• Random Dent@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    As a Brit living in another country, I get this too. People make jokes about me liking Doctor Who, drinking lots of tea and having bad teeth.

    How dare you but also that is completely accurate.

    • Hofmaimaier@feddit.deOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The joke doesn’t work with caucasian.

      But you are right I should have used country… I will change that.

      • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Also it doesn’t work because it’s not an insult though, unless the “German” in question is actually a yank, and gets offended as an actual hobby

  • balderdash@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I spent a month in Germany last year. Turns out the most authentic German food is currywurst and middle eastern food lol.

    But maybe that's just in Berlin. They probably have good potato based dishes in Bavaria.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Bavaria is probably the most "German" german region. That's where all the lederhosen stereotypes come from.

      Basically it's the Texas of Germany. Old school, religious, and conservative.

      Edit: in the very rural parts, they even have their own dialect that to some Germans is almost completely unintelligible. I realized this when I took German language classes in high school in the USA and what they were having me learn was very much NOT the way my Bavarian mother spoke to me. It felt kind of irritating when they told me I was pronouncing things wrong and my grammar was wrong when I fuckin' lived there as a child and spoke it fluently.

      • hstde@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well it's the part where after the second world war Americans temporarily governed and American soldiers and their families where stationed. So all they ever saw of Germany was Bavaria. They took their experience back home and so the image spread.

        Northern Germany is nothing like southern Germany. Yes they like their beer, but Bratwurst and pretzels? More fish and bread.

        • UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I was with you in the first half. But northern Germany still loves their beer and brats. We had bbqs almost every weekend and if you didn't have beer and brats, you might as well not have a party.

          Although there almost always way just a full fish on the grill at some point only in northern Germany so I will give you that.

    • flubo@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      There is no german fast food except curry Wurst in Berlin. That doesnt mean there is no good german food. Just in Berlin there are viewer Restaurants selling german food than asian/ middle East and italian food and there is a lot of fast food. I dont know why there are so few German restaurants. In Munich you find more of them…

      • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I feel that's kinda the point of Berlin though, its culture is formed by the patchwork of nationalities that migrates there. Much like the UK with its Indian food

          • ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            But that's not what OP said. OP Made a stupid claim about how only visiting Berlin means one hasn't really visited Germany.

            To your point, my analogy works quite well - If you go to NYC expecting to find the stereotype of cowboys, massive steaks, and barbeque, you'll be disappointed, because that shit is in Texas.

            It's all relative to how one defines a country's culture and the lens it creates. Just because someone has myopic expectations does not mean that NYC is less American than anywhere else in the US. The same holds true for Berlin and the rest of Germany.

            • teichflamme@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I think you're missing the point. NYC doesn't have cowboys or anything but it's representative of other aspects of American culture.

              Berlin is in fact the least German town in Germany. It has its own kind of culture that is vastly different from the rest.

              • ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                1 year ago

                No, I fully understand the point. By "German" you mean Fachwerkhäuser, Oktoberfest, Lederhosen and Dirndls, Bier Steins and Weißwurst, and you're correct, these cultural symbols are not characteristic of Berlin - these are Bavarian. There is so much more to German culture than Bavaria though, despite what the Bavarians think.

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Any country has its specialties and these German Meme things are certainly good, but in general German cuisine is not very sophisticated. In Europe by far it is Spanish and in general Mediterranean cuisine. I am from Spain and here the food is worldclass, apart there are also not only the best wines, but also the beer can compete with the German one. The worst cuisine is in Nordic countries and England, this is already off the scale, luckily there are good Chinese and Indian restaurants there that guarantee survival outside of fish and chips.

    • interolivary@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      A huge chunk of traditional Nordic food is either dirt-poor peasant food, or food that keeps for months on end so the brutal winter doesn’t kill you regardless of whether you’re a dirt-poor peasant or a hoity-toity lord (and this is what lutefisk is: usually low-quality dried fish cured in lye to soften it.)

      Unfortunately this also means that many recipes are more or less lost, or really only written down in eg. family recipe books. And at least here in Finland we’ve also stopped using a majority of the local herbs we historically used, in large part because they’re not seen as “fancy” (being herbs that dirt-poor peasants gathered from the woods) – not that we were ever that into spices, life being honestly pretty miserable for the majority of the population especially when serfdom was a thing. People had, well, other priorities

    • Umbrias@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The moment I hear someone claim a culture’s food isn’t sophisticated unironically is the moment im going to shut my brain off. It’s such a ridiculous claim no matter who it’s directed at.

      You like whatever food you like. It’s not more complicated than that.

  • marco@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    Though what Americans think of as a pretzel is just a sad squiggle of brown dough.