Fat Bastard

It is Saturday afternoon and we are waiting for Annika's parents to join us in the flat.  I am watching the snow from the lounge room window.  Big fat flakes swirling around on their inevitable journey to the ground.  Yesterday we went into town to register ourselves with the Einwohnermeldeamt.  (In Germany you have to register your change of address with the local bureaucracy.)   From there we had a general wander around and ended up at the markets in the altstadt.  These markets have been around for hundreds of years and were the city residents primary means of buying food.  They are fantastic.  The quality and variety of foods is wonderful to behold but is cause for concern.  I can foresee that one of the problems we will face living in Munich will be avoiding the potential gain in body mass.  There is a popular misconception that the German diet is mainly made up of pork, potatoes, bread, sauerkraut and beer.  This is not exactly true because cake also features quite heavily in there as well.

So here lies the dilemma. The food and drink in Munich is good and inexpensive but not necessarily what a dietician would recommend.  Take the simple bread roll (brotchen) for instance.  Back home they are fairly innocuous, not unappetising but certainly nothing to walk two miles through snow for.  In Germany the simple brotchen comes in many shapes, sizes and varieties, all of them delicious.  Your basic white brotchen costs 15 cents, is baked fresh with a crisp light crust and is soft white and fluffy inside.  Add a slice of paper thin schinken and some emental cheese and it is almost impossible to only eat one in a sitting.  Don't even get me started on bretzels.

This cheery little chap is going to be my nemesis

Then there is the beer. Beer is abundant, easily accessible, of exceptional quality and really cheap.  The other day I lashed out and went upmarket, buying a six pack of 500mL  Paulaner for less than it would cost me for one bottle back home.  How I am going to resist the temptation to drink beer and eat breztel every day?