International grocery shopping

Not many things are as bizarre as doing your daily shopping in a different country. Everything sort of  looks the same but isn't. For instance when I was living in New York a couple of years ago I found 100% fat-free cheese. Seriously. Did not get what was up with that. They sold it in a block that looked like soap, at least from a Finnish perspective. Here in Germany what caught my eye was the wide selection of organic foods and the fact that pretty much all milk products are lactose-free. My roommate says it's because everyone here thinks it's good for them even if they're not lactose intolerant.

I went shopping for groceries yesterday because I'm cooking for my roommates today. I'm doing the Finnish makaronilaatikko or hackfleischnudelauflauf in German. I bought macaroni which I thought to be the regular kind, but later when I opened the bag I noticed they were twisted. It's not a big deal, just funny how even the basic stuff have a literal twist to them. I also bought a small piece of dark chocolate which turned out to be the Diät kind, yuch, and a bottle of Jägermeister for a party we were going to.

So I obviously had kind of a funny combination of items when I got to the cash register: macaroni, diet chocolate and Jägermeister.

The party was crazy and my makaronilaatikko turned out a bit, well, original. I didn't put enough liquid in so it was crispier than usual and I even Skyped my mom to find out if there's anything you could do to salvage it. Even before she picked up the phone she knew I was calling about the cooking: "What, you screwed up?" It turned out okay, though.

Like with stores I've also gotten to know the way public swimming pools work around the world. After I get to try out one in London I'll tell you more about those experiences. Tomorrow I'm flying from Cologne to the British Isles for the first time in about 15 years. And why that city is sort of important to my existence, I'll tell you on my next blog post.

Auf wiedersehen, Cologne! Es war geil!