I have previously mentioned the small size of their chickens, so I suppose what else should I expect to drop out from one of them? If a poor German chicken had to lay one of our British Standard Eggs -- she’d scream out a lot more than ‘C**k-a-doodle-doo!’ They’d have hen houses full of chickens struggling around on crutches and carrying sick notes to excuse them from duty. The Germans also prefer the shade of their eggs shells to be pure white, which uncannily enough, is quite the opposite to the majority of us in England. Myself, I find it extremely difficult to spot a nice light brown pack out here -- so now, not only do I have to glue-up my roast dinners, I even have to paint my eggs light brown!

Cheese is another curious thing out here. The Germans do have their own special kind of cheese like, Limburger, Munster and Tilsiter, but they also sell a wide selection that hails from Holland, France and Switzerland. Yet despite the many different selections of cheese that there are around -- none of it ever comes from England. There is not one piece of Cheddar to be found anywhere! To me, eating Dutch cheese is like biting into a piece of rubber and it all seems to taste the same to me -- rubbery or tasteless!

Once, on a ferry trip back to Germany from a brief holiday in England, I got talking to a veteran British ex-pat who claimed he knew his way around Hamburg. I mentioned the cheese thing to him and he told me that if I went right into the heart of the city -- I could find,  English Cheddar Cheese everywhere.

“Go to the big stores!” He said.

So I did.

I went up to this large swanky cheese stall that stood proudly in the centre of the city shopping mall. Behind it was this rather big guy. Well I don’t like to be rude -- but if he was rolled out with a rolling pin he would have been very tall. He was smartly dressed in white, with a red and white striped apron and similar patterned straw boater hat to match. His cheese display was bountiful and had little flags of country origination stuck into every cut. He had also put up a large and colourful sign that was spread out, above and across the whole distance of his large glass counter. The  sign boasted the many varieties of his cheeses, in which it also claimed --

‘I Got All Cheeses From Everywhere!’

This guy was Mr. Cheese, or should I say -- he was Herr Käse of Hamburg!

I moved up to the glass counter and started to peer at all the little flags poking out of the cheeses -- searching for that good ol’ Union Jack! I only got up as far as Switzerland when he asked me --

“Can I help you!”

His smile was larger and cheesier than his stock.

“Yes!” I said, “Do you sell cheese?”

(No, I made that bit up -- I just couldn’t help myself)

I said, “I’m looking for some certain cheese.., but I cannot find it here!”

“Ve sell every cheese here madam -- ve get it in daily from all over za vorld und from ozer places too. You can go anyvhere in Hamburg and you von’t find as many cheeses as I have in my stock!”

He continued to brag as he poked the cheese around with his long knife; as if to make it glint in my eye (the cheese, not his knife).

“Vhat cheese are you looking for?” 

“Cheddar Cheese! I am looking for some Cheddar Cheese!”

“Ach so! I don’t have any Cheddar Cheese -- how about some nice Dutch Cheese?”

“No! I can’t stand that, ‘looks and tastes like rubber! You said you have cheese from everywhere!”

“Yes I do!” He said, delightfully hovering his knife momentary over each random selection of gaily coloured flags

.

“Well, do you have some cheese from England?”

“vhere’s dat?”

(Sorry, I’m at it again!)

“Nein, not von England -- but ve hav many ozer cheeses!  Ve stock the largest in Hamburg you know -- maybe even za largest in the whole of Germany -- and tomorrow, za vorl..,”

“Well I met this man on the English ferry who said I can buy some English cheese at almost any good shop within the city -- do you know where in Hamburg I can find a good cheese shop?”

His big cheesy smile dropped and he didn’t say anymore. So I left.

I was going to ask some passing shopper if they knew of any good cheese sellers in Hamburg -- but we were suddenly distracted by some distant sound of a gunshot!

But alas, I have now given up on my search for English Cheese.