The Challah Question

Germany bakery shelves are stock-full of A MILLION amazing baked goods. However, my favorite happens to be Mohnkuchen: a deliciously moist cake/bread loaf treat with layers of poppyseed filling and glazed with a gooey icing on top. And today, finally, for the first time since I've been back in Germany, I found (and devoured) some:

Mohnkuchen: the Deliciously Glazed Outside

Mohnkucken: the Moist and Gooey Inside

Well, not just some. I actually inhaled about a quarter of a loaf. See, in most bakeries you have to buy either one half of or a whole loaf of Mohnkucken at a time. Unfortunately (and fortunately - heehee), it doesn't come by the slice. And after perusing bakery after bakery, day in and day out for my favorite German delicacy, I decided to split half a loaf with Steve for lunch/dessert (after our cheese covered pretzels)...oopsies:

Me, Stuffing My Face with Mohnkuchen
(Posing just for the camera, of course!)

Feelings a little sick to my stomach, but very happy, I walked (most of the few miles) home lamenting over whether or not I will be able to find Mohnkuchen on say, a Wednesday (or any other day that I want it, for that matter) and contemplating Steve's new query:

See, today we learned that Mohnkuchen is likely baked only on Fridays - potentially for German Catholics who are supposed to (commanded to?) eat fish and sweets at the end of each week. Similarly, after visiting several bakeries today in search of a decent lunch (and Mohnkuchen!), Steve and I noticed raisin Challah (Rosinenzopf) at every shoppe. This led us to question the similarity between Jews eating Challah on Shabbat and Catholics eating sweet braided breads on Fridays. We wondered if this had anything to do with the development of Reform Judaism in Germany and liberal-minded German Jews wanting to incorporate aspects of German customs into the Religion.

Funny enough, today when I got back to the Werner's house there was a cake cooling on the counter. The Werner family is not Catholic, but they are German... So, if you know the answer to our question, please enlighten us! For now, I must go stuff myself with more cake. Happy Friday and Shabbat Shalom, wünsch ich Euch alle!

Brunch and Bowling

On work days, most Germans devote at least 30 minutes to their Tee (tea) and Semmeln (rolls). If not the most important meal of the day, breakfast is probably the meal Germans seem to take the most seriously. Consisting of delicious rolls, flaky chocolate filled croissants, melted-cheese coved pretzels, lean meats, strong tasting cheeses, creamy nutella and sweet Marmalade (jam), with a Deutsche breakfast you just can't go wrong:

Frühstück at the Werner's
(German breakfasts make rising early totally worth it!)

However, when it comes to Sunday brunch in Bayern, scrambled eggs and pancakes are extremely hard to come by. Therefore, this past weekend when Andy and Whitney invited us to a local restaurant with a real "American-Style" brunch menu, how could we resist? Yet, the experience was not quite what we expected...

"Seven? And you all want to sit together? Without a reservation?" asked the waitress, auf Deutsch, at Cafe Westend. "Impossible!" she exclaimed. "Come back in two hours."

Two hours?! What were we supposed to do with our grumbling stomachs for two hours at 11:00am on a Sunday? Besides, in two hours our scrumptous American brunch would then be a German-style lunch.

Pleading with the prickly waitress, Evelyn was able to sway her to seat us...in the basement of the affiliated (and closed on Sundays) kegeln alley. Trudging down a couple of flights of stairs into the dark basement, the waitress led us through a locked door.

"You okay with this?" she asked.

"Yes," our hungry stomachs answered as we entered the vacant kegeln hall.

But to our surprise, the end result (a private, amuzing brunch and impromtu bowling party) turned out deliciously and way better than expected:

Brunch Bunch
(We ate in this quiet, empty room at this akwardly positioned private table and then tested our skills on the kegeln alley behind us.)

Andy Attempting His Hand at Kegeln
(It's actually a lot more difficult (and different than bowling) than it looks...and the pins are attached to strings!)

Entrance to the Infamous Cafe Westend
(Pronounced with a "vuh" sound, Cafe Westend now comes highly recommened by the Brunch Bunch.)

die Dusche

After living in Germany for the past month, I now understand why Germans (and possibly all Europeans) only shower every three to four days. Showering in Germany is both challenging and lukewarm:


For starters, many showers have hand-held spouts. Saving water is the concept of this model. Instead of leaving the water running while lathering and shampooing, showerers are supposed to turn off the "Wasser" during this time and only use it to wet and rinse. However, the challenge of this method is trying not to spray water all over the bathroom, which is much easier said than done:




Additionally, many bathrooms have special water heaters for their sinks and tubs. Ten minutes before shower time, it is up to the showerer to remember to turn on the water heater. Then, once the hot water is out, it's out...and the showerer is out of luck:


I do believe that saving water is great. And, I am usually very green. But currently I miss my relaxing, every-other-day routine.

Accidental Hausfrau, ja oder nein?

When Andy suggested that his wife (and my new let's-hang-out-everyday-after-language-school buddy), Whitney and I join the Accidental Hausfrau Verein (club), I thought he was joking. I even laughed out loud.

However, the next day searching for things to do on Toytown.com, a web resource for English speaking expats in Germany, I discoved an "Accidental Hausfrau" meet-up group. So...Andy wasn't joking?

According to Jennifer, a wonderful Seattleite in my Tandem sprachkurs, no, Andy was not joking.

A New York journalist who ended up in the Freistaat after she married a Bavarian artist started the group in 2007. Career-minded, but without a career-visa, this woman was looking for ways to fill her time in München (outside of the kitchen). Thus, the Accidental Hausfrau Verein began.

"Perfect!" I thought. A bunch of educated 20-30-somethings (stuck?) in Munich without any work opportunities.

Going out on a limb last Friday, I decided to join Jennifer for the weekly Hausfrau meet-up: lunch at Cafe Puck.

However after being sandwiched on a bench for five hours, discussing whether or not one of the older group members was going to be kidnapped in Morocco this weekend, I determined that, perhaps, I am not quite ready to be an Accidental Hausfrau...or at least not the inactive restaurant loitering kind.

Apple-(Sauce)-Pee-Kuchen and other disasters

To begin with, I was worried about the springform pan--I'd never baked a pie in a springform pan before (has anyone?) so the thought of its high sides and bumpy bottom was a little daunting. I asked Edeltraud if there was any chance her frying pans were safe to bake in, but she didn't look too thrilled about that prospect, so I resigned myself to constructing the tallest apple pie in Munich.

By the end of the day, I had pretty much forgetten about the springform pan (aside from the fact that Edeltraud wanted to open it and let the hot pie ooze out onto her clean new tablecloth...) No, by the time we finally sat down to eat way too much else had gone wrong to be worried about the stupid springform pan.

I had picked out the apples several days before. Surprisingly a major hassle in a city littered with Bio-Märkte and greengrocers. Apparently most Muncheners are far more interested in good eating apples than apple-pie baking apples. Go figure. Still, a fancy-looking fruit-shop down the street from the Rachel Carson Center in hoity-toity Schwabing seemed to have just the thing: a crate of beautiful German Boskoop apples. The sign specifcally mentioned that they were sour.

For some reason I decided that vegetable shortening, unlike apples, would not be difficult to find in Germany. Oh, how wrong I was. A visit to the local Rewe, which probably has the best selection of any normal supermarket in Munich, was unsuccesful, but I wasn't worried. For some reason I was convinced that somewhere else in Munich there would be German-made shortening. There wasn't.

Increasingly worried that Edeltraud and Kurt would return home from their shopping trip to a pie-less kitchen, I dragged Jamie to supermarket after supermarket. Finally, we squeezed through the throng of tourists and shoppers enjoying downtown Munich, and found some Crisco on the American specialties shelf in the gourmet section of a pricey department store... Right next to the marshmallows and the fake maple syrup. After all, what else would it be worth importing all the way from the US?

Crisco in hand, we threaded our way back through the crowds to the U-Bahn, and returned home. We headed up to the kitchen, put on a Johnny Cash CD and started peeling apples. They were nice, sturdy apples, plenty sour, so I figured we would need a bunch of sugar. Soon I realized my first mistake (besides not having a pie plate and presuming that Germans eat shortening on a regular basis)--despite having been to almost every store in Munich, I'd forgotten to buy a lemon to keep the apples from browning as we cut them. Jamie volunteered to run back to Rewe and pick up the missing Zitrone as well some ice cream to enjoy with the pie. By the time she was back, I had the crust ready and most of the apples sliced.

We finished slicing together, and I had to move the beautiful, sour slices into a new bowl since there were so many. I got out the sugar and poured on about half a cup. I added some cinnamon and flour and gave the apples a big stir. It smelled like apple pie. I was happy.

Then I sampled an apple. It tasted terrible.

My mind raced.

Too much cinnamon?

The apples were really sour and just needed more sugar?

Nope, I had mistaken the salt for the sugar and heaped on enough to turn the Starnberger Lake into a minor Ocean. We tried to rinse off the apples, but it was far too late. They were salty to the core (well, we'd cored them already, but they were salty through and through).

I started to lose it. As Jamie knows far too well, things are not pretty when I screw up a recipe. It wasn't pretty.

Luckily for me, Jamie is far more relaxed and resourceful than I. She got me to run downstairs and start a new apple search in Sendling. Of course before we even made it to the first store, Kurt and Edeltraud appeared in the Alramstraße, shopping bags in hand. They had successfully found winter coats, and they were ready for some apple pie (or as the Germans pronounce it, "pee").

Jamie volunteered to head them off while I scoured the first store for apples. Nothing.

About five stores later, we finally found some more slightly less atractive sour Boskoop apples. We returned home and peeled and sliced them in record time. Jamie tested the sugar to make sure it was sugar, Edeltraud explained to me that even the best housewives make mistakes, and we put the pie together.

We baked it for an hour, and soon you could smell apples and cinnamon all over the apartment. I should have been happy, but I was nervous--what else could Murphy have up his sleeve?

We pulled the pie out of the oven and sat down to eat. I had no idea how to cut a pie in a springform pan, so Edeltraud smartly suggested that we take it off the table so that it could be butchered over on the counter and all we would see was our individual pieces of pie--not the oozing pie carcass trapped inside the springform pan.

Then I found out what my last mistake was: Boskoop apples are terrible baking apples. My pie was an apple-sauce-pee-Kuchen. Instead of tender apples slices, we had a springform pan full of apple-y mush. At least it still tasted good. I didn't have the heart to tell Kurt and Edletraud that this pie was a fake. The real thing probably would have been too much like a big round Apple Strudle, anyway, so why worry.

It wasn't until that evening that we realized how envious the hostess of Smittenkitchen.com would have been if we had beautiful picutres of our masterpiece to illustrate this post. I think a shot of all the salted-apples in the trash would have looked especially appetizing. Luckily Jamie didn't try to take one at the time. I probably would have thrown the crust out the window...

Trinken wir noch eins?

It was late Friday night at Sendlinger Augustiner (The proud home of Schnitzel-Saturdays, Schweinebraten-Mondays, and Burger-Tuesdays) when Jamie, Kim, and I learned the Bavarian answer to the question "Trinken wir noch eins?" (Sould we drink one more beer?).

In a state where a "Halbes" (half beer) is half a liter, and bars don't tend to keep smaller glasses on hand, deciding whether the evening is done or not can be a significant question. (Although it is possible to literally "grab one for the road"...) Of course, given the importance of beer for the local economy (when the federal government decided to implement a sales tax hike, Bavarian parliamentarians argued that beer, as a staple food, should be exempted... unfortunately, their argument didn't carry too much water in Berlin, where you'd be lucky to find a beer as large as half-a-liter at most bars), one would expect Bavarians to have a compelling answer to the "to drink or not to drink" question.

And, as it turns out, they do:

The answer is called a "Schnitt" (or according to Kurt, a "Kinderbier"), and its a pretty ingenious response. Not only can the bartender serve up a Schnitt in a half liter glass, ordering a Schnitt allows the patron to get a full glass of beer and to sit back for a minute (or ten), and enjoy the last beer of the night. The bartender pours a Schnitt by allowing most of the big half-liter glass to fill up with head, and delivers it to your table while its still foaming. After ten minutes or so, the head dies down and right before your eyes, somewhere between a half and two-thirds of the glass fills up with beer. So, next time you're in Bavaria and you're forced to decide whether or not to drink one more beer, you could always just order a Schnitt.

(Being) Jewish in Germany

As I walk down the street from our current residence to the subway, I could be pretty much anywhere in Europe. Well actually, I have only ever visited a few European cities outside of Germany: Salzburg, Madrid, Toledo, Aranjuez, and the Rheinfall in Switzerland. But, I imagine other big European cities to be just like München. Exploring our new Stadt, I pass hundreds of cafes, shops, churches, apartment buildings, and old buildings... lots of old buildings:

Old Town Hall, Munich
(Built in 1474)

"New" Town Hall, Munich
(Built between 1867-1908)

However, every once in a while I pass something that looks eerily familiar:

Odeonsplatz, Munich
(It was at Odeonsplatz on November 9, 1923, that Hitler attempted to bring down the Weimar Republic. Hitler's attempt was unsuccessful and he was sentenced to five years in jail. However, he only ended up serving nine months and it was in that time that he wrote Mein Kampf.)

Wait! I stop in my tracks. Where have I seen this [insert: building, square, gate, statue, street name] before? Oh yeah, that's right, in one of my Sunday school or college classes about the Holocaust.

Hmmm...I think to myself...

How am I reacting to this place or thing? How am I supposed to react to it? Should I be angry, sad, scared, upset? All of the above? Or, none of the above?

When Steve and I first traveled to Germany two summers ago, it was nothing like I imagined. Before our trip, the only pictures I had seen of Germany were from Holocaust books and films. On the plane I imagined landing in a country painted in black and white. Literally.

However, driving to Sulzheim (a tiny village and home of Steve's high school host family) from the Frankfurt airport was a wake-up call. In fact, Germany was not black and white, but painted green and blue and yellow and orange and all of the colors of the rainbow. On our drive we saw skyscrapers and fast trains, gorgeous fields and small villages. It was clear, Germany was recovering from its past; but had I?

No. At least, I didn't think so...

Thus, I spent visits the next two summers trekking from Holocaust memorials to Jewish museums, from old-burned down synagogue sites to newly renovated synagogue replicas, and from mass graveyards to new Jewish cemeteries trying to come to terms with everything. Steve even pointed out gold plaques thrust between the sidewalk cement in Freiburg marking where Jews had once lived and sadly stating what happened to each during the War.

Through my journey I came to recognize that Germany is still working to recreate its image as well as physically rebuild itself from war destruction. Additionally, Germany has not yet come to terms with its history, but is working on a way to move past the past without forgetting it.

Now, after my previous ramblings, as I walk by these places reminiscent of a darker time, I stop and I remember. Sometimes I dwell too. But, I am making an effort to also move past the past. Living here this year, it is my goal to stop dwelling (most of the time) and start enjoying our new adventure here in the present.

Last week, Steve and I attended Yom Kippur services in Munich. For me, walking into a synagogue here and being part of the community was the perfect transition from dwelling, to remembering and moving forward.

New Beginnings...

Well, I meant to introduce myself and this blog in the first post, but typically, I just jumped right in. For many reasons (well, two in particular), initially skipping an introduction seems fitting and okay.

First and foremost, you, the person reading this blog (if you are anyone besides my mother), are my father... or my (sometimes) co-author and husband... or my family member... or my friend... or at least my acquaintance. Because why would anyone want to follow the ramblings of two indecisive 20-somethings in Germany? Thus, an introduction seems unnessary.

But why "Wandern Gehen"?

Which brings me to the second and final reason initially skipping an introduction just makes sense:

As mentioned previously, both Steve and I are somewhat indecisive 20-somethings. What I mean, is that we're indecisive about our path in life (or at least I am). Even though I am one month away from 27, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow-up. I am lost.

Comparitively, jumbled in my thoughts, it took me a little while to comprise an introduction here, for our blog.

Caught off guard, gearing up for the hike of life (and a hike at the foothills of the Alps), this picture perfectly depicts my current state:


"Wandern gehen," loosly translated, means to go rambling. It is my hope that through some miracle, our year-long ramblings will lead me (and Steve) to some self-discovery. Guide us down the "right" path (or the left). And, help us discover the ramblings that will make us happiest at the end of the day and throughout our lives.