How to be German in 25 easy steps -Part 3

So today we come to the last part of

how to be german in 25 easy steps -Part 3:

21. EAT GERMAN "BREAD"

Come on, to be fair you have to admit that your bread sucks.

I'm not one of these tree hugging organic people, but what Americans call bread is an insult. 

It's some kind of manipulated white tasteless flour stripped of all its nutrients, most of the time the second ingredient listed is high fructose corn syrup, rye bread doesn't taste of rye but of a ton of caraway -which is supposed to be a SPICE that lifts the bread taste not the other way around and -everything has the consistency of  stodgy pappy toast. No, worse than toast. you can compress a whole bread with your hands without much force to 1/4-1/3 of its original size.

-That's still not bothering you?

And no one feels bad about sending their young kids to school or kindergarden with double piece of junk with jelly and peanut butter in between -wait, carbs on top of carbs on top of carbs with no vitamins, minerals or anything that's worth eating as a full meal? Oh, yeah, that makes so much sense!

In Germany you get lots of bread options -toast, baguette, rough farmer's bread, hoagie bread, with seeds, without seeds, whole wheat, rye, mixed, white breads, pita bread...there's one thing they have in common: yeast/barm, no damn baking powdered mess. Be it sourdough, quick rise or whatever.

I was so disgusted by the American bread options -and trust me, I  tried them all for months and months (and putting salami or Leberwurst - no, you don't slice Leberwurst like salami, you take it our of the casing and spread it on your bread- on that sweet stuff was so hard, I started eating it with jam or Nutella only) I finally caved in and started baking my own bread.

So there, a German bread obsessed.

22. ALWAYS SEND FRIENDLY GREETINGS

I don't know what the fuss is about. I never got an English US email or letter without the standardized 'best regards', 'regards', 'sincerely' or 'yours faithfully', in German it's just 'MfG' or 'VG' or something like that.

-and don't tell me anything about being 'offending'!

It seems like in the US everybody has the hobby of telling other people what should or shouldn't offend them.

-blackface is a total no-no, but it's OK to paint yourself 'red' for the Mummers Parade to look like an American Indian?

-there was a complete tirade when the pixiwoo sisters (from UK) did a make-up review and used the term 'black skin' and even had to apologize for it. 

Amazingly, no people of 'dark' skin felt offended (I mean, when you're in Europe dark skinned people come from everywhere -Ghana, Namibia  South Africa, Holland, the US...there's no generalized term possible like 'African American' -and seriously, if I was from Nigeria and someone called me African American, then I'd be really offended!).

-even subcultural acts want to tell females to be offended by other bands' 'racist or misogynistic' cover and video art while the females would happily throw themselves unto the stage to perform with the band.

-Americans are offended by things that were said or things someone didn't say,  with every joke they ask a hundred questions just to make sure nothing was meant to offend them, the tone of your voice, your clothes...no matter what, they'll probably find something, so don't even try but take everything with a pinch of salt, please?

After I put my foot in my mouth a couple of times, I'd rather not say anything at all.

23. SAY TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCHÜSSSSSSSSSSSS

It makes me feel so homesick, I just want to hear someone 'tschüss' again while I leave a store...

24. KNOW THE ANSWER IS TO BRING KARTOFFELSALAT

For me, BBQ was never about the meat, it's about condiments and salads.

Potato salad is a standard (although it depends on the area you come from what you put in your salad-my grandma always puts a diced apple in hers <3 and="and" i="i" it="it" like="like" most="most" nbsp="nbsp" not="not" people="people" s="s">that

 much work to put it together and bring to a party.

I have always been a pasta salad kind of girl - Nudelsalat is the best, I could make a huuuuuuge bowl and it'll be gone the next day, I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and if it sat in fridge for a night it tastes even better than fresh.

If anyone is interested, I could post my recipe here.

I made it for a party in the states and it was gone so fast!

25. PROST!! 

Well, how do I explain this...

In medieval times everyone used to prost and clink their cups together as a sign of trust, so the drinks would mix a little as the liquid slops over and everyone was sure they weren't poisoned by anyone in the group.

Looking someone in the eyes while prosting was part of etiquette once, but not anymore.

Now we only do it in a group of friends at the pub or at a party as a joke:

'The one who doesn't look people in the eyes while prosting will have 7 years of bad sex'.

Another stupid drinking joke is:

whenever someone in your group burps, you have to raise your hand to your forehead with pinkie and thumb extended like this and yell 'Schulz!' -the last one to do this will get smacked on the forehead.

And that's the end of our list.

If you have any questions, traditions or sightings you want to me explain, feel free to comment!

Missed part 1&2?
http://hairandcultureshock.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-be-german-in-25-easy-steps-part-1.html

http://hairandcultureshock.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-be-german-in-25-easy-steps-part-2.html

Nothing tastes as it seems

The first thing ever that I ate in our brand new apartment(house!) was Sicilian pizza.
Which we ordered -a classic self made family dinner (i mean, the hubby called the place all by himself and they made our food, so it's halfway right ;D).
They told me, it had 'a bit more' dough than a normal pizza.
-I thought they meant one of those weirdly thin, cookie-ish(means rock hard and crumbly bottom), flat, tasteless New York pizzas, so I decided more dough sounded just right, right?
HA!
A Sicilian pizza is as high as our remote control is wide! And it's just the dough -the toppings are the same bit of sauce, bit of cheese yada-yada as on any other pizza!
We could have fed a whole village with that one sheet of...bread (the non eaten rest stayed in the refrigerator for ages cause no one wanted to eat it) -and then chew and swallow the whole shebang!

So I tried a plastic cup (that's what we had in form of china and flatware in the beginning: paper plates, plastic cups -and plastic forks, knives etc that tried to look like metal, at least they tried...) of tap water as I did in Germany every day and never put a thought to it.
Let's say it didn't go down that well. I thought I drank from the public pool. Chlorine has an interesting after taste.
Thank goodness we have a filter for our drinking water now.
In Germany you can drink from tap any time. Not so much here if you don't have your own well in your garden somewhere in the wilderness.
I had some nice red stinging eyes from taking a shower in New Jersey once -yes, there are worse areas when it comes to water.

Next thing was shopping for food.
We have a Target and a ShopRite in walking distance.
In Germany we went shopping about every other day, always buying fresh veggies, some meat depending on what's on sale that day. We didn't have 30 different kinds of milk there (and it doesn't need to be refrigerated, dammit!), but they have everything you might need.
Our bread came from the bakery across the street.
In the US they have something called Wonderbread (ok, there are other brands, but they all have the same kinda textures and ingredients) which is sticking to the roof of your mouth when you chew, you can't hold the loaf in one hand because it's so...'fluffy' you squish it into nothingness easily (press the whole loaf together and it wont be bigger than two packs of cigarettes).
And it's sweet! Blergh. High fructose corn syrup is usually third on the list of ingredients (after flour and water) in all breads you can buy in a normal store.
Try putting Salami on it. Blergh, blergh, bleerrrrrgh.
After a couple of weeks of eating whole wheat sugar bread (it taste almost like German raisin bread without raisins) with jam or NUTELLA (whoever exported Nutella to the US, thank you, you'll make a fortune on me)  we finally found a bread that I could -at least- live with texture- and taste-wise: Jewish rye bread.
Which goes bad after 3days in your kitchen drawer. We can't have it all...

PS: On a side note, there is rye bread and then there is rye bread. Apparently you can't just buy any rye bread because Americans think it's their duty to dump huuuge amounts of caraway seed into their rye bread dough. Tasty if you're Middle Eastern i bet, gagging if you're just little old German me.