April 21, 2019
Day 34: Markranstadt
Joinng the family at dinner last night and at breakfast, I had occasion to remark that sometimes when one visits a foreign country one will sample the local food out of curiosity and politeness, but really the food at home is your main staple. But in Europe, we don't eat the local food out of curiosity and politeness. Rather we prefer it. Dining with the family, we get a simulation of living with this food all the time. Sign us up!
One link that we had yet to arrange was the train trip from Leipzig to Frankfurt. We left this to our expert consultants, Jurgen and Anya. They did it on their big internet enabled TV, making it a pleasant chore, though even they did scratch their heads a few times on the Deutsche Bahn web site. But they successfully printed our e-tickets. No nonsense here about DB helpfully sending the tickets to Canada!
Our train is not until 3 tomorrow, so there is time in the morning in Leipzig. We will use that for the visit to the Easter market. Today, we set off on a leisurely walk around Markranstadt. Markranstadt is most a suburb of Leipzig, and it is a basic workaday town. There are no really dramatic buildings to photograph, and it's a good bet that we are the only tourists in town, so no people watching.
But it was fun to be part of Birgit and Jurgen greeting people on the street. We walked into a central restaurant at noon, finding only one or two tables occupied. An earnest conversation ensued between Jurgen and the lady host. I couldn't make it out and I am not sure I understand the subsequent explanation. Since this is Easter, we would not have been surprised to learn that we needed a reservation, and on that basis to be dumped back on the street. But the lady had a different variant. I think it was that the staff had only enough strength (or food?, nah) for a certain number of guests. Because they were overworked and underpaid, they were unwilling to do the stretch and sell four more lunches. So therefore, we were out on the street.
But ah, the wonders of competition. We cruised on to the town Greek restaurant. Here we were welcomed and seated no problem. And I had no problem identifying my favourite dish in any restaurant: Hähnchenbrustfilet mit Pommes. So that's what I said to the young server. She was of Greek origin, but has been here 17 years, most of her life. Her response was the equivalent of "say what?". I repeated more slowly, to give her a chance. Puzzlement. Jurgen stepped in to save the day, and then he and Birgit explained the problem. See that umlaut over the a in Hähnchen? It turns the "hawn" into a "hen", and hen is what we want to eat! "Hawn" is getting dangerously close to "ente" or "entchen", apparently, in the way I said it. Ente is a duck, and Jurgen claimed the girl was guessing I wanted the grilled duck, which they do not have! But fear not, I have bookmarked the umlaut section in "learn german easily dot com" and maybe soon I will be an expert on the whole darn trio: ä ö ü !
We toddled back home, but soon set off again, this time for the home of Karla and Joachim (Joe), Marius' parents. Karla and Joe sat us in the shade at their place, and Karla brought out far more of baked goods than four people could eat in a week. Actually, they will have to work on it, because they are leaving for a Canadian trip in four days! The baking included Leipsig "lerchen" which is a true local specialty, being a "kuchen" with a centre of marzipan.
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We returned to Jurgen and Birgit's place, where once again parts of the family were to gather, for a BBQ. It was a special event this time, sort of held for us, and for Joe and Karla. We were impressed to see that a goodly portion of the guests arrived by bicycle.
Jurgen had assembled a variety of meats to go onto the charcoal, including marinated pork, chicken, weiss wurst, and a kind of cheese made for BBQ. The chicken was, yes, Hähnchenbrust, spawning another round of pronunciation discussion. Once we were at it, we analysed some other of the meat packages, like the rainbow trout - Regenbogenforellen!
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Karla and Joe have made repeated trips to Canada, which is easily explained by their son Marius being there. But I still asked Joe how he felt to be heading out next week to the land of poor food. Joe's reply was instructive. He denied that food is poor in Canada, citing for example large and excellent steaks, and our west and east coast salmon. In fact Karla had run into a classic "no photos" confrontation at a butcher near our house. Karla was trying to show the folks back home how insanely large steaks are in Canada. That is entirely analogous to me trying to capture the beauty of baked goods in Germany. Every tourist sees something special in the land they visit, and locals tend to not see what all the fuss is about.
The family here is really tightly knit, we think showing a venerable bit of village culture. The only one who "flew the coup" was Christian, who landed up at our house and ultimately in our town, creating the link that brought us here. But sitting with the family, we miss him as they do. Fortunately there is Skype, and it allowed him to sit with us all, for a while anyway.
When it was finally time to break it up, Oma said to me "Auf Wiedersehen, gute Reise" (goodbye, good trip). I am sure that if we had an Oma to speak to us, especially if she would speak as to children, we would learn the language quickly. Anyway, Auf Wiedersehen und Dankeschön, Oma.
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