Sunday, August 10, 2008

Brötchen/Kaliberg

Just in case my last post seemed a bit down on the Germans about the A/C thing, I figure I should list a couple things that are unbelievably awesome here. First off, the bread. Dear lord, the bread. We have bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and it's some amazing stuff, but to me the holy grail is Brötchen (common nouns in German are capitalized - how cool is that). Mostly a breakfast food, Brötchen is what Americans would call a dinner roll except that it's generally much better than our rolls, you buy it at an actual bakery (they have bakeries here!) instead of in a plastic bag at Sam's Club, and when it is served for breakfast it is socially acceptable to smear semisolid chocolate and copious amounts of butter on it and then eat it. The Germans are my kind of people.

The other amaing thing here is what locals seem to call the Kaliberg (spelling may be ridiculously wrong), what looks like a mountain on the horizon of our small town. This part of Germany is called Sachsen-Anhalt and it is known to be flatter than Minnesota - I had a feeling something was awry with the mountains in the background. I turned out to be right. The Kaliberg is actually an enormous pile of salt. I don't mean a fairly large 20 foot high by 20 foot long pile of salt. This thing looks to be the hight of Devil's Tower and about a quarter mile long. I didn't know this much salt existed all together anywhere in the world. Every time I see it my jaw hangs open a little bit.

Óh yèäh, and yöu cán dö stüff like thís with the keyböärds here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mmmmm bread!

Mom said...

My Dearest CJ,
You are so your mother's son, loving chocolate and bread for breakfast. All that is missing is the Diet Coke. The way you describe it I can almost smell and taste the bread and see the mountain of salt. Some of us miss you more than others (Noah told me to say that). Love you, M

Dad said...

You've got the world's largest pile of salt... well we've got the world's largest ball of twine.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2128