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Freudian Confusion

Savour the Phallic Vegetable

What's long, pale and drenched in a white cream sauce? It might not be what you think.

Having spent the earliest part of my childhood as a United States Army brat in Berlin, I was very excited to return to Germany in 2000. Like many Americans, I had developed considerable preconceptions about Germany's society and social mores. In particular, I knew that Germans and Europeans in general are quite open when it comes to nudity and sex.

So it wasn’t too much of a shock to my prudish American eyes when I saw the occasional poster-sized advertisement featuring topless women or well-endowed and scantily clad models hanging prominently in German cities. But one advertisement -- prominently displayed all over a major Munich subway station -- completely floored me. It was a large picture of a basket chock full of sex toys. Soft, rubber, male-appendage shaped toys.

The image was so shocking that when I visited my American cousin that evening -- who was living in Munich at the time -- I asked her if it was common in Munich to see such ads in public. She was confused and shocked herself; she said she had never seen such an ad. “Well,” I told her, “it was apparently for a brand called Spargel."

Silence. Then, slowly, a look of recognition spread across her face. She let out one of the biggest belly laughs I had ever heard.

Spargel, as it happens, is German for asparagus. And we're not talking the svelte, green asparagus Americans are used to. Rather, German asparagus tends to be white, have a bit more girth than its American counterpart, and served in a pool of creamy, white hollandaise sauce. And Germans are crazy about it.

But it's delicious. My advice to tourists visiting Germany for the World Cup, particularly if you happen to show up in May: try the Spargel. Just don’t think too deeply about the Freudian implications.

Contributed by Richard Huffman of Seattle in the US