MUSHROOMS! Are we really going to eat them?

"Would you like to go on a mushroom harvest?" It was a perfect sentence, and I could tell Birgit had practiced it. Birgit has been learning English as I have been learning German, and we are language practice buddies. Birgit and her husband Olaf visited America when Ron and I were living in Jupiter, and we became good friends. During their visit we learned that Olaf and Birgit are rather fearless when it comes to trying new things. They had fun in America, and Ron and I travelled vicariously with them, learning all sorts of fun facts about our little corner of the universe. So when Birgit asked "Would you like to go..." I didn't even wait for the end of the sentence before the "JA!" was out there. Ron looked at me: 'mushrooms?', he mouthed. Olaf jumped in - they have a mushroom specialist who will come with us, guide us through the harvest, and inspect every single mushroom for safety (edibility) before we take them home. "Then we will cook them and eat them!"

It was a perfect Friday afternoon for mushroom harvesting, I told myself as we boarded the train for Apolda. Grey, overcast skies; threatening rain clouds; cool temperatures. It seemed strange to be on a train without our bicycles. Be fearless! Ron and I joked about how our obituaries might read back home if mushrooms took us out. Not the way I thought I would go, Ron confided.

Olaf and Birgit met our train, and in minutes we stopped the car to collect the Mushroom Expert. He must have sensed our apprehension, as he immediately showed us his credentials.

Wolfgang is one of only a handful of experts certified by the local authorities. Most mushrooms are not edible even if they are not poisonous, he told us in his broken English. Ron asked from the front seat how many clients Wolfgang has lost over the years - fortunately Wolfgang didn't hear the question, as he was deep in a conversation with Birgit about the notorious "Death Cap". Birgit really hoped to find some.

Olaf coached us through a safety session in the car while we headed out to the forest, and after many (failed) attempts to pronounce the German words for poisonous, edible, not edible, and even the word for mushroom, we settled on "Ja" for good and "Nein" for bad.

We left the paved road for a narrow dirt road, and Wolfgang directed Olaf to place to pull the car off the road. We climbed through waist high brush, and then suddenly, we were in a beautiful forest. The entire forest floor was covered in moss and mushrooms. I had never seen anything like it. Birgit and Olaf have been harvesting mushrooms for many years, and they marveled at the quantities this year. The summer and fall weather had been perfect: wet and warm. There were literally hundreds of varieties of mushrooms. After many, many "Ja"s and "Nein"s from Wolfgang, Ron concluded that the brightest, most beautiful mushrooms were the most deadly, and that the dull, dingy ones were probably delicious.

I was hopelessly lost almost immediately as I chased one patch of mushroom after another in the dim light. Wolfgang knew right where we were, and after a while he herded us back into the car for the next secret location. His stock in trade is knowing where to find the best mushrooms, and keeping those locations secret. The last spot he took us was the best, both in terms of the quality and quantity of the mushrooms, and in terms of significance. His grandparents had taken him to this secret spot when he was a small bay, around 7 or 8, and they taught him about mushrooms and mushrooming. Seventy years later, after a long life as a scientist in Mykologie, he was still traipsing through the same forest, guiding others and teaching the secrets of safe mushrooming.

The Death Cap

The light was fading when we stopped the car again, and everyone dumped their baskets out onto a large stone in the middle of a park, where Wolfgang made the final sorting. Birgit had indeed found her beloved Death Cap, and it was wrapped separately and tucked into a coat pocket so that it would not be mixed up with the others.

We thanked Wolfgang, and headed to Olaf and Birgit's home, where we cut up and cooked down the mushrooms into a delicious soup-like broth. While the mushrooms were simmering on the stove, Ron & Olaf peeled potatoes and cucumbers, and the four of us somehow produced a spectacular traditional Thüringen dinner - turkey snitzel, boiled potatoes, sweet cucumber relish, and mushroom "gravy" over it all. Life is good.