My stomach’s global conquest

Story and photos by ERIKA NORTEMANN

My relationship with my stomach has always been pretty intense: we’ve been extremely serious for as long as I can remember. We’ve relished the good times: Marshmallow Santas for breakfast, four years behind a Dairy Queen counter, juicy steaks on the grill. And we survived the bad times: pennies and earthworms (the delicacies of a curious youth), an ice cream eating contest, my 21st birthday. But nothing tested the bonds of our relationship like studying abroad.

When I decided to spend a semester in Wales my junior year of college, I knew I would get to see the world, meet interesting people from different cultures and discover myself as an individual, as well as a member of the global society. Shortly after catching a flight to the UK and bounding off to the little market town of Carmarthen, Wales, everything the program handbooks promised me came true.

What the books didn’t warn me about, however, was the change in my relationship with my stomach due to a little thing called appetite. Of course, I’ve always had one, but during these four months in my home away from home, it became a driving force. Walking miles and miles each day uphill, downhill on pavement and cobblestone, often with a backpack loaded with important travel necessities - a Let’s Go guidebook, sunscreen, camera and practically indestructible Nalgene bottle - creates a hole in your stomach that you think will never be filled. Every week brought new adventures in the form of running, hiking, climbing, biking, kayaking, coastering, horseback riding, surfing and caving. It was during these excursions that my stomach found a new quest of its own: global domination. And I was its little pawn.

Like the first 20 years of our relationship, my semester abroad brought ups and downs, spanning multiple countries. So here and now I bring you the good, the bad and the embarrassing stories of my life with food while I was abroad. Warning: some content may not be suitable for weak stomachs!

THE GOOD

Chocolate: Cadbury machines in the United Kingdom are like soda machines in the United States. They’re everywhere! You know the Cadbury eggs you can only get at Easter with the milk chocolate shell and creamy goo filling? Imagine entire vending machines stocked full of variations of this miracle candy. I was in heaven! When I first discovered these vending machines, I was delighted knowing that I’d have four months to sample each and every flavor of Cadbury chocolate. My stomach had other ideas—I think I tried every flavor in the first two weeks, one bar after every meal.

Pub food: I’m not a huge fan of chain restaurants - I try to support local stores and mom-and-pop shops whenever I go out for food, and I attempted to uphold that same standard and integrity in Wales. But then I was introduced to J.D. Wetherspoons, a pub chain found all over the United Kingdom. That’s the chain name, but each individual pub has its own name; in Carmarthen, it was called Yr Hen Dderwen (Welsh for "The Black Oak"). Not only do they have Strongbow (the absolute best dry cider I’ve ever tasted), they also have a deal where you get two meals for five pounds 99 pence (approximately $11)—perfect for two broke friends. Cottage pie, lasagna, fish and chips, chili - any combo, just begging to be devoured. We frequented the place an average of once a week, and celebrated every occasion (birthdays, midterms, the end of the week) with a pint, a meal and a piece of chocolate fudge cake.

THE BAD

Butter Overload: "You can’t call it a sandwich unless it has butter on it," Tecwyn, my defiant program advisor said. With jam? Ok. Cold meat? Maybe. BBQ? I don’t think so.

I grabbed a BBQ beef baguette one afternoon as we headed out for a fieldtrip, thinking it would be a nice change from my regular tuna salad-and-corn sandwiches. Wrong. After the first bite, I discovered a more fitting name for the baguette would have been "BBQ butter."

Local Flavor: After a ghost tour in Edinburgh, Scotland, I met up with a group of friends at a little local pub (the name escapes me now). My friend Aaron offered to buy me a drink, and I made the mistake of telling him to get me whatever he was drinking. A few minutes later, I had a menacing-looking glass of Scottish barley whiskey in front of me. It’s always been a rule of mine never to drink anything mentioned in old western movies, but it was a new rule of my stomach never to refuse anything put in front of my face. So, down it went. My face contorted, my insides burned and my stomach demanded nothing more from me that night except to be left alone to suffer.

THE UGLY

Dust Bunny Delights: A group of us on the American program were sitting in a hostel room in Dublin, Ireland, killing time before dinner. One girl, Naomi, removed herself from our conversation and crawled under the bed. We stopped, perplexed, and watched as she disappeared into the dusty darkness. A few seconds later, she emerged with a long package labeled "McVities Digestives." Who knows how long they’d been under the bed, and who trusts food called "digestives," anyway? But Naomi opened the package, and we were all curious. It turns out that digestives are just cookies, kind of like circular graham crackers with chocolate on one side. They’re really, really good, and very addictive, but I would have preferred my first experience with them didn’t include picking hostel lint off the package.

Leftovers: After two hours of pony trekking in Killarney, Ireland, my friend and I decided to view the countryside on foot. (I won’t give you the name of this friend, but she’s the editor of Lumino’s travel section!) We grabbed a very small lunch and headed out to Torc Waterfall.

On the way back, we shooed away the taxis, determined to walk, even though our energy levels were dropping fast. We stopped in at Muckross House, a traditional working manor farm, to check out the beautiful gardens when the sky opened up and did what it does best in the UK: started to pour. We sought shelter in the little cafeteria, and got some hot chocolate to warm our bodies and kill the hunger gnawing at our stomachs.

It was a busy little place, and there wasn’t enough help to clear the tables from one group of customers to the next, so we just sat down at a table with someone’s leftovers still sitting there.

There was a piece of banana bread with hardly one bite taken out of it, just begging to be eaten. As we chatted, both my friend and I eyed the delicious delectable. It just looked so good. Finally, my stomach overpowered my better sense of judgment (and my pride, for that matter), and I asked my friend, "How bad would it be if I ate that piece of banana bread?" She told me she’d split it with me, and I needed no more encouragement. I cut away the part that had a bite taken out of it, and divided the rest between the two of us. We inhaled the cake, laughing nervously about how we were committing social suicide. As I polished off my half of the banana bread, I happened to turn and see the faces of the women sitting near us who had obviously just witnessed our sinful act—"horrified’ would be a good descriptor.

Though we struggled at times, my relationship with my stomach prospered during my time abroad. How can I be so sure? The scale tipping 20 pounds heavier is all the proof I need.