The umlaut and the omelette

Eating out can burn a hole in your pocket in expensive Germany.
Not having attempted a crash course in cooking I expected major problems with the grub. But it turned out well after all.
I had come prepared on this trip with my supply of masalas (the entire works - including the sambhar and garam masala types) and two packs of tea bags which I had calculated would safely see me through three months; as I had been advised to do so by a contact who has earlier been to Germany. Good thing too - German fast food would have proved too bland for my taste and Indian tea is not too readily available, the locals preferring to go for Ceylon tea which tastes differently.
I made my diurnal visits to the supermarket a fine act of balancing my expenses so that it never went beyond ten euros. Everything at the supermarket was packaged and labelled in German, excluding the vegetable and meat sections. The first few visits to the supermarket were elaborate missions of exploration as I discovered where I could find what; burdened, as I was with the double disability of not being able to read labels in German on the produce and the inability to seek assistance in English.
Before I headed out each day, rucksack on back, I mentally prepared a shopping list that had the advantage of making the shopping easier.
Once at the supermarket I shopped like a programmed microchip. First to the vegetables section, usually for cabbage, cauliflower or potatoes (I avoided the more exotic vegetables that I was unfamiliar with - there was a lot of green stuff around of which I could only make out the spinach and lettuce) and the onions - which we Indians can't do without. Stocks of Sunflower oil once bought lasted nearly a month. (I preferred frying the vegetables in spicy powder; hell, anyway it tasted good !).
Next the rounds for bread, noodles or spaghetti, rice, followed by the usual milk cartons, packaged fruit juice (choosing between banana, grape, orange and maracuja fruit) and a choice between hundreds of varieties of yogurt; and finally some pork or chicken. And some butter occasionally, and mushrooms and ketchup for a change. Yes, they had the Indian variety of rice too. My daily trips always included several packages of what was labelled “Patna Reis”.
My cooking and eating too followed fixed patterns. It was yogurt in the morning before I left for work (that saved me time making tea), rice or spaghetti boiled in masala with meat in the afternoon and gulps of juice in the evening, as I cooked food for the next day, humming to myself as I watched my favorite TV channel that I presumed was the German avatar of MTV; followed by a hot supper of one of my edible concoctions.
I took the luxury of brunching a hot dog at the market place on Sundays.
Wine I never touched - and it must have seemed strange to the natives, me being in the land of the World's best wine.