EuroYankee

It hasn’t gotten above 75 degrees in August and has rained pretty much daily. The outlook puts the chance at rain between 90-99 percent every day through Sunday, which will make for a pretty miserable August. 

You probably thought from the title this post would be about misguided foreign policy decisions. Well, no. It’s about food. No matter how disgusting one might find U.S. politics, we must not forget that delicious food is getting served up daily in homes and diners everywhere.

And I’m missing out.

I think that pining for food from home unites every ex-pat. Try as one might to replicate national dishes, it just doesn’t quite turn out the same. And strangely, these are usually dishes that don’t seem particularly attractive when actually at home (macaroni and cheese being the best example.) Baking is impossible. So many factors go into a sugar cookie that it’s impossible to know if there’s any one cluprit that makes them turn out flat and brittle. Could be the weird shortening or the undecipherable oven settings or that mysterious Type 405 flour.

Yet thanks to globalization it’s getting easier to find ingredients and junk food. Yes, we have Oreos and Pepsi and Cheetos and boxed Macaroni with orange cheese powder (although only a generic Kraft knockoff.) The Holy Grail of missing American junk food remains Reeses, which Europeans (correctly) believe to be unedibly sweet. But I’m sure those will make it here soon as well.

There’s one beloved U.S. (or maybe it’s more North American? Do Canadians eat s’mores?) food that I’ve been wanting for the past year and a half. S’mores. To me, this food combo brings back memories of many a campfire. Plus, although many would disagree, I consider myself something of a marshmallow roasting expert. You will find no flaming charred marshmallows at the end of my stick. No sir.

Anyway, I brought back graham crackers from the U.S. and the other day found marshmallows for sale in a weird furniture store that shouldn’t have been selling marshmallows. So now all I need is something that approximates Hershey’s chocolate and something that produces fire and some sticks and I’m set. Yum yum.

Decided to make a Sunday outing to Bruhl, a town between Bonn and Cologne which is easy to reach by train. Bruhl has only three things going for it: a castle, Phantasialand (an amusment park) and the Max Ernst Museum. Not up for rollercoasters or sliding around a hunting castle in oversized slippers, we went to the museum.

Max Ernst is originally from Bruhl and about a year ago, they opened a small museum entirely devoted to him . It was delightful and completely changed my impression of this artist. Until now, most of what I’d seen were his dadist works and the only thing I knew about him was that he was briefly married to Peggy Guggenheim. Turns out he was an amazing painter and illustrator who made a lot of really beautiful, bizarre sculptures.

After, we did take a little stroll around the castle grounds. To me, the castle looked exactly like the one in Bonn, which now houses the University. The grounds were nice, with some big trees. Bruhl gets an overall thumbs up, although it has a reputation for being a lame place to live. Still, for tourist attractions it does all right.