“Do you eat Sauerkraut with every meal in Germany?” is a question that I get asked pretty often as a German exchange student. Although Sauerkraut is indeed a dish that is very typical for Germany, most Germans don’t even eat it that often. I feel like there are a lot of Americans who eat Sauerkraut more often than Germans. There is other food instead that is pretty typical German food.

Pretzels are definitely pretty much on the top of the list of typical German food. Although you can buy Pretzels in America too, they taste different in Germany. The most popular kinds of  Pretzels are not the small and crunchy, but the big and soft ones. Unlike what most Americans do, I have not seen a single German dipping his/her Pretzel into cheese. We eat Pretzels usually either plain when they are fresh out of the oven and still warm and soft, or we even put butter on them. 

Another typical dish is Schnitzel. A Schnitzel is a thin, breaded slice of veal cutlet that is pan-fried. It is usually served with lemon slices to sprinkle some lemon juice on top and most of the time we eat Schnitzel in combination with Ketchup and fries.

Käsespätzle is also a meal that we eat pretty often in Germany. It is a type of noodles baked with a lot of cheese and topped with crispy onions.

Some other foods that we eat a lot of in Germany are all kinds of sausages. For breakfast many people eat Weißwürste. Weißwürste are white sausages that are made of minced veal and pork back bacon. For lunch or dinner we eat Bratwürste. Bratwürste are sausages made from veal, beef, or most commonly pork and are usually pan-fried or roasted.

Last but not least, we also eat Sauerkraut, but definitely not as much as most Americans expect. My family ate it maybe about four times a year. Of course, there are other families, especially with older people, that eat it more often, but I know a lot of Germans that don’t like Sauerkraut at all.