Recently at the bakery...

We Germans love our bread. It's the first thing your stereotypical German misses when going on holiday - a decent slice of whole-grain bread for breakfast, instead of the daily bland and stale toast they get (especially in countries where they don't even eat bread for breakfast, but that is another story...). We Germans are convinced that too much white bread gives us indigestion. So bakers had to come up with different sorts of bread with all kinds of grain in different proportions. You might know, dear reader, that Germany is the country with the largest multitude of different kinds of bread. In fact, there are several hundred different sorts of bread.

Many of these kinds of bread are endemic to certain bakeries or chains. Or at least the name is. And this is where the problem starts. There are breads like the König-Ludwig-Brot (King Ludwig bread), Feierabendbrot (after hours bread), Wurzelbrot (root bread), Fiakerbrot (viennese carriage bread), Bergbrot (mountain bread), Kellerbrot (basement bread - who wants to eat this?), bread named after occasions like olympic bread, world cup bread....the list could go on and on. And it always involves a slightly awkward situation when bread shopping (yes people, it is a big enough deal to call it shopping), as I usually order a whole-rye bread, and then the sales person asks me sort of indignantly: 'You mean a King Ludwig bread!?' Or any other of these fancy names mentioned above. I mean, how is anyone supposed to know the difference? The names don't give any indication. Maybe I should go on a no carb diet.