Ah, the finer things in life. Or maybe not. So here’s my rant. A local grocery store is having a special on all things American starting next week.

Sadly, one look at the specials listed on their advertisement the impression is clear: American cuisine equals junk food.

Germany’s image of a typical American’s diet is a hard but overstretched reality: Millions of Americans starting their days off with either donuts, muffins, bagels or pancakes and sometime within the week hot dogs, hamburger buns, popcorn shrimp and platefuls of barbecue spare-ribs will be consumed.

But the hunger doesn’t stop there. We’ll gorge on american pizza and sandwich pickles, guzzle down blueberry and cranberry juice, and we aren’t ashamed to dip our grubby index fingers into an open jar of peanut butter and once our digits are clean we’ll lean back and smack our lips together in sugary nirvana.

But of course, you couldn’t let us forget the American all-time diabetic favorites: jelly beans, marshmallows and brownies.

It really is all too much. Behind every unhealthy and poor, nutritionally valued food substance you smugly decorate it with the American flag as if to say, “This wasn’t our idea.” I’m half embarrassed. Sugary items, refined grains, starchy and sodium polluted snacks: Is this what America really has to offer to the world? Or is this what you really sarcastically think America has to offer?

Okay, so maybe it’s true we eat individually almost 300 tortillas and 23 pounds of pizza per year*. We know these junk foods, those you want to sell so badly here, are bad for us, for you, for everyone. But this food is in the US, we developed it and now it’s an addictions we have to deal with. So I’m baffled. Why, Germany, with the negative stigma these food carry, why would you feed this food to yourselves?

Okay. I’ll give you some credit. I myself am having a hard time thinking up of typical or commonly known American foods that would be consider mildly healthy. How ’bout them tortillas? Or pecans and cashews? It’s not on your list, but how about soybeans?

Yet, I forgive Aldi. Germany may have a weakness for life’s seductions. Who can fault them or us? And anyone who believes scones are American is clearly confused.

Breakfast on our balcony. Alex makes a heart in his tea.

Grilling for two on the Isar river. Things we (I) forgot: fire and plates. Time to cook: 35 minutes. We watched a group of three try get their fire going for over an hour. I’m now a believer of Metzger steak, esp. with Bärlauch marinade. After dinner, I heated stones over the hot coals. I handed one to a cute older couple.

Eva and Me - City Mädchen. Behind us is Rapeseed (used to make canola oil). We rode to Lake Starnberg and then over to Schäflarn. More highlights on my travel blog to come.

One of the wonders we discovered on our bike trip of the terrain between Munich and Lake Starnberg. We also saw a frog crossing sign but missed the photo op.

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I asked Alex what that meant, to knock. He told me the audience knocks as a sign of being satisfied with the speaker. It’s very rare that the students don’t knock after a lecture. Perhaps the students felt a little lambasted.

Mr. Mentor did stop the lecture twice to pick out a few students for being rude and speaking over people trying to ask questions. I thought hooray! It was true the class was noisy and I gave up most of the time trying to decipher the conversation through the Deutsche-babble.

Well maybe he did go overboard by tossing a 1-cm piece of chalk at the annoying guy with the white and black checkered glasses. Finally karma has struck! So far I’ve tried three times to sit away from this yammer kid but still he and his female cackling brude vex me.

I must say I’m very please with myself that the gears that work out linear algebra in my brain are turning once again. There was a period or so in the last years when I looked at a derivative or an integral and felt amnesia and nausea. I guess all wasn’t lost. I just needed a refresher.

So after the class let out and a visit to the bathroom, I discovered that I was locked in the building. All doors are locked after 9pm except for the one on Arcis Street, another block away from the subway stop I wanted to take. Mist!

I looked for another way to exit the maze, maybe a door ajar, but found myself several times alone in pitch black hallways. It was the first time in awhile I felt my imagination take hold of me. Don’t ask me why, but I was reminded of Stephen King’s, The Shining. Thank god for modern technology. I called Alex for moral support until I reached some sort of random hall party. geesus. more movie parallels? just keep going. All I wanted was to get home.

There was some relief when I found the library and people that actually looked like students again. I managed my way outside of the building and ran across the Pinakothek museum lawn to the tram stop and sat next to a nicotine addicted lady who ignored the no smoking law at public transportation stops.

Whatever. I’m outside and on my way home, I thought. I pulled out The Gordian Knot by Bernhard Schlink (in German) and sunk into another world until the tram and subway took me home.

Artist: Virginia Jetzt
Title: Das Ganz Normale Leben