Tag Archives: German food

Self-Milking Cows and Wellness in Wald

Posted by dkrashb on

Having been collected by Pat’s parents and friends at the guest house we arrived at in Wald from Berlin, we now load our stuff into their vehicle for the short drive to where we’ll be staying.

Pat’s parents and friends have been traveling together for several days already. The friends, Dieter and Gisela, have traded their car with their daughter so they have a mini-van to fit us all in for this trip. The mini is a little more mini than a typical American mini-van, but we all fit perfectly. They take us to the “wellness resort” we will be staying at for the next 3 nights. This is an interesting concept in Germany. These are guest houses equipped with pools and hot tubs and various other amenities that help restore health and sanity. They typically are quite economical, although only available in pretty, country areas outside large cities, and are often free for Germans who are suffering from illness or stress that their doctor feels warrants a break from everyday life.

This one is located on a working farm. They make most of their own foods served in their restaurant from the butter and cheese to the beer. When we have dropped our bags in our room, our group reconvenes and takes little tour of the farm. We visit the horses and donkey in one barn, and the milk cows in another. We watch as a cow milks herself–the most fascinating thing I have ever seen. When a gate is opened, a cow with a full utter walks into a pen and lines herself up in the milking station, where grain releases into a bucket so she can happily munch while being milked. A robotic milking machine starts by washing each of her teats with rollers. Then, laser beams line up the suction cups on the milking machine with the teats until all four are properly captured in the milking machine. The milk is matched to the cow using an electronic chip on her ankle. If the cow has recently calved, her milk is rerouted to her calf in a barn next door. All the milk is automatically tested to make sure the cow doesn’t have any diseases and that there isn’t dangerous bacteria in the milk before it is pumped into the milk storage container. When a teat stops producing milk, the machine releases it until all of the teats have been milked dry. A gate opens, the cow walks out, and the next cow, when ready, enters. I wish I had thought to bring my camera down, but maybe I am the only one who gets excited about cows that milk themselves?

We visit many calves next. They are at various stages of growth. Some are in large plastic huts and they stick their heads out as us as we walk by. I reach out to one and let it suckle my fingers while I rub its head. I don’t think anyone else in the group has ever seen someone do this because they were all pretty surprised. The calf holds its tongue over its teeth so it doesn’t bite, but the force that calves suckle with is pretty amazing. My fingers are covered in slim when I extract them. I do my best not to touch anything. We wander over to the building where they make cheese and beer. Nothing is currently being made, but it’s still nice to see. Pat buys some Landjaeger (something between sausage and beef jerky) that is also home made. We then wander back to the main guest house to have dinner. I scrub my hands twice before sitting down to eat.

The restaurant serves four courses, with the only choice being which of three entrees you want. They bring us a soup to start with a meaty broth and a large noodle. It’s delicious and hot. Then we have a typical German salad with lettuce on top hiding an assortment of other types of salad underneath. I have the fish. Dieter describes the fish as a “salmon trout,” which is exactly what it’s like. Flaky trout meat that’s firmer and pinker than most trout. While it’s delicious, the filet they brought me was about the size of a flattened football and I couldn’t eat it all. The dessert was warm chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and fresh currants. Surprisingly, I find I have just enough room for the dessert.

We sit and drink beer and swap stories in German and English. Two of us do not speak German, two of us speak German and American English, and two speak German and formal English. It makes for interesting translations–it’s amazing how many words we use in everyday conversation that don’t make it into language classes. But, we have a good time anyway. Giesala has a warm and ready laugh that is infectious and Dieter has a quiet sense of humor that catches me by surprise, making his jokes even funnier. Both are patient with those of us who don’t speak English and make a tremendous effort to speak English whenever possible so we feel included.

We discuss our plans for tomorrow and decide to make a change from the original plan. The cold and rainy weather is supposed to improve the following day, so we decide to switch days. We will all go to see some castles tomorrow and we will go to the Oktoberfest the following day. All in all, it’s been a good day.

In Search of Dinner

Posted by dkrashb on

Since we have returned late from our afternoon of hiking, we return to the hotel to quickly clean up and then hunt up a place to eat dinner. For some reason, I decide to put a little make up on and try to make myself presentable. I suppose I am thinking of the three men we encountered at dinner the night before when we sat at the bar of a crowded restaurant and Pat said they were making comments like we didn’t belong there. I don’t know what wearing make-up has to do with improving this situation, but I take a couple extra minutes to put it on anyway.

Now that I am wearing the fanciest outfit I brought with me–skinny black pants, a red sweater, and ballet flats–we wander around on the cobblestone streets looking for food. As it turns out, my feet are bruised from our long descent on a rocky trail–one of the two disadvantages of hiking in fivefinger shoes (not counting the odd looks). Each step reminds me how many stones I stepped on with nearly bare feet.

As we wander around on tired legs, we pass large clumps of bicycles. It seems there is a parking shortage for bicycles in Freiburg; some bikes are parked with a lock only through their own wheels, having no stationary object left to lock them to. There are virtually no cars in the old part of town. When one does venture through, they drive slowly, allowing the pedestrians walking down the middle of the road time to clear the way. It seems that car parking is limited to the outskirts of town and hotel garages.

We wander around past crowded restaurants, many full of university students eating mounds of fried food from baskets; it’s a university town. We pass those restaurants up as well as the “Wein” restaurants with their more sophisticated clientele–the wine is tempting, but it feels wrong to drink wine in Germany when the beer is so good. We wander past a restaurant that advertises its daily special as “fresh killed rabbit” and keep on going again. Finally, we end up back in the main plaza around the cathedral and choose a table outdoors at a restaurant across from where we had lunch the day before.

There are three restaurants here, their outdoor tables distinguished by the furniture style and the color of the umbrellas. We sit at the third, close to the restaurant entrance, hoping to be noticed since it is late to be sitting down for dinner in this small town. As we sit, we overhear an inebriated American one restaurant over and several tables down. He speaks so loudly, he might as well be shouting. Every person in the area can hear every word he says. He complains about the tables having numbers on them. I find it interesting what annoys people. There have been many times when I have been highly annoyed by something that seems petty and not worth the energy to others. But usually it comes down to something that ultimately makes me feel stupid. Like door handles that look like they should be pulled when they really must be pushed. It doesn’t take too many times smashing your face into a glass door that didn’t open when you’re not paying attention before you get annoyed by misleading door handles. Although, I have to admit that even now, imagining my face pressed against the glass from the view of a person on the other side makes me laugh out loud. But that is beside the point. Most of the time, what I find annoying depends on whether it makes me look foolish in some way and how cranky I am at the time. I try to remind myself of this when I want to dismiss someone as a nasty person–I have been that nasty person more times than I care to admit. But in this case, I am at a loss to explain why the noisy American is so perturbed by table numbers or why he feels compelled to shout his irritation to the world. I find myself wishing he would shut up, feeling like he reflects badly in all Americans. After all, those of us who are quiet go unnoticed while the rambunctious make a lasting impression.

The food comes. Pat has ordered cordon bleu for me. The German version is made with pork instead of chicken and I actually like it better than the French version. The pork is tender and juicy and the salty ham and creamy cheese set it off just right. It’s a huge amount of food, but this doesn’t prevent me from snagging a few spaetzle noodles from Pat’s plate when he’s not looking. I have a weakness for spaetzle. We enjoy our dinner, cleaning our plates, but we are too full for dessert.

We return to the hotel slowly, bikes with headlights passing us on the walkways as we go. The night is cool and the moon is rising, about half full. I try to remember if it’s waxing or waning–the top portion is lit, so the old trick of a “D” for “dying” won’t work tonight. I decide it must be waning and I realize that I did not buy a new tripod before the full moon, as I had promised a photographer friend I would after shooting horribly blurred shots of the full moon in August. I make a metal mote as we continue our stroll. The cathedral bells start ringing and are then echoed by another church’s bells in the distance–it’s 10PM and I have stayed awake all day. By the time we return to the hotel and get ready for bed, I fall quickly into a deep sleep.