Dealing with Food Intolerances in the Land of Bread and Beer

When you make the decision to live abroad, there are always going to be some sacrifices that you’ll have to make. Some of them will be foreseeable, such as going through culture shock and working towards assimilation in language, dress, mannerisms, et cetera. Other things will be crazy little bundles of surprises that you never would have dreamed of even on your trippiest day. One of my craziest and most inconvenient surprises has been the manifestation of so-called “intolerances” within me.

Now, I have always known that I can’t tolerate stupidity. I don’t mean ignorance; I don’t mean being undereducated; I don’t mean uninformed. I just mean plain, flat-out, unabashed stupid behavior that is far too often celebrated, accepted, and, to my disgust, inexplicably imitated. I do have Stupidity-Intolerance and I struggle with it every day. Fortunately, I know I’m not the only one who has this form of intolerance, so it helps to be able to talk about it with sympathetic listening ears.

Sadly, shortly after having moved to Germany, in addition to the first, I developed new intolerances to deal with. I was constantly ill, lethargic and feeling poorly most of the time. It was so bad; at one point, I was scheduling my week around doctor’s appointments. To make a long story short, after no fewer than 12 doctors, too many invasive procedures, a lot of helpful suggestions from my dad (who strongly encouraged me to look into natural healing & homeopathy) and a doctor friend of mine (she introduced me to the western adaptation/incorporation of Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM), I’ve been dealing with lactose intolerance and more recently, glucose intolerance.

There’s no need to get into all of the details, but I do think that it’s important for you to know that if you are going to spend a significant amount of time in Europe, you need to be aware that the pasteurization process of milk differs from that in the US. I’ve heard from many people in the US military that they developed these intolerances while being stationed abroad, so this isn’t anything new. Nevertheless, it’s important to know about. For example, I wasn’t “lactose intolerant” when I was at home in the US, and even when I go home, I can eat some things that I would never lay a finger on anywhere in Europe. I can eat acceptable amounts of Häagen Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and it won’t bother me, but then again, they’re both American products. Go figure. Any other ice cream brand or dairy product (excepting butter & hard cheese) is pretty much a no-go for me. This is an adjustment that I was not necessarily prepared for when I signed up to live in ‘Schland.

The latest intolerance I’ve developed is just a shame. Germany is known for all kinds of food products, and unfortunately, I don’t really eat or drink the top three. I have never tried a drop of beer in my life (and I really don’t intend to), I am not a fan of sausages unless my father-in-law picks one out for me & insists that it will “change my life”. (It usually doesn’t, but at least it tastes good.) Admittedly, I’ve never been a major bread lover anyway, and if anyone knows of the horrors that can be experienced when your body turns against you because of bread, you learn to stay away.

CountryEuroCityMouse™

But it’s Germany! The breads here are amazing. They’re big, small, fluffy, and dense, of varying shapes and sizes and even combination of grains. It’s really very hard to say no, especially when throughout the day, you smell more Brötchen being freshly baked, or you see small children holding onto their Bretzels with a death-grip. I’ll tell you, do not harass anyone in Germany who’s got bread in his or her hands or mouths. That’s a blatant invitation for an altercation, big or small, young or old. Bread is something sacred in this country. There are so many idioms that use “bread”, the discussion of bread baking practices is common political fodder, and many people still call dinner Abendbrot (evening bread). This is fitting, because generally, breakfast and dinner incorporate breads, while lunch may often be the warm meal of the day. No joke – I could devote an entire blog to Germany’s love affair with bread. It runs deep.

Fortunately for me, it’s becoming more common here to offer gluten-free breads (rice or corn-based) or breads that are baked using spelt (Dinkle), which usually doesn’t bother those who are “just” glucose intolerant.

I’m curious to know if any of you have similar experiences in your respective countries. It certainly forces me to be more creative, picky and informed in my eating practices!

xoxo CountryEuroCityMouse

©2012 CountryEuroCityMouse™. All rights reserved.

Ahhh... Quality German Television

For the Handyman Who Ain’t – IKEA

First of all, for those of you who are deeply offended by my use of the word “ain’t” in the title of this week’s blog entry, sorry. Well, sort of. If I were truly sorry, I probably wouldn’t have used it in the first place. It just reminds me of a saying one of my nursery school teachers would say when she heard a kid use the word: “…‘Ain’t’ ain’t a word, and we ain’t gonna say it.” As I child, I always found that saying to be totally stupid. Who was the genius that thought that it would be remotely useful to use a disdained word three times in one sentence as a reminder not to use the word at all? To this day, this saying makes absolutely no sense to me. Granted, I actually do remember the sentence, but I was never one to use “ain’t” in any case – unless, of course, for narrative emphasis. It’s a cheap trick, I know. But it gets results.

This entry actually isn’t about the etymology of the word “ain’t”; it’s about IKEA. (Whoa! You’re probably wondering where that came from. As you should already know by now, randomness comes second nature to me.) If you are over the age of 18 and don’t live at home with your parents anymore, you probably know of which store I am referring to. I don’t know if I can call IKEA a “store”. I personally liken it to being one of Big Brother’s Labs created to look like a massive furniture store. You either love the place or you don’t; but depending on the size of your budget, you probably end up going there either way.

Such has been the case with us. I usually like shopping, I guess. But I’m the kind of person who’s always on some kind of mission. That means I go in, I look for the specific items I need or want, I look at some additional items that might catch my eye for a little while, and then I’m ready to make the purchase and move on my next mini-mission. At IKEA, however, you may as well write off half a day before you even get in the car to drive there. Insanely enough, those Swedes found a way to make furniture shopping a universally torturous glorious experience around the world.

IKEA, here in Germany, pronounced “EE-KAY-AH”, forces you to walk through a maze, going so far as to adding a blue or yellow dotted line to “guide” you along the way. (Are you feeling like a lab rat yet?) Even if you know exactly what you want, say, an inexpensive office chair, you must walk through at least four unrelated departments before you can get to the one you want. Along the way, you must battle through people who stop the flow of traffic to look at a purple Bårgy, whatever that is, and leave their cart – and infant child, mind you – unattended to gaze at this new IKEA item in wonderment. Meanwhile, as you try to skirt this diversion by walking on the other side, you’re side blocked by a group of confused looking people walking in the opposite direction of the obnoxious dotted line, who, in addition to having failed the first test, also look irritable and confrontational as people continue to get in their way.

By the way, if you are in a hurry, you are an idiot for going to IKEA in the first place.

I’m not going to get into the details of the IKEA shopping experience. Scholars have written books on the place, and focus specifically on the manipulative techniques and product placement used to intentionally create psychological experiences before and after the sale. I know many people who scoff at their products and claim that they’re so inferior to other brands, blah, blah, blah, but when we go to visit them at their place and see their Billy bookshelves etc., they sheepishly admit that “for now” they, too will “settle” for IKEA products. Whatever. I know other people who go there with their kids and have a celebrated “IKEA” day, which is absolutely horrifying to me. My husband and I do not celebrate going to this store. We do not ride there thinking, “Yippee! We’re going to be herded around like cattle, wait in an exasperatingly long line and have to figure out how to fit these crazy boxes in a car that is clearly not large enough to accommodate them.” We don’t eat the scary hydrogenated pellets or anything else they have to offer in their canteen, so by the time we’ve finally selected all that we need and pay the fee to have the majority of that mess delivered directly to our home, we’re exhausted, starving and ready to drop kick the happy families leaving the store with 1 Euro hotdogs and 50 cent ice cream cones in hand. This actually was an excursion for them!

Back at home; when it’s time to build up the items, I can’t begin to tell you what change comes over my husband. He gets this determined look on his face, pulls out the instruction manual and all of his tools and gets to work. He’s going to build something, gosh darn it! At this point, he clearly has this major surge of testosterone, which I find to be perplexingly sexy and hilarious at the same time. For the love of humanity, it’s just an IKEA bedroom set, but after you’ve taken those countless hours to build your adult Lego-home, you can’t help by feel a major sense of accomplishment. The best thing about IKEA items is that when you put together something that you’re going to be using on a daily basis, you have a deeper sense of attachment to it because you helped bring that particular item into being. You’re proactively contributing to the betterment of your living space and you’re doing the family budget a favor at the same time.

Our IKEA shopping binges are always an eye-opener for me. As annoying and generally frustrating as I find it to be, it still amazes me how many things you can actually buy in one place for your interior decorating needs. Through your efforts and the genius that is IKEA, you and Big Brother’s Furniture Lab have brought you one step closer to making your house, your apartment, your loft, or whatever – a home.

xoxo CountryEuroCityMouse

©2012 CountryEuroCityMouse™. All rights reserved.

Trading Spaces

Before you say anything, I know, I know – I’ve been a bad mouse. First I start blogging multiple times a week, showing you pictures and posting quotes and writing weekly entries; and then, for three whole weeks… silence. Sorry about that, friends. There’s been a lot on my plate lately. One particularly time-consuming event involved a long-awaited move from Purgatory back to Earth.

About a year ago, we moved to a nice apartment and believe it or not, we got along pretty well with our landlords (a husband/wife duo). It was located in a nice area, across the street from a playground, about 6 blocks away from a school in one direction, 6 blocks from a grocery store in another direction and about a mile and a half from some retailers in two directions. The one problem is that, well, it was in a village. I mean, their City Hall wouldn’t have called it that, but in the end, that’s what it was. Initially, I didn’t consider this to be too problematic because it seemed like the perfect, quiet idyllic place to go when you wanted peace and quite to write and be creative. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Our apartment was located in a large house divided into four family units. Let me just say that my husband and I were incompatible with all three neighboring units within the house. There were just small differences, I suppose. While we tend to avoid manic and aggressive dogs, our neighbors downstairs had a penchant for raising them. While we consider bodily functions to be a rather private matter, the neighbors upstairs were FAR less inhibited. The neighbors beside us apparently took Rihanna’s song “Breakin’ Dishes” very seriously, and regularly had loud conflicts around the convenient hour of 2 AM. That’s not all, but these examples should give you a general impression of our experience there. We finally decided we’d had enough and discovered an idyllic apartment in the EuroCity before we went to New York.

My husband said it best when he said that the best thing about that place was the landlord duo (and yes, we’re planning on meeting up with them for dinner again some time this month. They really ARE very nice people). Another disturbing but probably equally accurate thing that my husband said was a few minutes before we were scheduled to return the keys to the apartment. As we stood in the empty living room listening to the manic dog's barking tirade in the background, he sighed and said, "What were we thinking? This is a place where you go to DIE." 

Now, about a week after our official move-in day, everything feels absolutely right. I can now sit at my computer without wanting to yield a Thor-like hammer and knock some sense into someone every time I hear the voice of a neighbor. That, my friends, is progress.

xoxo CountryEuroCityMouse

©2012 CountryEuroCityMouse™. All rights reserved.

Ronaldo the Clown, My Agent

Now, if you’re in the process of job hunting and you’re searching for that elusive, nearly extinct creature called a career, perhaps you can also relate to some of these experiences that we performing artists go through on a regular basis in our search for work. Even when you’re fortunate enough to be in a show or you’re gigging regularly due to your own tenacity, you must always keep your eye out for the next opportunity to audition. This isn’t only important for maintaining your talent or keeping your face/name relevant to the public; it’s also important for you to earn money so that you can eat. It can be stressful. You wake up after a great but exhausting performance the night before, travel to an audition in another town or city that day, and then return to perform another show that night. Actually, that’s an ideal description of how it goes when you’re actually willing and able to support yourself as a performing artist.

If you’ve never done it, auditioning for any kind of role or gig can be extremely nerve-wracking. It’s exhilarating, nauseating and slightly embarrassing all at the same time. You’re putting yourself out there in front of a complete stranger (no matter how famous he or she may be, you still don’t know them personally) or a group of them. Within the span of a few uttered lines or a maximum of circa 7 minutes for a power aria to be sung, you’d better have impressed the pants off of the people you’re auditioning for. Well, I meant that figuratively, but these days, I’m starting to wonder. I’ve heard stories.

In any case, after a while, you may start thinking that a talent agent could do you some good. That way, you can save time searching for audition opportunities and just be notified by your agent when something possibly good comes up. Best-case scenario, you get the gig or the role, your agent gets a cut, and both of you are happily doing what you do best.

That’s what I was hoping for the first time I looked for a talent agent. I sent a professional head shot with a sample recording asking for the opportunity for a live audition. Fortunately, there were a few bites, and so I scheduled the audition dates. To save money, I chose the closest one first. I called the number and told the agent that I was looking for representation as a classical vocalist with a penchant for Broadway. He sounded completely excited and ready to add me to his client list. When I got there, I was expecting to see a professional dressed up in at least a jacket and nice pants. Instead, it was a clown.

Seriously, if you’ve ever seen the movie “IT” (“ES” in German), just imagine you’re already going to some stranger’s office, you’re nervous about auditioning so that you can get work, and on top of that, you’ve got Steven King’s love-baby staring expecting at you, patiently waiting to hear you flawlessly sing an aria by Saint-Saëns.

Ironically, I have never liked, enjoyed or trusted people in costumes off-stage. Moreover, I abhor clowns. My own mother has told me repeatedly that the reason why there are no pictures of me with Santa, Spiderman or any other character is because each time the opportunity came up, I was literally fighting for my life trying to get away from them. According to her, the first time this happened was when I was two and a half. And while I would run from the majority of them (there are a lot of them in the numerous amusement parks we have in Florida), for some reason, when a clown came along, I was ready to fight. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is that to this day, when I see anyone dressed as a clown – and I mean anyone – I must still repress the innate urge to punch that freak in the face.

So, I was at my professional best and worst when I auditioned for a clown. On the one hand, it’s pretty amazing to stand your ground, face one of your phobias and simultaneously sing a romantic aria; on the other hand, you might want to reconsider your career options when you find yourself auditioning for a clown, even in happenstance.

After I finished, he sat there with a goofy grin on his face (well, it was there the whole time), and he applauded and said, “Great. Just amazing. I’ll take you on. We even have a couple of shows lined up throughout next month. Uh, can you also sing Mariah Carey and Madonna?”

This was supposed to be a legitimate talent agency, I promise. As much as I respect and enjoy the work of both of these women, no, clown agent, I didn’t spend countless hours studying music theory and history in order to expand my repertoire to include Touch My Body and Papa Don’t Preach.

I gently reminded him that while I could sing those songs, I was looking for an agent to represent me for classical music and standards. And why was he dressed like a clown? Was it to try to throw potential talents off in order to test their resolve? I asked, naïvely optimistic and readily open to denial.

“Oh, ha ha, no, but that’s a good idea. I have a troupe of many performing talents and we travel throughout the country. I’m the MC and dress like this. We’re looking to legitimize the troupe some more, and that’s why we’d love to have you join us!”

This “talent agency” was a small-time circus. In the words of George Takei, oh my. Once Ronaldo saw the expression on my face, that goofy grin of his quickly waned. “Um, well, of course, you may want to take a couple of days to think about it. These are for you. If you’re interested, just call me back. We’d love to have you…”

He handed me a stack of karaoke CDs with German Schlager, Mariah Carey, Madonna, TINA TURNER, Whitney Houston and the Bee Gees. I still have those CDs in a shoebox in our basement.

This serves as a reminder as to why I will never like clowns.

Not long after, I made two very important decisions in my life: I would manage myself and I would go back to school in a non-music related field. I regret neither. So, if you find yourself in a situation that’s not ideal, just remember that it could always be worse and more absurd than you could ever imagine.

Happy career hunting!

xoxo CountryEuroCityMouse

©2012 CountryEuroCityMouse™. All rights reserved.

Woman-Speak versus Man-Comprehension

As you ought to know by now, I work a lot with communication. Not only do I explore communication between cultures and perceived language and ethnic “barriers”, I also like to focus on communication between genders. This brings me to this week’s blog entry, which will help every single person in the world. As a matter of fact, I will not be surprised if I get a Nobel Peace Prize for today’s contribution.

At this point, I’m going to assume that everyone has heard of John Gray’s book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” It is on our bookshelf. I have never read it. If this book gave my then boyfriend the divine insight on how to be the amazing husband that he is today, then kudos to the author and lucky me. It must be a pretty awesome book – even Jay-Z created a song with the title “Venus versus Mars.” Alrighty then. But without having even turned a page in the book, I’m pretty sure that there must be a vital missing chapter. It’s called Woman-Speak versus Man-Comprehension.

This is a blog, so I’m not going to dump a whole chapter’s worth of knowledge on you. Instead, I’ll just give you one tip that should lead you to blissful communication with the opposite sex for the rest of your life.

More often than not, when a woman presents a man with a particularly harmless question that sounds like a spontaneous suggestion, it’s most likely a statement (okay, a gently swaddled imperative) that men must unravel in order to maintain peace in the valley. Here are a few examples:

“Do you really want to do that?” MEANS: “You don’t want to do that.”

“Didn’t you say that you wanted to cut down on the greasy foods when we travel?”

MEANS: “I have to sit beside you for the next three hours during this road trip. You’d better think long and hard about what you’re stuffing down your gullet, because ‘Excuse me’ just won’t cut it.”

“Are you sure you want to wear your socks with sandals while you walk around with me today?”

MEANS : “There’s no way on God’s green earth that you are going to embarrass me in public by wearing such an atrocity.”

See, the thing is, we all want democracy, also at home. However, when we see loved ones making the wrong poor choices, we just want to diplomatically guide them to the path that we see most fit for them (see, you’ve also gotten some political insight here as well). The problem is that the men often mistakenly view these questions as being, well, questions. Which is why the conversation usually ends up like this:

Woman: (Thinking to herself, “Oh dear. There he goes looking like Grandpa Georg wearing those horrible sandals with socks up to his ankles and shorts.* This has got to stop.”) Are you sure you want to wear your socks with sandals while you walk around with me today?

Man: (Innocently thinking that this is the beginning of a nice conversation) Yeah! They sure are comfortable, and these above-the-ankle-high socks don’t make my toes get all sweaty and itchy and stinky.

Woman: (Thinking to herself, Okay, too much information.) Um, do you really want to do that?

Man: (Still a little slow to catch on.) Of course! What’s wrong with it?

Now the man has unwittingly placed himself in the death box of gender-dialogue. He is the one who blatantly stated the previously insinuated notion that there is something wrong with his sandals and socks. Since he has provided the woman with an opportunity to fully express her opinion (which will likely be followed by a request to remove the offending shoes and/or socks), this conversation can go in a multitude of directions.

And it all began with an innocent question.

Don’t get me wrong. We women don’t necessarily do this on purpose. It’s truly in our nature to read between the lines, which in turn, often leads us to unintentionally speak between them as well. It’s also quite clear that both men and women use this method of expressing requests. Sometimes, this approach works well, or it can lead to two people being exasperated and thinking that the other is ninny. Instead of presenting a request for action in question form, make it a statement. Any counterpart can figure it out from there. (*By the way, thankfully, my husband is not one of those guys who would wear such a thing. Yes, this had to be clarified.)

Wouldn’t it be funny if all of this were actually in that book? Then this week’s entry would have been this: “I suggest you read page 121 from that book.” And everyone would have understood exactly what I meant.

xoxo CountryEuroCityMouse

©2012 CountryEuroCityMouse™. All rights reserved.

30 Seconds of Medical School

Ranting time.

Now, I’m not being judgmental here (wink, wink), but there are some moments in life where I simply have to resort to using one of Mugatu’s most awesome lines in Zoolander: “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” Well, if I am to follow the advice given by the flood of commercials for various medications, I suppose I should. This also drives me nuts. Just take a moment to think about it: You watch one commercial for, say, 30 seconds, and all of sudden you’re a freaking expert on the solution to your health problem. Forget any extra (or actual) research or finding out about alternatives. When those commercials say “Ask your doctor about _____.”, we all know what that really means. No American asks for something. We tell people what we want. Go back to the last time you went and ordered something from the drive thru. Your conversation probably went like this:

“May I take your order?”

“Yeah, I’ll have the number three with no ketchup, cheese, onions or mayonnaise. But I want extra pickles. And I mean extra pickles.”

So you drive up and the first thing you do is aggressively interrogate the server before you’ve even seen the sandwich. “Did you get my extra pickles?”

(By the way, what ever happened to using “please” and “thank you”? It’s as though the use of basic manners is comparable to the fragile existence of an endangered species.)

Now, taking this natural tendency that most of us have and then couple it with the diabolical genius of the pharmaceutical and marketing industries, and well, we’re basically done for. That’s how it’s become the multi-billion dollar industry that it is. Just show images of happy people with perfect teeth playing in front of a perfectly manicured lawn, a painted house, sunshine and a frolicking, non-mangy dog. Throw a puffy-cheeked kid in the scene and/or a car and you’ve basically covered every pharmaceutical commercial except for Viagra. Or maybe some anti-depressant commercials.

All of a sudden, you want this. You’re starting to associate yourself with that images that you’ve seen and turn a deaf ear to the last spoken portion of the commercial. “Side effects may include: loss of appetite, sleep depravation, increase in appetite, weight gain, weight loss, depression, losing an ear, growing a third ear, hallucinating to the point of wanting to have as much plastic surgery as Joan Rivers, sleepwalking, an enlarged heart, shortness of breath, sudden death and thoughts of suicide.”

Really, with the exception of the ears gained/lost and a direct comparison to Joan Rivers, I’ve actually heard all of these comments on real commercials! And this is super-scary to me because I know that people have truly been going to their doctors, “asking” to receive Product X without truly having looked into it. (Otherwise, the frequency of such commercials would have decreased – not the opposite.) And by asking, we all know that means “strongly suggesting”. Forget the fact that their doctor most likely has nearly a decade’s worth of specialized schooling and training under his or her belt; that commercial has made the patient, no, the consumer, the expert. 

And now, during their 5minute consultation (don’t get me started on that), the doctor is likely in the precarious position of having to explain why one shouldn’t take a certain drug just because it was advertised so beautifully on TV. And let’s be honest here: Whether these people walk away with or without that prescription, they feel kinda smug because they’re convinced that they know just as much as their doctor. Then they go and brag about this misconceived perception to others. “Can you believe my doctor didn’t even mention Product X? The nerve!"

Then, months later when scores of people are sleep eating, operating vehicles and heavy machinery while asleep, or worse, lose their lives or endanger the lives of others, a world collectively questions why such things can happen.

xoxo  CountryEuroCityMouse

© 2012 CountryEuroCityMouse™. All rights reserved.