Friday Observation. Eco

Once, a Turk living in Germany came to Latvia. And not just to Latvia - to Latvia's most remote eastern corner - Latgale. Since the gentleman chose not to lounge on the sofas of grand hotels and feast in the more refined restaurants, such as are to be found in this corner of the world, life for several days fell into the same rhythm as for many residents of this small town. The Turkish gentleman, born in Turkey but having lived in Germany since early childhood - that is, all of his conscious life - had also attended a German school and, which is quite pleasant, studied at a German school, since in Germany, just as in many other European countries, there are simply no Turkish schools.

It was summer. The local natives, with good intentions, arranged the most ecological food possible for the gentleman from distant Germany: sourced farm milk and butter, dug up potatoes from the garden. The tomato season had not yet arrived and these were obtained from the shop. No more and no less than 2.5 lats per kilogram. The very best. The evening's topic began with indignation at how tomatoes could cost so much? 2.5 lats! The natives tried as best they could and, drawing on all their ingenuity and their feeble German skills half-forgotten since school days, set about explaining that these particular tomatoes were somehow better and so on, but to no avail... the indignation did not subside. It was fortunate that the gentleman had not yet seen the "local" Getliņi or Mažvidi tomatoes at 5 lats per kilogram.

The following evening, potatoes grown right there in the local garden were placed on the table. Peeled and boiled, salted and garnished with dill. "What is this?" - came a question full of despair, after the first bite. The gentleman was eating something like this for the first time! But it was not a compliment to the hostess, but genuine astonishment and incomprehension. The next morning, the gentleman went to the local shop to buy frozen potatoes, which according to him tasted considerably better. Well, if better then better.

Many years later, while visiting Germany, I understood the Turkish gentleman's despair, because food there mostly truly tastes of "nothing". The countless cheeses on shop shelves, sliced into paper-thin slices and each carefully wrapped in cellophane, tasted completely identical to me - some kind of mass with a distant hint of dairy product. The same could be said of many other products that had to be consumed in this economically most developed European country.

Here's to ecological food and everyone's own berry bush!

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