German Sunday

My orchestra friend Kathrin declared her last Sunday to be "absolutely ideal," and I found it to be almost stereotypical.

9-ish Wake up, hurry in sweatpants and houseshoes to nearest bakery (a.k.a. the only store open on Sunday) which will either close at 11 or run out of rolls.

10-ish Eat rolls with the widest possible variety of things to put on bread: cucumber, cheese, marmelade, Nutella, leberwurst, butter.
Under no circumstances should warm foods be prepared for breakfast.
*Church-going Germans (the few, the proud, the tax-paying) do, of course, get up earlier as to not have to sacrifice the roll-eating.

Remaining early morning: wander around the house in underwear and house shoes (always, always house shoes), possibly read newspaper or watch television.

Around 12ish--go to your parents' (who, of course, live in the same village as you) and help them prepare a large meal almost certainly involving cabbage.

1ish-Eat, eat, eat. To prevent indigestion, drink schnaps. Topics of discussion include: geography, local history, public transit schedules, and (rarely) football.

2ish--Sleep off alcohol/food coma.

3ish--Go walking in local park, a pleasant leftover of aristocratic rule. Excitedly point at squirrels, rabbits, ducks and other small animals to anyone who will pay attention. Ignore extensive signage forbidding the feeding of ducks. Feed ducks hard, leftover rolls from previous Sunday.
*Other Sunday afternoon activities include bicycling.

5ish--Go to grandparents' (same village) and eat cake with coffee. Should grandparents be dead/on holiday/in a different village, eating cake with friends is also acceptable.
*Those Germans foolish enough to have left their home villages make regular pilgrimages back in order to eat the cake of their grandmothers, even if said grandmothers buy the cake from a bakery chain available outside the village.

Early evening: Do washing-up from cake, sleep off cake, do laundry to get off cake crumbs, put cake recipe from grandmother into files.

Before Tatort: if the children are hungry, they may eat bread.

20:15 Tatort. You might not care enough about current events to watch the news program that immediately precedes Germany's most popular detective show, but you damn well will be able to talk about Tatort the next day at work. Coinciding well with their love for national geography, the most exciting part of any Tatort episode is to determine where the Tatort is taking place before the detectives arrive on the scene. Tatort is produced by all of the regional public television channels in rotation, and accordingly takes place all over Germany. The detectives rarely change (hence the easy association of detective with location), and any rotation in cast is a cause for national discussion.

Post-Tatort: Anne Will, television's equivalent of the BILD Zeitung, their New York Post. Imagine a female, wildly populist Larry King about a third his age. While she and her guests try to solve Germany's problems with as much overdramatic transition music and as many one-sided reports as possible, fall asleep.