03 September 2008

Genthin and Parchen


Oh dear! I finally, finally worked at two German schools again, after 1,5 months of submerging myself in Italian goodness. I came home on a Sunday and dove deep into Sachsen-Anhalt village life on Tuesday. Quite a culture shock, and I think I can say I was the one with the darkest skin color in entire Genthin....
Once again, the culinarities that German small town offers were also represented here, and not more than that: one "Asia-Imbiss", one pizzeria (but with real oven!) and one Gasthaus with German food. Spoiled as I had gotten by Italian pizza, I appreciated the German interpretation even less this time: thick crust, 1 kilo cheese and 3 olives. That covered one night of dinner. The second night I was lazy and opted for the Gasthaus in the hotel we stayed at, which resulted in eating a not-even-so-bad tomatosoup (yet the mozzarella which they had creatively added, had tried to take its original ball-shaped form again at the bottom of the cup) and boiled potatoes with butter and parsley.

On the schools, we were provided with food this time, but I didn't have the time to eat so much, let alone take pictures. The second day, there were salads in boxes, and old fries. The fries were quite disappointing, I thought Germans formed a holy alliance with potatoes? Hm, maybe an exception was made here, for as we all know, Dutch make better fries.


There were more things in the room as I ate the fries:



Only on the last day I found a plate I could eat in peace, after a whole day of running around trying to do my job as well as possible. Unfortunately, I didn't like it so much; on the pictures it looks quite harmless, but I simply cannot bear this slimy substance on an empty stomach.



And even though the food was not too special (but had I expected that?), there were other interesting things: the usual skeletons in the biology classroom seemed to be taken care of with love, grasshoppers seem to like chewing gum, flies and coffee beans can easily be confused and funeral dresses are not so sad after all.

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