A Pause For Pig

It's crunch time here in Regensburg. I have been derelict in my blog writing duties as I have been preoccupied with the impending end of the semester. It has not been a terribly eventful beginning of 2014 for me, save that in the first few hours of the New Year I slipped on some black ice and cracked a rib. It's mostly healed by now but I have hardly had a proper nights sleep in a month as a result, because I will roll onto the afflicted side and then not be able to fall back asleep.

I told myself that I wouldn't go the whole month of January without writing anything, so I just wanted to share a short anecdote from Thursday. A friend of mine, Federico, who you might guess is Italian, organized a dinner for everyone to take a break before diving into a weekend of test preparation and writing papers. It consisted of 30+ people, about two-thirds Italians with the rest German and a couple of Americans. There is a medieval-style restaurant in Regensburg which is known for great food and house-made mead. They are also known for their Spanferkel or "suckling pig." It is only available to large parties and requires ordering well in advance. I had been to this establishment several times enjoying their Flammkuchen, a German dish resembling pizza, and ribs with a delicious honey-mustard dipping sauce. However, I always wanted to feast like a medieval lord, and last week I got my chance.

We all congregated on the steps of the cathedral here in Regensburg. With great ceremony, Frederico read through his list of people who had signed up for the feast, and with most of us in attendance, we headed to our destination. The restaurant is located in an old building with vaulted stone ceilings, and is filled with long tables and benches with furs and pillows on them, the walls are decorated with shields, bows, and even a small tapestry. I wish I had remembered to bring a proper camera with me, I only had my cell phone, so I couldn't really get any good low-light pictures of the place.

We filled in to our section of the restaurant and placed our drink orders. All the drinks are served in terracotta cups, and mine was full of a delicious mixture of dark beer and mead. I was seated at the end of a table flanked by a German girl from Allgäu, a scenic part of southern Germany famous for it's dairy products and thick dialect, as well a couple of Italian exchange students from the area around Pisa. We enjoyed our drinks and waited for the pig, and I discussed differences between America and Italy with my Italian table-mates. Aside complaining about how early Germans and Americans eat dinner, the most important lesson they had for me was that "Italian women are a beautiful, but a very dangerous!" I told them I could believe it, and recounted a story of when I was in Italy and was struck by a very beautiful girl walking with her boyfriend, who at that particular moment took obvious notice of a buxom woman in a very scandalous dress. The girl began to beat her boyfriend with her purse while letting our a stream of what I assume were Italian obscenities, the only one I could recognize being "ba fangul!"  

I know, no apple in the mouth, how disappointing.

It was around this time that I heard people start chanting "Schwein! Schwein! Schwein!" and pounding on the tables. I saw the main event coming out of the kitchen. Two Germans, a tall man and a woman almost as large carrying the suckling pig out on a huge cutting board. This pig was surrounded with a ring of their delicious brown bread, some of the best bread I've ever eaten, you could live of this stuff with a little butter. There were also bowls of Knödel, tennis ball sized dumplings (I can't understand how people can eat more than one), delicious Sauerkraut and pitchers of Au Jus to pour over your plate. The pig's skin is crispy, but the meat is so tender that you don't really need a knife for it, you can just stick it with the big serving fork and it comes right off the bone. I don't know if they have a huge oven or a rotisserie, but it must take all day to cook.

It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time: simple, salty, and satisfying. After my second plate and cup of mead/dark beer I was feeling very content and sleepy, I'd been up since early that morning and been working my ass off all week. So I peeled myself off the bench and caught a bus back home. It was one of the few nights that I've slept soundly in the last month, and I slept like a feudal lord after a day of hunting.