My next offering is "Football food." In England, the stadia that we visited each had their own meat pies. In Germany, it was bratwurst. For the former trip, last April, I took my son to see his favorite team, Liverpool FC, as his college graduation present. I picked what the Germans call an "English Week," which means that teams play a mid-week game, in addition to Saturday. We got to see 5 games in 9 days.
Warning: the pictures seem to have loaded in reverse order, except for the last picture, which is where it should be.
First, is the meat pie at Anfield, home of Liverpool FC. We saw them host Notts Forest. The next two pictures are at Man U, the hated rival of LFC. Next is the pie at Crystal Palace, which is in Croydon, a trip on the train from central London, but it was incorporated into London in the 1960s. I didn't try the meat pie at our other two games, West Ham hosting Liverpool FC and Everton hosting Newcastle United.
Across the street from the British Museum (they looted the world) is the famous Museum Tavern, dating from the late 1700s. It featured in Conan Doyle's Holmes case, "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." I had the meat pie and my son Jeffrey had the fish and chips.
Last October, I took my wife to one of my favorite countries, Germany. We went to Berlin and Cologne. I got to see two games, BvB 09 versus Werder Bremen and 1. FC Koln (where is my umlaut key) versus Moengladbach, their biggest rival. The bratwurst at Dortmund was only twice the length of the bun and in Koln it was 3 times the length of the bun. Both were quite tasty.
The next two pictures are from the Hofbrau Wirsthaus in Berlin. They sit you with other people at long tables. That's Mrs "DaBroons," aka Lisa, with 3 Danes, who were celebrating a birthday, IIRC. I had the sausage platter, and we went there again and I had the Wiener (Vienna) schnitzel, which is veal; regular schnitzel is a pork cutlet. It is one of my favorite foods, and I almost never passed an opportunity to eat it. You can see the huge schnitzel on the plate of the Dane closest to the camera.
On the express train from Berlin to Cologne, we sat across the table from one of Angela Merkel's former cabinet ministers and his wife. He and I had a great conversation, sharing an interest in playing 60s rock and roll guitar. He recommended the Fruh am Dom. "Fruh" means traditional German food, "Dom" means Cathedral, and "am" means lots of things, in this case "by") for dinner and we ate there twice. So, traditional German food near the Cathedral. It was great!
Finally, Cologne, like most German cities, has their own beer. Cologne's is Koltsch (still can't locate the umlaut key). It is actually an ale, not a beer, and is very lite. By law it can only be brewed in Cologne. It is served in small glasses, and the procedure is that the waiters will bring you a new one seemingly every five minutes. If you don't want any more, you put your coaster on top of your glass. On Saturday afternoon, we took a guided Koltsch tour, going to four places, starting with the one with the mildest flavor and working our way to the least mild. It wasn't a huge difference among the four.