As for other events since I last wrote, we have spent the last two weekends away from Kempten. The weekend of the 1st of November, we went to Stuttgart for the day on that Saturday to visit the Mercedes museum and try to take in a team Stuttgart soccer match. Our last goal for that day was to eat in a Mexican restaurant that had food that actually tasted Mexican. Two out of three wasn't bad for the day.
We started by taking the train to Stuttgart. They have this wonderful ticket called the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, which means Happy Weekend Ticket. With this, a family of up to 5 can travel for one very low price from your home to your destination and on all the local city trains in your destination. So for us, we were able to go to Stuttgart for all of us for only 37 Euros. As for using the train system, normally, this would be an easy feat, but for some reason, from our town northward, the train line stops in a little town called Senden, where you have 5 minutes to catch a city bus to the next town's train station, and again 5 minutes to find your train there and catch it on to the final destination. But we did it!
And once in Stuttgart, we went right on to the Mercedes Museum. This was a really neat museum full of old cars. It had a nifty information device that you pointed at each of the exhibits, where it downloaded information for you to listen to. It not only had many of the cars, since the beginning, but it also had all the other vehicles (trucks, snow plows, service vehicles, buses and luxury coaches) and bicycles that the two company owners, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz, had been involved in producing. Incidentally, Mercedes, a car first produced by Daimler for a racing customer, Emil Jellinek, was named after his 10 year old daughter. The name stuck. Benz, who was also from southern Germany and who produced the very first automobile in 1886, approached Daimler to merge the two companies after World War I due to the economic downfall of Germany. In 1926, the first Mercedes-Benz named car was on the market. Mercedes-Benz is still making luxury cars today, with many of them on the roads here in Germany. Smart brand cars are also made by Mercedes as part of the Daimler company, and their trucks and commercial vehicles have a very good reputation here.
As for the soccer game, the sign on the door said it all: Hoffnungslos Ausverkauft (translates to hopelessly sold out.) Although we tried to buy tickets in advance, there were 8 of us all together with the friends we met. So we decided to take our chances on getting them at the door. Oh well. We will know better to get them WAY in advance next time. We did learn later that Stuttgart's team had lost the big game, though, to the team from Cologne.
Afterwards, we went on to the city's center where we did find that all elusive Mexican restaurant in Germany. Honestly, there really is nothing like Mexican ANYWHERE near us. Even the taco stuff you buy in the store is much sweeter, and to find anything resembling salsa is almost impossible. Ah, for a chance to get back to La Carreta's. Our little restaurant was called La Cantina. It had real chips and salsa (well, I have had better salsa, but at least this tasted like salsa!) They had real burritos and fajitas. And my tacos were delicious, even if they were soft shelled and rolled such that I had to eat them with a fork. Of course this brought us to the funny conversation of how Germans eat their food.
And for this, I am changing the question of the day from last week to "How do Germans eat their food?" In America, we are taught how to cut with a knife and fork, keep your elbows off the table, and once you are finished cutting, you put down the knife, change hands with the fork and then place your other hand under the table. We also have a variety of finger foods, such as tacos and pizza, that we use only our hands to eat. For Germans, this is completely foreign, and a bit unacceptable. Germans place their fork in their left hand and their knife in their right hand. All food is eaten this way from that point onward. Never are they to put the fork or knife down, until all the food is gone. Never are they to have any one portion of food left on the plate without having the other portions still left to also eat with it. Always, the food must have a lot of, for lack of a better word, gravy, over the food, to help mush it all together while eating with the fork and using the knife to scoop the food onto the fork once it is cut. Never are you to cut all your food at once, only at the time you are taking that specific bite. Since I have always eaten with my right hand, and since I tend to be one of those who eats one thing at a time, and since I really dislike gravy and most sauces, condiments and anything else that makes food mushy or vinegary, eating here in German-themed restaurants has been a challenge for me. What the Germans have told me is that just by looking at a group of people eating, they can pick out the Americans pretty easily, but they do not hold our style of eating against us. And with a good pile of Spätzle (a German noodle pronounced shpets leh) and a schnitzel, I am all set. And of course, there are a ton of lovely Italian restaurants, so it isn't too bad!!
As for the other trip we took, you will need to tune in tomorrow to find out more. And then, of course I will get to the other question of the day of "What is the Deutches Museum?"
The words for today are fork - die Gabel (gah behl), spoon - der Löffel (lerff ehl) and knife - das Messer (mehss er).
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
