I can say that Germans really loved their schnitzel. It was on our plate most days, with different accompaniments. At the local deli, we had it With chips and cabbage salad.

At the Czech-themed pub, we had it With white asparagus (the favourite seasonal spring vegetable in Germany) and hollandaise sauce.

The other favourite is the sausage, or the bratwurst. The sausages are usually pork-based, and packed with flavour. It also came with different accompaniments. At an Irish-themed pub we had bratwurst with fried potatoes and onions.

And with sauerkraut and mash.

The portion sizes as you can see were generous, and we always came away very full. The cooking was generally quite homely in Saxony. I guess it reflected on the taste of the locals. No high-end, modern, experimental cooking here, just firm favourites.

In Freiberg, we stayed at a little Art Deco hotel, a former cutlery factory.

It had a pretty good restaurant which we ate at quite a few nights. We got to sample some German fare this way. The consommne with dumplings below was good, more delicate than I expected.

And the pea soup with a prawn side was also tasty.

Mains generally consisted of meat and veg or salad combinations, with lots of potatoes. There was certainly a lot of pork, either as chops.

Or as schnitzel, of varying sizes. The latter certainly could feed several people.

What we didn’t expect was that the people around town, especially those of middle age or older, had no English. I guess in the Communist era, East German had more ties to the east, hence their second language at school was more likely to be Russian. So our phrase book, especially its menu decoder, got a bit of workout during our stay. Fortunately, German and English aren’t too far apart (unlike some other languages), and with a bit of practice it was relatively easy for us to order and figure things out in general.