das Abendessen

The exchange students here at Hochschule Neubrandenburg have been having a series of dinners where each person cooks something from their homeland. I already missed Greek and Latvian nights, but I got here just in time for Russian night.

I've found that the areas of Germany I visit are (not surprisingly) heavily influenced by their neighbors. Whereas the majority of the exchange students in Tübingen were Italian, British, French, or American; the majority of the exchange students here are from the East; Latvia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Greece, Bulgaria, Russia. I really like this since it means I get to meet people from far-flung places. Incidentally, it turns out that the Kazakhstanis look absolutely nothing like they do in Borat. Also, Russian is the lingua franca here instead of English.

But I digress, back to our Russian night. I got to Katja's apartment around 7pm and was surprised to find my new best friend, Mia, there watching Russian cartoons. Mia is the daughter of someone from the Foreign Student Office. Mia is also fascinatingly multicultural. I believe she is ethnically Estonian, but speaks German natively, and also has an ego-killingly good grasp of Russian and Estonian for a 5 year old. To Mia, I am a very interactive jungle gym. I like talking to Mia since she is patient with my German, and she is always energetic. Also it's nice to have little kids around in general.

While Mia and I played bank robber, Katja and several other roommates were busy in the kitchen preparing dinner. In total there were about 17 of us in a 6'x15' kitchen. The main course was varenyky with sour cream. Varenyky are in the same line of food as Polish pierogis, German maultaschen, Italian ravioli, or Chinese pot stickers. They filled the dumplings with beef or pork and then boiled them in a broth with parsley, dill, and bay leaves. They were then served with a dollop of sour cream on top.

Mine didn't have sour cream, but it was my second plate, so presentation was less important.

To drink we had Malzbier. I am gonna have trouble describing this drink, I know. Despite the name it's technically non-alcoholic, less than 0.5%, but it comes in a bottle like regular beer and it's about as fizzy as regular beer. It's darker than coke, almost black. It tastes....well I think it tastes horrible, but seeing as how we drank 4 six-packs, not everyone shared my opinion. But it tastes strongly of barley or hops, and it's very sweet. Imagine walking through the cereal aisle of the grocery store with your eyes closed, now condense that smell, choke it with sugar, and drink it.

Lastly, for what I originally thought was dessert, we had this sort of pie thing.

Right as I was about to take my first bite of it, I heard one of the Latvian girls say, “how do you call this type of fish in English?” But it was too late, the (fish) pie was already in my mouth. I don't think I can say strongly enough how jarring it was to expect sweet, sugary, pie, and actually bite into herring. The Latvians explained to me that the dish was called something like “herring in a jacket” in Latvian, the Russians and the Germans agreed that the translation from their languages was about the same.

Herring under a fur coat, as it's called in English, is sort of a layered salad starting with chopped herring, boiled potatoes, carrots, and covered in a beet and mayonnaise sauce, sprinkled with grated boiled eggs. It was, by the way, absolutely delicious, if not confusing.

I think next week is Hungarian night, but it was sort of hinted that American night is coming up soon after. Any ideas what I should cook? I already suggested buying everyone McDonalds, but it's expensive here and tastes different.