Germany’s Second Breakfast
Germany is governed by ritual, as strange and as rigid as those of the Japanese. Instead of the oriental tea-ceremony though, the Germans have the Second Breakfast, the elegantly packed, lovingly unpacked Leberwurstbrot, which must be consumed between 09.30 and 10. The other day I went to the bakers for a cup of coffee – my espresso machine still hasn’t been repaired – and found that I had to balance my cup and my Fleischsalatstulle on the very edge of a zinc table because the place was full of orange-glowing rubbish collectors, carpenters and gardeners. The bus driver from the M 19 popped by and so did the policemen who should have been keeping an eye on the local Jewish Mahnmal. “Aha,” said a Tagesspiegel reader, instantly recognising me from the 20-year-old photograph that graces this column, “you celebrate Bergfest too?” Mountains give me nightmares – I have long argued for making Bayern flat – so I didn’t understand the reference. Apparently the Bergfest, and my apologies to readers who have always known this, is celebrated at 12 o’clock on Wednesday because it is the summit of the working week. From then on, it is bergab towards the well-deserved weekend.
Fine, I thought, I have learned something new. But the next day, while walking the dog, I noticed that all my fellow Bergsteiger were sitting in the cabins of their trucks – the guys from Alba, from the Gartenbaufirma – eating Leberwurst at precisely 09.30. It was like that irritating television advertisement for Knoppers – das Frühstückchen. “Morgens halb zehn in Deutschland”. It is as if the stomachs of the whole German population have been programmed to rumble since their first Pausenbrot at school. How many calories does a German Handwerker need? How many Puddingbretzel have to be consumed before he can successfully check your tyre pressure or fix your sink? How many hours does he spend actually working?
Many cultures have a 2. Breakfast culture. In Plattdeutsch it’s called Fofftein. We can deduce from the word that the North German spends no more than fifteen minutes on his Brotzeit. The Berliner, according to my investigations, takes 45 minutes. Perhaps a certain Bundesbank director could do the appropriate calculation to see how much time is crumbling away every month. Germany seems convinced that it has made the Giant Leap into a service society – shopping until 21 Uhr on Fridays! – but it is still held back by archaic routines. Or have you ever tried to ring a plumber at 10.15 a.m.?
The answer – obviously – is to introduce the Anglo-Saxon model. The priority of the new government has to be to persuade the nation to eat the full English breakfast every morning. Scrambled or fried egg, baked beans, grilled tomato, two sausages, mushrooms, fried bread. Tea with milk. Cornflakes or porridge. The resulting boost in productivity should put Germany on the path to growth. XL.
Now, you don’t have to be a top dietician to work out the problem with the English breakfast. It was devised in the Industrial Revolution to give workers the 3,000 calories they needed to dig in the coalmines; by four o’clock, they had burned up the energy and were ready for teatime. But you don’t burn 3,000 calories by working in a Call-centre. So, there is the risk of getting fat. Not, though, if you use high quality ingredients and eat in moderation. In that case, the breakfast can do you nothing but good. Organic eggs, home-made bread, grilled bio-tomatoes, meaty tight-skinned sausages from Bünger in the Westfälische Strasse. Britain is full of happy 80 year olds who have eaten the bacon-and-egg breakfast all their lives, all fitter than I am. Germany should convert now. Schwarz (the colour of blood pudding) and Ei-Gelb is the perfect political constellation to transform the early morning German diet, to push a Herzogian Ruck through the intestines of the nation. And who knows – maybe you will be able to get your washing machine fixed at halb zehn in Deutschland.
