Wet Cookies and the At Key

Sometimes adventure comes in the everyday things. That's not to say it doesn't also come in the new, the extraordinary, and the spectacular. Just saying that's not always the source.

We are in Hamburg, Germany, only for a day. Our flight got in on Monday afternoon and our flight goes out on Tuesday afternoon. So yeah, day in Hamburg. Hooray!

This is Speicherstadt. Say hello, Speicherstadt.

By the time we landed in Hamburg, got tickets for the S-Bahn (a subway), rode into the city, and walked to our hotel, it was after 3 PM. My stomach was having words with me. So our first order of business was to get lunch. We went to a traditional German restaurant across from Central Station. There I had Nuremberg Bratwurst which included six narrow sausages served over sauerkraut with a side of potatoes. Alrica had Labskaus which was very different. It was ground up corned beef mixed with ground up beets, and it was excellent. It came with a side of pickled herring, a pickled pickle, a non-pickled salad with a mustard dressing, and a fried egg on top (also not pickled.)

Central Station

We then visited Speicherstadt; this literally translates to Warehouse City. This is a UNESCO world heritage site with this striking red brick, tall buildings built in lanes with canals between them. Of course, these were designed to be warehouses, though they are surprisingly intricate in their architecture. Today, they are used for many other activities and include several museums.

More Speicherstadt. Now you can say hello back.

But the big adventure was that night. We were in the hotel room and I wanted some dessert. There was a grocery store only a block away, so I told Alrica I planned to go there and get cookies. Her reply was, "I'm not excited about dry cookies." I said, "So you want me to get wet cookies?"

So now I am on a quest for wet cookies, or fluid biscuits if you're British. But I also had a second task, not exactly a side quest, more of a simultaneous quest. I needed to get something printed for the next day, something that confirms our transport from the airport in Tirana into the city. But hey, the hotel has a business center. I can print it there.

First, to the market where I must find wet cookies. Quest completed! I found these cookies that have a soft cake layer topped by an orange curd and then the entire thing is dipped in chocolate. But curd in the cookie makes it wet, right?

If there's curd in the cookie, then the cookie won't be dry.
Cause the curd in the cookie is the key.
Put some curd in the cookie and you'll giggle and you'll sigh
Saying fork that box of cookies over now to me.

Where I had more trouble was in printing the document. I went to the business center, and there is a printer. But there doesn't seem to be anyway to connect a USB drive to the printer. No problem, I can connect it to a computer in the business center. But the computers in the business center won't let you just open up File Explorer to see the contents of my USB drive. So I can't send anything to the printer.

The business center is on the ground floor as is reception. So I go to reception and the man at the desk tells me to email it to a particular address of the hotel and he will print it for me. Great. So I go back to the business center to log into my email. I can't do it from my phone, because I don't have the file on my phone, it is on a USB drive. That's when I realize I am not dealing with the keyboard I have come to know and... maybe not love, but at least get used to. Many of the keys are in the same place, but I quickly realized the Y and Z are switched, along with a few others.

Can you see my key problem?

This is not a big deal, I just have to be looking down at the keyboard as I type. This is when I hit my roadblock.

If you are planning to send an email, there is one key you must be able to use. You can't put in an email address without the @ key. For you and I, you hold down Shift and press 2, and you get @. But that is not where the @ key is on a German keyboard.

Hopefully you can see it in the picture. It is with the Q key, but not written above it, rather below it. So I am trying keystroke after keystroke to get an @ into the email address and each time I either get q or Q.

Finally I gave up on guess and check. I went to the internet and searched "How to use a German keyboard" and the first result that popped up was "how to type @ on a German keyboard." I feel better knowing I am not the only person who ever had this problem.

In case you ever find yourself with this particular conundrum, here is what I learned. You hold down the Alt Gr key (which is different from the Alt key) and you then press the Q key.

I successfully completed both of my simultaneous quests. Does this mean I go up in level? Or get an upgrade? Rocket shoes would be cool, but maybe the ability to understand more languages (and their keyboards) would be more practical. Or at the very least, could I hear trumpets, see confetti, and have the words "Quest Complete" scroll across the sky please. That's a modest request, right? Certainly more modest than wet cookies.