Fish & Friends

Elisabeth and I like to eat fish, although finding a good choice in Freiburg is tough. The city is too far from Germany's coasts, where it's traditional to eat seafood often. 

In the States, I always found a good selection of fish, even in places like Knoxville and, particularly, lobster in Oak Ridge.

English still is the preferred language in Germany.

The only chance to eat fresh fish in Freiburg is a German restaurant chain called Nordsee, where we quite often eat grilled fillets of plaice caught in the Pacific, even though it tastes entirely different from plaice found in the North Sea. This is why whenever I am in Hamburg, I try to eat Speckscholle, a plaice caught by men on fishing cutters harbored in Finkenwerder, a village on the left bank of the Elbe River. Remember my blog from last January? I nearly missed the boat.

Coupons: this is just the first page

The local Nordsee restaurant tries hard to convince Freiburgers that fish is healthier than their traditional Schäufele (pork shoulder). It issues coupons that will cut your bill in half. Sometimes it is hard to find those coupons, so Red Baron joined their customer club, Fish & Friends, not to be confused with either the craft beer Fox & Friends or the early morning show on Fox Television.

Note: the restaurant is open, not geöffnet.

Yesterday I had a strange encounter. With some difficulty, I created a QR code on my iPhone using the Nordsee app, giving me a price reduction on our favorite dish. When I proudly presented the above image to the man behind the checkout counter, he panicked: "I don't need that," and handed me not one but two sheets of coupons, avoiding the electronic gadget like the plague. He nearly fainted when a young man waiting in line behind me showed him his mobile phone with a barcode too.

So much for digital competence in Germany.

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