Weapon of mass multiplication*

Yes, I know what it looks like (poo. It looks like poo.), but hold the judgement until you've tasted one. It's called a Granatsplitter, which translates to grenade splinter, and it's an ingenious way of recycling and selling bakery scraps. The bakers take the leftover dough from pies/cakes/whatever, mix it up with a bit (or sometimes a lot) of alcohol, and dunk it in chocolate. YUM.

And then you buy one, eat it, and spend the next half hour contemplating whether this was the best or the worst decision of your life. Then you realize that you need a larger sample size to draw a reliable conclusion and are forced to repeat the process. The travail of the scientific method, I tell you.

For the longest time I couldn't remember the name of these delectable... piles... and I was forced to develop a memory aid, which went as follows: "If you eat too many of these, you're going to be a real granite splitter." Granite splitter = Granatsplitter. And that's what you call a mnemonic device, kids.

*by which I mean that these top the list of "Things That Would Make Me Fat If I Spent Too Long in Germany."

The day of reckoning

Part of moving is rediscovering all the stuff you thought you would someday find a use for and coming to the realization that there never was one and that you're just a hoarder. For me, that meant finding these:

Now, some (most?) people would have just sighed and thrown them out. But others, with inquiring minds and an abundance of time, might decide to sort and count them and tabulate the results for... posterity? Sure! So, out of 183 Ritter Sport bars consumed by yours truly (with some assistance, I hope and presume) in the period between January 2011 and August 2012,

42 were Halbbitter*
41 were Marzipan
20 were Mousse au Chocolat
15 were Nougat
12 were Noisette
8 were Olympia
7 were Pfefferminz
7 were Amarena Kirsch, and
31 were something else (aka the lesser Ritter Sport flavours)

Would you like to see that represented as a pie chart? Of course you would!

Unfortunately there are some weaknesses in this study. I didn't save every wrapper - some were lost in transit. Some of the wrappers (and the chocolate they once contained) were won in bets, meaning that the contents did not accurately represent my preferences, but rather those of the bet loser. However, I think that the sample size is sufficient to compensate for the effects of these factors.

*Halbbitter chocolate therefore mathematically = the meaning of life.

Heaven on Earth

After you see the Fernsehturm and the Brandenburg Gate (or before - I'm not judging), you should probably head on over to Ritter Sport World.

You can buy Ritter Sport in the Schokoladen.

You can eat food and drink beverages made with Ritter Sport in the Schoko-café.

 

And you can learn things about Ritter Sport (like how they make it and why it's

called "Sport") in the little museum. So it's *cough* an educational trip.

Austria goes pop

I was in Austria over the weekend and seized the opportunity to pick up a bottle of Almdudler, the quintessential Austrian soft drink.

No fewer than 32 Alpine herbs (and a shitload of sugar, of course) combine to create a beverage that tastes almost exactly like apple juice. It's magical.

Going over to the dark side

There's an inexplicable belief in Germany that herbal tea is somehow "real tea", as opposed to the coloured hot water it really is. In fact, herbal tea is the default in Germany. If you want real tea, you have to specifically ask for "black tea" or "green tea" or else you're getting some sort of Hagebütte-Holunderblüten-Sonnenblumenblütenblätter-Schwachsinn (rosehip-elderflower-sunflower-petal-nonsense).

Anyway, the Empire (and not the British one) has won. I woke up this morning to a grey, depressing sky and my first thought was, "Ooo what about brewing a nice herbal tea and answering a few emails?" This simply will not do.