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The Things We Miss

Welcome “Oh God My Wife Is German” readers! I know you just got treated with one of his finest once again, which is hard to compete with. But I gave it a shot and here the version of the “evil mirror image”…

Background info for other readers:
The other day I reached out to the author of the Oh God My Wife Is German blog, asking him if there are any products he misses from his home – the USA – as well as products he would miss from Germany if he would ever move back. He’s American and lives in Germany. My counterpart… or “evil mirror image” as he would put it. If you have not heard of his blog yet, you are really missing out on some serious culture shock fun. Anyway, after reading his response to my questions, I got inspired to turn this thing around and answer the same questions from my perspective, living in HIS country. So, here you go…

What food I miss from Germany

Number one would be real German bread. Delicious fresh baked bread with lots of seeds, a nice crunchy crust and made by the local bakery. In America bread is this soft and sweet spongy stuff that holds the guts of your sandwich together – a necessary evil, so nobody really spends a lot of time on trying to make it taste better. It’s like the shell of a pill. You can see it, it holds the essential ingredients, but you don’t taste it and it eventually dissolves in your stomach. Nothing more. And even if it would taste like actual bread, you wouldn’t be able to tell, because your sandwich is loaded with 27 slices of ham and cheese. Not to mention the decorative leaf of lettuce. A little bit of green gets the healthy people on board!

Delicious pastry from my favorite German bakery – Bäckerei Rieser in Simmerberg

Delicious pastry from my favorite German bakery – Bäckerei Rieser in Simmerberg

Pastries come right after great bread. Again, the crust of German pastries alone tastes delicious, so everthing that comes with it like Quark (greek yogurt) and other sweet ingredients are complementing it. In the USA, it’s all about the filling. Everything tastes like an overdose of sugar or artificial sweeteners and often times Americans just eat the filling and leave the rest on the plate. I miss authentic

German beer that is brewed with just the core essentials – water, malt and hops. Americans have a few good breweries here, but there is also so much crap out there in bottles with cool designs. And some beers gets poisoned with stuff like the all so popular High Fructose Corn Syrup, Caramel flavoring and various GMO ingredients. German cheese that stinks so bad, you think you eat from the bottom of a trash can. But it’s oh so good and the best ones are made with raw milk. That cheese kicks the socks off every lactose intolerant American. I still don’t get it how Americans are so obsessed with cheese when they have never tasted good cheese right from the cheesemaker. They just love the idea of cheese and put it on everything. It even comes out of spray cans for extra convenience.

Überraschungseier
For people who don’t know what that is, it’s a toy/chocolate combination from KINDER (Ferrero brand), that looks like an egg. I can’t believe this product is banned in the USA, just because some fat kids swallow the whole thing as a whole including the toy inside and eventually choke on it. And as soon as Mommy and Daddy are done patting junior on the back, they are going for their first million by suing the manufacturer. That’s America. If there’s no warning on the product about any possible misuse, somebody will do something stupid with it and blame the manufacturer.

The evil Überraschungsei (~Surprise Egg). The surprise is that you choke on the toy inside when you're too greedy.

The evil Überraschungsei (~Surprise Egg). The surprise is that you choke on the toy inside when you’re too greedy.

Everything that Ferrero has every produced.
Not Ferrari… Ferrero Chocolate.

Chocolate with Schnaps inside
Another product that I’ve heard is banned in some states. Probably because (once again) fat kids don’t read and eat it because it’s …..mmmmmm… chocolate. If they eat the whole box (hopefully not the packaging) they are in for their very first hangover.

What food I would miss from USA

Wow, that is so sad. I really had trouble coming up with something for at least 5 minutes. I would probably miss certain protein bars that I got so used to, or Hummus. But I’m sure as soon as I would be in Germany and be exposed to all this German delicious goodness, I would quickly find 5 replacements for both Hummus and protein bars and never look back.

BBQ everything, and I’m sure I haven’t even had the really good BBQ sauces from Texas. But it’s all better than what the Germans label as BBQ sauce. It’s more than just ketchup with a kick.

What products I miss from Germany

Cheap deodorant that works and doesn’t stick or leave white marks. For example the Nivea deo rollers. Nivea sells all kinds of stuff in the USA, just not deodorant. I don’t get it. I pay pennies for a great name brand deodorant in Germany compared to what they charge for nasty Axe or Speed Sticks here in the US. Maybe that’s the whole secret why people religiously keep everything air conditioned to 70 degrees: If you don’t get sweaty, you don’t need to buy a lot of deodorant.

Solid built houses
Houses built with bricks from the ground up and not just at the front for decorative purposes. Buildings that can withstand heavy winds without having to call a roofer the next day. I also don’t need to hear every fart from my neighbors, because the thin walls are as useful as a shower curtain.

What products I would miss from USA

Okay, this is not a product, but I would really miss the original voices of movie and TV show actors (German voice overs SUCK!! Do you know how irritating it is to get used to Schwarzenegger’s German voice over and then hear the same voice on several other actors?  I mean, listening to Arnold speak English is worth the admission. Voice overs don’t just translate the actors, they also turn really good jokes into pretty lame German jokes, that are related to things Germans know. Long story short, I couldn’t watch an American movie or TV show in Germany anymore, if I would have to listen to these awful voice overs. I swear there are two voices that I hear in every single movie or episode!

Cheap gas
Gas is so cheap here, that I am tempted to just leave my car running 24/7. It would never get too cold or too warm again, the AC set perfectly to 70 degrees. All kidding aside, I’ve seen people who walk into a building and don’t come back for 30 minutes while their car is idling. One day I’m going to hop into one of these cars and park it around the corner, just to mess with them. And I will turn off the engine of course.  Others press a button on their remote to start their cars while they are having breakfast or taking a shower, so that their car is perfectly air conditioned by the time they get in. So yes, gas is very cheap here and my wallet would definitely miss it.

If you love posts like this make sure to check out Tips from an American Expat: Everyday Products You’ll Miss after Moving to Germany from the Oh God My Wife Is German blog. Some of you will lie on the floor laughing, I promise.

4 Responses to “The Things We Miss”

  1. Great post, Dan! I totally forgot about real German bread. Damn! 🙂

  2. Mark Gerbacker says:

    The surprise caption was hillarious

  3. Dana says:

    Of course the Überraschungseier is banned in the US. We are very excitable eaters. It probably failed the first few field tests in America because we just opened it up and gobbled the whole thing down. Then the guy testing the product asked “and did you like the toy inside?” American: “Toy? What toy?” Down the hatch 😀

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