It has been so long since I visited Germany, I’m not certain how relevant my experiences will be to any future travelers, or how accurate my memory is. As I’ve said, my family has been involved in AFS since I was in middle school; my trip to Germany was during the summer prior to hosting our first exchange student, a girl from Switzerland. (We met up with her in Munich for lunch during the trip.) When I was there, Germany was still using the deutsche mark for their currency.

As I was a child, prior to leaving for the trip, a family friend from England taught me a very important phrase: “ein kleine kugel” (“one small scoop”). Because what does a child want in the heat of summer but an ice cream cone? As it turned out, there were ice cream carts on almost every other corner in every city we visited, selling small, one-scoop cones for one mark.

The summer is spargelzeit (“asparagus time”), and restaurants will often have multiple asparagus dishes available, and often serve asparagus as a side dish for other things. One night, my grandfather even ordered “spargle mit spargle” (“asparagus with asparagus”). The asparagus is usually white asparagus, which is supposed to be more tender and less bitter than asparagus that hasn’t been blanched. Green asparagus will usually be specified as such, being the exception despite being the vegetable’s natural state.

Of course, the summer is also the season for erdbeeren (strawberries), one of my favorite fruits, and there are almost as many roadside stands selling them as there are stands selling spargle.