I think it’s time to talk about the würst aspect of German life.
It is a stereotype that Germans love sausages, and it seems this stereotype has some background after all. What’s more, as I learned from one fountain in Kandel, the nearby area of Rhineland Palatinate was known as the Cattle Belt—and you can guess what they made out of that cattle. One of those specialities is called Saumagen or “pig’s stomach”, a sausage made by filling the namesake with meat, diced potatoes, spices and boiling it (some people prefer to fry it afterwards anyway, making it to spiritually resemble haggis even more despite sheep not being involved at all).
Initially I learned about it when I bought various kinds of tinned sausage from Landau at the local supermarket (yes, it is common here to sell sausage tinned and even rural butcheries produce it), but in the recent years with the spread of vending machines in rural areas offering local goods I had a chance of trying more varieties of it (those machines work every day while almost everything is closed on Sundays—exactly when I have time to travel around). So I’ll describe what varieties of saumagen I’ve seen before mentioning other curious sausage-related things.
Weisenheim am Sand is the only place (so far) offering saumagen in slices (vacuum-packed) in addition to tins. It’s nice but it had a bit too much mustard seeds (or maybe it was marjoram) to my taste.
Kirchheimbolanden offers variety with the most ingredients: it’s the only one I’ve encountered that added carrots as well. Also it has the other variety of it like in St Martin.
Speaking on which, St Martin had the best saumagen to my taste. In addition to the regular version there’s another one with chestnuts instead of potatoes. Even the fact that they add a bit of beef to it does not spoil it at all. The funniest unrelated fact is that I bought it from the shop that was open on Good Friday (it is a rare occasion when something is open on public holiday, especially on public Catholic holiday in former part of Bavaria).
Maybe I’ve seen and tried it elsewhere but those variations didn’t leave an impression. Unlike the one variation that I’ve not tried and yet it left an impression: I’ve seen this exotic dish being advertised at some restaurant in Lorsch (which is a part of Hessen and lies on the other side of the Rhine).
There are other interesting mentions (with my health I should not eat meat much or often—so I don’t, and probably there are a lot of other things that I’ve never seen; but that’s for other people to talk about). For example, in Bavaria it is common to have a version of common dish made from liver (hence my test for maultaschen not being Swabish—otherwise there would be the ones made from liver in Bavaria like it happens with spätzle). Though they have Leberkäse, literally “liver-cheese”, which contains neither.
And in Württemberg I’ve encountered at least twice Bologna sausage with boiled eggs (it makes me think of Scotland for some reason once again).
For the traditional sausages I prefer käsekrainer which are available everywhere in varying thicknesses and lengths. The best ones I’ve ever tried came from Sasbachwalden (which is worth visiting for other reasons, it’s one of the most scenic places I’ve ever seen).
That’s the story with the sausages: you pull one link and another one comes after it. I started with one specific local variety of sausage, overcame a desire to talk about local vending machines that can sell e.g. ice cream instead (not something you’d expect to see in a random village), still ended mentioning some bits of geography and local customs as well as other food articles. More talented person could write a book about German history viewed through a sausage ring (and it would be a very entertaining read!), but all I can manage is this pathetic post.
P.S. And from a small biased review the most impressively decorated butcher shops I’ve seen were in Bad Kreuznach, Ingelheim am Rhein and Durbach (the one near Offenburg).