When we are at home we become accustomed to our
surroundings, belongings, and routine. You take for granted the little things
that are at your disposal every day. When you travel, this all gets disrupted. The
surroundings, the culture, what you know is different. We may pack some of these comforts and bring
them with us on our travels, but you cannot take everything. Traveling is adapting to your surroundings,
embracing it, and making adjustments along the way. My first visit abroad, I had hard time living
by this motto. However, each journey I
make, I have to stop and remember I am not home and I just need to go with the flow
and make the best of the situation. You
make not always like it, but you do it.
Here are a few of my stories about making these adjustments:
Scandinavia and Breakfast Items
When I was 24 I spent a month in Norway. During my time there, I traveled across Scandinavia
to Russia. This was my first trip abroad.
I was quickly introduced to entirely different culture than what I was
used to. The whole country did not shut
down when it snowed, in fact they thrived in it. There is like 20 feet of snow outside and I
am outside driving in it. CRAZY! However, the biggest adjustment for me was the
food. It wasn’t that it was radically
different, it is just was it was different.
Condiments came in a tube, there was some strange brown butter that did
not taste like butter, and they did not have hot dog buns. Although there were
these differences, I enjoyed every meal that was prepared for me. The biggest struggle I had was the breakfast
meal. It is not like every day for
breakfast I am eating eggs, pancakes and bacon.
I guess when it isn’t an option, it becomes something you obsess about.
I describe breakfast in Scandinavia a like a combination of a
continental breakfast and a Subway. There are
breads, jams, what I think of as deli meats/cold cuts, cheeses, fresh vegetables, 1,3,5,10
minute hard boiled eggs. Before this
journey I didn’t even realize there was a variety of hard boiled eggs. In my world, there was one time of hard-boiled
egg. We also scrambled eggs too, and
they are very tasty this way. This was
harder option to find. Perhaps because
they were too busy boiling the eggs. Now there are Norwegian/Swedish pancakes. These are more like crepes, and served with delicious jams. These pancakes are not served for breakfast. They are considered more of a dessert item. There are delicious potatoes from Denmark, that taste better than Idaho potatoes. I don't know why, but they just do. For some reason, potatoes are not served for breakfast only dinner. Each new Scandinavia city we visited, I hoped there might be scrambled
eggs and bacon, but there never was. When we took a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki,
we paid for the fancy breakfast buffet.
I was scraping by on the money, so this was big expense for me. Although
I had just won a pocketful of rubles in the slot machine, but this wasn't going to buy me a pig and chicken. I just knew when I walked
into the fancy breakfast buffet there would be mounds of pancakes, eggs, and
bacon piled high. It would be like walking into Denny’s. Cue the heavenly music.
Well my dreams were quickly dashed. The extra money I spent bought more variety
of hard boiled eggs, some fancy fish and caviar, more variety of deli meats,
veggies, and cheese, but none of the breakfast items that I dreamed of. Don't get me wrong, the food was good. When you get your head and heart get stuck on this idea of something, then you do not get it, then it is just a disappointment.
It is interesting how I became so obsessed on
breakfast foods. I am not sure if it was because it was my first time abroad,
and I was just homesick. Eggs and bacon were my security blanket. If I could cover myself up a little, I would
just taste a little bit of home, and would not be so homesick.
I can tell you, after a long journey home, I went straight
to Beth’s café in Seattle and had their 12 egg omelet, hash browns and bacon
for dinner. It felt so good to be home.
Stay tuned for more of my travel adjustment stories. Missing Washcloths in Amsterdam.
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