Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Lübeck (10.9.10)


Whew, today was an early morning. I woke up around 9 and ate some breakfast with the fam (you can guess what I had). They informed me they wanted to leave in a half hour to go to the Lübeck, where my host Mom  is from. It is located on the Baltic Sea. So I attempted to shower, but it was one of the worst showers. You know those showers where you are nauseated by the smell of your shampoo. Packing was the worst experience ever. I couldn’t stand long enough to get anything in my bag. So I packed very light haha. 

Oh and the drive there was absolute horror. Their driving makes me nervous normally, but today I was particularly sensitive. I slept the entire 3 hours to keep myself from getting sick. It was the worst drive of my life, all that speed up, slam on the brakes, rinse and repeat. Finally after what seemed like an eternity we got there. We checked into our hotel. I got a room, Thimo got a room, and Corry & Andre shared a room. It was hilarious. It looked as if my room was a broom closet compared to theirs. My door was even different than theirs. It had all the essentials, so that’s all that mattered to me.

We walked around Lübeck for the remainder of the day. We saw the store where they make marzipan. My host Mom informed me that it was invented there. After the war, they only had sugar and almonds, so they made this marzipan. It’s hard to explain to the taste, but it reminds me a bit of the filling in some candies. They had neutral flavor and ones that had flavorings such as caramel. The neutral flavor ones looked so amazing!! They were shaped and looked just like produce. They had potatoes, tomatoes, apples, etc. The detail on them were amazing! I bought a small potato. It looked 1000 times better than it tasted. It just really didn't have a lot of taste. But only from eating that tiny potato I realized you can't eat much of that stuff. I also had chocolate covered caramel flavored marpizan. It was much better than the neutral flavored one, but I’d still rather have a Milky Way any day :) Niederegger is the name of the famous company in Lübeck who makes it. Apparently, this stuff if very popular for Christmas. Let me know if you want some and I'll see what I can do. 

We also went to several stores in the area. We went past a little store, with fashion jewelry. Corry said, “Oh you should go in there.” Apparently I needed some accessories. They had a lot of cool necklaces and the like. Tons of people could pull them off and look super cute, but I’m not quite up on fashion. I found two that I like, so I purchased both. Jen, I haven’t decided, but you may be getting one :) My hostfamily approved of my purchases….finally haha. 

We ate dinner at the Kartoffelkeller, which means potato cellar. Every dish was centered around potatoes. There were so many to choose from, about 8 pages of things. I told my host Mom to pick one out for me. I had no idea, but apparently you have to close your menu in order for the waitress to come back to your table. I order a pretzel for an appetizer and then whatever dish Corry picked out for me. The pretzel came, and it had this dip with it. The dip is a version of quack. It’s a low fat dip, or so they say. It kind of reminds me of a chive flavor, almost with a runny yogurt texture. It was good, but these people eat this dip with a spoon even. It wasn’t that good. I was quite disgusted to watch Thimo eat this stuff like it was pudding. Oh and another realization: they won’t bring your food until you are finished with your appetizers. Wouldn’t that be nice if they did that in the US! I can’t count the number of times that my salad and meal come out within 5 minutes of each other. When they brought out our food, it still was piping hot though. It looked amazing!! All that cheese on top….and the best part….with slices of bacon on top! These people definitely speak my language! It was so delicious! Quite possibly the best potato dish I’ve ever had! I ate as much as I could, but it was huge! When the waitress came to take our plates away, she asked me if there was something wrong with it because I didn’t eat it all. Here you are pretty much expected to finish everything on your plate, or at least that has been my experience. Must be why I was always taught to eat everything on my plate growing up. At home, Dad serves as my garbage disposal; here Thimo fills the role perfectly. 

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel. It was crazy how cold it had gotten. I tried to work my study guide for Legal Traditions, but that just put me to sleep.

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