An Educational Momment: Brotchen

Brotchen is what we call the little bread that people eat here. There are different names for it all throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland and I'll tell you those once I find the book from my last German course (honestly, my room is better suited to a field mouse the way I keep it).

Back in December, when I was paying the Cologne Wheinachts Markts a visit, I ended up buying the bread for our little slumber party group. I don't know the names of any of these little breads, nor do I really care to learn. I mean, there's the one covered in sesame seeds, the whole wheat one with pumpkin seeds, the boring white kind, the pretzel kind, etc., so why bother with naming them with such litotes as Kaiser Brot?

When I was instructing the lovely baker woman as to which ones I would like, she deemed it an appropriate time to inform me of the breads' names to which I pointed with a tone that implied I should repeat, so as to learn the name. Between those awkward pauses I'd give a few, "Ja. Genau. Ich möchte das da." and wonder, 'Why does she have to exacerbate things if all this hungover, non-German kid wants to do is buy bread?' Even if I'd had my Vocab Diary back then, I wouldn't've bothered to write down such scrap. Eventually victorious, but feeling slightly deprecated, I marched back to the building where myself and the other kiddos were shacked up. Feeling that I had to prove a point to myself, I asked my lovely host if he knew the names of all the breads.

"Why, of course!", he quickly replied, "This one is Kaiser Brot and this here is...."

"That's enough, Ulf."

If I lived in France, everything would be a baguette and we'd all be settled and fine and happy.

Now some pictures of Brotchen. It says "Moss" all over the place because that's the name of this particular bakery chain.

^ Germany's lame excuse for a baguette. ^

^ These are pretty typical German breakfast stuff. ^

<-- and a wide array here. There's some more in the back.