Most of our time in Germany was spent in Trier and Heidelberg, both stylish, historical and touristic centres in the South Western regions of Germany. We enjoyed our time there and as always placed the anticipated dining aspect of our trip as one of the top highlights of our travels.

We thoroughly enjoy the culture, history, architecture, scenery and site-seeing in general, but this most definitely needs to be complemented on a daily basis by a light – or not so light, tasty lunch, and above all by a lovely, full and generous dinner to end each interesting day. We eat well when at home, so it wouldn’t cross our minds to lower or curb our eating habits in any way while abroad.

While in Germany rather than obtaining recommendations from our hotels, we decided to go down the Tripadvisor road and simply tried restaurants which were given the very best reviews and which therefore enjoyed the highest ratings. Without making it sound like a bit of an obsession, when we travel we always like to try the typical, local fare, representative of the region’s specialities. If we wanted to eat exactly the same food as we eat at home, then we would do best in staying there. When in Rome do as the Romans do and all that… Also this is one good way of discovering new delicacies and extending your culinary knowledge in general.

However in spite of all our perfectly good intentions and more so of strictly sticking to the most highly recommended establishments which were meant to be the very best in town, we were subjected to one bad meal after another, much to our dismay and rising frustration.

We had various nondescript boiled meats, fatty pork products, tasteless sausages, mashed potatoes swimming in bland lukewarm gravy, boiled turkey steaks covered by a less than delicious tomato sauce (yes boiled turkey steaks with tomato sauce – this is not a typing error!) and loads and loads of sauerkraut. The very best dish we managed to have is the renowned (Austrian) veal schnitzel, which admittedly can often be pleasant, but how many schnitzels can you eat? Meals ranged from bland and uninteresting at best, to inedible hospital food at worst.

We also tried a couple of desserts, however none of them were anything to write homepage about. And if you might be thinking of apple strudel und kompanie, that is mainly centred around Vienna, which is admittedly Germanic, but not all Germanic is Vienna.

Without any doubt, our best meals were our breakfasts which all featured a nice fresh selection of cheeses, hams, fruits, yogurts, cereals and pastries, providing a tiny beacon of hope in an otherwise vast gastronomic desert. And what probably kept us from leaping out of our 5th floor hotel window were the copious amounts of excellent beer and equally delectable riesling sekt – the lovely local sparkling wine. But even these need at times to be accompanied by a decent bite to eat.

Now some of you may be thinking that this is Germany and that is exactly what one should expect, while others may be saying that it serves us right for eating German food in the first place. But it really beats me how people can go out for a meal to a restaurant and enjoy being fed what a truly untalented and unimaginative parent might whip up at home in a few minutes to shut up their young hungry children. Well the most likely answer to this question is that they don’t!

It seems that even most locals would much rather go for a pizza, a burger, or go ethnic for a Turkish, a Thai or a Chinese. Traditional German fare has long been out, especially with the younger generations. This is not dissimilar to say the English, who save a few old favorite dishes at a pub meal, would rather go for an Indian or oriental restaurant, rather than going out to an English restaurant. And I suppose that we in Malta are exactly the same. With the exception of a rabbit meal how often do we go to eat at a Maltese restaurant? For clarity’s sake I am not comparing German cuisine to Maltese cuisine and neither to English cuisine for that matter. I am only comparing dining habits in these countries.

So I suppose in many ways we were playing the dumb tourists who insisted on doing exactly what dumb tourists do and also insisted on riding it out till the bitter end, rather than cleverly changing tack somewhere along the line and slipping into a tasty Turkish instead.

Without wishing to offend anyone who might somehow hold German cuisine to heart, my advice would be a resounding ‘don’t even bother trying’. Go ethnic or try to find a good Italian or French restaurant when you’re there. You are lucky that we did all the experimenting for you and resiliently stuck to the seemingly near-impossible task of having a great German meal. For German cuisine is what it is – you either dislike it or you hate it.

So on our last day in Germany we leapt out of bed at the crack of dawn, jumped into our hired car and sped straight to the French border without any further delay, diversion or distraction.