Frühstücken

My new favourite word

Often, people will ask you what your favourite word is when learning a new language. I’ve watched several videos* where people list “untranslateable” German words, or they share what their favourite word is.

Feierabend is often a favourite from Ausländer - defined as the period of time between finishing work and going to bed. Despite the literal translation meaning celebration night, it can be any night of the week. Often, you will hear “schönen feierabend” when leaving an office in Germany.

You would be forgiven for getting this confused with Feiertag, which is the same concept - celebration day. But this one is only for days that are being celebrated. Public holidays for my Australian readers, bank holidays for my English readers. I could almost say Sundays to my German readers also considering everything is shut anyway.

In Spanish, one of my favourite words is entonces. It rolls of the tongue so well. The best translation is “then” in English - although it can also be translated to “so” or “therefore”. Whilst none of these are particularly sexy words, they do then leave you with so many possibilities with which to continue.

An honourable mention for me in German is Abenteuer, meaning adventure. Similarly, I love the Spanish word aventura. I get a great sense of joy from both of these words, because I am usually on a great adventure if I am speaking a foreign language. Granted, I live in Germany, but that doesn’t mean that my day-to-day life is not one giant adventure.

Because that is certainly how I view it.

As I said at the top, my new favourite word is the German verb Frühstücken - to have breakfast.

I find it humourous that the act of eating breakfast can be a verb, but I love it. In early April, I was taken in by friends’ parents on consecutive weekends.

I’ve always loved breakfast. We have an interesting assortment in Australia, not quite the wild west that they have in the United States, yet we still had some great advertising. Those from Nutri Grain and Weetbix left a lasting mark. In fact, just this morning I was referencing the adverts including elite Australian cricket players from the early 2000s.

My summer/university job saw me waking up every morning around 6am, to be present at the factory ready to work at 7. Despite this, my mother always got up in the morning so that I had someone to enjoy my breakfast with. Often returning to bed afterwards, knowing that at least my day had started well.

I loved this. It definitely sowed the seeds for me having quite particular table manners, which endure to this day.

Whilst we were away at Easter, Max’s family also made sure that we had the best possible start to our day. Before we went to bed each night, the time of breakfast would be decided upon so that we could all enjoy each other’s company.

Despite both coming from the same language family, the German and English words for breakfast have slight variations when translating the parts that make up the word. The English breakfast can be split simply to mean breaking the fast. Or eating for the first time since beginning the period of not eating (fasting) overnight. The German Frühstück splits into Früh meaning early and Stück meaning piece. With the etymology stating that this goes back to the period when farmers would start their day with an early piece - often of bread - before getting to work.

It’s funny noticing more of the nuances of German life, the longer that I live here. Staying at my friend Niels’ parents place a week later, we were offered the choice of a German breakfast which included a selection of breads, cheeses, and dried meats; or our runners breakfast of oats/porridge over the stove.

As a vegan, this was a no-brainer for me, but one must also always remember the famous adage “nothing new on race day”.

However, it was less about the selection of food available that made me fall in love with this German word, but rather what it meant to people - to the families.

There are as many arguments for eating breakfast as there are against it. On the one hand, people who practice intermittent fasting would tell you endlessly about the benefits of skipping breakfast, whereas others might tell you it’s the most important meal of the day.

However, the latter is purely marketing. Whilst working my way down a little rabbit hole, I found that the quote “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is a marketing ploy from General Foods in 1944 to increase the popularity of breakfast and sales of their product Grape-Nuts. This was a supplementary slogan for their campaign “Eat a Good Breakfast, Do a Better Job.”

I have tried intermittent fasting in the past, but also worked with a nutritionist last year and was duly warned that I was not eating enough food during the day, and that running fasted is almost never a good idea. They went on to say that there is little to no research that shows benefits of running fasted, but there is plenty against it.

As I write this piece, I have just made my way on to the ferry between Germany and Denmark and there is a big line directly behind me waiting for the all inclusive buffet to open behind me for breakfast at 5:55am. I can’t tell you whether the people here are hungry, want to make the most of the all-inclusive offer, or want to spend time with their companions.

I will always make the effort to eat breakfast. Getting up this morning at 04:15, I had packed a jar full of overnight oats when I left my home more than 12 hours earlier. I took the time to eat them while I waited for the bus connection on the way to the ferry terminal. People will often tell me they don’t have time for breakfast, when really it is not a priority to them.

This is also true of the people who won’t have breakfast but still have time to head to the pub for a pint before an early morning flight. Something which has been in the news recently, with Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary trying to ban the service of alcohol before early morning flights.

Which I will fully own up to, here is a photo of Conor drinking a pint of Guiness at 07:30 before our trip to Croatia. It’s tradition, which is really the whole point of this article.

I think that we need more traditions, I think that we need to go back to good family values (to quote Ride). I think that we need to spend more time breaking bread (literally) and without our phones.

In the context of my recent trips, waking up to a table that is entirely full of breakfast food was slightly unbelievable. Knowing that I got to spend an hour or so having good conversation with people that I didn’t know incredibly well, allowing myself to use this time to build a deeper connection with them.

We drank coffee, sat, listened to each other, and the conversation flowed naturally, as it always does when you are sitting around a table with others and take a keen interest in what they are saying.

Like the memes showing the glass table and chairs sitting around it, the best conversations are always sitting around a table with people that you care about, or that you care to listen to. You have chosen to sit at that table, you may as well pay attention to what it is that they have to say. You might just learn something, or forge a deeper connection.

I think these experiences impacted me so profoundly because currently, I do eat breakfast by myself everyday. There is no ritual to it, not much variety in the food that I am eating. When I do spend the time and effort to make myself some nicer food it makes me feel amazing.

The other side of this probably comes from having lived away from my family for so long. It has been 8 years since I left Australia to live overseas and I miss that connection at the kitchen table. My housemates often don’t get up before 11am unless they have a reason to, so it is always me sitting at the table alone shovelling down my oats.

Everywhere that I go travelling, I try to pick up the best parts of a culture and adapt them to my life. A profound example of this is when I was in Morocco, whenever you met someone for the first time and shook their hand, they would immediately touch their heart with the same hand - a seemingly unconscious sign of respect. Which to me, is beautiful.

From my time in Germany, if I take nothing else away from this country - other than the memories and some of the language. I hope to take away the culture of breakfast.

Ich möchte jetzt Frühstücken, Tschüssi!

* P.S. Go watch RobWords on YouTube, or check out his Substack here.