And Now for Something Completely Different

Our trip to Bamberg and Weimar was wonderful, as Lauren vividly described. But as our travels in Germany have shown us, not even the shortest weekend trip is complete without a few strange moments.

Dialect: Our voyage south to Bamberg took us across a number of prominent German dialect boundaries, including the linguistic Mason-Dixon line where southern Germans and Austrians routinely express their hellos by saying “Gruß Gott!” (Greet God!) instead of the more neutral “Guten Tag!” (good day!) common up north. (Funny anecdote: apparently northern Germans often mock this greeting by replying "When I see him" or "Hopefully not too soon!"). Anyway, since Lauren and I have cut our German teeth up here in Berlin, this simple change in greeting was immediately disarming. I can’t tell you how many times I fell speechless when nice Bambergers greeted me. I couldn’t even remember how to utter a simple “Hallo” in response. Bamberg is also in Franken, where they speak Frankisch. This dialect strikes my ear as a little odd. Lauren, on the other hand, concluded that Frankisch happens to be one dialect that she understands perfectly. Weird.

Beer: Bamberg is famous for its beer, particularly a strange brew called Rauchbier (smoked beer, made from malted barley dried over a flame). Imagine your favorite dark beer, light beer, or wheat beer infused with the distinctive smoke flavor of meat from the BBQ pit. It’s actually better than it sounds. Well, we went to the famous brewhouse where they brew up the famous Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, and upon arrival the waitress asked if we wanted it. “Just a moment, please,” I kindly responded in German. We had just taken off our coats when she returned with two large krugs of beer. “Ready, yet?” she asked. Knowing that Lauren would never be able to choke this stuff down, I politely asked, “Do you have a pilsner for her?” “Nein,” came the reply, “this is all we’re serving.” She then plunked down the beers and walked away. Well, I guess we’ll be drinking Rauchbier tonight. Apparently the concept of giving your patrons a choice isn’t so universal. So, when in Bamberg, drink Rauchbier. And only Rauchbier.

The Insect Store in Weimar: It was the only store open on a Sunday, which should have been our first clue that something was amiss (because no stores are open in Germany on a Sunday). But the store was literally filled wall-to-wall with beautiful rocks, crystals, and the most amazing collection of exotic dead insects you have ever seen. We couldn’t resist. We were looking around when the kooky storeowner approached us with a cookbook. “They really are a fantastic source of protein,” she began. We looked with her in the book and holy geez we suddenly realized that all of these recipes featured... insects. Curried beetles. Salads with breaded crickets as croutons. Mealworm spaghetti. Cockroach casseroles. Grasshopper Goulash. The pictures just kept coming. Now one problem with speaking in a foreign language is that you can never really detect whether someone is joking or not. Humor doesn’t translate and whether or not she was serious about her bug recipes was entirely lost on us. Then she says, “Come here, let me show you something. Do you like Kakerlaken?” We cautiously followed the creepy woman to the cash register and I slowly recalled - with about 75 percent certainty - that in fact I did know what a Kakerlak was. Oh God.

She then picked up a large coconut, removed the lid, and pulled out the largest cockroach I’ve ever seen. Largest and totally live, creeping, crawling cockroach. I recoiled in disgust and Lauren shrieked at the “big ass jungle beetle” (her words) as she high-stepped it/sprinted/fell over herself to get to the other side of the store. As quickly as possible we extracted ourselves from the psycho woman and her little shop of horrors and decided it was time to head home to Berlin.

You can't make this stuff up.