Fish with Whiskey

I guess anyone who knows me won't be too surprised to see that one of my first Polish posts is about Pączki.

These delicious, sweet, perfectly-fried-fluffed-and-filled delicacies, pronounced more like 'pOnchki' than 'pac-see', are Poland's version of a jam-filled doughnut (or Berliner).

But let me tell you friends, the word doughnut just doesn't cover it.



When we arrived in Warsaw, one of the first questions I asked the magical Google machine was 'where can I get the best Paczki in the city'.

As luck would have it, it turned out that my beloved had chosen a hostel directly between two of the most famed bakeries in town. I'm sad to say that we never made it to A Blikle- I guess now I have another reason to return to the Capital, but we did manage to feast on some of the exceptional product from Cukiernia Pawłowicz.


Paczki dough is not at all sweet, but instead has a fairly distinctive 'yeasty' flavour. Often in addition to the filling flavour, the little dough balls are garnished with some sort of candied fruit peel, or, in the case of this fine and fluffy fellow below, flavoured throughout with orange.



Add a slightly tart traditional rose jam to the centre of a perfectly risen dough and produce a completely crispy outer shell with some sort of synergistic marriage of light frying and glaze... and then sprinkle on yet another layer of texture, complexity and rich almondy flavourings... and you have a beautiful beast.

Fun fact, apparently the addition of a bit of alcohol to the dough prevents absorption of too much oil!
Oh yeah, and did I mentioned that all the doughnuts were somehow, magically, always warm?

Did you want to see the inside?




And the surprise player?

Ok, the title maybe doesn't make immediate sense to the non-Aussie readers out there.

AFL is the Australian Football League.

And Australian Football (Aussie Footy- because we are lazy race of English speakers) is a weird little game played 'down under'.

It involves a lot of leaping, men wearing short-shorts, and a pointy egg-shaped ball.

Like this:

And the G in AFLG? Well, the G is for Germany.



Growing up in Australia, you're pretty much guaranteed to have some sort of exposure to AFL.

You probably learn to play it growing up: sports are a big part of school, and AFL is a big part of Aussie sport.

You see snippets on TV, because our sport cycle is literally AFL-cricket-back to AFL. In Australia, if you want to watch the soccer kind of football, you probably have to switch over to the 'foreign' channel.

So, as an Australian, I kind of get AFL.

But I've never sat down and watched a whole game, live or televised.

That is, never until last month, when, nearly three years into living in Germany, our Aussie friend invited us to watch his team, the Rheinland Lions, play a home match out of Cologne.


*Yeah, Aussie flavour means swearing. I haven't heard F*** and C*** used so fluently since leaving Australia. For example: "Man the F*** up! For F***'s sake get on the F****ing little C***!"

Beautiful! So much like home it almost brings tears to the eyes.

So Andy, our friend Richard, some of his friends and I, spent an afternoon bathing in the sweet song of our people.

While 'our' Lions, took on the Hamburg Dockers.

And yes, for those of you playing from home, the Dockers are the ones who look like, well... the Dockers:

Haaaamburg, way to go. Hit 'em real hard send 'em down below!


AFLG is a slightly different game from the home variety. From what we could tell, it was generally played a bit lower (less jumping on other peoples backs and overall less marking), there was less ball bouncing while running, and less hand passing.









In the end, the Lions- many of who were playing for the first ever time- lost to the Dockers.

Nonetheless, it was a pretty lovely way to spend a day after three years in Germany, bathing in a bit of that 'back-home' feeling.

The Museum in der Runden Ecke, and the Zeitgeschitliches Forum, are two absolutely free museums that you should probably visit if you're in Leipzig.

If everything goes well, today we will be heading to stilinberlin's ice-cream market.

Which, I'm hoping, is exactly what the name suggests.

And because of this event, and because we are generally Eis-schweinchenen (how do you make a 'chen' plural German people?), our conversations of late have gravitated somewhat towards the discussion of icecream experiences.  Yesterday, my friend was describing the most amazing pistachio icecream in the world- which apparently exists at Berlin's Hokey Pokey ( I don't know.. he still refuses to take me to -trying to keep all the Eis for himself I suspect)... and I thought of this:

The prices aren't cheap for Germany- 1.30 for a 'normal' flavour, and 1.60 for the premium- which includes the heartbreakingly delicious pistachio.

We also chowed down on the dark chocolate (seen above with Andy), which somehow managed to not only be dark, but- unlike most 'Zartbitter' eis in this country, also creamy and not overly sweet.

Plus a brownie (below)- which I would struggle to find any fault with.

Nonetheless, if you're not capable of eating your way though quite the same quantity of icecream as us, you should probably just head straight for that creamy green flavour giant.

Do you notice that my clothes have changed between the two photos (above and below)?

Different outfits, different days.
The great thing about a weekend trip is that it's totally ok to visit your new favourite icecream joint two times in two days.