Note: This post originally ran on my blog from many years ago, wheeleringermany.blogspot.com. I posted to and updated it during some of my tenure as an au pair in Dresden, Germany.
I wish this post had some kind of better subject matter. But it doesn’t. I’m like that. I’m that way. I could talk about Halloween, or notes on what happens when one over beats cookie dough (such as my au pair child did) or other seemingly more interesting things. But to me, they’re are merely seemingly and never really.
Instead, I will write of mustard. That’s right, mustard. Because I love the stuff. It might very well be hard-encoded into my genes to love mustard — it may be a trait I pass down to my prospective children.
Mustard is to me what chocolate is to many other people. Yet, mustard is so much not-fattening. And so cheap! Which doesn’t exactly bring me to in any other than a superficial way to my subject: Bautz’ner Mustard, or in the native language, Bautz’ner Senf. (Senf is mustard in German.)
It’s a middle-spicy mustard, it’s slightly pale in color but is not a French mustard. Nor is it the incredible Sierra Nevada Porter & Spicy Brown Mustard, the best mustard in the world. That I’ve tasted so far.
But the German mustard is delicious. It is incredible. It does create an addiction to Wiener Würstchen dunked in the mustard.
It’s like crack, without the drugs, chemical dependency and an incredible taste. As seen in the photo above, the glass of mustard (for Europeans sell mustard [often times] in glassware that is meant to be reused — in France mustard comes in the much more useful wine glasses) features the, or, Unser Sandmännchen — Our (diminutive) Sandman. He’s a feature of German TV, especially East German TV.
And he’s not scary like the 3D talking piece of toast. Which is a nightmare for another day.
