Doppelkeks : available world wide!

When my friends and I travelled around Europe, it was predominately by train, and when we arrived at a new place we had to find our feet quickly, having only what we could carry in our packs. Our first port of a call was always the tourist information office, where we asked the following without fail:

• Where is the nearest supermarket (preferably an Aldis)?
• Where is the nearest campsite?

I like to refer to these as biscuit and board.

Why biscuit? Well without a doubt biscuits preserved our sanity, and good relations, during many an adverse circumstance.

With all the traipsing around that travellers do, the calories just drop off, until all that’s left are shambling skeletons. It doesn’t have to be that way, but if you only have a limited amount of time in each place, then you tend to eat when it’s convenient. When we didn’t have enough to keep us in good spirits, it was the biscuit that balanced the books.

Sure enough, other food types would have sufficed. But nothing beats a biscuit. Why? Well it could be down to most British people being obsessed with tea and biscuits – I sure am, and if I can’t get the tea then why not the biscuit? On a more practical note, they last ages, even at the bottom of a crusty back pack. Plus they’re dead cheap. And what is better than sharing a splendid view with friends over a pack of biscuits?

Everywhere I’ve ever been to makes a good biscuit. Ok, it doesn’t take much, but where consistency is the name of the game, the biscuit wins out. I’ve lamented the amount of sandwiches that I ate whilst in Europe, and whilst we ate a tonne of biscuits, I never got tired of them.

So biscuit we owe you one! Or at least to the inventor of the biscuit, but I’m beginning to think that biscuits just happened in a chicken and the egg kind of way – making biscuits as old as humanity itself.

If I had to choose the country with the best biscuits then it’d be Germany with their ingenious doppelkeks, followed in second place by Slovenia, based purely on unbeatable value.

Oh yeah, and don’t expect to loose weight on this diet! It’s solely for biscuit purists, and travellers who can’t afford to loose much weight. And if you’re adverse to biscuits then remember to pack something to put pounds back on the midriff, because if you’re going to get the best out of your trip then you’ll need the energy.