Cupboard Confessions of an Expat

'fessing up'

Comfort food takes on a whole new meaning when you move abroad. You develop strange cravings for things that you never thought you would miss. Stumbling over products from home in a supermarket here can make you feel elation akin to winning the lottery. Such delicacies as Angel Delight, Sandwich Spread, Bird's Custard and Walker's Shortbread are sold in the British international section of supermarkets here in Germany. The reality is that probably the people of Britain have moved on from these to more sophisticated foods whereas expats like me are trapped in an ever decreasing spiral of instant powdered puddings, questionable salt levels and twee packaging.

As part of the Trailing Spouses' Art Project in Bielefeld, Germany, Rachel asked us to contribute a recipe that reminded us of home or connects us to home. I found this surprisingly difficult, realising that my expat tastes have changed so much over the twelve or so years since moving to Germany and, for me, it is products rather that dishes I crave.

So here, just for the record, are some of the foods I can't do without in Germany, my couldn't do withouts (I am reformed),  and my 'could I now do without these if I had to leave Germany?' food quandries.


Can't do withouts -

Marmite -

This is my most serious and incurable expat addiction. Actually, it would be an addiction even if I was in the UK. I don't eat Jam, honey, peanut butter or Nutella, so if I don't have my little glass jar of black gold then my breakfast is a sad affair. It is rare to find a German who understands Marmite. I have never been a pusher, but there are some Germans curious enough to sniff it at least, but then vow never to go near it again. I now have my sources in Germany and have compiled detailed charts with various prices. I have been known to pay four times its British market value just to get my fix. And it is worth it.

Couldn't do withouts

Heinz Treacle Puddings

When I first moved to Germany I got an inexplicable need to fill my suitcase with those treacle puddings that you boil in their tins. I was, I think, trying to impress by new German boyfriend shock and awe style with what British culinary culture had to offer.  The average German woman can bake a cake from scratch at the drop of a hat, but could they boil a pudding so sweet and rich that it takes a week to digest it and not spray boiling water over themselves in the process whilst opening the tin?  I felt confident.

Could I do without if I left Germany?

Bread

Bread has changed perhaps in the UK since I moved to Germany for the better. My German spouse told me how, as an experiment, he once held a loaf of white sliced bread in the UK between his hands and squeezed, squeezed until it was reduced to tiny proportion of its former self. There was nothing to it, he said, it was light as air and never filled him up. In Germany, they sell bread with a 1KG stamped into it. You can eat the bread, but also use it for other purposes, such as body building or door stops, which is very practical. But there is so much variety of bread here, you are really spoiled for choice. And that is something I would miss if I left Germany.

Do you have any guilty expat food pleasures? Or would you miss food from your new country of choice if you returned to the UK?



P.S. anyone who knows me will wonder about the glaring omission of crisps. This is, I feel, a topic that will one day take up a blog post of its own, or even a book or two. As I am going through a period of reflection and introspection about my crisp eating habits at home and abroad I feel I need to give this theme the time and space it so rightly deserves. Thank you.

Forget Me Not

Ceramic Bottles by Ian Marshall

One early May morning, my brothers and I gathered at my father’s flat. We had just a few hours to decide what to keep and what to leave.

Belongings once private were now laid bare because of practicalities. We had to sort through papers and find important documents. It seemed strange that we could simply take an object off a shelf, open up a book, and all without asking the owner's permission. I felt like a trespasser, despite the fact that the person who used and loved these objects was no longer here. 

Objects now turned over in our hands, scrutinised. Objects in limbo and with an uncertain future. 

I took an odd array of objects that day. Some of practical use: a cheese grater, a metal spatula, a coffee maker, an omelette saucepan. When I use them I feel closer to my father as he was an avid cook and I know that he valued such practical things. On the other hand, the omelette pan has since given up the ghost of its non-stick surface after four years, and burnt and sticking eggs are hardly a fitting tribute to my dad. But still, I cannot bring myself to throw it away. 


Other, more precious, objects have also suffered. In transit to Germany, a nail had made its way into one of my father's paintings, puncturing the canvas. While mourning at its imperfection, I was forgetting that I had literally saved it when I chose it that day. 


Then a few weeks ago, I heard a crash in the bedroom and instinctively I knew what it was before I went to see the damage, as if the thud and crash had happened within me. The kids had been racing around the flat on bobby cars. A piece of sculpture that my dad had made was lying on the floor in two pieces. It had been on my dressing room table for want of a "home". Tall and thin, I had deemed my dressing place the safest place. I was wrong. 


I have to admit, though, that as much as I felt devastated, I felt some kind of release. As if I had been given some kind of permission to let go of this one.  I had taken all these objects with me to remember my dad by, but if I was honest, some of them were not really to my taste and others I had no idea where to put them in my home.

Luckily, I still have other objects of his that are intact and I hope to be a better caretaker of these, though I will never know what they meant to him exactly.

Still,  the memories of a home brewed cup of strong coffee, in those days quite exotic and grown up to me as a teenager, brought to me in a ceramic cup, and thai meals lovingly prepared by him bring me nearer to my father than any of these objects did.

And they, like other memories of him,  cannot be so easily broken.

Ceramic Bottle with signature stamp(underside) by Ian Marshall

Home, a Mini-Saga

For the next 'Trailing Spouses' art group meeting, one of our members, Coralie, asked us to write a mini-saga, a story in exactly 50 words on the subject of Home, an emotive theme indeed, even for the most seasoned of Trailing Spouses. Here is my offering, covering the 3 places, and counting, which I call and have called home in my life. 

Going home to Berlin(where I lived for 11 years)

I went home and looked up at the plants on my balcony, strange objects. I looked over at the playground, children from my son’s kindergarten, new faces. A neighbour came to greet me like always. I looked at my front door. How strange to think that I cannot go inside. 

Going home to London where I lived from 0 – 29 years)

For my holidays I go home to London. I was born here. At St Pancras I buy a ticket and speak German! On the train, the familiarity of people takes me aback. A snippet of friends and family, that’s hardly enough. But better than Facebook and all of that stuff.

Going home in Bielefeld, Germany, where I have lived for 3,5 years.

I’m registered at this address, a German formality. Think of those who’ve stood at these windows before me! Who will move in? We move out, less than a year, possibly? View from my kitchen, a three hundred year old tree. Some people don’t appreciate it, blocks the light, you see.

Going home to Bielefeld, Germany (sometime in the future)

Seen through shop windows, fancy goods I could never afford. Outside the school, where Eric spent one year. One street of the square mile, walked again and again. The patisserie, they still know my name. Broken gate, lift it, feels the same. Ring the doorbell, old friends, ask me in.

Check out this mini saga on the theme of Home by Piia Rossi, which inspired me, on her blog, Trailingspousesdotcom.