Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Travels to Germany - worth every penny of your plane ticket just for the breakfast

So traveling to Germany is not cheap, but one thing I can recommend is for anyone that can afford to travel to Europe to stop in Germany for the breakfast alone. Breakfast is probably my favorite meal in Germany because you get a very good selection of breads and rolls. These you combine with jam or cheeses or meat products.
copyright Durhamonthecheap - selection of rolls and coldcuts for breakfast
The image above shows a variety of salamis, some additional coldcuts as well as liverwurst. Also visible are rolls and some thin, crusty bread. This is a typical breakfast in Germany. Most Germans will have rolls or bread and make a sandwich by adding butter and topping it off with either jam or cheese or some meat cuts.

copyright Durhakmonthcheap - my typical breakfast in Germany, roll with meat coldcut, yoghurt with fruit, black coffee
I thoroughly enjoyed breakfast in Germany. In part because it was a very peaceful start to the day. You sit down, have some coffee, read your newspaper, chat and start the day off quietly. I got addicted to the dessert-type food called Ehrmann Fruechtetraum or Vanilletraum. This is similar to yoghurt, but more of a cheese. Quark basically is very fresh cheese, much more liquid than cream cheese, but similar in flavor. The company Ehrmann makes many different kinds of this dessert, some with additional vanilla flavor or semolina as a base and then combines it with fruit flavors or flavors such as hazelnut or chocolate. I used to eat two of these things a day, one for breakfast and another one in the evening. They were fairly cheap, you can get them for about 25 cents a piece, considering that this is a fairly healthy snack and tastes soooo good, I was definitely making the most of my stay in Germany by indulging on these treats.
So here you have it, the German breakfast. It may not be bacon, eggs and hash browns, but I actually prefer this type of breakfast to what we eat in the USA. I clearly wish for two things to develop in the USA, Ehrmann should just decide to export their products to the USA and butcher shops in the USA need to pick up their coldcuts production and improve the varieties available. In Germany you can buy a dozen varieties of salami and bologna with 10+ kinds of ingredients (meat, eggs, pistachios etc) - this should all be possible in the USA as well. I believe that the German breakfast is much healthier than the bacon and egg routine in the USA. I also like the fact that most Germans do not start work until 8AM or later, leaving people to enjoy their breakfast and getting the day off in a peaceful way.

No comments: