More fun facts about Germany

More fun facts (well, technically, observations):

• German foods border on the decadent. After seeing the size of the lunches that they eat and the fattiness of the food, I'm just completely flummoxed as to how they're not all fatter than Americans. Claudia, incidentally, has lost about 10 pounds since moving here, whereas I have gained about 10 pounds. I have no idea why this is the case. She suggests it's because of the lack of processed food, which maybe my body was immune to. This one still stumps me.
• Case in point re: decadent food. I got a frozen pizza and cooked it only to discover that it was not a pizza, but rather a Flammkuchen. Flammkuchen is just like pizza except that it uses creme fraiche instead of tomato sauce. Yeah, you heard that right. Oh yeah, and the classic toppings are onion and bacon. And these people will eat about a 10" one of these, by themselves, for lunch.
• The biggest minority here, by far, is Turkish. How this came to be is kinda complicated and is written up very nicely here, but the essense is that lots of Turks came on guest worker programs when Germany was being rebuilt, and they stayed, and they multiplied, and their families came too. Generally, you will see plenty of them around here (although to be honest I can't tell a Turk from an Indian from a Persian, but it's kinda like, in California, if you see a Latino, it's probably safe to guess that he's Mexican). The amount of Turks I see here is roughly the same as Latinos or Blacks in New York; they definitely have a presence, but they're very obviously a minor percentage of the population. Anyway, what really amazes me is how blatantly and unashamedly prejudiced the Germans are about the Turks. When we were looking around for an apartment, we were trying to get a sense of costs relative to neighborhood etc. Our agent told us that it depends, and started going through neighborhoods in terms of quality and price. When she got to the bottom, she said "of course, you could find someplace cheaper, like a Turkish neighborhood, but you wouldn't want to live there." She said this in a way as to suggest that a Turkish neighborhood would be your neighborhood of choice only if there was nothing available directly under the airport runway flight path, or near the sewage treatment plant. Come to think of it, those neighborhoods are probably Turkish.
  

More stuff coming as I think of it....