A Load Of Krapfen

For a country that has some genuinely fantastic baked goods (if you haven't had authentic German breads or pastries, go to your phone book and find a bakery that advertises itself as either a Bäckerei or Konditorei and see what I mean), you'd think the Germans would be well-versed in the doughnut sciences, but that would be a mistaken assumption. Shame. Perhaps it's because filled doughnuts, known as krapfen (alternately Berliner or Fasnetsküchle) are not generally available year round in Germany and the lack of practice shows.

Part of the run up to the countrywide pre-Lenten celebration known as Fasching (a sort of Mardi Gras), krapfen are basically filled doughnuts with a powdered sugar topping, and the fillings vary wildly, and seeming regionally. Traditionally it's a type of jam (apricot, plum and strawberry are the most popular) or vanilla creme, but I've heard of fillings like rose hip jam, eggnog creme, coconut cream, and weird stuff like chili & caramel, strawberry jam & vodka (known as a "Stalin") and even mustard (fasching will be described in another post, but it's basically a government-approved time to let one's hair down and do "crazy things," like ruining a damn doughnut). But how do they taste? Pretty lousy, actually. The Krapfen I've had are just deep fried flavorless white dough with a dollop of filling and a blizzard of powdered sugar on top. Lent is all about sacrifice I suppose; maybe you are supposed to sacrifice taste. And your hips too. "Regular" doughnuts are generally available year round but even the fresh baked stuff is several pegs below Hostess/Entenmann's level. Good news though: there are 30 Dunkin' Donuts locations in Germany... but the closest is 4.5 hours' drive away. Eh, I'm trying to lose weight-- these lousy krapfen ensure it.

The photo is a sign for regional bakery chain Der Beck. Tag means "day," so the sign is advertising filled doughnut day-- 3 for €3.30-- about $4.60 to the USA viewers. Isn't worth it.

Saab Love

I've mentioned it before, I'm a Saab guy. My last 2 cars were Saabs, and I'm still holding on to the pipe dream of getting a Europe-only Saab 90 and bringing it back home when we return. Saab has seen better days of late-- its neglectful corporate parent for the last decade, General Motors, had been trying to sell it for the last year, and one deal after another seemed to fall through. The vultures were circling, and GM had appointed a liquidation team to start the wind-down of this unique Swedish marque. The Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg was supposed to have purchased Saab in December, but that deal fell through-- to hear the Koenigsegg folks tell the story-- literally as they were on their way to file the (signed!) contracts with the government of Sweden. Long story short, Dutch supercar manufacturer Spyker stepped into the breach and pulled off the improbable sale. I'll save my ire for GM some other time, other than to say that they did their level best to kill off Saab [starving them of development cash, negligible advertising budget for years, moving Saab production to Germany so Cadillacs(?!) could be made in Sweden, accounting tricks that would make Meyer Lansky blush, etc.] and it's a small wonder Saab was even around for Spyker to buy them. Barring any late objections or regulatory hurdles the sale should be finalized in mid-February. While I still have my doubts as to the long-term feasibility of a tiny manufacturer buying a much larger one, at least Saab gets a new lease on life, and a sympathetic ownership group who happen to be genuine Saab fans.

The Wheels Of Justice Grind Slowly But They Grind Fine... But Mostly They Grind Slowly

Huzzah! Our incompetent building super has finally been relieved of his duties. This yob has been directly responsible for our apartment remaining unfinished 13+ months after move-in. Trying to explain the multiple layers in the common German apartment & housing system is a bit of a brain-melt, but the person I call the super is actually the Hausverwaltung, which is to say... a guy like the building super. Our situation was a bit more complex due to the fact that this building's Hausverwaltung also briefly owned our apartment (in this regard, apartments are like condos in the States) before flipping it while still under construction to the current owners. So beyond the contractually agreed completion of the place, there were also standard maintenence issues he had to take care of for the entire building. Anyhow, after more than a year of promises, excuses and lies from this dude and an equivalent amount of requests, cajoling, groveling and threats from us and our owners, very little was accomplished. Turns out this guy behaved much the same to the residents of the other 8 apartments in this building, and he was finally voted out in the annual owner's meeting yesterday. While the remaining work still needs to be done, we are breathing a sigh of relief that actual pros will complete the needed repairs and upgrades instead of the band-aid fixes using the wrong tools/materials perpetrated by this guy's construction-school rejects. The best part? The former super will be paying for the repairs out of his own pocket.

Breaking: Beelzebub Embarrassed To Be Mentioned In Same Sentence With Televangelist

My folks raised me right, and you'll notice that entries involving politics, current affairs and/or religion are pretty few and far between on these pages-- there are plenty of websites written by experts on those subjects for you to peruse, and frankly, I'd rather be making people chuckle than beating them over the head with any sort of perceived bias or agenda. But, once in a great while you really need to point people to some standard fact checking facilities. Case in point: Televangelist Pat Robertson's outrageous statement about Haitians was called out and fact checked by one of the interweb's great sites, The Straight Dope. I've been a huge Straight Dope fan for 20 years, and it's a clearinghouse of information where folks can send in any question, big or small where it will be answered by a dedicated staff of researchers and outside experts. Questions in the past have included "Is time travel possible, even in theory?" (answer: yes) to "Is it true about Catherine the Great and the horse?" (answer: no) and everything in between. But on to the task at hand: The Right Reverend Pat's assertion has nearly no basis in fact, plays fast and loose with dates and names, brushes off a contemporary contradictory account, and ignores two essential points: (1.) A known fault line lies underneath the Island of Hispaniola (where Haiti is located), and a quake already leveled Port-au-Prince in 1770, some two decades before this "pact with the devil" (2.) This "pact" was to last 200 years. Well, that 200 year period ended in 1991. Oops. Folks can read this genuinely entertaining brief article for themselves here and decide for themselves. And now, I can get back to making light of Europeans.

Roman Holiday

The Rome vacation photos are now posted. I've been wrestling with the photo posting site's editor for several days (it now loads the photos in ascending file size order and not chronological order and it took time to properly re-sort), but they are all up, and there are quite a few of them-- about 250-- to enjoy. In reality, a lot more photos were taken, but our not-that-old digital camera suddenly got buggy, and ruined a good 25-30% of the shots. But I think the ones that did make the cut are marvy.

What can I say about Rome that hasn't already been said? It's a wonderful city and was a pleasant surprise for me-- despite my affinity for art, architecture and history, the idea of going to an endless parade of ancient ruins did not seem terribly appealing, but The "Eternal City" rather quickly won me over. While there were terrible winter conditions in the rest of Europe and parts of Northern Italy suffered crippling blizzards, the weather is Rome was merely brisk with some rain thrown in. And Christmas Day itself was sunny and a pleasant 60 degrees-- we even saw one brave soul in shorts and a T-shirt. When you realize that we had offers from friends to spend Christmas in London (which actually shut down in the face of its worst weather in almost 20 years), as well as the Alsace region of France (on the French-German border, which experienced similarly epic weather), I think we lucked out this holiday.

While we got a fantastic deal on airfare and hotel, that legendarily great Roman food is swoonworthy expensive. A light lunch in a simple trattoria off the tourist trail set us back an astonishing 56 Euros ($80), so we quickly learned to grab sandwiches and pizzas on the go.

We visited a lot of churches, starting with St. Peters in Vatican City. We're not the most religious folks out there (indeed, I was waiting for the bolt of lightning to come through the dome of St. Peters to smite me), but in Italy and especially Rome, most of the modern history and patronage of arts was generated through-- and by-- the church. There are numerous cases where the church co-opted pagan temples and buildings of ancient Rome (most notably the Pantheon building) and made them their own.

It was a lot to chew off, and I'm glad we stayed as long as we did. The Italians were gracious and helpful (despite our attempts to speak Italian, everyone replied in English) and the language itself is beautiful to hear. No offense to the Germans, but when we got on our return flight and heard German for the first time in a week, it sounded like loose bolts being chewed up in a sink disposal in comparison to the lyrical Italian language. The ultimate level of success of any trip is this: Will we go back? There is a whole lot more places to explore in Europe first, but I certainly would enjoy a return trip to Rome.

To access the photos you can go to the tool bar on the right hand side or simply click here. Clicking on a photo will give you a blow-up and some commentary by me-- it took almost a week to write it (cross referencing books and maps to do so), so check it out. Lazy folks can just use the "slideshow" button on the top right. Enjoy!

It Never Snows In Nuremberg, Year Two...

Second winter here, and the second time we have been emphatically told that it never snows in Nuremberg-- last year was a once-in-a-generation fluke. Riiiight. It's been snowing here since the 3rd week of December, and there is currently about 6-8" accumulation on our windowsill, it's snowing as I write this, and if we're lucky, the high temps may nudge over the freezing mark in the next few days (first time in weeks). I spent my formative years in western New York state (north of Buffalo, actually), and graduated from a college in the frigid midwest, so I know from snow. But really, enough is enough. Especially when we're supposed to be getting zero white stuff. I took this photo yesterday of the notorious East German Trabant with a full layer of snow on it. That car isn't going anywhere.

Just Sayin...

If I may take a minute to talk about non-Teutonic/European happenings...

Maybe I'm from the old school, but there was a time when a handshake was a handshake, contracts actually meant something, and you stood by your obligations, confident in your decision. For anyone who hasn't been brought up to speed on this issue, check out this concise story. That's a far classier response than his employer warrants, I'll just say that.

Paris Review

The Paris photos have finally been posted-- 2+ months after the vacation occurred, but hey, what are you going to do? Besides the sheer exhaustion that always comes with the end of a vacation, some external distractions were waiting for us back in Germany around that time, so getting around to posting these took longer than usual.

Despite a couple minor irritants on this trip, Paris is still one of the great cities of the world, and well worth your time. All that talk about rude Parisians is simply not true-- in 3 separate visits, I have yet to meet a single individual who hasn't been polite, professional and helpful. Yes, it certainly helps to have a basic understanding of the language (even knowing a couple simple French phrases is a huge plus, though nearly everybody speaks English), and being respectful of these very proud people and this capitol of culture is always the right move. Negatives? Like I said, pretty minor in the grand scheme of things as a tourist, but the city (particularly the Metro/subway stations) seemed a lot more gritty this time out (though in all fairness, a lot of Metro stations are in the midst of reconstruction), and hokey smokes this town has gotten crazy expensive since our last visit of a mere 2 years ago. But unlike some of the cities we've been to and seen where one visit was enough (cough cough, Berlin), I fully expect that we'll be regularly returning to Paris for the rest of our days-- it really is a magical place, and very close to our hearts.

The photo link follows at the bottom, and as before you have the option of running the photos as a slideshow, or going into each photo and progressing at your own pace. I've spent some time adding captions and descriptions to about 90% of these photos, and I do hope you avail yourselves to this research and travelogue of mine. A lot of the factual and historical information came from one reference source in particular, and as a personal recommendation for any travelers, I can not recommend the fantastic Eyewitness Travel books (aka DK Guides) highly enough-- they are simply the best, wonderfully written, thoroughly researched, regularly updated, with true "insiders tips" sprinkled throughout. The DK Paris book allowed us to explore a Paris that was off the beaten path, and just as fascinating as the major attractions. Great stuff.

Check out the photos by using the link at the right side of the page, or simply click here. Your comments and questions are always welcome. Enjoy!