From: fr@compu.com (Fred Rump from home)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: Information for trip to Germany...
Date: 11 Dec 92 17:52:50 GMT
Organization: CompuData Inc.

espen@coli.uni-sb.de (Espen J. Vestre) writes:

>In article <1992Dec10.053408.22660@compu.com> Fred Rump from home,
>>two cups of coffee on the Autobahn 13.40DM, a plate of soup 10DM, a

>If you measure the german restaurant food/quality ratio by Autobahn,
>you're being even more unfair than I would have been if I'd based my
>opinions on American Restaurants on the price level of Yuppie Palo Alto
>restaurants...

Well, we have our turnpikes and associated overhead here too. The typical 
situation involved a contract is for one organization to run all restaurants 
in a state. Sometimes this organization will bring in competing vendors for 
brandname recognition - like Roy Rogers, MacDonald's and BurgerKing. A cup of 
coffee may be 75 cents or, at the very most, a dollar.  I have never been
refused a free refill.  The bottomless cup is fairly standard here.

In Germany I found all kinds of different establishments along the Autobahn.
There were little food stands and huge restaurants. They seemed to be run 
differently and without state control but their prices were uniformly high.

As I drove from Oldenburg south to Frankfurt during the middle of the night, I 
needed coffee and would have paid any price. (I had to be in Frankfurt around 
7 AM and with rental car returns etc, I left at midnight).  Anyway, almost all
coffee shops or restaurants were closed during the night. Believe me, I 
stopped in every one.  :-) Around 3 or 4 AM I found one shop open where the
price was 6.70DM per cup.  It was fairly crowded as lots of truckers seemed to
know of this one particular place that was interested in making money.

Perhaps these are special prices charged during the night? It seems to me that 
in Germany the consumer is not as important as here or maybe the drive to 
compete and make money is not as great.  Maybe they have to pay
coffeemaker/cooks tripple salary during the night.  Such sillyness seems to
abound.

If I lived in Germany, I'd certainly look into getting a restaurant opened 
that would run around the clock or maybe only at night as money can be made 
very easily without competition.

Coffee is dear to my heart and I probably missed the quick cup at MacDonalds 
more than anything while doing a lot of driving. The whole process is too damn 
convoluted in Germany. Kaffee trinken is still surrounded by porcelan cups and 
saucers and Kaennchen and table cloths. I didn't need all that. I cared more 
for the contents. This was good by the way.

In one place I bought a Kaennchen of coffee thinking it might be cheaper and 
my wife and I could share. So I asked for a second cup. I was met by a blank 
stare as if I was crazy or something. The fellow behind me in line explained 
that they don't do that here. The person serving me was probably too 
dumbstruck to answer. So I had to buy another cup, with coffee, to get to 
share the 2 cup Kaennchen. 

I'm just not used to this kind of crap.



>  By central/north european standard, coffee is the only thing which is
>really expensive (I don't know how you managed (even on the autobahn) to
>pay 13.40 for two cups, though, sounds more like the price of 3
>"Kaennchen" (each containing 2 cups) to me :-)).

Yeah, that's what one would think, but it doesn't jive with reality.




>  It's not difficult to find nice little restaurants where you pay 11-15
>DM for a simple, but decent a-la-carte meal (like Wiener Schnitzel with
>french fries and salad), and 3DM or less for a glass of beer.

I can't disagree with that. But most of my credit card bills came to around 
$25-30 for a meal for two. The old GDR still had much better prices than the 
restaurants in the West.  In Norhausen I ate very good and cheap.

Fred
-- 
W. Fred Rump 	office:	   fred@COMPU.COM     'mans feet have grown/so big 
26 Warren St.   home: fred@icdi10.compu.com  that he/forgets his littleness'
Beverly, NJ. 08010                          		Don Marquis 
609-386-6846    bang:uunet!cdin-1!icdi10!fr