This time of the year is Spargelzeit (asparagus season) in Germany. The Germans seems to bizarrely obsessed with spargel in the short time it's available. It started to make it's appearance in April and will be exiting the German culinary stage on 24. June. I guess it is the law that no Spargel be sold after that, or maybe there is just no Spargel left. The Germans like their Spargel white, although they also eat the green variety. I have eaten Spargel three times this week--a cold Spargel salad at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich (more about various trips I've recently taken to come in a later post), green Spargel and sundried tomatoes with pasta that my roommate made, and then my roommate's family's traditional way to eat Spargel--roasted in little packets in the oven with butter, salt and pepper, and then potatoes, smoked ham and parmesan cheese all over it. Delicious. My pee is now back to smelling normal.
It is also strawberry time. A man just walked down my street ringing a bell, calling "frische deutsche Erdbeeren, 2 Euro." He said the part about the strawberries in a singsong voice and the 2 Euro very ... if you know what that means, so listening to him was like listening to cheerleaders or a chant or something. I looked out and he didn't have any strawberries with him, so I was confused and didn't go down to buy some. Maybe next time a random man is selling strawberries...
And maybe it is also renovation time. The building next door to my apartment building is apparently being renovated. As is typical here, the two buildings are right on top of each other, so my bedroom wall is right next to the wall of this other building. Apparently they are tearing the other wall down. For a few days, I was woken up by drilling that was so loud that Seeja (my roommate) and I both has the feeling there would be a hole in our respective walls at any time. She asked them today when they would be done and apparently it will be in November, but they won't always be making so much noise they say. Today I was woken up by sawing. Today is a Saturday. Yes, they will also be working Saturdays.
Seeja's parents are visiting from Hamburg and are very nice. North Germans have a reputation for being unfriendly, but oddly the Norddeutschen I've met (okay, less than 10, so hardly a statistically reliable sample) have been some of the friendliest people I've met here. When I was in Hamburg, people seemed to be just as (un)friendly as the Rheinländer, and sometimes even friendlier. Anyways, Seeja's parents (who by the way are named Burkhard and Birgit--does it get any Deutscher?!) brought lots of food and wine with them. I remember Claudia's parents doing the same (and her mother actually cooking all the meals during their stay). My parents never brought me food when they visited. Americans, do you think this is a German thing, or are my parents just lame (sorry, mom and dad.)?
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