Consider the following spectrum:
I sat with Moriah and Peter in a 160-year-old restaurant in Köln known as Brauerei zur Malzmühle. While we chewed crispy pork knuckle, grilled pork belly, and raw minced pork (do you smell a theme here?), a local family settled into a stained wooden table adjacent to ours. Somehow we stood out as foreigners and became a subject of their whispered conversation. There was no ill intent, we later surmised, it was just human behavior. Peter and I were oblivious to the whole matter, but Moriah—with her superior radar and language skills—picked up the signals.
“They are making fun of American food,” she whispered sideways through her teeth. “McDonalds and all that.”
I nearly choked on my fermented cabbage. “That’s sacred ground!”
Peter nodded absently. He was wrestling gristle from his crispy pork knuckle.
“I guess it all comes down to what you’re used to.”
The entrance to the Brauerei zur Malzmühle (left) and Peter’s crispy pork knuckle settled into a bed of mashed potatoes.
Foreign travel is a subjective experience, an exercise in flexibility. What one pilgrim finds tasty, another finds abhorrent. The needle bounces across the spectrum from familiar to outré. It is often voiced in the form of a comparison: “We never do it that way back home,” or “Why can’t they drive normal?” or “They put onions on that?” Rarely does the needle go positive: “This is so much better/lovely/helpful than what we have back home.”
To be transparent, I struggle with this sort of cultural criticism at times, even after years of trying to exercise my self-awareness. Inefficiency is what cracks my teeth. I have yet to outgrow a sprinter mindset: faster is always better, or so I think.
Of course, none of the “this is us/them” stuff is new.
A “Turkish Street” in downtown Köln, Germany.
Consider Julius Caesar’s tour of the northern frontier in the middle of the first century BC. On that occasion, he brought Rome into contact with two groups they considered foreign: the Gauls and the Germans. The Rhine River more or less divided these groups with the Gauls on the west bank (or “French” side) and the Germans on the east bank (or “German/Austrian”) side. Of course, each of these two people groups was further divided and subdivided into “us and them” tribal units.
Caesar records his adventures in a seven-book set remembered as Commentarii de Bello Gallico, or “Commentaries on the Gallic Wars.” Cicero regarded Caesar’s literary talents as “splendid,” although others have been more critical. (Keep in mind that the Gallic War is remembered as a commentary, not as a history.) The military mind responsible for upshifting Rome from republic to empire had his own reasons for sniffing around the north wood. Not least among them was showing the barbarians on the frontier—as well as his competitors back home—some serious Roman teeth.*
Lionel Noel Royer, Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar (1899). Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Wars#/media/File:Siege-alesia-vercingetorix-jules-cesar.jpg (accessed 5/17/22).
I wish we could excavate the mindset in the cavity above those teeth. A Roman citizen from the first century—Caesar’s audience, of course—believed that the further one traveled away from the center of it all, the Mare Nostrum or “Our Sea” (the way the Romans fancied the Mediterranean), the more barbarian the cultures became.** Hence, if one traveled far enough, to the very edge of terra firma, where land and nature itself gurgled into the cold dark Oceanum, the residents were absolute savages, milk-swigging’ butter eaters.***
This point is clear from the opening of Caesars’ Gallic Wars:
“Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are furthest from the civilization and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least frequently resort to them and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war” (1.1).
A bit deeper, in Book 4, Caesar describes a Germanic tribe called the Suevi (or Suebi). They are nomadic, own no private land, hunt for their food, and have little interest in vegetables. They wear practically no clothing at all, bathe in rivers, and do all of this in the coldest climates. They are strong and fit, and when they enter the fray of battle, they are liable to leap from the horses and fight on foot (the horses are trained to wait on the spot until they return). Such details underline the deep differences between “them” and “us” and would have deeply troubled the more civilized Mediterranean mind.****
Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars shows him to be more than a politician; it elevates him to the ranks of Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and other classical ethnographers.
Barbarian food. German Methappen or simply “mett” is a delicacy of finely minced raw pork seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, and a heavy dose of onion. When is served on a rye roll, it is Mettbrötchen or “mett bread.” I must confess that I was a little hesitant to do raw pork, but it was actually quite tasty, and to date, I remain parasite free (I think).
Of all the vittles that Moriah, Peter, and I consumed that night, nothing was as tasty and outré as the apéritif of minced pork on a rye bun. The pork was, of course, served raw. As the tidbits of crust and onion flew and our own teeth flashed I wondered what the neighbors were thinking at the adjoining table. We did not miss McDonald’s for a moment.
In retrospect, the Brauerei zur Malzmühle served us a fine barbarian meal. The only thing the waiter could have done to improve it would have been to bring each of us a crock of butter. And a spoon.
*For more on Caesar’s motivations, see Jane F. Garnder, “The 'Gallic Menace' in Caesar's Propaganda” in Greece & Rome 30/2 (Oct 1983): 181-189.
**For references, pursue Emily Alen-Hornblower, “Beasts and Barbarians in Caesar’s ‘Bellum Gallicum’” in The Classical Quarterly, New Series (64/2 (Dec 2014): 682-693.
***Mediterranean peoples with their fondness for olive oil, were critical of the northerners with their fondness for dairy. Calling someone a “butter eater” was a low blow indeed, a description of true barbarity, and, not surprisingly, a reflection of real foodway difference between northern and southern European climes. Check out Mark Kurlansky in Gastro Obscura (May 29, 2018). You can find his article here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-milk?utm_medium=email&utm_source=interestingfacts.com (accessed 5/17/2022).
****Listen to more observations on the Germans by Julius Caesar in this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEfq--HJ7vo (accessed 5/19/2022).
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