Drink me

There you have it: I'm through. There's no Dutch food left in this house*.

They say that you are what you eat, and until now I've always been able to sustain myself at least partly on Dutch food... But!:

Bread and bananas have disappeared in the first few days. Followed by the smeerkaas, apples, peperkoek (and yes, everyone in Exeter now knows peperkoek: they wouldn't understand if you would start about "ontbijtkoek"), roggebrood, stroop, stroopwafels; the salami has been used in meatballs, the garlic put in every dish so far, the Swedish toast used in many cases of ermergency, the German kneidl were delicious in a Chinese lemonsauce together with cabbage and now even the drop is almost completely gone ... it's time to shift to an all-British diet.

Here I present some of my discoveries in the English foodscape.

Let us start with drinks.

They have an enormous variety in limonadesiropen which go under a number of names. You have fruit drinks (dilution: a must), barley waters, fruit and barley, squash, cordial... don't ask me to explain the differences (except that barley water contains barley). They come in all colours and tastes (not necessarily related). Some are nothing special (coming down to simple grenadine), some are new to me (pink grapefruit and barley for one), and some are blissfully reminding of camping in France... Only in France they don't come in concentrated form, which makes England the sympathetic one in this matter.

Last week was also the first time I had a cranberrry and raspberry juice drink. I'm sure they have that in the Netherlands too, in some uppish supermarket chain which won't be named here, but I'm sure juices like these are much cheaper in Britain - and otherwise I'll just cherish the illusion. (It's always a disappointment if you find out that that special holiday-time discovery can be obtained in your home country jut as easily...) It tastes good!

But then there is British alcohol legislation... I won't give a dissertation on age restrictions and pub opening hours in this place - except that I'll just say that, though I favour the new (later) closing times, I don't think they will solve any problems until Britain has gained a new, continental, drinking culture. This would include drinking more wine, drinking for taste and not effect, and drinking outdoors, where the (stimulating?) noise is less and problematic cases can cool off. In other words: problems won't be solved until the British climate, British temperatures will have changed. But we're well on our way.

My own experiences with legislation: over the bread in Sainsbury's hangs a notification that if I look under 21, I might have to produce my ID for this purchase. Fortunately this has never happened, as I don't carry my passport with me. In the meantime I did succeed in buying several alcohol-containing beverages. In Tesco however, where I bought one innocent bottle of wine, together with A., who is even older than I am, we were asked the brilliant question: "Which of you is buying this item?" But weren't we clever? We said: "we're buying it together!" Ahum...

So let's follow my own advice and talk about taste. Much to my embarassment I did not drink a real ale yet. Maybe tomorrow. I did drink a lot of Guinness as you know, so there's one culinary discovery. Also, I learnt about pear cider and that it only comes in bottles of 50 cl. Delicious. Fortified wine: nice too. Only slightly, ehm, fortified. But you won't notice anymore once you had a glass. (Other people will, though.)

All in all, I didn't drink much alcohol in the UK as yet. Much too expensive.

Oh, but I do like that when you go to a semi-formal occasion with a group of people from work or university, and you get drinks and fingerfood: they do not call it a "borrel", they call it a drink. Bless them.

So far for this incoherent post. Food is next.


P.S. Why have I not quoted anything Alice in this post (apart from the title)? (Un)fortunately, there's no chapter in the book that's not about English food and drinks...

*for the sake of effect not counting some minor storages of chocolate letter

De laatste der Mohicanen

The kitchen has never been so clear and clean (most of the credit going to R.). I have cleared out the fridge... God knows what magic R. conducted for the dirty dishes... I can finally see the bottom of my hob again (conclusion: custard is still my major culinary weakness) after applying a knife and some force for an extended period of time. The laundry is on its way. We are packing. (At UC we would at this moment see two rooms with two open doors and two stereos playing loud clean- and pack-music. Unfortunately this wonderful semi-annual communal experience is unknown at Lafrowda, as our rooms are separated by a narrow curved corridor including firedoors.) In other words: flat 2c is nearly ready for Christmas!

Also, my fourth essay has been finished completely yesterday afternoon. Two more to go: starting today. (This is the Exeter exchange student system: you don't have to do the exams in June, but instead you write a double amount of essays, i.e. two papers for each course.) And I am getting the hang of it: it seems that every next essay takes me one day less. At the moment I am at a quotum of a thousand words a day (that is: revised and 'scientifically sound'). Which means... that my last UC-essay will actually yield me an extra day! According to wonderland logic that is: see the Gryphon's explanation on why lessons are called "lessons": "because they lessen from day to day" i.e. they take an hour less every day.

Carol

We have just finished a foreigners-that-have-stayed-behind dinner in our flat. Two Swiss, one Swede (a Swedish person I mean, not a turnip; the first sense of the word my dictionary explains as "obsolete Dutch". And I have found more Dutch words sneaking into our language lately) and me. Got two more people addicted to pepernoten - and no, they're still not gone! And had a marvellous dessert of oranges and figs, prepared by R.

I stumbled upon a rather questionable warning for the movie Narnia (see last week): "Parental Guidance: contains mild threat, battle and fantasy violence". Anyone explain to me how fantasy violence is any more harmless than 'real violence' or indeed whether such a difference exists in film? The murdering in the movie (of a series of ugly black creatures who undoubtly deserved to die because... why?) was depicted pretty vividly.

Also, I would like to say: ResNet is stom. The provider of my inter/networkconnection does not know semesters (of which there are two, I had to explain them): their brain only operates in terms (of which there are three). That means that if I would like to stay connected until the end of my stay here, I would have to pay for the next term as well, of which I will only actually use my connection for two out of nine weeks. The next person in my room might use it for free. But I have been informed that providing any service to one semester-exchange students, or even dividing 2 by 9 and multiplying it by the weekly (= hebdomadal) connection fee would be such an overburdening of their (brain)capacity that they would have to charge me the other 7/9 for it.

I.e.: no connection from the ninth of January onwards...

One of Britain's (generally) low quality television stations has been conducting an experiment over the past few weeks which I've been following with great interest: they have managed to convince a group of young people they will go on a space holiday. They have been telling them stories about how they wil be trained in a Russian space institute, how they invented a machine that can create a field of gravity within a satelite and more such nonsense. And for four weeks now they have been taking the stuff! At the moment they think they are orbiting the earth. Actually, they are in a similator in Suffolk. Tomorrow the truth will be revealed... Breathtaking & hilarious!

To conclude with something cheerful and christmassy: M. has been so kind as to send me a Christmas Carol link: Penguin reading Dickens' ghost story to all you lazy/busy asses without the time to read it yourself. Load down and enjoy.

Before I forget: happy birthday m.!! It's just turned the 16th!