Culture Post #1: Guten Morgen Deutschland!

     Hi!  How's it going?  Today we're going to explore the most important meal of the day.  Here in Germany, people on the go might decide to stop into a local bakery, or perhaps a chain like "Backwerk," for a quick bite to eat, and a cup of coffee.  These types of places are (obviously) chock full of various types of 

There's no way I'm trying not to look creepy taking this...

bread, but also stock plenty of sandwiches, particularly variations on the caprese, as well as sweeter options, like Berliners, danishes, and certain donuts ("pinky," chocolate frosted, and plain.  No exceptions).  As far as coffee goes, they have just about anything you could want, although you make it yourself using one of their machines (though this is not true of all bakeries here), and it also appears that all of those many and varied artificial sweeteners that we are used to in the U.S. are nowhere near as popular (look for the little tablets, or for the industrial Pez dispenser- they're hiding behind the hundreds of tubular sugar packets), while anything involving milk takes the top spot.

That's the large. Take it all in.

     Up front, these bakeries are a little odd compared to what we might consider a place for a "breakfast stop," considering that on the same rack as the donuts, Berliners, and other pastries that we associate with breakfast in the U.S., there are also whole loaves of bread (which far outnumber the sweeter things), which not only manage to get sold, but sell in enormous quantities.  As someone who is used to seeing places like Dunkin' Donuts, overloaded with sugary donuts and other sweet treats, it seemed a little bizarre that people would buy regular bread loaves and rolls in the same way that we might pick up a box of donuts or bag of bagels back home; however, it eventually made sense, when I considered what the collective "sweet tooth" might be like here.  In the United States, we (sweeping generalization) tend to use stronger sweeteners, in larger quantities, that I have seen in Germany (note the lack of powerful chemical sweeteners), so it would follow that this liking of sweet things would transfer over to baked goods as well.

Gotta love that sugar!

Without such a powerful popular craving for sweet treats (at least in the morning), it makes sense that shops would have far less sugary goods, and instead would opt to stock things like breads and sandwiches.  Anyway, that's all for now.  Stay tuned for the first installment of "Cooking for People Unsure of What a Stove Does," and for next week's installment on the local food scene in Leipzig.  Tchüss!

For your Amusement:

This is the ghost town known as Starbucks at 8:30am 

The chickadee which came to visit me at breakfast time.
His name is Friedrich.

This is just a Chihuahua being cute.  Enjoy!

Vocabulary that You'd wish came up in Class:

das Eiweiβ - protein
Nicotinsäureamin - Niacin
Pfandflasche - bottle with a deposit (25 cents)
Mehrwegflasche - reused bottle with a deposit (15 cents)

Proverb of the Day:

Leave the flip top bottles open.  According to the person at the bottle return,
the world may be ending because I forgot to.  Cheers?

*Stock photos used due to a camera malfunction; source links included.
**The background music is from a personal music project in progress.