Europeans are good at everything

Says my favorite interior design blog. It is an american blog and I learn a lot from it. For example that a 60 m² apartment is considered small. That people don’t have style. That fridges are big because people rarely eat fresh food. Riding a bike is exotic. Egg whites in tetra paks are not. Europeans are envied a lot. Obviously I had an idea about all of this before. Memories from Tillamook, Oregon 1997 come alive. But now that I live an adult life in this country, the american reality hits me hard in many ways.

I have had five educational encounters with supermarket staff during my eight months in DC so far. One on kohlrabi, one on turnip, two on chestnuts and one on vanilla. The educational part consisted in me telling them what these items were. The vanilla case was the most influential one because it involved four sales assistants.

Big fridges, ugly apartments, people in cars, no style, food ignorance – it all relates. Even healthcare. But why am I telling you all this? I recently spent two weeks at home in good old Europe. When I said “In the US you either become fat or a food fanatic” for the fifth time I thought wait a minute. I had the incredibly bad liver results from a tropical parasite infection on the back of my mind. One added to the other and out came my resolution for 2014: eating good, healthy, fresh, tasty, sustainably produced food as often as I can!

I started with eating breakfast. Boykotting paperlike salads in plastics. Eating yogurt every day and consuming directly imported high quality coffee from cooperatives in Central America. The last one of these habits will obviously be supported by my business travels, the others not so much. Let’s see. But the Americans’ positive prejudice towards Europeans is encouraging. I’ll try not to judge them too hard either.

(c) Steve McCurry

Europeans are good at everything – santé and happy new year!

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