Eating Lunch.

A pretty typical occurrence, but also one of those everyday routines that you take for granted. That is, until it becomes difficult.

Most days we eat lunch at one of the many cafeterias in the university. The whole process starts out simply enough: grab a tray, silverware and glass. Actually, two glasses – one extra for water. Okay, can do. But then it starts to get tricky. You’re given the options of milk, juice or homemade beer. Elizabeth usually goes with milk (gotta keep those bones healthy!) and does eeny meeny miney moe to pick which carton, while Jaime tends to lean toward juice. One thing they don’t tell you, however, is that the juice is concentrated; fortunately, a Finnish guy tipped Jaime off before she could drink the oddly think- and dark-looking orange juice...

After drinks, it’s on to the entrées. Depending on the dining location, you either serve yourself, or someone dishes it up for you (preferably the former, given the apparent Finnish proclivity to give you at least 3 people’s worth of portion, though we should mention here that lunch is the biggest meal of the Finnish day). In any case, choosing an entrée has become an art form, and we have become amateur artists. Our techniques include: 1) avoid anything with “fish in cream sauce” or “____balls” 2) avoid anything whose first 3 ingredients can’t be guessed upon sight, and 3) avoid anything whose name is completely unpronounceable. This generally serves us pretty well, though admittedly the pea soup was a little… well, interesting.

Following the entrée comes salad. In the US, this generally means lettuce, and an assortment of other vegetables and toppings. In Finland, this generally means cabbage. Stringy cabbage. Though not always; sometimes it’s stringy cabbage with stringy carrots. Today there was even stringy cucumber. And to add on top (if you’re lucky), onions, tomatoes, dill potato salad (?), and sweet pickles. The choice of dressing, much like the choice of milk and the choice of entrée, is a complete mystery. Red ketchupy bottle or yellow mustardy bottle? You decide. We just hope it’s never actually ketchup or mustard.

Moving down the line is the bread station. Now, bread seems pretty safe, and it’s usually pretty good, except, again, the topping is a complete mystery. Butter? Light butter? Garlic butter? This time, being that they all look like, well, butter, only Fate herself can decide. Once Jaime was even surprised to bite into a piece of bread buttered with... yellow cream cheese?

All in all, though we’ve made it sound kind of rough, the food is actually great. Not only do we get all of this for a mere 2,60€, but it’s almost always really tasty. Today we had these neat pancakey things topped with berry (as usual, we’re not really sure of the specifics here) jam. Suffice it to say, every lunch is a new adventure.