matters of taste

Germany doesn't usually come to mind when one thinks of gastronomic delights. Yet for me, one of the great pleasures of going to my home country is always eating. So many things I love are made and sold in the right way only in that country. Last weekend in Heidelberg, I had plenty of time to sample the riches.

• Germany is full of bakeries. This is good when you want to buy bread. Germans love bread so much that every supermarket has a bakery associated with it. Only very few people buy the factory bread that the store itself sells.
• Very many people, in contrast, get up a bit early on Saturday and Sunday to walk down to the nearest bakery, which is usually not more than a few minutes away, and buy fresh rolls for breakfast. Some bakeries open only for the morning rush on Sundays.
• Besides the bakeries that bake breads and similar items, there are pastry shops, which emphasize the cake-and-sweets aspect of baking. The cakes can be amazing!
• Germany has American-style coffee shops for the hip crowd but I much prefer old-school cafés. The older the clientele and the more out-of-date the decor, the better. The best of these cafés are part of the above-mentioned pastry shops. We went to one in Neustadt that looked so painfully unhip, I could see only one reason why people would patronize it, great cakes. I wasn't disappointed.
• Italian migrants have opened a million gelaterias. Every town center has plenty of them and people eat ice cream all the time. There's nothing that says summer more convincingly than a cone of lemon freshness, especially if it pours buckets.

You can tell already that I had a sweet weekend, but there was more.

• On the trip back to the airport and then at the airport itself, I realized that most of the little stalls and shops where you buy snacks sell sandwiches of fresh bread rolls filled with cheese, cold cuts, salami or ham. Tasty and healthy, though no one would buy them for the second reason.
• Another fine thing to do with a bread roll is slap a pickled herring, a slice of gherkin and a good serving of raw onion in it. Do it in the morning and sell it as Fischbrötchen in the afternoon. They're best when they're stewed for hours in their own juices.
• Besides the stalls selling freshly made sandwiches, there are those grilling sausages over charcoal. Every region has its own sausages, but the best (from Thüringen!) are available everywhere.
• With a sausage, nothing is better than a cold beer. In Germany, you can have that anywhere – in the University cafeteria, in the market square next to the church, in a garden by the river, and on any domestic Lufthansa flight. Prosit!
• May is spargel season, which extends far into June this year because of the dreary weather. White asparagus is everywhere, for sale in roadside stalls and on special menus in every restaurant. Cooked the same day it was picked it is a heavenly treat.

None of the above involves supermarkets, which tend to be dismal experiences. Food prices are the lowest in Europe, but the quality often reflects that and the presentation is dreadful. You scour what you need from cartons strewn about. Price is king. Other variables don't enter the equation.