Eating
The last time we went to Germany, admittedly many years ago, eating was all about sausages. I remember bockwurst, bratwurst weisswurst and of course weiners or frankfurters. They must all still be there but I didn’t see any. Instead we found cafes selling excellent coffee and lots of soup and cream cakes! German cream cakes are bigger and better than most I’ve seen and they taste even better than they look!
Did find something I’ve never seen before, schneeballen. I think they are a local delicacy. They look amazing and I just had to have one but the taste doesn’t live up to the expectation. Quite nice but not amazing. We had planned to take some home but decided not to bother. Shortcrust pastry is cut into strips and formed into a ball then deep fried (didn’t know about the deep frying until after I’d eaten it!).
The basic recipe is just a covering of sugar but shops sell a huge variety of types covered with chocolate and nuts. You have to break the ball up to eat it so its quite messy!
And Drinking
Something that isn’t a disappointment is a Rudesheimer coffee. It tastes delicious but the main attraction is the little ceremony that takes place when it is served.
Three cubes of sugar are placed in a special cup and soaked in a miniature of Asbach, the local brandy. This is set on fire and the sugar dissolves. Hot coffee is added topped with sweetened cream.
So you get a delicious sweet hot coffee with lots of cream. What more could you want?
The Rhine valley area of Germany is well known for its wine. All along the river you can see the steep vineyards and everywhere serves the local wine at good prices. A great discovery for us was the local blanc de noir wine. We had never heard of this but found out that if red grapes are fermented without contact with the skins you get white wine made from red grapes or blanc de noir. Highly reccomended especially from the wine stall that is open in the early evenings in Rudesheim town square.
As you can see we went on more than one evening.
