Things I’ll Miss about Germany #1 (Warm Rolls from the Gas station)
Warm Rolls from the Gas Station
theres more to authentic german culture than lederhosen and oktoberfest. lets start with bread.
germans are always complaining about our soft white north american bread. and showing off their Bergsteiger (mountain climber) bread made from lots of rye and nuts and seeds and other heavy undigestible stuff.
however (what i am about to write, could have me deported) their favourite bread is also white and fluffy. im talking about brötchen (literally: little bread). these rolls are to the germans like rice is to the chinese.
breakfast without a roll, they say here, is like hello without a smile. a typical german breakfast is brötchen with jam, brötchen with cheese, brötchen with cold cuts, brötchen with liverwurst… brötchen with anything from the fridge.
lunch is also often a belegte brötchen - a “busy brötchen” i thought when i first arrived, (a busy telephone number is belegt, so is a toilet when someone is in there) but maybe “filled” is a better translation.
anyway, germans need their brötchen; thats why you can buy rolls everywhere. we live in the suburbs and in every german suburb, there must be four bars, two flower shops, a driving lesson headquarters and 12 places to buy brötchen.
we get ours at the tankstelle (gas station); five brotties for a Euro. a great deal. they are not heikes favourite. shes a bit of a brötchen snob. she prefers hers from the hairdresser’s. but they arent open sundays.
me i love them from the gas station. mostly cause its right across the street and the brötchen are still warm when i get them home. but also cause i find it sooo funny: fresh bread from a gas station.
even funnier: today when i went in, there was a guy scratching his head by the pumps. when i came out with my little brown paperbag of brotties, the attendant followed me.
“no gas today,” he said to the guy at the pumps. “maybe tomorrow.”
“oh okay,” said the guy nodding. “but you do have brötchen eh?”
that’s what i’m going to miss: authentic german culture at it’s finest.