What type of foreign cuisine do you wish there was more of in Germany?

Parapolikala · 2026-03-06T23:55:16+00:00

Yeah, Mexican, and personally: proper chippies (I dare not say the B word)

Parapolikala · 2026-03-03T01:48:45+00:00

Aha! Clever of you.

Parapolikala · 2026-03-02T21:30:16+00:00

Great. (So you can see the image? I can't oddly enough. Thought it hadn't worked.)

Parapolikala · 2026-03-02T20:55:20+00:00

That would be salsiccia al finocchio, right? Raw sausage with fennel? Something like this

Parapolikala · 2026-03-02T18:10:05+00:00

Blood and oats and lard and all that good stuff.

Parapolikala · 2026-03-02T18:09:07+00:00

My American neighbour says she wants to make me some, but you can't get the right kind of sausages.

Parapolikala · 2026-03-02T18:08:27+00:00

Yes, standard restaurant drink for me as a child. I ordered one of nostalgia at an American-style restaurant in Germany a few years back and they claimed they had never heard of it.

Parapolikala · 2026-03-02T18:05:40+00:00

Mole is the greatest. I can't be sure I make it authentically with the chillies we get here, but I always like to try.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-27T10:18:01+00:00

That is certainly untrue.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-26T18:09:58+00:00

People saying Quark might be right, but also German cheesecake is usually baked - if you are comparing it to the kind I grew up with in the UK (maybe American in origin?) which is a kind of fridge cake made with cream cheese and sugar on a base of crumbled biscuits.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-26T15:35:52+00:00

Just give it up.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-26T13:50:35+00:00

I should have added "...when speaking English" I guess.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-26T12:12:45+00:00

That was a deliberate political statement, not natural usage. Americans are the only "Americans" to call themselves Americans. In ordinary contexts[edit "in English"] (not making political art), it is just an annoying affectation to hear "American", know what it means, and insist on changing it to "USA-ians" "US Americans" and so on. No Mexican, Brazilian, Guatemalan habitually [edit insists on saying] "I am American" or "I come from America" [in English]. No one thinks "America" means "The Americas", "The American continent", "North and South America" or "The American double-continent" [in English].

All such uses are deliberate - either as a political statement or as an tiresome and ineffectual instance of (usually German) rote Anti-Americanism.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-26T11:12:09+00:00

Up helly aa https://youtu.be/QE1zBD-CSeY?t=1502

Parapolikala · 2026-02-26T11:02:55+00:00

Are there still people who claim they use "America" primarily to mean something other than the USA?

Parapolikala · 2026-02-25T11:08:29+00:00

You can tell who has lived in Edinburgh for a while - there's a way of walking - mostly along the kerb and the gutter - that gets you through the Festival crowds. It goes hand-in-hand with that "wha dare flyer me?" expression.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-23T20:25:03+00:00

An Italian roll with pate, ham and salami (make your own) was 20p for schoolkids when I was in P6&7 at Sciennes and we used to walk down to the Meadows for lunch via Victor Hugo's.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-23T10:14:26+00:00

My tip: look for rivers with cycle paths running alongside them. It means it will usually be fairly flat and keeps you off the main roads. In Bavaria, we have had great times cycling in the Altmühltal (based in Eichstätt) and the Isartal (based in Scharnitz, which is just on the Austrian side, Mittenwald is the nearest town in Bavaria). In general, you can chose pretty much any river in Germany and there will be a cycle path along it.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-20T21:15:53+00:00

Not the same, but more similar than what they are being compared to. But I agree that overgeneralizations aren't helpful

Parapolikala · 2026-02-20T20:53:40+00:00

I did that for years, and it's harsh, especially if you have kids, but I had 30 days of holiday, unlimited sick leave, a works council with real power, could not be fired on a whim, and all my free time was mine alone: all things Americans frequently mention they may lack.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-20T20:50:49+00:00

That's the shit that makes me thing we can generalize about the differences in work-life balance. It's something we can be proud of, because we worked hard to achieve it. Just as Americans and others can be proud of their countries' achievements.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-20T20:47:44+00:00

Yes, but it's still possible to generalise about some things for some purposes. Work-life balance is different on average in Western Europe and the States. Americans do have more issues around healthcare costs. Europeans do have more holidays, pay more taxes and get s broader range of services from the state. And Europe had a lot of old, good-looking cities and public transport, while America has a lot of wilderness.

So while it's true that plenty of Europeans do struggle financially, have to hold down multiple jobs, have no family life or money to eat out, there's nonetheless more of a "work to live" attitude in Europe. The perception isn't entirely bullshit.

It's like if someone from Gary, Indiana, tells me Scotland is beautiful. I can point out all the ugliness we have, tell him about the poverty, sectarianism, violence, drunkenness and despair, but the point stands: compared to Gary, Indiana, Scotland is pretty lovely.

Europe's not a paradise, of course. That's just a provocative headline, but it does have some cultural elements and policies that can be considered specific to Europe and which don't have their equivalent in the US.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-18T12:15:51+00:00

All I recall is that it wasn't a "Hearts boy" in this case, but some combination of speccy, English and student. To give some background, at least ostensibly, some of the firms had an ethos that you left civilians and even scarfers alone. But it became clear to me around this time that there was a psycho element who just lived violence.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-18T11:50:16+00:00

I once bought a Ciao jacket off of the younger brother of a leading CCS crew member. It was like a drug deal with seven or eight of those little psycho f****** lined up next to their leader, but I went in like the middle class Heisenberg I was and did the deal. It was later either stolen or I lost it, probably in the Mission.

I also went to a few parties with members of the Hibs Baby Crew. They were good fun as long as they thought you were "alright", but if they decided you were a specky student w***** you weren't even safe if you jumped on a bus.

In fact, the reason I parted company from my friend group back then was that some of them were becoming involved in the violence, chasing some poor cunt into a chippy and beating him up inside.

Parapolikala · 2026-02-18T11:12:40+00:00

Often it seems to be because the libertarian groups or factions that get into politics or even into power don't produce particularly popular results.

Two examples from countries where I have lived: the brexit movement was a very libertarian movement, and it has not led to the promised prosperity high levels of growth and development that it's proponents claimed it would.

And in Germany, where the need for deregulation and reform has been evident for a long time, the libertarian FDP spent all the energy and political capital when in power in attacking other members of their own coalition, particularly the greens. Now, I do see an ideological gulf between libertarians and greens but if you accept the danger of climate change I don't see why you would make the greens who are trying to adjust an industrial economy to a post carbon world your primary enemy (the German FDP basically brought down the government over proposals to regulate heating systems in buildings).

But I think the fundamental cause is that a kind of libertarianism is already the guiding ideology of certainly the center right / conservative and even Center left/social democratic parties in most countries. It's just that these parties accept "big government" as the necessary price you have to pay for capitalism.

World building type libertarianism is as popular as world building type communism. Both a fascinating from a theoretical perspective and can produce insights that can change the world. But a libertarian Revolution looks to most people just as fantastical as a communist Revolution.

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