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passatdoc

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Joined
Aug 31, 2006
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Orange County, California
I will be playing host to a friend's nephew and niece from Germany (university age....I have known them since birth) and they e-mailed me asking what treats I would like from Germany. Naturally they assume I want Lindt chocolates or perhaps some WMF stainless steel kitchen utensils. Not unreasonable, given that they have seen me buy these products in Germany.

So what did I ask for?

PERSIL UNIVERSAL MEGAPERLS!!!

To them it sounds bizarre and a bit embarrassing to bring LAUNDRY DETERGENT as a gift. I had to explain that nothing works as well as Persil and it isn't mass marketed here (yes, you can go to a Miele dealer and pay $60 for a box, or you can go to Rewe in Germany and pay 10 euros for a package). Even nicer, Megaperls comes in indestructible plastic packets that survive transit in checked luggage.
 
YAY!

Let's hope the bag doesn't burst and the gum-ment don't see no white lines and powder leaking out!

IIRC my European relatives that came here wanted "PERCALE" no-iron bed-sheets. [but it has POLYESTER in it for heaven's sake!] (Our Queen size roughly fits their metric beds).

Well thnk about it..if you wash it in a tiny machine, boil it to death and spin it to within an inch of it's life, it MAY just come out wrinkled. Ditto line-dry or a tiny Euro dryer.

So a silly as your request may seem to them....what they come HERE to get sounds funny to us. So many Europeans come to get Timberland boots. Now I ask you has anyone ever heard of those?

Now my relatives were AMAZED that we bathed every day, had hot water available 24/7 and believed ALL food was either canned or frozen. Big difference from "All food is AVALABLE fresh, canned or frozen"

Back in 1980 when they came to visit, they were amazed at clothes dryers, dishwashers and natural gas being piped in..and yes that we had it 100 years earlier also.
 
So many Europeans come to get Timberland boots. Now I ask yo

Hey Toggles! Timberland boots are very popular here in the midwest. They are great boots and wear extremely well. Alot of the guys at the electric power plant that I work at wear them. They also make hiking boots, work boots etc. Kind of pricey but from what I hear are worth it for the comfort.
Mark
 
Yes we doohoo!!!

We've got Timberland here in Oz and Florsheim Shoes and other stuff, like perma press fitted bed sheets. Though, since Gowings closed their doors for good, a couple of years back, I can't get Hanes T-shirts no more. That sux so big time. Anyhoo, Costco is coming so I hope against hope that their product range won't just be 'made in China.'
 
Quote: "Now my relatives were AMAZED that we bathed every day, had hot water available 24/7 and believed ALL food was either canned or frozen. Big difference from "All food is AVALABLE fresh, canned or frozen"

Back in 1980 when they came to visit, they were amazed at clothes dryers, dishwashers and natural gas being piped in..and yes that we had it 100 years earlier also."

Where were they coming from?

A cave in Norway?!
 
Aerosol cheese

My sister had friends from the Netherlands come to the US to visit back in the 80s, they were amazed at the aerosol cheese. They ended up bringing several cans of it back. It was kinda funny, seeing them spraying the cheese on crackers in between hand-rolled cigarettes, (tobacco)
 
Nutella....

My friends from Sweden always demand to be taken to the nearest outlet center for a Timberland shopping spree. It's just another brand here, but approaches cult status abroad.

It's like Americans shopping for WMF cookware in Germany. Normal, ordinary (but high quality) stuff for Germans, but a luxury item for Americans. When you can't get something that's good where you live, it becomes a must-have luxury item.

Fortunately, when I have houseguests from Germany, we can buy Nutella in nearly any market (in the peanut butter section) in the USA, so we are prepared!!

Man kann auch Wurst sowie Käse kaufen, aber echte deutsche Brödchen sind hier leider nichts zu finden....

PS: Nutella may be a product of Italy, but just try to find a breakfast table in Germany without a jar of Nutella...

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Theo and Brot

It's not really cheese, at least not by our definition.

It's a cadmium-orange colored edible plastic which is extruded out of an aluminum can which is under pressure (sort of like shaving cream, where you have a bladder in the can and the propellant surrounding the bladder.)

It tastes very very very salty and a bit like Schmelzkäse mixed with dog vomit.

Und, nein, echtes Brot gibt es in den Staaten doch, man muss bloß wissen, wo es zu finden ist. Die meisten Ökoladen haben einige deutsche Kunden, welche in Amerika gestrandet oder gelandet sind, die gerne bereit sind das echte wahre Brot zu einem akzeptablen Preis zu backen.

So halte ich mich am Leben, wenn ich in den Staaten bin.
 
The best work boots I've ever worn

I have amassed quite a collection of work boots... but the $20 wonders I was getting from Big5 Sporting Goods weren't a good fit and some of them looked pretty sorry after a half a year or so. I had to get a new pair and my employer partially subsidized a purchase from a "boot truck" (like a Snapon truck) that visited the shop last month. I settled on a pair of QSS "Double Shift" work boots... great fit, great cushioning that doesn't give out after a full day plus night school afterwards.

They weren't cheap: $160... but the company paid all but about $40 of that.

They are made by Weinbrenner... www.weinbrennerusa.com... and unlike just about every other boot you see in shops today, these are 100% made in the USA... and it shows...

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Nutella

I bought a couple of jars at Costco about four years ago... still have one unopened and the other about 7/8 full. It's far too sweet for my taste. Makes my fillings hurt. But I do like the hazelnut component.

Nutella would be good inside a chocolate...
 
Well, that's an interesting description Keven. But there are many Dutch that actually like edible plastic. A few weeks ago there was a programme on television here where they tried to find out how those perfect walnut halves on Rambol cheese (quite popular here) were produced. Something that has puzzled me too for a long time :-). After all it's a well known fact that most people end up with a lot of fragments when they crack walnuts.

In the programme, a reporter went to France as that is the country where these cheeses are produced. He found that most French people had never seen these cheeses and one woman said: "That's plastic, we don't eat that here!"

(It was shown that the walnut halves are produced in Eastern Europe by ladies who crack every nut by hand with a hammer...)
 
Somebody please...

... send me Whirlpolf (and his bike).

I'm sure he won't mind spend a few weeks here in Brazil.

But please don't use DHL services because he would hate that tracking label with a huge bar code sticked on his butt.

I bet he would prefer Varig, British Airways or (why not?) first class at Emirates Airlines.

Ok, I admit... As he won't need clothes here (i'm talking about the "inferno" weather), he can also fill his suitcases with Persil.

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Tree? What's a tree?

Timberland?

LOL I forget that in my city we don't have mud and snow etc as much as others may.... we're all paved and concrete steel and glass.

Some people came over from my parents' country and were living here to have their kids attend college. They were hell-bent on serving Tang (instant fake orange juice) and Nescafe frappe instant demi-tasse coffee mix. Honestly, two things I had never before or since tasted.
 
Used To Love Persil MegaPerls "Sensitive"

Then some darn fool at Henkel tought it would be a good idea to add scent, and that put me off. Even worse the scent is designed like those found in many others sold today, to remain for several days or even weeks after laundering.

Still, have a case (three boxes) of the stuff, but only because got it at a great deal (cost less than one box retail), don't know if it will be replaced when inventory is gone. Only reason one went back to Persil is that my vintage Miele has rather long wash cycle times. Just what Persil is designed for.

The one thing one is not liking about many detergents is the increasing complex chemical cocktails, especially for European detergents that are moving away from phosphates, but must find a way to clean in water often hard enough to chip teeth upon.

My other pet peeve is the ever higher amount of optical brightening agents found in detergents to mask the fact one's laundry isn't quite so clean after all.
 
Laundress,

Tell me about it. It is an abomination!

Henkel used to stand for staid quality.

Now, the young-dynamic-manager generation has proclaimed what we are to like - and that, apparently, is smelling like we just woke up in a cheap Marseille cat house.

The only Henkel scent right now I like is the hypo-allergenic scent free version of sensitive.

Oh, well - this too shall pass that is the only constant among the Y-D-Manager set. They can never leave anything alone.
 
Persil currently offers its Gold Edition. Don't think there's any difference - apart from the Gold logo on the packaging. But (and for what it's worth) it come with a nice golden measuring cup. This is obviously the large cup that goes up to 250 ml, which comes with the non-concentrated version ( -> with fillers) of Persil powder.

5-5-2009-15-59-21--logixx.jpg
 
Also new

Terra Aktiv liquid laundry detergent - for colors and whites. Terra Aktiv is Henkel's new like of eco-friendly cleaning products: liquid detergent, window cleaner, bathroom cleaner, floor cleaner and washing-up liquid.

5-5-2009-16-13-43--logixx.jpg
 
"Well thnk about it..if you wash it in a tiny machine, boil it to death and spin it to within an inch of it's life, it MAY just come out wrinkled. Ditto line-dry or a tiny Euro dryer."

As opposed to being shredded in a top loader and having the creases fried in by a boiling hot, uni-directional american dryer?

Matt
 
Da weiß man, was man hat....

Oops, sorry if weiß is now weiss under the new Rechtschreibung rules, but when I studied German, it was WEIß!!

Funny how a $1 vegetable peeler here is a big deal in Germany. We take Hershey's for granted, for us Lindt is a big deal. You CAN buy Persil from stores that sell Miele products (Miele vacuum cleaner stores are not uncommon here, and they sell Persil even though they don't sell Miele washers or dryers), but be prepared to pay $50 for 2 kilo box. Enough for 50-100 washes.

Last time at Rewe in Dortmund, I was explaining to my host (auf deutsch) that "in USA ist Persil eigentlich nicht zu kaufen...." and the customers in the aisle were listening in disbelief. Disbelief that it isn't sold through normal channels in USA and disbelief that people actually go to the trouble to bring it back home to USA. What they may not understand is that travel to/from North America allows two pieces of luggage, 23 kgs each. Not 20 kgs total as within Europe. So since the luggage is empty after giving away the Hershey's chocolate, Costco Egyptian towels, Halloween decorations and candy, ZipLock plastic bags, Bounce dryer sheets, etc., etc., to one's Germann friends, you may as well fill the luggage with Lindt, WMF, and Persil products.

The gift people here seem to like the most is the WMF Tortenmesser, we simply don't have wide cake knives with a sharp edge for cutting through a cake (we have them, but with dull edges) or torte. I explain that "Kaffee und Kuchen" is an art form in Germany, almost as complex as the Japanese tea ceremony. Essential elements include:

---linen tablecloth
---best porcelain
---often candles are lit
---Tchibo or Kaffee Hag coffee
---at least three types of cake or pastry from a Konditorei, or else something homemade (Apfelkuchen, Plaumkuchen, etc.).
---Sahne (whipped cream) is mandatory
---it is perfectly acceptable to gossip about relatives, neighbors, or friends who are not present
---the whole thing lasts a minimum of two hours and sometimes can go on all afternoon and evening.

In USA we have the concept of "Kaffe Klatsch",

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coffee_klatch
but shorter in duration and not as fancy. Meeting at Starbucks to chat over a cup of coffee and no pastry or cake--conditions that would not be tolerated in Germany--- still qualifies as a Kaffe Klatsch (coffee break).

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~As opposed to being shredded in a top loader and having the creases fried in by a boiling hot, uni-directional american dryer?

If the dryer is big enough, it irons the articles for you, and it doesn't NEED to reverse direction!

Your machines are said to wash satisfactorily with fewer resources (well except lots of time and heat) with ours you just don't have to iron......

(Ducks and runs!)
Sorry. Didn't meant to strike a nerve!
 
Kaffee oder brauner Abspülwasser

Jim, I take the position of Der Spiegel. When the Neurechtschreibung makes sense, (like using commas the same way as in English), I follow it.

When it is stupid beyond belief, I refuse to follow it. I can live with Delfin and Stengel if I simply have to, but this nonsense about muss instead of muß and dass instead of daß or, as you pointed out, Weiss for Weiß???!!!

Nein.

Dag-nab it, it's German and not Swiss-German.

Aber Hallo!

Anyway, here's a wonderful, simple cake recipe I love:

5-6-2009-12-47-41--panthera.jpg
 
Die neue Rechtschreibung

I think it was useful to deal with all of the non-German tech vocabulary that has been absorbed into German, in terms of assigning genders and plurals. The move to minimize or get rid of the eszet (ß) might have made sense in the pre-computer era, when an additional letter might have been perceived as adding to the cost of doing business in Germany. However, it's so easy to make the character with a computer that any savings from eliminating the letter probably no longer hold water. I have my Windows keyboard set at English-International and I form ß simply by holding down the ALT key and typing "s". It's easy to do on a Mac, and on my Blackberry I just type an s and roll the cursor backward over it and it changes to ß (admittedly a bit more awkward than with a keyboard).

I believe that Die Zeit and Helmut Schmidt refuse to use the new system. Fortunately, everyone seems to understand the old way, even if it's no longer officially taught, so it's not as if people won't understand you if you write the old way.
 

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