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why are sugar-free noncaffeinated soft drinks an almost nonexistent product category in germany. what does this say about german culture

or maybe germans don't see a need for sweetened uncaffeinated flavoured drinks when they can drink unsweetened uncaffeinated flavourless drinks (sparkling water)?

man the way fritz-spritz is available seemingly everywhere will end me. how am i supposed to avoid the temptation of rhubarb spritzer or apple spritzer or melon spritzer or

sparkling apple juice is objectively one of the greatest soda types and yet it's so uncommon in places i've lived other than germany. and this applies to so many kinds of fruit juice. but in germany they've fixed that… but at what cost

@hikari Afaict you can't even get it in all of Germany! It seems to be only Bavaria.

i love apfelschorle

@mcc @hikari are you saying you can't get apfelschorle in all of germany? because i've been to multiple bundesländer (except bavaria) and they all had apfelschorle

@timotimo @hikari I'm saying that in my very limited probing

- I can find apfelschorle literally anywhere in Bavaria
- Last time I was in Berlin I couldn't find it

@mcc @hikari i don't want to invalidate your lived experience, but that seems really odd. i am sorry that happened to you, nobody should be deprived of their apfelschorle under any circumstances!

@timotimo @hikari Thanks! Maybe I just did not have adequate German skills to properly formulate the question "excuse me, whre is the apfelshorle"?

@timotimo @mcc @hikari Apfelsaft gespritzt vielleicht? i haven't been to berlin since 2019 but i thought you could get apfelschorle in Berlin and elsewhere outside of southern Germany by ordering a "Apfelsaft gespritzt" :-) but what do I know

@roland @mcc @hikari good point; germany does definitely have some things that have a very different name in different parts of the country, take the breadrolll for example, or the famous "Berliner". But are people in berlin not going to say "apfelschorle? you mean <name that is used locally> right?" when you ask them?

@timotimo @roland @hikari an important note is that the chances are okay if i try to ask for something using the correct German words i will pronounce them so incorrectly i will not be understood :(

@mcc @timotimo @hikari mcc: would i be correct in surmising that German isn't your `Muttersprache`? German is not my first language but i've had many many hours of instruction and luckily even a few months of 10 hours a week private tutoring back in the 90s. When I lived in Germany for 3.5 years back the 90s, I considered it a good day if my good moments in German outnumbered the not so good :-) #Ymmv #HumanLanguagesAreWonderfulAndInfuriatingButMostlyFun :-)

@roland My native language is English and I've been speaking Spanish as an occasional second language since I was six. I can pronounce Spanish extremely well! German… >_>

@roland If I were going to take third language tutoring in the near future it would likely be in Chinese.

@mcc Cantonese, Mandarin or ...? i didn't pay for my German language tutoring. Nortel , RIP, did :-) My wife speaks Cantonese (her family is from Hong Kong; she was born in Vancouver but raised by a Cantonese-only speaking grandma). So I want to learn Cantonese & my heritage Filipino dialect, Kapampangan. Tagalog not so much because it's too popular :-) & I like to be different :-) . Kapampangan is theoretically my 1st language but we moved to Canada when i was 14 months so English took over.

@roland my neighborhood is mostly Cantonese speaking but what I'm told is the Cantonese tone system is kind of nightmarishly complex so ideally I'll learn some basic Mandarin first?

@mcc i'd say go for whatever is practical :-) and it sounds like Cantonese would be the most practical thing for your neighbourhood and you can speak it day 1 to some folks. Cantonese tones *are* harder than Mandarin but it's not a big deal if you are just learning it for fun times with your neighbours :-) I am not an expert so what do I know :-) have fun and good luck :-)

@roland thanks! I'm gonna be honest, my goals are real modest, like on the level of "I'm gonna take enough lessons I can sight read pinyin and pronounce people's names right"

@mcc super cool. i grew up in linguistic ambiguity as well. My parents spoke to us in a confusing mixture of mostly English, Kapampangan, our dialect, and Tagalog and counted in Mexican-style-Spanish (because Spanish Empire Philippines was ruled from Mexico) like all 'educated' Filipinos of their generation.

@mcc My German u's and any vowels with an umlaut are terrible :-) most days :-) The rest of the German alphabet I (luckily) don't have a problem pronouncing. Apfelsaft gespritzt though is one of the phrases I can pronounce properly :-) ! No umlauts :-)

@mcc if you are ever in Vancouver, love to meet up and have coffee outside Revolver Coffee at 325 Cambie and then you can practise your German and French with me :-) Spanish I know nothing except the Mexican Spanish Filipinos use to count :-)

@hikari As someone addicted to the fizz (doctors outright told me to significantly reduce intake of fizzy drinks years back + I have frequent heartburn problems) my stance on German beverages is mixed

- on the one hand, Apfelschorle? sparkling AJ? heck yeah, galaxy brain idea, should be available everywhere

- on the other hand, sparkling water on its own is nasty; plain water is like the one thing that gets *vastly worse* when carbonated and I will not take criticism of this stance

So, y'know, impossible to say if Germany is good or bad or not

(If I was in the cult of Club Mate or liked alcohol, it might swing more to the "good" side, but as-is it is mostly the fizz that entices me)

@hikari will say Paulaner Spezi in sugar-free is pretty good though :3

@hikari there's also a _lot_ of public health scare/BS/FUD about sweeteners in the culture here.

as someone who's allergic to many sweeteners I still think that crap is in too many products, but yeah...

@manawyrm it should always be a personal choice… i hate how in the uk, the introduction of a sugar tax led to previously sugar-only soft drinks being reformulated to be a mix of sugar and sweeteners. worst of both worlds