Discovering Deutschland

Hi everyone! As many of you know, I spent 12 days traveling all throughout Germany with my Learning Community class from Stonehill at the beginning of March. Throughout this trip, we went to five different cities within Germany, spending various amounts of time in each, with other stops along the way.

From Start to Finish they are:

Berlin
Erfurt
Nuremberg
Augsburg
Munich

We also visited other cities and towns but they were just stops in between the 5 mentioned above. These cities and places include:

Rothenburg, Andechs Monastery and Brewery, Colditz and Colditz Castle, Wartburg Castle and Monastery, Berchtesgaden, and Dachau.

All of these cities were unique in their own way. In each city, we did different things involving the renaissance and Martin Luther as well as Hitler and the Third Reich. Our 12 day adventure included a lot of walking, museums, and tours.

Other parts of our trip included shopping, exploring cities, as well as testing out a ton of restaurants and even a few bars. Let me tell you, the food we had there was very interesting.

For my family and friends who know how picky I am: In Germany, I definitely tried a lot of new and different food and drinks. Some of the new foods I tried include:

chicken liver, rabbit, potato dumplings, nuremberg sausages, sauerkraut, croissants, literal whole grain bread, a ton of pork, duck, various types of soup, fruit, chocolate, and some pretty amazing italian food along the way

Overall, the foods weren’t bad, but I definitely wouldn’t choose to eat them everyday. Although there were some nights where I was actually still hungry after dinner, I am grateful for my professors for forcing us to eat German foods. As much as I wish I could say I never consumed chicken liver, I’m glad I did because I was able to experience German culture. To me, it’s kinda crazy that people eat food like this but to them it’s normal. It makes me wonder what people think about American food??

Also, I’m sure your biggest question is: how’s the beer and the beer halls?! Here’s my answer:

Beer is way better and a hell of a lot stronger than the natty or bud lights we’re drinking here at school. They actually have a purity law which requires breweries to only include 4 ingredients in the beer. For someone who doesn’t like beer, my professor showed me Vice beer, which was pretty light and was the easiest to drink a 1/2 liter of before the end of dinner (it was rude not to drink the whole thing).
Beer halls are INSANE. They’re so loud and crazy but an absolutely awesome time. It seemed like the friendliest people we met in Germany were at the beer halls. When one of my class mates put on a lederhosen, the entire beer hall got up and cheered. It was very funny and a great atmosphere that I definitely recommend experiencing if you ever do go to Germany
Irish pubs are where the good times are. They’re small and homey with a great atmosphere and even better drinks. Baby Guinness shots and vodka oranges were my favorites and they were pretty cheap which was the best part. We went to Irish Pubs in 3/5 cities and at every one, someone bought us drinks because we were Americans which was awesome

So yeah, there’s your answer to your questions about food & drink in Germany. If you know me, you know I’m picky and I’m sure you were wondering how I managed to survive.

Getting back on topic….

Throughout this series of posts, I’m going to write about each of the specific cities we visited and talk a bit about what we did and how I liked it overall.

As I said before, each city was different. It had its own unique style and atmosphere, some being better than others. The look of the city, what I experienced while I was there, and the people we encountered were probably the determining factors as to how I felt about a particular city.

Overall, this is how I have decided to rate the cities we visited: 1 being the best and 5 being the worst.