Oat Bran in West German grocery stores?

Hi Greg, not sure I have a complete answer to your oat bran query exactly, but I do have a couple of observations about German hotels: 1. Many do not have kettles in the room. You could solve this by taking a folding kettle (made of silicone). I have one and would describe it as mildly dangerous. But it would not help your luggage situation, it's something extra to bring along, even though it doesn't weigh much. 2. Many German hotels include the cost of the breakfast in the hotel room. This is decreasingly the case, probably thanks to search engines like booking, which separate out breakfasts to provide differentiators between room packages. Particularly if you go for one of those non-chain hotels, or small-chain hotels like Flair Hotels, you will find a breakfast is included. However, breakfasts are not oat bran or porridge kinds of breakfasts, they are hearty meat and cheese platters, bread rolls, and in many bigger hotels, some hot food for the foreigners. If you prefer to skip hotel breakfasts, then a bakery (Bäckerei) is a better option than a coffee shop. You can often find filled (savoury) bread rolls or Bretzeln, you don't have to do sweet things. Coffee is usually also available. Any train station of any size has a Bäckerei, but of course any town has several bakeries because bread rolls are a staple of the German diet, especially at breakfast.

Now to turn to your oat bran: I looked up the word for oat bran (Haferkleie) in Kaufland: https://www.kaufland.de/s/?search_value=haferkleie . It is readily available there although Kaufland is a bigger supermarket and mostly on the outskirts of cities. In city centres where there are smaller supermarkets, if they don't have it, you should try a Reformhaus (health food shop). Since I don't know exactly where you will be, I couldn't tell you which supermarket to try. But in principle, yes, it is available, and I would ask the hotel you stay at for directions to a supermarket of a reasonable size.

Good luck with your quest. I love visiting supermarkets when abroad, so many interesting things to discover!

Lavandula

EDIT: As an example of a folding kettle, see these: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=folding+kettle+for+travel&crid=TJYTFRFUGIKL&sprefix=folding+kettle%2Caps%2C333&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_14

Look for an Alnatura store. They carry oat bran. Most cities have at least one. I know Frankfurt does, as I've shopped in the one that's close to one of the Oxfam shops.

Lavandula-
Thanks very much for your helpful advice. I hope I don't sound too weird, but anticipating no kettle or microwave, I've also experimented with pouring a half cup of cold water over the oat bran and letting it soak for ten minutes, and also hot water from a tap a different time. Both kind of do the job. We've not talking gourmet delicious food, but with a bit of cinnamon, it's edible. Last year I travelled around Bavaria and often found a kettle and some tea bags in some rooms in newer places, but some older places had nothing. It's hit and miss I guess. Perhaps one mistake that caused breakfast to always be extra was using booking.com for most of my bookings. I thought maybe I'd try booking with the hotels directly sometimes but found the price higher than booking.com. Maybe I was doing something wrong.
Thanks again for your help.
Greg

Thanks KGC,
I land in Frankfurt around 2pm on a Tuesday (Sept 15) so I should be able to go to the Alnatura store. Sure would be nice to buy it there and maybe more in Cologne to avoid packing all the way from home.
Thanks again,
Greg

Greg you're not alone, we choose to avoid expensive hotel breakfast and enjoy having coffee/tea in PJ. If there's no kettle in the room, u can ask front desk for one, or bring a thermo to their bar/restaurant for a cup of hot water. I will not get hot water from tap. Bring some oat from home and shop for more while you're there. In the bio section, they have a good selection of healthy grain in various forms like bar, bread, cake etc. When we were in Munich, bakeries open really early and have many healthy choices.

Thanks Gdtoknow
A small compact thermos is not something I had thought of. Great idea!
Thank you,
Greg

Tell me which hotel you are in (private message if you prefer) and I can tell you the closest store to your hotel.
A Reform Haus is good, but you can also check Tegut.

An immersion coil to heat water may be your best bet. Check a camping store or someplace like REI, but it would have to work in Europe. Get one here at Decathlon or Globetrotters.

Thanks very much Ms. Jo
I haven't booked any hotels yet but when I do I will let you know.
Thanks very much,
Greg

I try to book hotels that have kettles in them. They aren't that hard to find but probably not the ones RS recommends in Germany.

For hotels that don't have kettles, I carry this Immersion Heater that is dual voltage. You will also need a cup/bowl to heat the hot water. The heater weighs about 110g.

Just make sure it is immersed in water when plugged in otherwise it will short itself out and you can then put it in the bin.

I have used one of the collapsible silicone cups to heat the water. Before anyone starts to obect, the water acts as a barrier to the immersion heater so it doesn't touch the side of the cup directly. I've never had a problem.

Rewe is a popular market chain and some of their stores have oat bran. Edeka is another popular chain and they might carry it.

I always have oat bran at home, and you can buy it in every large supermarket and every organic supermarket (that I've been to so far) - I prefer the organic version. 'Haferkleie' is very common.
I usually eat Bircher muesli for breakfast. So, on vacation, I'm all the more excited to indulge in all the other filthy treats from the breakfast buffet. Those wonderfully unhealthy wheat rolls with butter and jam instead of whole-grain bread :-)

Greg, I can attest to how great the immersion coil by Lewis N Clark is. Thanks to a recommendation by Frank ll around a year ago, I bought one and it works great and very fast in Europe; don’t turn your back too long when bringing your water to boil. I also take a 16 ounce Yeti tumbler instead of the silicone cup Frank mentioned. I’m a light packer, carry on only traveler so it isn’t something I decided lightly to add to my bag, but I’m a BIG tea junkie and unless you are in the UK your chance for a good cup of tea is slim to none on your travels. (I bring my own tea as well.) Last year I drank a lot of tea with the coil and cup combo in France and Italy where your chances of a kettle in the room was about 33-40% I’d say.

So if you can locate the oat bran you should be able to do your cereal and coffee in the morning no problem. I bet your cholesterol is pretty good with daily oat bran consumption, eh? Happy travels.

No one is going to comment on "West Germany"? It's just Germany now, Greg, and has been since 1990. And I don't want to hear someone saying he was referring to "western Germany" or "the West of Germany" because no one would say that Hamburg is west of anything.

G3rryCee:
My apologies, I did not mean it in a political or cold war sense. I guess I should have said the western part of Germany from Frankfurt north then over to more middle north in Hamburg. I have traveled in all the other regions, or most, of Germany over the decades since the early 1990's, so am finishing up in this region. I meant no offense.
Greg

Thanks Frank II:
I'm definitely going to check out that immersion heater, that looks like a great idea. Last year I traveled with some friends who were doing family history in Bavaria as well as side trips to Salzburg and Hallstatt and I'd say around half the rooms had a kettle, or even a microwave to heat water, so the immersion heater would be great for those rooms I'll be in that don't have them (I guess I'm stating the obvious). And thanks for the grocery store recommendations.
Greg

Thanks Mignon:
It sounds like oat bran is readily available, so I probably won't bring any with me. I try a breakfast if it is something special to the region I'm in, but if it's just a generic hotel breakfast I'd rather have my oat bran. I usually save my appetite for the regional specialties in the evening and do a splurge then. Last year we ate so much heavy meat based food in Munich I was dying for a greek salad when we got to Berchtesgaden and as luck would have it there was a greek restaurant just a couple blocks from our hotel!

Thanks Lyndash
I was planning on a collapsible cup or bowl, I guess either would work. I thought maybe with a cup it would be easier to cover as the bran tends to thicken better if it's covered for 5 minutes or so, but I experimented with not covering and it still is acceptable.
I hesitate to ask this about tea, but since you mentioned tea in the UK I thought I'd ask. I like a coffee in the morning then a black tea around 3 or so. When I was in the England in 2023 I pretty much went everywhere except London and was disappointed that everyplace just gave me some generic tea bag. I only went to typical restaurants and tea/coffee shops - no high end places. But still, I thought a nation of tea lovers would have higher standards. I asked many times if they served loose tea and most just laughed and said those days are long gone. Anyway, as a tea lover, I was a bit dissappointed.

I like a strong cup of tea. I have recently begun using loose leaf tea in my travels.

I bring along a small tea infuser. Currently I'm enjoying Yorkshire Gold loose leaf tea. I bought it in Sainsburys.

If I go the teabag route, I'll either get Yorkshire Gold, Yorkshire or PG Tips because all are easily available in most supermarkets.

Lately, I've been using this Coffee Dripper to make coffee in my room. No paper filters needed. (I actually use the metal version that I picked up on Amazon UK for a lot less than what it is sold for at Amazon US. But I have used both.) Depending on the cup or mug used, I can also use it as a tea infuser as long as the bottom sits in the water. So far, no tea leaves or ground coffee has gotten through.

I also use these Coffee Bags for ground coffee, loose tea and even tea bags. They do a better job of containing the smell off my clothers than the bags they come in.

Greg, I guess I got lucky because other than the Premium Inn where we stayed in Oxford, I got good tea in England. They had the dreaded Lipton but everyone else’s was pretty good. I drink Yorkshire Red for the most part at home and travel with it. I used to order loose tea from Harney and Sons but somewhere along the time I switched to only drinking it black I started using bag tea at home. Barry’s is another brand I like.

Hey, Greg, it was oat bran, my own muesli, and the brand of loose tea (Taylors of Harrogate Ceylon) that I prefer that helped drive me to checking a just-over-carryon size suitcase when we go to Italy for a month every year. Breakfast is just different from other meals --- you want what you want! As people are saying, though, you should be fine in Germany.

This is my personal experience: I traveled to Bavaria and Frankfurt in August-September 2024. My trip was 15 nights total. I did not eat restaurant food even once on in my trip. I did irrationally try some restaurant food, not more than once a day, in Mexico and Peru, and less that once a day in Greece and the Netherlands. In Spain and England, I also didn't eat any restaurant food. In Germany I don't remember whether I saw any oat bran for sale. I did buy some instant hot cereal which looked like it included the ground up bran and didn't have any salt or sugar, along with a package of plastic snap-and seal storage bags with the little slider. I added what looked like an appropriate serving of the dry cereal to a cup or plastic container, and then added enough bottled water, and mixed good ate it with a spoon. It doesn't need to be heated to cook it because it pre-cooked. Instant hot cereal isn't the only thing I ate. Hopefully it doesn't need to be heated to sterilize it. You don't need restaurant food - it is all made with oil, salt, and/or sugar. But I also was traveling solo which meant that (by coincidence) I didn't have any travel companions who would be annoyed at me for not eating in restaurants enough with them.

Mike, if you would have gone to some of the wonderful vegetarian or vegan restaurants in Frankfurt, you would have been surprised. This is fresh, healthy, organic food, much of it local, and it is not full of oil, salt and sugar. Not sure how to convince you that restaurant food in the EU or Europe in general is not the same as restaurant food in the US.

Greg, one of the coolest hotels in Frankfurt would be Hotel Nizza. They have a beautiful breakfast buffet, that is more on the unique style. I stayed here last year after my knee surgery and really enjoyed the entire ambiance of the place. https://www.hotelnizza.de/en/frontpage/

Hi Ms Jo- Thanks for the recommendation. Just wondering if it's in an ok area. Rick Steves' latest Germany book says the Bahnhofsviertel has had some issues since covid - Is the hotel in that area? I'm a moderately tall, fairly well built guy, so I don't generally worry about getting hassled, but if it's an area with people suffering from mental health or drugs issues and they come at me with a knife, I'm probably going to wind up getting stabbed or something.

The hotel web site says the breakfast is 17 euros, which works out to 27.50 in Canadian dollars. That's ok if it's a unique style, maybe native to Frankfurt or something, but what I'm hoping to avoid with my oat bran scheme is a memory I have with friends in Salzburg where we were eating the breakfast of generic sliced meats cheeses, scrambled eggs etc and we said wow we are paying 30 bucks just for this? There was lots of food, it wasn't a question of scarcity, but we felt like we needed to absolutely stuff ourselves to justify a 30 dollar plain breakfast. Again, part of the problem is the pathetic value of the Canadian dollar.

Hi Mike L - Thanks for the advice. I hear where you are coming from - I try to eat healthy and keep the excess sugar/salt/oil in check when I eat. I do allow myself to try local delicacies when travelling but over the course of a month long trip I try not to eat too much unhealthy food. I'm a bit less worried in Europe than at home in Canada or the US because we really crank those things into the food, but at the same time, I don't think a steady diet of German heavy meats and fries is the greatest thing to have too much of either! I'll be travelling by myself this trip, so I'll be totally free to seek out healthier restaurants whether that means vegetarian or just less rich meat and potatoes kind of places.

Hi Lyndash - Sounds like you love your teas! I'm a tea lover as well, but I have a friend who is absolutely a fanatic and special orders a certain kind of loose Assam tea that I try sometimes at his place and it is great, even smells amazing in the bag. Keep an eye out for when I ask the forum later on about East Frisian tea in the north west part of Germany and where to go to try it. Maybe after this post has wound down.

Thanks Frank II - Good idea, I may take along some tea bags. Although if I'm picking up some oat bran in a Frankfurt store, maybe they might have some good brands as well maybe. I usually have a chamomile tea around 8 at night back in my hotel room after supper - last year in Munich I bought a box and all the people I was travelling with drank it! The equipment to make coffee looks neat although I'm backpacking for almost a month so it might fill up my main bag too much, maybe. I'll have to see once I get everything jammed in the bag. Some great ideas, thanks for the advice!
Greg

Last year we ate so much heavy meat based food in Munich I was dying for a Greek salad

So, I know what you're writing very well. I eat extremely little meat, and in a city like Munich, thank goodness, there's everything from vegan to fish to meat. When I was on vacation in Franconia in May, I absolutely had to eat the region's typical meat dish (Schäufele). But after one, I get fed up, and I go back to Asian, Italian or healthy German food - preferably the vegetarian or even vegan options.

So the idea of wanting to eat something local is quite understandable, but I would say that these days, what we think is typically local is often just a memory of the past. And we remember it wrong, because in the past, meat was something precious in Bavaria, and it was only available on Sundays. There's almost nothing as Bavarian as the Sunday roast after morning church. Even my grandmother did it that way. It's a shame that we all think that in certain regions, meat is eaten all the time.

Oat bran is really just oats that have been pulverized. I sometimes use oat bran in recipes so I make it at home in a blender or a food processor. You could always buy regular oats and bring a little mini food processor with you.

Of course, that's a bit impractical but have you thought of staying in apartments (aka Ferienwohnungs)? You can find them on booking (dot) com, but another (and better way, imo) is to go to the town website, where you will usually find local accommodations. Every Germany town has a website with a URL that will contain the name of the town and the domain ".de". for example Münster will be found at www.muenster.de.

Once you're there, look for the "Tourism" link, and then on the tourism page will be another link for accommodations. There you can find listings for small apartments, rooms, even local hotels. I found my apartment in Ostbevern, a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia that way, and loved it. The cost was €55 per night for a 3 bedroom apartment over a couple's garage. That way you would have a kitchen and could prepare whatever breakfast you like.

The thing with the neighborhood around the main station in Frankfurt is similar to main train stations all over Europe, when it comes to drugs, but Frankfurt has the addition of the RLD. This occupies about a 2 block by 3 block area. If you don't go over there you will never know it is there unless you look down a street and see the neon lights.
The Kaiserstrasse and the street right in front of the station, Düsseldorferstrasse, have the junkies. I walk through here all the time and have never been bothered, let alone even spoken too. They are busy with each other. There is a lot of police presence here as well as cameras. Would I want my hotel to be here? Not really, but on other streets, it is fine. Münchenerstrasse is full of ethnic markets, really popular restaurants and about 20 barber shops. One of my favorite streets in the city as it is so lively and colorful. To get to Hotel Nizza, you go down this street and then south down a side street. There are other nice hotels around here like Hotel Victoria and many restaurants. The breakfast here, like the hotel, caters to artists, authors, and entertainers. They come here every year. Fresh fruits, vegetables, nice cheeses, and fresh breads. I think they made me eggs, but not sure. Tea, coffee, and juice, all you want. It isn't a chain experience.
Hamburger Hof, Flemings, or Hotel Crystal are outside of the north exit and these are fine. Metropolitan and Le Meridian are outside of the south exit and are fine.

You won't get knifed in Frankfurt.
More central hotels would be Motel One, Flemings City Center, or Moxy.

I'm not a big breakfast person, but I'm not especially picky either. But with the huge number of good bakeries and coffee shops, to include those inside the Bahnhof, I wouldn't pay more than 10 euro for anything offered. And if there's a outdoor market then that's where I'll head and get everything fresh for less than that.

https://www.frankfurt-tipp.de/en/index/specials/the-most-beautiful-farmers-markets-in-frankfurt.html

Tea and herb teas will dissolve in cold water. It just takes longer to dissolve into cold water than hot water but using cold water still works. Some kinds may dissolve enough in cold water in 3 minutes, other kinds seem to take longer. Or if the hotel room has a refrigerator, you could combine tea or herb tea and bottled water in a plastic container before you go to sleep, press the cover on, refrigerate and drink it when you wake up.

Hi Mignon-
Your observation about some foods we think of a typically local being a memory that may no longer be accurate reminds me of a travel show I watched once where they said some of the medieval structures in Europe that tourists love are actually rebuilds by the people in the romantic or Victorian periods (18th and 19th Centuries) who sometimes would put their own ideas of what the medieval period should look like onto the buildings, so sometimes we are looking at the fantasies of people from a couple hundred years ago instead of a thousand or so.

Hi Mardee-
Thanks for the idea regarding apartments. I'll definitely check it out. Many places I won't be staying for more that 2 nights so I don't know if that would still work but I'll look into it.
I grew up on a farm in North West Canada and I remember one of our neighbors who was a grain farmer saying he made his own oatmeal from his oat crop. I never tried any though so I can't attest to how it tasted, I'm sure it was fine, it's basically just grinding up the oats.

Hi Mike L-
Interesting idea, I'd never thought of that. I'll have to give it a try before I leave next month as an experiment to see how I like it.

Hi KGC-
Yes, I agree. Thanks for the link.

Hi Ms. Jo
Thanks for the recommendations and reassurance that my life would not be in danger - haha. I'm planning 3 nights in Frankfurt - first day I won't get there until about 3 pm - check in, them buy some oat bran and tea, then walk around a bit. Then next day to go to city museum (I like museums about the history of the city I'm in) and do the Frankfurt walking tour in Rick Steves book. 3rd day to do a day trip to Wurzburg as I didn't have time to see it last year as I finished up seeing all the places in Bavaria I wanted to see ( or maybe I should say Bavaria and Franconia), and then it's the weekend and hopefully I can get a hotel in Bacharach or St. Goar. (or if they are full maybe Koblenz).
Thanks for your hotel list, I'll probably try to get Nizza that you recommended.

Hi Nancys8-
Yes, I like Taylor's tea as well.

I like the Historical museum in Frankfurt, but also think a visit to the Judengasse Museum is very worth while as well as unique.
If all you are doing is the walk in the book, be aware that it leaves out some important stops. It hasn't been updated in a while, as far as I know and leaves out the new Alt Stadt which opened in 2018. Please include a stop at the Karmeliter Cloister, the Alte Nikolai, Franconoford, St. Leonhards, the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Wall, and on Thur. Fri. or Sat. one of the open air Farmers Market.
You might want to visit a museum after you arrive, and go shopping afterwards since the museums close at 1700 or so, but stores stay open. There may be a fest happening here or in a near-by towns, so if you post your dates or send them to me, I can let you know about them.

Thanks Ms. Jo
Right now the only firm dates I have are arriving Frankfurt Sept 16 at 2:30 and fly home from Amsterdam on Oct 17. After Frankfurt/ Wurzburg I plan to go Rhine Valley to Bacharach and St,Goar and a couple close castles, then Koblenz- Burg Eltz- Cochem- Trier- Luxembourg- Colone- Hamburg and several day trips from Hamburg then find a place in East Frisia where I can try some Frisian tea, then a few places in Holland if there is time. That is probably more info than you wanted.
Greg

so sometimes we are looking at the fantasies of people from a couple hundred years ago instead of a thousand or so.

I'm afraid that's the rule in Germany, not the exception, considering what was bombed in WWII. And some of the things that make tourists melt away because they are so wonderfully medieval are, in fact, partly copies.
Or take Cologne Cathedral, for example. Parts of it may be really old, but over the years the stonemasons have had a certain amount of artistic freedom when they replaced certain elements. So the cathedral no longer looks the way it was when it was built.

Slightly off topic.....but.....since you will be in Frankfurt, I will suggest you take the Frankfurt on Foot walking tour. It's an excellent way to see to learn about the historical past of Frankfurt.

The tour is highly recommended on this forum.

Info if you are a foodie: be prepared that your breakfast will taste differently in Germany due to different handling of tap water in Germany. Tap water is the most checked food in Germany and you can trust drinking it everywhere from tap.

Germany does not use fluoride in tap water, so you will not taste it and at some places in Germany tap water is "harder" and tastes differently. Topic in German is called "Härtegrad".

Since traveling means also to explore something new I recommend to try also some German oat products (oat = "Hafer").