the nervous wreck in front of/before the/a (boiling) pot of noodles


eventuell

take it with a pinch of salt, that cauldron-idea...

And just what does that mean? I'm a US native speaker and I've never heard that.

"...or was I, wet noodle that I am, just a hopeless pessimist?"
Is this the direction we're going?

I don't think so. for whatever reason, the person in question is a Nervenbündel, a nervous wreck, and he's standing in the kitchen in front of a pot of presumably boiling water with noodles in it.

it seems purely satirical: the person, who consider themselves at their wits' end, questions their partners' sanity. She/he wonders who wears the glasses backwards - her/himself or Ondra & Tomy - while preparing dinner.

Does that help?

So "das Nervenbündel vor dem Nudeltopf" is not a figure of speech. Got it.
Thanks.

not a figure of speech, just a play on sounds (N-ervenbündel /N-udeltopf) as well as creative writing

The author uses lots of alliteration - which I have, luckily, been able to maintain in the translation. I just wish she had posted a sign on this example.....I don't really need to be a nervous wreck either!

I have to admit, I don't understand this anymore. For some reason, I thought this was about people working in a kitchen, even though the connection with the mountaineering aspect had me puzzled. What is the context here?

You are writing >>The author uses lots of alliteration<<<br/>If that is so, I would definitely prefer the cauldron to the ordinary pot.
Just imagine out in the sticks of a mountaineous desert, the poor thing 'I' on the verge of turning a crackpot all the while stirring their watery dinner over a not soo blazing fire in a soot-covered cauldron which is swaying from left to right, with creaking chains and too little oxygene to think straight...

@dude: The Nudeltopf is the sole reference to the kitchen in this section of the author's reminiscences. I thought the phrase was a Redewendung that I couldn't find in the Duden Redewendungen volume or the ever-helpful "Hitting the Nail on the Head."

And just so you all know that I have caused Viel Lärm um Nichts.... my client's client, who is on the team collecting all these musings into a photo book for publications and who knows the authors, says: "Ich würde diesen Teil einfach weglassen, weil es eigentlich gar nicht klar ist, was der Nudeltopf da soll. Wahrscheinlich waren die Jungs gerade beim Essen, aber Flo hat sicher nicht gekocht."

Tja...thanks for your ideas anyway.

another case of mental masturbation then. :-)