Square, Practical, Good: Germans and food

The Germans are a people of routine and convention, not least when it comes to food and drink. They are also a people who believe, not always wrongly, that if it’s made in Germany (it referring to anything), it’s better than from somewhere else. When it comes to cars, they are right. Food, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

The German attitude to food has been no better encapsulated than in the ultra-snappy slogan for Ritter Sport chocolate. “Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut.” Square, practical, good. It’s less a slogan and more a series of words that, in translation, form a lesson for German engineers to explain in English the shape and benefits of whatever they happen to be engineering. Even something as ostensibly pleasurable as eating chocolate needs to be explained according to a manual.

And so it is with other German food. Its functionality dominates over its genuine appeal. It is practical, square in the sense of providing a square (and usually large square) meal, but not necessarily any good.

The Germans engineer everything. And food and drink are no different. Mealtimes are precisely determined as though by real-time systems engineering. Twelve on the dot is lunch. Four on the dot is coffee and cake. Seven on the dot is the evening meal.

The routine and convention are such and the made-in-Germany tag so prevalent that it is hard to imagine any un-Germanic influences disturbing the pre-set equilibrium of German mealtimes and the German propensity to hoover up an entire beef herd in one sitting. However, this convention does skip cultures.

It must be all that engineering, but Germans approach the culture of Mallorcan food with a process of both scientific conformity and enquiry. Unlike the British, who are both predominantly an uncurious breed and one not inclined to be told how they should conduct themselves, the Germans take their convention of process control with them when they travel, along with their manuals. A guide book of some description is always to hand in informing them as to the convention as to what they should eat. They try tapas, for example, because the guide book says so. If it’s in the manual, it must be correct.

All this brings us to the impact of a substantial increase in the number of German tourists in Mallorca’s main resorts this summer. In Alcúdia, for example, there is a 20% increase in German tourism, one that has not been anything like matched by an increase in British tourism. This increase has had an effect on one area of the local restaurant business. The Indians.

Curry would not be something to be found in the German tourist’s manual for eating in Mallorca, but the Germans, as with the British, are still very much creatures of habit; witness, for example, all that coffee and cake being wolfed down at four on the dot every afternoon. And curry has a peculiarly German flavour and a peculiarly German application. The sausage.

Curry wurst is a German institution. While it is thought that the Germans don’t have the same taste for tandoori or balti as the Brits, they do like smothering their sausages with curry sauce. It might seem odd that one restaurant has suddenly re-branded itself as a German curry house, but not when you consider this tradition.

Checkpoint Charlie, for this is the new name, boasts that it offers “Berlin curry”. When I went past and saw this, I thought it was completely mad. I know I shouldn’t have, but it conjured up the thought of waiters from the sub-continent sporting lederhosen and their lady wives swapping their saris for a dirndl. There again, they don’t generally wear lederhosen in Berlin.

But it isn’t quite as mad as it first seemed. There’s something of a moral here. It is one of reacting swiftly to what is happening in the tourist market. If there are that many more Germans around, then adapt to try and attract the business. Berlin curry may not conform to the conformity of how the Germans approach their Mallorcan eating experiences, but it is at least in line with a German market that is nothing if not conventional. Whether there should be a slogan though, I’m not sure. Practical? Possibly. Good? With any luck. But how do you describe the shape of a sausage?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

How To Screw Up: Hotels

Here’s a case study for you. Assume it’s still last year, you own a hotel, a fairly small hotel popular for years with British families and firmly “British” in reputation. You get a bit edgy about the way things are, not just with the British tourism market but also with the competition from all-inclusives (you are, at present, a mix of self-catering and board). What do you do? Do you carry on in the same way or do you change completely?

I’m naming neither the hotel nor the resort, but the case study has panned out as follows. The hotel has switched to being primarily German and primarily all-inclusive. It is still possible for British tourists, of which many have been loyal and regular visitors, to book, but the Britishness has gone. The entertainment has changed. It was never grand, but it was homely, constrained by its budget and the domain of someone who was, in many ways, the “face” of the hotel.

British visitors have faced something of a surprise. In addition to the switch in emphasis to being German, which includes a different emphasis when it comes to the food, if they have booked all-inclusive, this hasn’t turned quite as they might have expected.

The hotel, remember, is fairly small. It has a restaurant, but it doesn’t have the facility for providing the sort of food, out of set dining hours, that is commonly associated with all-inclusives: pizzas, chips, burgers from a snack bar. Drink there is, on demand, but the guest is obliged to pay a deposit for his or her glass; a deposit for a plastic glass.

Because there are only set dining-times, if guests arrive after ten in the evening, there is nothing for them. The kitchen can’t be opened. There is no flexibility, despite the guests being all-inclusive.

Not all guests have booked all-inclusive. Those who have come on a self-catering basis are greeted with the possibility of their upgrading, at a daily rate, to all-inclusive. It’s what the hotel wants; it’s what it almost expects. The rooms for those who insist on remaining self-catering have to then have equipment re-installed that had been taken away on the expectation that it wouldn’t be required. The microwave, for instance, has to be put back.

Though primarily German, other nationalities are booked in. In addition to the British, there are the Russians. They are on their way. If the British and Germans don’t always see eye-to-eye, then the Germans and Russians positively detest each other. In a large complex, nationalities are diluted, but in a fairly small hotel, they are not. And they are all-inclusive. Likely to be there, all together, all getting on each other’s nerves.

The hotel, and the season has barely started, seems to realise that it has made an error. It is already considering going back to the board and self-catering mix, abandoning all-inclusive and getting the British back. So why did it take the route it has for this summer?

It panicked. It saw that the British market was struggling, and so looked for more secure markets, the German one mainly. But it leapt too quickly. As things have turned out, the British market has recovered. Not totally, certainly not, but sufficiently, and aided by events in north Africa. It also miscalculated. As a smallish hotel, but with a loyal British following and a good reputation, the British market would probably still have been viable, even if Egypt and Tunisia hadn’t come along.

This case study is informative in many ways, one being a lesson for hotels which, believing they have to jump to the all-inclusive tune, have to be sure they can deliver. This one can’t, not in the way the guest expects it to. It’s too small. Even larger hotels in Mallorca have problems, because they were not designed with all-inclusive in mind.

But more than this, it is informative in acting as a cautionary tale for hotels that would ignore their loyal markets. Apart from the nationality mix, many British guests don’t want all-inclusive. Not everyone does. The worst aspect for the hotel is that the internet will be alive with the sound of its being criticised. It acted in a supremely short-term manner. It didn’t think through the consequences, and now it faces a challenge of recovering a reputation, one that is likely to be damaged more, as we are still only in May.

And more than all this, for guests who have been dissatisfied, it is not just the hotel but also the resort and the island which suffer. “Never again,” said one guest. And never again might mean Turkey in the future. The greatest lesson should be that everyone in tourism is in it together, but they are not. They are in it for themselves, and the rest can go hang.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.