Goody it's Saturday

Food for thought. Why is it that one of the first questions people ask me about the new countries I frequent or reside is, "What's the food like?"

Montenegro was all meat, fish and potatoes. Rich and delicious and all natural. But every restaurant serves the same damn thing and it got so boring after a while. And they really have no concept of sauces over there. Meat is served as is.

Then we came to Sweden where it's also a lot of meat, fish and potatoes. But here it's all about the sauces. Everything's smothered in something it seems. And hey, I'm not complaining. Sure the food is highly processed, sprayed with God knows what and chemically enhanced but the sauce hides all that ickiness.

And then there's the candy. Every grocery store, corner store and even store, stores have rows and rows of candy. Sweet, sour, salty, chocolaty, hard, soft, sticky, crunchy C-A-N-D-Y. It's no wonder the Swedish word for candy is "Goodis". Swedes love their candy and you'd think they'd all be porkers for it. I guess all that bike-riding keeps the natives slim. Plus, there's a phenomena I've just discovered: Candy is bought and eaten ravenously on Saturdays.

On Saturday you see the kids of all ages lining up to fill their empty Goodis bags with candy from each of the rows of candy-filled buckets. They march to the check-out loaded down and pay whatever it is they charge per kilo. They rush home to fill their special candy bowls, also marked "Goodis" and pig out until it's all gone. Then the wait is on again...7 more sleeps till more Goodies.