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The sweet and chewy treat known as the gummy bear comes in endless bright and happy colors, shapes and forms and enjoys a cult following. These baby beasts are consumed en masse. According to A Brief History of Gummy Bears in Bon Appetit, if you were to place a year’s worth of HARIBO’s production of Gold-Bears head to toe, they’d form a ring around the earth four times.
Gummy bears are German in origin. In 1920, Hans Riegel, a confectionary worker in Bonn, Germany, quit his job to set up his very own shop. He took the name for his new business from the first two letters of his first and last name and his hometown: HARIBO. After a couple years in business, Riegel had the bright idea of producing a gelatin-based, fruit-flavored sweet in the shape of a dancing bear. His first bears were taller and slimmer critters than today’s more roly-poly version, first produced in 1960. Living in Germany presents you with an almost overwhelming choice in terms of tastes to try and buy.
Gummy bear worshippers might enjoy a pilgrimage to Bonn, Germany, home of a supermarket-sized HARIBO outlet store. Other outlets are found in Solingen and Neuss (both near Duesseldorf), Wilkau-Hasslau (near Chemnitz) and, as of November of this year, in Montabaur, about an hour’s drive northwest of Wiesbaden.
Other chains sell their own versions of this treat for all ages. Bären-Company has a range of wonderfully flavorful products. For a unique gift, go for Tee-Bären. Pop two to four of these little bears into your favorite mug, add hot water, and voila- you have a tasty drink in your hands. Shops are located in Cologne, Heidelberg, Mainz, Tuebingen, among other cities. It’s also possible to order online.
Bären-Treff and Bären Land shops are found throughout Germany as well, with branches in Frankfurt, Hanau, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Schweinfurt, Trier, Wiesbaden, Worms and elsewhere.
Travel tip: For a customer service experience like that you might expect from the finest of wine shops, I highly recommend a visit the Bären-Treff shop in Mainz. While stopping in there for research purposes, the friendly staff spoke with me at length about their range of products and plied me with samples of their delicious wares, including gummies made with fruit juice and licorice bites. My favorite treat there might well have been the Kaffee-Bohnen, coffee-bean shaped gummy candies in coffee, milky coffee and cappuccino flavors. Yum!
