Things that I never found...

Okay, so the most obvious thing I didn't bring back from Germany was something cuddly to occupy either of the two empty seats next to me on the plane, and I don't mean something I could win at the Cannstatter Volksfest. There were a few other things I expected to put into my suitcase for the trip home, but which somehow eluded me:

1. Really delicious sour pickles.

For all the hype around Spreewaldgurken and Germany's close proximity to Poland, I was never able to find pickles like Bick's Polskie Ogorki or the varieties of Vlasic Pickles that I love here. The pickles that I either bought or sampled were always too mild, even if they were labeled as "knackig und würzig."



2. Benco distance cards.

One very nifty thing I received from Dad before my trip (along with some Euros in order to borrow a cart in the Stuttgart Airport) was a simple map of Germany printed on a cardboard sleeve with distances marked on a slidable card inside. By sliding the card, you can pick a start location and the distance to a destination is shown through a hole in the card--a nice piece of functional art (and a gift I would like to give--they exist for many countries). The card my dad gave me was from the days of the DDR (distances to East German destinations took the limited number of border crossings into account), making it a great piece of history, to boot. Even the stores I visited which specialized in maps (Schropp in Berlin and Dr. Götze in Hamburg) didn't carry the Benco cards, so I came home empty-handed. A company called Hallwag makes regular folding maps with a distance card integrated into it (branded as Disto-Guide), and make such maps for many countries. I found a map of Denmark for a friend of mine, a nice item which features Danish, French, English and German in its legend.

3. Redoxon Vitamin C effervescent tablets.

For a long time, I've taken my vitamin C in effervescent tablet form, a brand called Redoxon being both available and having an acceptable flavour. The tablets are quite expensive (about $3.00 for a sleeve of 10 tablets) and since they are made in France by Bayer, I was hoping to run across some. Well, no Bayer products, but effervescent tablets are popular in Germany--I found tubes of 20 multivitamin tablets for about one Euro a crack.

4. Germans Under Cover

An earlier post on this Blog from Roy Black and an invitation to meet him in Berlin never materialized, which I suppose, but the worst part is that the great Schlager music he shared (perhaps illegally) is no longer available for download, nor is the savage commentary about it. If you're out there, Roy, please get your commentary back online! The music you posted lives on in my iPod!

In any case, my favourite piece of German cover version Schlager nostalgia is this priceless clip from a 70s German music show, where the duo of Cindy and Bert synthesize contemporary fashion, Arthur Conan Doyle and Black Sabbath.


At the Museum für Film und Fernsehen in Berlin, there is a room filled with TVs where visitors can call up old TV programs, including full episodes of shows like this one. A can't miss for Germanophiles.