Despite the strike in Paris, we, by the grace of God, caught a day train to Munich where we met up with the couch surfer who was hosting us for the weekend. Staying with Elmar was a gift. He told us where to eat, what to order, how to get there, and generally made his “flat” our home. He even made us a Bavarian brunch (see above photo) complete with beer, pretzels, and a local white sausage that he explained must be eaten before noon (and I thought I had weird food rules!).

Staying in someone’s home gave me a taste for “real” German living quarters, and an appreciation for my kitchen at home. Above is a picture of Elmar’s kitchen – all 9 square feet of it. His fridge is smaller than my freezer, and his freezer is smaller than my ice maker. Even the stove was miniature! If I lived here, the line item in my budget for kitchen gadgets would be significantly reduced. Where would I store all my cool toys?

After reading my Paris post, you’re probably wondering where all the fun pictures of food are. When most people think of Germany, they think of beer. There’s a reason for this. Germans have yet to come up with anything else to add to the culinary conversation. That said, staying in Germany was tough for this foodie who had just ridden the wave of mouth watering croissants and delicious fresh-baked Parisian pastries. Germans like meat, potatoes, sauerkraut, and beer. Of this list, I like potatoes. You can see where we might have a problem.

Elmar insisted that as long as we were in Munich we had to go out to eat at a local guasthause and order pig’s knuckle (see above photo). Brant is Chinese and grew up eating all kinds of adventurous meats. I’m 100% apple-pie American, so I passed on the pig’s knuckle and ordered some other mystery meat instead. Dining in Germany was a culture shock in and of itself. When you arrive at a restaurant, you’re supposed to join others’ tables for dinner, and when you ask for bread, the waitress simply steps over to the next table, asks if they’re done with their basket of pretzels and then plops the half empty basket on your table. And free tap water? Forget it. It’s bottled water or beer – and they both cost the same amount.

While Germany doesn’t have great food, they do have castles! Loads of gorgeous, towering, rambling, out-of-a-fairy-tale castles. Beautiful castles surrounded by absolutely stunning countryside. So, while my mouth was disappointed, my eyes were feasting on turrets and moats and drawbridges…

You know that I’m longing for my own kitchen when I start taking pictures of pots and pans in the kitchens we see on castle tours.

When your husband is as slow of an eater as mine is, you have to make wise choices about how to spend meal time. If you aren’t careful, you’ll spend all day moving from breakfast to lunch to dinner and miss the major sites. We chose to eat “sandwiches” with bread, cheese, and salami every day for lunch so that we could walk and eat at the same time.

We took a day trip to Salzburg and deviated from the “sandwich plan” to eat lunch at a local restaurant. Salzburg is very touristy, but we were floored when we got our bill and the restaurant had charged us five euros (almost EIGHT dollars!) for this bottle of water!

Salzburg, home of the eight dollar bottle of water, was also the culmination of our search for European drinking chocolate. We had searched high and low in Paris and Munich for this very drink, and just as we were leaving Salzburg Brant saw a sandwich sign advertising Italian hot chocolate (the irony of Austria offering the best Italian chocolate I’ve ever had is not lost on me). We popped in, explained in broken German that we wanted a thick hot chocolate, and they provided us with heaven in a glass. Note the spoons – this is more like warm chocolate mousse than hot cocoa. We were delighted to finally find the hot cocoa of our dreams and promptly spent way too much money on a container of the mix to bring home. We can’t wait to replicate Italian sipping chocolate in our own home!

Next comes Venice, home of beautiful buildings, great food, and lots and lots of bridges.