I don't mean to be un-accepting of other cultures but I'm sorry that's just horribly disgusting, no offense. I don't know how you can eat that stuff, not to mention the poor piggies!

And yes taco bell is AMAZING there is one by my house and I eat is sooo much, I can't get enough.

About fastfood, I think that Belgium is one of the only (if not the only) countries where McDonalds is not leader of hamburger-based fastfood: Quick Restaurants has 65% of the Belgian market.
It was originally a Belgian company, but now it is owned by a French group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_(restaurant_chain)
They started in 1971, MacDonalds arrived here only in 1978, later than in other European countries.

In Spain we have a sinmilar food, with a different form and more "compact" called "morcilla" it is also made with pig blood and rice, i must admit that indeed that pudding looks a bit disgusting but the Spanish morcilla is different, its mroe compact and has nothing to do with a pudding.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morcilla_de_Burgos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding (here it talks about the many types of it, including the Spanish one)

Apparently in English it is called black sausage.

Food made from blood, we know also in Germany, for example "Blutwurst". In the area, where I live, just North of the Ruhr-area something similar to the Swedish blood-pudding is a local spciality (mostly available before Christmas). It's called "Panhas". I don't like it, Blutwurst neither.

Sure, nearly everywhere you will get food, which is only loved by a minority.
At a K 70-club-meeting in South-west-Germany (close to the AUDI-NSU-factory in Neckarsulm) once we got some butcher's specialities with new local wine. One of this stuff was pig-throat. Yes, the throat, just flabbly fat. It was disgusting (for my wife and me, others had liked it). We tried not to throw up, than we left the location quickly - and drove to the next 24hrs-McDonalds. My wife yelled, that she must have immediately that to forget the pig-throat.
But it was ugly, too, to buy a big bag of Mc-food (I don't like it generally) and to eat it in the night in the hotel-room. But it was an experience.


@taxiguy: I know Taco Bell from trips to the USA, but you should be sure, that it's not authentic Mexican food. If you go to a real Mexican restaurant, you'll get other (I'd say better) things.

For those, you have an interest about food, I recommend books of Anthony Bourdain, a New York-cook, who wrote about his life- and travelling-experience.

In Germany we all know McDonalds, BurgerKing, too, but it's less popular. We've also Pizza Hut. KFC and Subway are quite new and try to get their piece of the market.

I usually don't go there. I don't like this type of gastronomy, and the reputation of the tratment of their employees is quite bad (but at a lot of German discounters, too - nearly all of them are worse).
And last but not least: compared with local, private owned Döner-Kebab's, Chinese take-away, pizza-men (in germany often in Pakistanian or Tamilian hands), the prices of these fast-food-chains are quite high! For 10 Euro I got a fuller stomach at these private take-aways!

@atom: once I saw a TV-reportage about the "sur strömming". After a while the team let the "Swedish natives" in the house and continued filming from the outside, through the windows.

Do you know, that the Japanese are the one and only other people in the world, who love "sur strömming", too? It was said in this reportage. I've asked a Japanese friend, and he confirmed, that it's known overe there.


Scandinavia is known for extremely expensive alcohol. So everyone in other countries expect, that Scandinavian citizens are always drunk, when they have left their home-countries (often it's the truth indeed).

I should digitalize a photo of my Swedish friends, how they are crawling under their VW Vento (Jetta III in the USA) to measure the space betweend chassis and ground - it was 4 cm.
They've bought some car-parts here, alloy-wheels and so, but also lot of beer and wine. Finally there was no space for the beercan-boxes, so we've thrown the single cans from the driver's seat in the back, have pushed them under the seats and so on.
The guys had to take the two bridges, because the Vento was too loaded to get in the the ferry-boat.

A propos McDonalds: I'd known crazy guys from the German Bundeswehr, who like to shock the people, if they drove with that to the drive-in-counter:
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_177279-Thyssen-Henschel-TPz-Fuchs.html

Those burgers look horrible

It looks like a swiss roll, except instead of creme filling, PIG GUTS!

Yes, the alcohol is very expensive here. Many Swedes go to over to Putgarden in Germany to buy lots and lots of beer, the stores there is specialized in selling alcohol to Swedes, they have written info on both German and Swedish and also have the prices in both Euro and SEK.

The limit to take beer over the border is that high that the police or customs don't stop them for taking to much alcohol into the country but because they have exceeded the loading limit for the car!
When you come from Denmark on the ferry (Helsingör-Helsingborg) there is a scale in the harbor where they weights the cars (there is also a scale a few km north of the Oresund bridge).
If your car exceeds the limit you have to unload until you're legal and also pay pretty high fines.

This is ofc well known of in Sweden and people in southern Sweden go to the weighting places and see if there is some beer to “steal”. It's a good deal to get something for free that they can sell for 15-20 Euros (if there is 20 cases sitting on the side of the road it's 400 Euro in direct profit!)

A friend will go down there soon with a trailer and buy beer and I will buy some cases from him. He sells them fore about 3-4 Euros (that’s 5-10 Euro less than at the ‘Systemet’) more then he bought them for and he makes a pretty good profit.

Yes, I have heard that prices in Europe for the same exact resturaunts as here are much higher. You can get a double cheeseburger here for only 99 cents (= 1.57 euro) at McDonalds, but I saw on TV that in a European location (Holland I think) a burger costs 10 euros!

Hmm, I just have looked the the German McDonalds-page www.mcdonalds.de , but there aren't shown the prices.

10 Euro for a burger? I don't think, at McDonalds or Burger King. But the prices are often a bit different. I think, the most expensivst European McDonalds is just in the building right of that place: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanische_Treppe
@walter, Neon: can you confirm it?


When my wife and me are travelling, sometimes we eat something at McDonalds in airport, so we did in Frankfurt and London-Heathrow. Over there they are cheaper than the other airport-diner's with their impudent high prices.

@atom: about the situation in Helsingör me and my family were amused, when we've been there on vacations in the 80ies: a small town, in the center only alcohol-shops and butcheries, full with drunken Swedish people. Always the same view: a car with four or five people inside. The driver was clear-headed, all other totally drunk. And everywhere and at every guy you could hear the "cling-cling"-sound of bottles in plastic-bags.

I must say, that I've often heard and have often seen it by myself, that Scandinavians cannot enjoy alcohol as others. They are going like we say in German "Half drunken is wasted money". If they drink, they drink, until everything is "off-duty". My Swedish friends have confirmed that.
It's often unusual for them to enjoy one or two beer or wine to the meal, perhaps a short "Schnaps" afterwards - and then it's o.k. for the evening.

My uncle has live in Norway for a while. He told us, that the people are really saving hard their money for alcocol. When they got enough, that they're going on until "game over".

A colleague has been to a German wedding-party, where several friends of the Norwegian bridgroom have been invitated. He was shocked and has said "I'm a farmer's boy from the countryside, we can drink indeed very hard - but the Norwegians are something totally different."

They are similar to those found in McDonalds here, and most people find they taste better (hence the bigger market share here, and the spread in other European countries).



It is rather around 2 € for a cheeseburger and around 3.5 € for bigger hamburgers. Fast food is more expensive here, but the meat quality in the hamburgers is better too, the laws are more strict about quantity of fat etc.

99 cents = 0.6 € btw, the dollar dropped a lot

Hmm, the national and EU-laws about food are one thing, the other is, how much is illegally going on.

In Germany we had recently a few scandals about old and rotten beef, which was going illegally, with faked papers, at last to customers. A lot of this ugly stuff was used to making Döner Kebap.
Easy to disguise: cutted in small pieces, grilled stronger, some stronger spices added and you cannot recognize, that it's rotten in fact.

Best idea: don't think about it, if you eat a Kebap or other food made of unidentifiable meat-products.

All this talk of fast food reminds me of this article I read:
Snackbar
Some things sound quite good, others not so much. I like spicy foods, for example, so that peanut sauce would be dissapointing. Even worse, I can't stand Mayonnaise.

@BlackIce_GTS: You can immediately see, that this article is written by a Dutch guy.
Our close neighbours, but indeed, the (fast) food is different.

So this article goes only for Holland (and perhaps the Flamish - means Dutch speaking- Belgium, but Antoine will correct me )
Outside of Holland it's different.

An example: at IKEA-restaurants and -shops you can get Swedish food, but there are differences between the countries. So in German IKEA's you can get Schnitzel with french fries (in Germany we use the French word "Pommes frites") and in IKEA Holland food with saté- (peanut-) sauce.

Several Germans like to go to Holland to eat their fast food (while buying the cheaper coffee, Diesel-fuel, clothes and -ahem- Marihuana).

A little view to other Europeans:

The most popular Danish fast-food are "pölser" (the "o" with a slash), sausages with a strong (artificial) red colour. And Danish cakes, cookies and sweets are usually coveres with -often strange coloured- sugar-glacé.

In Poland you can get a big variety of cabbage in their fast food-shops (usually private owned trucker-restaurants besides their countryroads.

I'm German - but I don't like Sauerkraut! Except the Polish made, because it has less vinegar (I hate vinegar).
By the way: Polish beer has more alcohol than German made, around 1 to 1.5 % more.


At least: @atom: my Swedish friends of Avesta and Vesteras are used to have a lot of Sauce Bernàise over their pizza! Yes, ther pizzaman puts the sauce over the pizza before baking. I've never seen this anywhere else.

A propos typical Polish: I just have read, that it's a Polish habit to wear red underwear (girls, but boys, too) by making the exams of the school.

Perphas a bit too private question, to ask Weasel, Bravada and fck, if they'd going with that tradition, too.

That's true. It is mainly in case of the exams which finish the secondary school and is mainly practice by the girls.
We (boys) before the same exams, which are always in may, usually don't cut our hair since february - when we have "Studniówka" the most important and biggest school ball (it is exactly 100 days before the examination).

I have a few things that I wonder if they are available out of Australia:
Vegimite-Spread
Shell-Petroel station
BP-Same

Also, do any of you Americans think the same as me-3Musketeers are the best? Im Australia you can only get them a specialty shops.

Shell being originally Dutch & British ("Royal Dutch Shell") and BP being British ("British Petroleum"), yes, these exist outside Australia
For Vegemite on the other hand, this seems to not exist outside AU/NZ:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite