Tinned Fish, Tzatziki & Olives
Tuesday, April 4
Anyone who has carefully read the texts on my previous travel sketchbook pages knows by now how aromatic, delicious and cheap the olives are here in Greece. Not only do we love the olives, but also various other products that we discovered in Greek supermarkets.
Since Christoph and I are “only” staying here for four weeks, we want to take advantage of the great range of olives here and are already well known at the fresh food counter in our local supermarket. One of the nicest things for us abroad is to stroll through markets, shops and supermarkets that are new to us and look at the local products, which somehow say a lot about a culture. In Greek supermarkets, we notice the huge selection of different fresh feta cheeses and olives at the deli counter, and the large selection of fresh and packaged dips and spreads – which we love!
My attention got also drawn to a completely different shelf in the supermarket because I particularly like the packaging design: the fish can section. Compared to German supermarkets, this is of course huge and includes a large number of beautifully designed small tins with pickled fish and seafood. Since I like fish, but haven’t been a huge fan of canned fish swimming in oil, I decided to buy two small cans of sardines and octopus, which also have a particularly nice design. This way I can still think about whether I dare to eat the contents oder leave the tins closed and put them in my kitchen as decoration …
We’ve been here in Athens for a few weeks now and we’ve tried our way through the different dips and spreads. Now we realize that we will have a big problem on the return flight regarding the weight of our suitcases. They were already too heavy on the outward flight, but now also the 400g pack of lemon hummus, the 400g pack of hot cream cheese spread, two cans of fish, hard cheese from the cheese counter and as many olives as possible have to be transported home on the return flight! The biggest problem: we don’t have any scales here in Athens to weigh our suitcases before checking them in with the airline and possibly to transfer them to our carry-on suitcase. That means we have to estimate how heavy 23kg feels. Keep your fingers crossed for us – checking in our luggage for the return flight is going to be exciting!
