Germany

drinking weissbier at Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest: getting your weißbier on

drinking weissbier at Oktoberfest

You may have heard that you need to be sitting inside (or on the terrace of) a tent to be served beer at Oktoberfest. This is mostly true. Indeed, it is the only way you’ll be able to get your hands on a big old maß (liter) of special Oktoberfest brew. But if you don’t mind drinking weißbier (wheat beer) in small vessels (only half liter), head for one of the many outdoor stands that serve it up. You’ll need to drink your weißbier in the general vicinity of where you bought it, but these little areas are often quite pleasant places to hang out. I tend to prefer them to the hot, loud, sweaty insides of a tent, especially on a beautiful sunny day.

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French pretzels with blueberry sauce

Oktoberfest: breakfast of champions

French pretzels with blueberry sauce

We (along with most everyone else in Munich) are hosting a lot of house guests these days. Seems like as good a time as any to add to my breakfast-making repertoire. Plus, I like to make up recipes. Our most recent guests (the delightful Redenii) inspired this experiment with their love of German pretzels. We had a few left over one day, and I was trying to figure out what to do with them before they went stale. At the same time, I was thinking about the next day’s breakfast, which was possibly going to be french toast. You can probably figure out where this is going. 

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dancers at Oktoberfest

The real dance moves you need for Oktoberfest

No matter what lazy travel writers want you to believe, there’s no Chicken Dance at Oktoberfest in Munich. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, stop taking their travel advice immediately, lest you start looking like an arm-flapping fool everywhere you go. Instead, spend your Oktoberfest prep time (only a week to go!) learning these dances, which are sure to come in handy in each and every tent.

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Munich: my own private Tatort

If you find yourself sitting in awkward silence with a German, try breaking the ice by asking him about ‘Tatort.’  The mere mention of the show makes 9 out of 10 Germans’ eyes light up as their tongues trip over their lips in a rush to push out the words to describe how they have been watching it since before they were born and they never do anything else on a Sunday night ever.

From discussions such as these I had gleaned that ‘Tatort’ is a detective series kind of like ‘Law and Order.’ It has been on since the dawn of time (1970). Each episode takes place in one of a handful of cities, each city having its own recurring cast of local detectives. Germans will be happy to tell you which cities produce the best episodes, and some even schedule their TV viewing in advance based on the location of the episode on any particular Sunday evening. This show is loved.

So when we received a note in our mailbox explaining that they would be filming an episode of ‘Tatort’ Munich on the street in front of our building, we immediately understood the importance of the occasion.

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Fear your vegetables: E.coli outbreak in Germany

Spanish cucumbers are no longer the primary suspect

As if coming home to find David Hasselhof climbing the charts weren’t bad enough, Germany also welcomed us back with a bit of an E.coli pandemic. At first I didn’t pay it much mind; the outbreak was small and happening in Hamburg, which is about as far away from Munich as one can get in Germany. But instead of the cause being discovered quickly and us all living happily ever after, the outbreak is only becoming worse, and spreading all over the country. 

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What’s that wacky German food? Spargel

white asparagus = spargel

It’s here! Spargelzeit is here! What, you mean you don’t celebrate asparagus time where you live?

The Germans are crazy about white asparagus, a special breed that grows underground and is only harvested for a couple months each spring. Restaurants have special menus featuring white asparagus done every which way, and all the fruit and veggie stands display big piles of it, as if it’s the only thing worth eating this time of year. Preparing this Teutonic vegetable is relatively easy, but there are a few things you should know before doing it for the first time.

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A stroll through Halle

Markt in Halle an der Saale

Halle an der Saale might be one of the largest German cities you’ve never heard of. In the little-visited eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, Halle was my home for three years during the 1990s. I was thrilled when I managed to talk my friend Kim into stopping by on our way back to Munich from Leipzig a few weeks ago.

Read moreA stroll through Halle