Groceries in Germany

Every so often, readers ask me to describe how our life differs in Germany and the US.  While it’s impossible to say which is better, I do want to try to share the experiences.  For more scenes of life in Germany, you might enjoy A Typical Sunday in Berlin (when everything is closed), Making Sense of German Recycling (for all 10 piles we have to create!), and Setting Up a New Filing System (no more manilla folders?).  We’re drooling over today’s topic…

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Our favorite grocery store is probably a ten minute bike ride away.  It’s stocked with so many delicious foods that I love to unload the grocery bags right onto our counter so I can just stare at how much I got (for so little money!).  Martin looks over everything I have picked, licking his lips even at the sight of tomatoes.  Who licks their lips over tomatoes?!  Both of us in Berlin.

We went from living in the Rocky Mountains where we had to drive half an hour just to get to the grocery store to having little grocery shops, fruit markets, and organic grocery stores everywhere we look.  Living in such a huge community means high turnover, so our food is always incredibly fresh.  Our grocery store in the US did everything it could just to maintain a selection of food without everything spoiling.

fresh groceries

Today as Martin helped me hang my bike back up in our “double garage” in the apartment and eyed what I picked, he cheered.  He also groaned; I accidentally bought garlic and herb cream cheese.  Germans love garlic and onions in their cheeses.  But they also really like a lot of other delicious combinations of hard and soft cheeses – the sorts of things that you’d have to special order and pay half a fortune for in the United States.

Lunch becomes a simple thing at our house when we’re both home.  We don’t cook.  We cut up a plate full of vegetables like peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, fresh rye bread from the bakery, cheese, and pesto or hummus.  Everything is fresh, uncomplicated, and so unlike anything we experience in the countryside.  I couldn’t resist picking out this cheese today:

German cheese

It’s called “Halloweenkaese”.  It’s flavored with ginger and pumpkin.  Like I said – Germans like weird things in their cheese.  But oh my gosh – it tastes amazing.  This hunk, which is now a third consumed!, only cost two bucks.

I think I understand why Germans have such tiny fridges now.  Our fridge is the same size as the one I had in my college dorm room in the US!  We stocked up on fruits and vegetables in the United States and needed a huge fridge.  Here the food tastes so amazing right when you get it from the grocery store that, at least at our house, the frequent bike rides are well worth the added taste.