Fact: Dr. Pepper tastes better in America

You might think I am crazy, but Dr. Pepper from the States tastes different than Dr. Pepper here (bottled in the UK I think).  How much different?  Enough where I found I don’t like the Dr. Pepper I found here.  And since American Dr. Pepper is my favorite soft drink, I found myself adding one more thing to the list of American products I cannot find here, or if I do find here, are different.

Here are my top food products that you people in American should not take for granted.  And I know these are all packaged goods, and I could try to make things myself, but where is the fun in that when a company already makes them good enough?

• Yummy flour tortillas: Ok, this is aimed mostly at Texas, where a good flour tortilla makes the foundation for good TexMex food.  Here – you can only find the stiff Old El Paso brand. 
• Snack Pack Pudding:  For me, I miss the basic chocolate one.  Pudding here is more mousse-like.
• Good ole butter popcorn:  Germans prefer ‘sweet’ popcorn.  Not like kettle corn (I wish), but lightly sweetened.  You can find “American butter” salty popcorn in some American sections of larger grocery stores, but this is Jolly Time popcorn, who uses the word “butter” very loosely.  You know that brand, right?  No?  Take my word for it, you don’t want to – disgusting!  At least when I go to the English movie theater, they have it done right.
• Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup – again, you can find a weird off-brand version in some American sections of grocery stores, but again, disgusting.  Lucky for me I have should enough to last me while I am here thanks to a coworker visiting Germany.
• Blueberry muffin mix: Specifically - Betty Crocker Wild Blueberry Muffin mix.  Muffins and cakes here are a bit different – they tend to be rather dense.  American cakes tend to be fluffy and, say what you will, what I prefer. 
• Cornbread mix – Anything branded “American” – like pizza, soup, etc – probably has canned corn in it.  Because us Americans LOVE OUR CORN, right?  Whatever – I do love cornbread, and they don’t sell mixes here.  And I am not sharing my stash of Jiffy Cornbread mix.  Sorry.
• Varieties of Cake mixes and frostings: If you want American cake mix here – you will find 2 flavors: Chocolate and Carrot.  Frosting?  Chocolate and Vanilla.  Where is my Cream Cheese Frosting??  Spice Cake?  Red Velvet?  Life is hard.

To combat having to “rough it” over here, we often ask our visitors to kindly bring us items we are missing.  For instance, here is the food stash my parents brought over last year (not pictured – the other non-edible products they brought too):

So what is typically in the American section of German grocery stores (those that have one) that I haven’t already mentioned??

• Carter’s American flag root beer
• Marshmallow Fluff
• Rocky Mountain American Marshmallows
• Strawberry Frosted Poptarts (a brand I actually know!)
• Barbecue Sauce
• Cheese-Whiz style cheese
• Bisquick Mix (another real brand!)
• Some strange brand of Mac & Cheese
• Hot chocolate packets
• Griffin’s pancake syrup
• Crisco shortening

Isn’t that great that those foods sum up American cuisine?  I know I always cooked every meal with each of those items, just like Germans only eat sausage and pretzels, washed down by beer.

One thing missing from my list of products I can’t find?  Oh yeah – American Dr. Pepper. Why is that??  BECAUSE I RECENTLY FOUND SOME!!! Yes – imported Dr. Pepper cans!  I have recently found two grocery stores that have this.  I have bought their stock up a few times, and Noah finds this all rather amusing.  At one point, I looked up from trying to fit as many cans in my arms as possible, to see him snapping my photo. Whatever – at least I can now scratch something off of my list!   

525,600 minutes later…

We started our journey in Munich exactly one year ago – landing January 5^th, 2012 at 12:30 pm.  There were a few uncertain moments in the beginning, and we both had our “that’s it, I’m moving back to the USA” kind of moments (we still do sometimes – just not as often).  Though after settling in, the last year has been the most fun and transformative year of our lives.  There are absolutely no regrets, except for the decision to study Spanish instead of German in high school.

For those that do (or don’t) follow our blog regularly, here is a recap of the best and worst from Weiss aus Deutschland 2012.

Top 1^st year moments in no particular order:

1. First night in our completely empty apartment except for 6 suit cases, some hand me downs from Ellen, and a dorm sized kitchen….an unexplainably weird and amazing feeling.
2. Seeing a male stripper at a public restaurant on (or for?) my birthday and Julie ‘accidently’ taking me to a strip club after my first day at work (check the previous blogs).
3. Watching, partying with, and later practicing with the Munich Caribes baseball team.
4. Cramming in with 40,000 fans to watch the greatest sporting match I have ever seen in the FC Bayern vs. Chelsea Champions League final in Munich.
5. BBQing on the Isar River, if you ignore the multitude of naked old men.
6. Traveling all of Europe.
7. Living the Bavarian way- in the mountains, in the beer garden, or attending some festival in the city.
8. Our 13 visitors from home…thank you for all the trips to Marienplatz!
9. Our ‘Pangea’ international party – 18 countries represented!

Bottom 1^st year moments in no particular order:

1. Julie’s face plant and trip to the ER for stitches.
2. Counting down the days before we can move back to the US….after our 3^rd day here (Noah).
3. Getting locked out of the apartment, spending 200 EUR, even though we had our keys!
4. Getting speeding ticket my first time driving through the city of Munich.
5. Eating a sandwich out of partially raw bread, not realizing what ‘Fertigbacken’ means – ready to bake (also Noah).
6. Train delays/misses.  Especially the 3-hour delay after my train was hit by lightning.
7. Continuing with public transport – trying to figure out where a bus/tram stop is, only to learn by watching it leave you standing in the wrong spot.
8. Wearing canvas shoes (aka sponges) through snow that one (or ten) time(s).
9. Outfitting an entire apartment, from the light fixtures to the curtains to the furniture to the kitchen.  Though not as bad as it could have been without all the help from Aunt Ellen!

Hopefully 2013 comes with more ‘Top’ moments than ‘Bottom’ – but either way, we wouldn’t change anything in 2012.  Well, maybe one: eating that raw bread.

Glückliches neues Jahr!

As the year winds down, Noah and I finally took time off with NO travelling!  After a whirlwind year of sightseeing, it’s been really wonderful having almost two weeks off work with no real plans.  So how did we pass the time between Christmas and now?  A good 4 solid days went into this:

Yep, that is a 5,000 piece puzzle (technically 5,040… we did the math).  Sadie now uses this as a nice spot to relax. 

Besides puzzling with either Home Alone or Kevin Allein zu Haus (the German version that plays on TV) on the television, we also made it to Tollwood with Ellen and Rüdiger to see a Finnish-inspired Czech circus, Slapstick Sonata.  It was definitely interesting, as you can probably imagine.  After the show, we dragged them out in the rain over to the Bavaria statue to try to get some photos of the Tollwood festival, but instead we only ended up with a good one of Bavaria.

On Christmas day, after spending the morning trying to recreate our Danish Ebelskivers without American buttermilk, we went over to Ellen and Rüdiger’s for a lovely Christmas dinner.  She made a venison stew, which was a real treat neither of us had tasted before.  It really is great having family in town for the holidays – especially when the town is thousands of miles from where you grew up.

Friday we were met with some unexpected visitors – a friend of ours we met in Arizona but who is also from Texas and went to UT.  Jennifer and her family are touring Europe, and decided to make a quick visit (really quick – I’m talking 5 hours total) to Munich.  And since we had no plans for the week, we were gladly available to be their tour guides for the afternoon.  

Yesterday the pups got a late Christmas present when Ellen and Rüdiger drove us out to Bernried at Starnberger See.  First we stopped at Wilhelmina Busch’s Castle Höhenried.  She was the co-heiress of the American Anheuser-Busch beer company.  She clearly lived well, and her estate is absolutely gorgeous.  Now it is home to a heart clinic, but her beautiful house remains separate - probably used for events.

Next stop – Bernrieder Park!  This was also owned by Wilhelmina Busch’s, and left to the public after her death.  All I can say to that is danke!  

And with that we will ring in the New Year tonight with the family – nothing too big, but then again that is how we wanted it for our vacation at home.  Happy New Year Y'all!

Pangea Party

With the departure of our American friends back in October, we have making an effort to be more social and meet new people.  Being internationals ourselves, we mostly interact with other internationals in and out of work.  So we straightened up the apartment and invited over our eclectic group of acquaintances for an international potluck dinner party.  We asked everyone to bring a representative dish from their home country so we could all share a taste of the world.

We invited a diverse group of people, and in the end the turnout was even better than I would have expected.  We had a total of 18 different countries represented, which meant an amazing spread of food and some really fun conversations.

We had arepas from Columbia, guacamole/salsa/beans to go with chips from California, Hungarian liquor and cakes, tiramisu from Italy, Turkish food from Turkey (yeah, we can’t remember the name), spanakopita from Greece, empanadas from Argentina, muhellabi milk pudding from Jordan, roasted duck from France, chicken nuggets/cookies/cupcakes from USA (us!), sushi from South Korea, potato and carrot stew from the Netherlands, liquor and cake from Estonia, and some filo dough pockets from our one German guest.

All in all, it was really cool to know we are not the only ones trying to figure out our way in a foreign county while learning the language.  Lucky for us, English tends to be the medium for most foreigners!