2025: This is an announcement to PattyCooks readers. As many of my readers already know, I was born in Germany and was brought to the USA by my family. Now, fifty + years later, I have started the process of moving from the USA back to Germany, and as a result, this blog has been and will be published inconsistently until we are fully resettled.
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Introduction to Our Move
I do apologise for the long break in publishing. Along with planning our move, which had so many “balls in the air”, we actually moved quicker than we thought we could and had all the settling into a new country processes to go through.
Since 2025, my family (including dog) has physically moved from the USA to Germany. It has been a long time since I was home, and much has changed. The next few posts will be about the change and experiences we had moving, and my experiences coming back to real European culture and food.
The First Days
While I have spent most of my previous German life in Bavaria, and other Southern states, I wanted to move some place new. So we looked for a city that still had a town feel, great numbers of international peoples, was queer-friendly, and friendly in general.
After our decision of where to go, our plan was to visit for several weeks the city we were considering moving to, and check out the various neighborhoods. There are 10 boroughs in this city, with a population of ~650,000 people. We wanted time to find the one area that we would like living in. Then, our plans were to return to California, pack and schedule the move.
Well we changed our minds. By the first of April we knew I was going to stay in the apartment we had rented, and my spouse would return to complete the many tasks requiring a presence in the USA. Meanwhile, I completed the paperwork for citizenship, visas, registration, and so on.
Food in the Area
Our Hotel
As part of the planning to move, we needed to find a hotel and then a temporary, furnished apartment to move into, while seeking a place to live, exploring appropriate legal standing, and meeting with experts for longer term EU residency. So we wound up first moving into a hotel for several weeks, while waiting for the temporary accommodation to become available.
The hotel we stayed in for 2 weeks was, The Living Hotel de Medici, it was an amazing place that alsooffered an amazing breakfast to its customers. Although it cost €30 per person, it was one of the best breakfast buffets I have seen.
The buffet offered a Japanese breakfast section, made up of miso soup, and baked fish. With various Japanese seasonings available, like sesame seeds and chopped seaweed, to augment the other dishes.
Nearby was the Western area, featuring scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage, and good looking sautéed herbed mushrooms.
Next was a variety of baskets containing German bread options (sliced bread, various buns, pretzels, croissants) along with butter, cheese, jams, and honey which could be spooned out directly from a real bee honey comb.
There was a yogurt section with fruits, granola, and the like. Along with a station for diet restrictions, such as gluten free, lactose intolerance, etc.
One section focused on European breakfast with semi-soft boiled eggs, sliced deli meats, cheeses, Fleischsalat, mustard, mayonnaise, with cucumbers and tomatoes for toppings.
And finally, it had all forms of drink: coffee, tea, water, fresh squeezed orange juice, vitamin water, mint water, etc.
Breakfast Out
Because of the cost, most days we grabbed breakfast or lunch in the various neighborhoods we were exploring. The food pictured above comes from a small eatery that had a dish called Amazing Eggs + Avocado.
This dish consisted of two slices of toasted dense dark bread, smeared with avocado, topped with a small bundle of lettuce and sprouts, topped again by two poached eggs, a green dressing, and pepper flakes. We have eaten this twice as it is so tasty. Cost was less than €20 for both.
Other breakfast places were like bakeries that also served pastries, coffee, tea, and fruit drinks. If not for all the walking Germans do, it would be hard to not gain weight given the amazing aroma of fresh breads around every other corner. Above I pictured the bakery side of one of these retail outlets, to the right would be the little sandwich place where we ordered two ham and cheese on a bun breakfast.
The German city we were considering moving to is located in an area that has many peoples from all over the world. And as such, there are restaraunts from Italy, Spain, France, India, Japan, etc. So do not be surprised when I say we have also eaten Irish Beef Stew, Italian pizza, and Mexican Tacos. (So far, there are no Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurants we would say are on par with Mexico or California.)
One place we ate at featured very traditional German lunch dishes, and although the meat was a bit too dry, it was still a trip of culinary nostalgia since I had not had this meal in over 50 years.
But sometimes my feet would just hurt from all the walking, and we chose to eat at the hotel, in our room. This type of meal would feature any left over pastries, bread, cheese and meats, and the local beer of course.
Delivery of Food
One night we decided to order out, and found that UberEats works well in Germany. We ordered some Curry Wurst and Chicken Schnitzel with fries, which were good tasting and filling.
Unfortunately, I had to create a Paypal account, since my USA credit cards did not appear to work as well as the online account. But, we had been pre-warned that Germany used Paypal all across the country.
- Why unfortunately? Because Paypal founder and former CEO, Peter Thiel, has been referred to as the “don” of the original PayPal Mafia, a group that included Elon Musk (1), and now has supported candidates aligned with the extreme rightwing agenda of the current Republicans and Federal Administration.
I have some ideas on ways to pay without using Paypal, so that is in the works. Meanwhile, the ethnic mix represented by the local restaurants in this city is simply amazing. Asia, Europe, North America, Middle Eastern, and some of South America are all well represented.
Apartment Rental
Mid-March we flew with 3 large suitcases and several smaller ones from California to Germany.
Our hotel was located “smack-dab” near the town’s center, so we could easily walk to several neighborhoods from there, and did. At one point, we decided to walk to our rented apartment, located ~1 kilometer away, and while there, managed to peek through some of the windows, and it was just like the photos we saw online. It was also near a convenient park, important when you have a dog. A couple of weeks later, we were able to move in and receive the keys.
Immediately we were confronted with new terms and had to learn new concepts.
For example, rent is broken out by a “cold” and “warm” rent.
- In Germany, cold rent (Kaltmiete) is the base rental price for using the living space. Warm rent (Warmmiete) is the amount of incidentals like operating costs and utilities that are added to the base rent. The combination of the two is what a renter pays.
Normally, apartment rentals in Germany come without kitchens or light fixtures, only the wiring for those things. But because we rented a furnished apartment, this was not an issue we had to face. Essentially, an unfurnished has only the walls, doors, utilities, and a functioning bathroom.
German apartments are small compared to similar named USA facilities. Sizes of space are in square meters, so the apartment we initially rented was listed at 103 square meters, which converted to ~1,108 square feet. Most of the apartments we saw in the listings were in the 50 to 80 square meter ranges. And when rentals are described, it is by number of actual rooms, not bedrooms. So our rental was listed as 5 rooms, whereas in the USA it would have been called a 2 bedroom space.
Buildings are also different, and not just that they tend to not use lumber to build, but concrete materials. It is that the ground floor is considered 0 level, so the first floor is always one story up. Also, buildings have numbers, but apartments do not. Only our last names appear on the exterior buzzer and on the central mail box area.
Until Next Time
I hope you continue to join me in this new adventure. After a year of settling, I anticipate us traveling more and exploring the foods of many countries. Let us have fun exploring cuisines and learning to cook ever better as we refine our knowledge and the changing politics of food.
— Patty
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The symbol “€” indicates Euros, where “$” indicates the USA dollar. Currently the Euro continues to be stronger than the Dollar, so that €1 is equal to $0.83. Very sad when your SSN or pension is in the Dollar!
Europe is metric, so centemeters and kilometers instead of inches and miles, and Celsius (C) instead of Fahrenheit (F).
