I never normally have any kind of entertainment other than the actual show, but this year I decided to try a bit harder: after both of the semi-finals, when the final 25 contestants had been chosen, I attempted to find some food from every participating country... it was not an easy feat, I can tell you! I didn't technically complete the challenge, but I think I did pretty well in the one day that I had to prepare it all - and the countries from which I couldn't find food, I at least tried to link in some food somehow...!
Here is a list of what was chosen for each country:
Austria - I couldn't find anything from Austria so I bought some Viennese Whirls... they're from Vienna, right?!
Azerbaijan - pakhlava (it's Azerbaijani baklava, nyom!)
Bosnia and Herzegovina - the song is called "Love in Rewind"... so I bought Fruit Winders, of course!
Denmark - Danish pastries, natch.
Estonia - the song is called "Rockefeller Street" so I bought some rocky road.
Finland - Finn Crisps (multigrain crispbread).
France - French baguette (made from 100% French flour, no less) and brie.
Georgia - now this one was very tricky... so my friend Georgia made some cakes so we would have something from Georgia!
Germany - Hit biscuits made by Bahlsen - my favouritest biscuits when I was a child.
Greece - my lovely friend Dave scoured the shops for Greek olive oil and Greek balsamic vinegar to have with our French bread, and also brought Greek dolmades - stuffed vine leaves - one of my favourite snacks!
Hungary - well, this was impossible so we just had an empty bowl to represent hunger. I know, I'm sorry, that was an awful joke, but we were desperate.
Iceland - after going there in February I brought back a horrendous-smelling traditional Icelandic alcoholic beverage called Brennivín (meaning Black Death) even though I don't actually drink alcohol. I knew it would come in handy at some point.
Ireland - I could have bought one of lots of different types of alcohol for Ireland, but I thought I'd better not risk it after the Brennivín - so I got some jelly lips, as the song is called 'Lipstick'.
Italy - this one was easy... no, not pizza or pasta, that's too obvious! I found some utterly delectable biscuits that I first had when I was in Sicily a few years ago, and had no idea you could buy in this country until a few months ago, woo!
Lithuania - Ekstra beer - this was a great discovery, as Lithuanian food is hard to find!
Moldova - this one is a point of contention among the group: I, for one, don't believe that this ridiculous song should have made it through to the final show, and I think Belgium deserved to go through far more as their song was awesome and had a guy beatboxing (!) so when this song was playing we ate Belgian buns instead of Moldovan food, in protest.
Romania - I found some disgusting Romanian biscuits in one of the grocery stores close to my house, so we had to go with them as we couldn't find anything else.
Russia - easy: vodka. OK, OK, I know the vodka we had was Swedish, but I didn't know that at the time!
Serbia - the song was about magic, so I bought Milky Way Magic Stars.
Slovenia - this was the only country I couldn't find anything from :(
Spain - some weird sticky honey cakes I found in a shop nearby.
Sweden - after all my recent adventures to Ikea, I already had plenty of Swedish goodies in my cupboards - Daim chocolates and Kex bars in particular.
Switzerland - cheese and chocolate, nyom!
Ukraine - the song is called 'Angel' so we made up a batch of strawberry Angel Delight.
United Kingdom - Cadbury's Roses - the ultimate British chocolate.
There was quite an unfair bias toward the sweet end of the food spectrum, which meant that by the end of the show a couple of people were drunk and most others were suffering from a sugar high, me included. The amount of food I ended up with was huge, and a lot of it was, sadly, vile, especially the Romanian biscuits. I'm very impressed though that I was able to find as many of the countries as I did - that's one of the great things about living in such a multicultural city, and in probably the most culturally diverse area of that multicultural city!
If anyone would like to try any of these bizarre foods, do let me know and I'll supply you with some!
10 hellos:
Oh. You cancelled the Facebook event so we didn't come. :-(
I know, I couldn't handle lots of people, so my cousin came over and my brother and his gf.
Ah, I thought you'd do something like that at the time. Sorry, from your post I thought it sounded like more people.
We ended up missing it entirely as we spontaneously decided to go and see some dreadful stand-up comedy.
Sorry I didn't explain myself better, or by email, I just couldn't really handle social stuff at the time.
It was a good show, do watch it if you can!
That's fine, I just got confused by this post. Glad you made a sensible decision and had a good time. :-)
I doubt I'll find the time to watch it. I seem to be caught in the middle of some kind of time vortex at the moment. It's probably called The Internet or something...
I had actually written the first bit of this post before the event, when I was expecting more people... but yeah, if I'd had any more than I had in the house it would have stressed me out crazy amounts.
I can take a trip down to South London at some point though, if you'd like :)
Yes you can, though it's a bit awkward having my friend's in Laura's house when I don't actually live there and her housemates do.
BUT... we're moving in together at the end of July so there will be a housewarming in early August. Yesterday we went wine-tasting and I now own an English bottle of sparkly pink wine, which is being saved for the occasion.
Yes, SPARKLY PINK WINE.
No idea how they do it. Probably some kind of potable glitter.
Well I'm sure I can wait until the summer holidays :)
I wish everything had glitter in it.
Nom nom nom. I need to try pahklava.
Cxx
Yay for Azerbaijan!
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