Clare B. Dunkle's Blog, page 12

That's Typical

When we hear of a food typically associated with a country, we often ask ourselves, "Yes, but do the locals eat that? Or do they just sell it to us?" Haggis and lutefisk come to mind immediately, but I remember hearing an Irishman declare that he and his fellow citizens would sooner die than eat Irish stew. So I thought I'd take a camera to the German supermarket to answer a few basic questions.

Do Germans eat pretzels? Yes, they do: big soft pretzels, tiny hard pretzels, and pretzels dipped in chocolate. On a recent Lufthansa flight, I was disappointed to receive a soft pretzel as a snack until I realized it was filled with real butter (17%). That was a pretzel I could appreciate!

Do Germans eat gummy bears? Oh, yes. Invented in 1922, gummy bears are the M&M's of Germany. Germans of every age and class tuck them into lunch bags and hide them in desk drawers. You'll find them for sale wherever candy is sold. As the photo shows, Haribo makes an astounding array of other gelatin candies, and so does Trolli, their leading competitor. Between the two, they take up half an aisle.

Do Germans eat wurst (sausage, hotdogs, brats)? Yes.

And yes.

And yes. My husband declares that this bacon-wrapped, cheese-filled wurst may just be nature's most perfect food.

Still, there are some grim statistics wrapped up in that decorative slice of bacon. According to the most recent statistics I could find (2006-7), heart disease is responsible for almost half of all deaths in Germany. In fact, in this gloomy category, Germany has us beat: 224 deaths per 100,000 over America's 199 deaths per 100,000.

That's a good reason to leave the bacon, cheese, and wurst on the shelf.

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the "Green and Pleasant Land" logo at the top of this page. Photos taken in November, 2011, at the Globus supermarket in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Text and photos copyright 2011 by Clare B. Dunkle.

die Streu

This morning, as I was drinking my coffee and reading the paper, I came across an ad for Katzenstreu. That got me thinking about Streu, which relates to an old word in English: to strew. Die Streu is anything we strew, sprinkle, spread about, or scatter (streuen). This means it can crop up in all sorts of combinations. Das Streusalz is salt we scatter, so it's salt used for de-icing roads and sidewalks. Das Streulicht is scattered or stray light. Die Katzenstreu is kitty litter, which cats like to scatter around even if we don't want them to. Die Einstreu is animal bedding–something we scatter in a place (einstreuen).

But streuen and einstreuen are also actions we perform in cooking, and that brings us to an interesting relative of Streu: der Streuselkuchen, or the streusel coffeecake. Die Streusel (English: streusel) is a crumb topping that's been sprinkled over a dessert. Not so far from die Katzenstreu, when you think about it.

The Month of the Dead

In Germany, November is the month of the dead, a special time to remember lost loved ones. German Catholics set aside the first two days for this purpose: Allerheiligen, the Feast of All Saints, and Allerseelen, the Feast of All Souls. German Protestants remember the dead toward the end of the month, on Totensonntag, or Ewigkeitssonntag, the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent. On these days, Germans visit the graves of their dead and get them ready for winter.

The photo above appears to show an old grave that is charmingly untidy. In fact, it's the opposite of a typical German grave. This is one of a cluster of monuments near the memorial for Rodenbach's war dead, and I suspect that it memorializes a long dead soldier. This photo shows a much more typical cemetery view of graves tidied up and recently decorated.

Winter decorations need to be able to handle cold, wet weather. Fir boughs, pine cones and branches, and heather plants are favorites. Here's a grave that makes creative use of ornamental kale:

I particularly enjoyed the graves lit with their flickering spirit candles. Some dedicated Germans keep candles lit on their loved ones' graves all year. The indentation in the grave stone below is deliberate, by the way. It's a place for birds to drink. Some of these hollows have little brass birds perched by them, just in case the real birds don't figure things out.

Sadly enough, these decorated graves make the neglected ones stand out even more. But they won't be neglected for long. The grave in the image below has had its nameplate removed because its rent hasn't been paid. Soon the granite will be broken up as well. The other graves around it have already lost their stone coverings. They're ready to be rented to new occupants.

These desolate graves remind us that even love, grief, and memory come to an end. It isn't just people who pass away. Graves have a lifespan as well.

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the "Green and Pleasant Land" logo at the top of this page. Photos taken in November, 2011, at the Rodenbach Friedhof, Rodenbach, Germany. Text and photos copyright 2011 by Clare B. Dunkle.

der Toast

Being sick gives a person little motivation to change the channel, so the other day, Joe and I watched an entire television program about toast. The highlight of the show was the making of what was then the world's largest toast mosaic. (It's since been surpassed by this one.) What's the German word for toast? It's der Toast! Because sometimes, German isn't all that hard.

The Big Sleep

When we place a city on the imaginary globe in our minds, we tend to think first in terms of weather. Kaiserslautern, Germany, has a wonderfully mild climate: the average daytime temperature in winter here hovers several degrees above freezing. That puts it on a par with places like Atlantic City and Baltimore. Really, how far north can it be?

Answer: way far north. Sweater-weather Kaiserslautern is north of the 49th parallel: 49° 26′, to be exact. This is further north than Minnesota, Glacier National Park, and snowy Buffalo, New York. It's even further north than a number of major Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. And now is the time of year when we start to notice.

German clocks fell back this weekend, and commuters are now driving home in the dark. Since I got here in late August, we've lost over four hours of daylight. By the time we get to the winter solstice, the sun will be working an eight hour and ten minute day. No wonder the trees have given up on photosynthesis.

But it gets darker.

The fact that we live on a ball has implications beyond sunrise and sunset. Only at the equator does the sun strike the earth at ninety degrees and make the dawn come up like thunder. In the far north during the summertime, the sun doesn't set at all, and if you slide down the globe, twilight lingers all night. Germany isn't that far north, but it does receive a generous allotment of "the blue hour" during the summer. In the winter? Not so much.

Nautical twilight is the time after sunset when sailors can still make out the horizon. At the summer solstice, Kaiserslautern enjoys over three hours (214 minutes) of nautical twilight, but at the winter solstice, nautical twilight shortens to a mere 158 minutes. This means that in addition to losing over eight hours of daylight between June and late December, Kaiserslautern loses almost an hour of twilight too.

What fills in the gap? Lots and lots of night. So nature is settling in for her long sleep.

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the "Green and Pleasant Land" logo at the top of this page. Photos taken in October, 2011, at Mehlinger Heide, Mehlingen, Germany. Text and photos copyright 2011 by Joseph R. Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle. Statistics on sunrise/sunset and twilight times from Timeanddate.com.

der Feigling

Recently I've been watching the comedy series Scrubs in German. Why, given all the wonderful German programming, would I choose to watch a dubbed American show? First, the German dubbing for Scrubs is very well done–really top-notch. (Kudos, Axel Malzacher!) It's actually a pleasure for an American Scrubs fan to watch. Second, I know exactly what the English means, and that means I know the intent of the German. That's very important, especially in comedy, because I can look up every word in a German sentence and still not know what it means to a native speaker, but with good dubbing from English, I can catch a break. (Don't race out and order Scrubs in German if you're in the States, though: it's Region 2 and won't play on your American player.)

In the first episode, J.D. is running to answer a Code Blue when he recollects that the doctor who gets there first will be responsible for the life or death of the patient. He immediately veers off into the supply closet. But Elliot is already hiding in the supply closet, so with great indignation, J.D. tells her, "Du Feigling!" Naturally, der Feigling is a coward.