November welcome week

This is my class, well, most of my class. The Willy Brandters of 2015. The final tally I believe was 74 students from approximately 35 countries (but whose counting?). This picture is from our Welcome Reception this past Wednesday after more than 5 weeks of classes. It was quite an event, hence the fancy clothes. We had some big wigs of the university, the historical society, and from the major money donors of the school come and give some context to the school and it's icon, Willy Brandt. This was followed with an excellent buffet including salad and dessert and unfortunately only one complimentary champagne. There were a lot of photos taken by a professional photographer and others and they may crop up here later once I find any good ones of me. The professional setting here eventually dissolved as the night wore on, and many of us ended up going to the Kicker Keller, an underground bar in the center of town that features cheap drinks and free foosball (provided you pay 8euros for a year long membership card). It was pretty fun seeing so many people with dresses, suit jackets, and ties at a dive bar playing surrounding a foosball table. It's unreal how good some Germans are at foosball, and they have some interesting rules for each game. For example, when one team scores, they pull the ball out and place it at the feet of the team which just got scored on, to serve as a kickoff like it real soccer. Secondly, there is a pretty informal system of knocking the table with your knuckles to signal your intention to play the next game. This often leads to confusion (especially with drinks in hand) because multiple knock at several different times and then arguments break out for who is actually supposed to play. The quarter system in the US is pretty handy, but doesn't really apply when all the games are free. But damn do they respect the foosball table there- everything was well oiled and felt amazing.

Urgent! Tortilla Update!

In a recent post I sort of went off on how disappointed I was in the Mexican food here, but things are actually looking up and I thought my blog needed an update: I finally found a shop that supplies some pretty decent tortillas, of the Poco Loco variety. They were thicker, softer, and held their own when filled with the standard burrito affair. So for now, I can rest assured that my burrito cravings will go satisfied. Soon I will have to create my favorite recipe, the breakfast burrito. Although I'm probably going to need to adjust the recipe to fit my new environment. Germany is famous for it's sausages, so these might have to fall under the meat lover's category of B.Burrito

More city pics!

I've taken a few more pictures of the city but I forgot to take some of the university grounds. The weather has actually been pretty warm and not too rainy. Supposedly this time last year, there was already snow on the ground so we've been fortunate.

Late night walk through downtown

These are 3 liter bottles of booze. The double handle

The forest park nearby our apartment has a bunch of old water work facilities and pipelines coming out of it. 

Big boring apartment buildings

 

Some raw buildings around town, but I kinda like spooky post industrial vibe they give

Old hospital right next to the university. You can walk right up to the partially boarded up front door and peek inside

Döners and Nachos

Well school has been progressing nicely so far. 3 weeks in and not too much stress yet, so that has been nice. I'm going to sign up for 3 German classes so I think I will be able to improve my language skills very quickly. Bonus.  I got a little more practice in this week when Erika and I went to a "Neu in Erfurt" Facebook group meeting. Basically you go and meet some other people who are interested to make new friends and then have some dinner. It was a group of about 30-40 people and we went to a pretty nice restaurant in the center of town. It had all kinds of food and drinks on hand, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I ordered an appetizer of "Nachos" with "scharf Soße" (spicy sauce). Now, I've already had some questionable experience with Mexican food here in Germany. Last year I went to a Mexican restaurant in Freiburg and spent way too much money for what I deemed as mid-quality Mexican food. It was good, but it wasn't any special, and for $20 a plate, I was relatively disappointed. I've tried making Mexican food here too, but I can only find 1 brand of tortillas in any of the grocery stores and it is complete shit. They come in a 4 pack for 2 euros or so, but each one is just so thin and brittle that it's impossible to roll anything up in them. We tried making some bean and rice burritos with a few veggies in it and the veggies burst through the shell in 8 different places and I ended up with a taco salad. But despite these failures, I still love Mexican food so I really hoped this fancy restaurant would do me a solid and lay out some serious nachos. But, I was wrong again. Nachos here consist of someone opening up a bag of mostly broken tortilla chips (the same tortilla chips that I buy at the grocery store for 90cents)  and dumping them on a plate. And the spicy sauce was actually just a smallish bowl of not spicy tomato sauce, but sweet and sour sauce. The exact same sweet and sour sauce you get at any crappy Chinese restaurant. No tomatoes, no sour cream, no olives, no cheese, nothing remotely related to American, or Mexican as far as I know, nachos. 4 euros of Supreme Disappointment. It actually made me sad. I know I probably should have read the description more carefully, and I could have even had the waiter take it back and get something else for me, but I didn't know how to ask politely in German, and I didn't want to be "That guy" in front of new acquaintances. I'm never ordering Mexican food here again. I'm really going to miss eating it too, but it's just not worth it even trying to eat it when I'm only going to be disappointed.

BUT this has given me a new long term goal here: I want to open a Döner and Nacho shop. I know very little about operating a food business, but I think my idea is a winner. Don't get me wrong, döner here is excellent, it fills every happy receptor in both my brain and my mouth, but the one thing thats missing is the right hot sauce to go with it. Some stores offer the crushed red peppers to sprinkle in with the mix, but that never quite gets the right spice spread evenly throughout the whole thing (I forgot to mention that the dough they use can be made into a REAL tortilla like dough, or can be made into a pita bread style). I was thinking more along the lines of Sriracha or even some solid tasbasco-esque hot sauce, or even some hot shit like Blairs for the tough guys. There is usually a fair about of garlic cream sauce they add into the standard döner that it should create a really nice mix of flavors. AND on the side you can also order some serious nachos with all the good fixings, but maybe instead of ground beef or something they can use some of the same döner meat to reduce costs. There are already plenty of pizza and döner and even noodle options at all the shops I've been to, but I think my shop could seriously make some money. This is of course, my plan for after I work elsewhere and have some stable income...