Sprinkles for Breakfast
I didn’t know about hagelslag before visiting Amsterdam, but my local friend quickly filled me in on this Dutch food. When I first heard the word, I couldn’t escape the image of Scotland’s traditional dish, Haggis. I was very, very wrong thinking that. Hagelslag isn’t sheep innards simmered in a stomach at all. It’s actually buttered toast topped with sprinkles.
Delicious, right? Can’t go wrong with butter, bread, and sprinkles. But even with only three ingredients, hagelslag is pretty tough to eat. Frankly, it has some engineering failures. I love me some sprinkles, but only when they are well secured by more sugar. Hagelslag lacks either frosting or a glaze to hold down the sprinkles. As wonderful as butter tastes, it fails as an adhesive. These Hagelslag sprinkles are completely loose, precariously balanced on frictionless bread and prone to falling off if you don’t eat the bread completely horizontally. With every lift of the bread, a few more sprinkles roll away and meet their unfortunate fate of hitting the ground, uneaten. I tried to eat over my basket so I could eat the rebel sprinkles later. This is when I discovered there is no dignified way to eat a handful of loose sprinkles. Try it. It’s impossible.
It seems like the Dutch have learned to overcome these hagelslag pitfalls and are going back for seconds. They even sell hagelslag in their grocery stores.
And this is a breakfast item, which isn’t really strange, I guess. Having a little something sweet to start the day seems to be a Western World favorite. Americans have donuts, and the Dutch have hagelslag. But there must be some way to make these chocolate sprinkles more easily spreadable on bread. Like, some kind of spreadable chocolate. Wait a second, that’s Nutella! Far be it for me to try and change a nation’s traditional food choices, but seriously, someone tell the Dutch about Nutella. It would solve all of my eating problems when I visit their country.
Whozits and Whatzits Galore at the Spanish Steps
Rome’s Spanish Steps are one of the big sights to see in the city, and I’m not sure why. I guess they’re pretty photogenic, as far as steps go. They’re definitely more impressive than my apartment building’s stairwell. But they’re still just steps. They don’t light up when you walk on them or move like Hogwarts’ staircases. The same thing happens when you walk up the Spanish Steps as when you walk up non-Spanish Steps. You go from one altitude to another, possibly sweating along the way. I still liked seeing them, though, because the piazza where they are had some of the hardest selling merchants I’ve ever encountered.
All the sightseers relaxing on the steps had to continuously turn away these wandering businessmen. These guys sold the go-to tourist trinkets. Bouncy balls, plastic doodads that light up, noisemakers. You know, authentic Italian merchandise. A few stuck to selling just one item: roses. These sellers were the most interesting to watch. They had a whole little dance they’d do. A merchant would give a person a rose and not charge them for it. It would look like he was just doing it as an Italian ambassador of good will, spreading joy to all foreigners visiting his fair city. Then, once the “customer” started walking away with the rose, the merchant would follow him, and he would either have to pay for the rose or give it back. It’s like these guys gave people a little rose test drive for free. ”Take that rose around the block. See how it handles. I know you’ll be impressed by its performance.”
I never saw anyone actually buy a rose from one of these guys, but I had to admire their work ethic. Handing out a rose, chasing after the rose, handing out the rose again. They were smart at targeting people, too. They’d go for the guy with the girl on his arm. A classic maneuver. The guy wants to look good in front of his girl, so he buys her the rose. I wonder how many relationships have ended over the guy handing the rose back?
You can park anywhere with one of those!
Rome has a lot of Vespas, but you probably already knew that. You also probably knew Rome had tiny vehicles in general. But there’s something about a Vespa that really excites me. They just look so cool. Zipping along windy streets, weaving in between traffic, while a deep voiced Italian delivers a philosophical voiceover and everything is shot in black and white.
I’ve never ridden a Vespa. The closest thing I’ve gotten to ride is a motorized scooter. Now, mind you, Vespas are technically scooters. For the SAT crowd, “Vespa” is to “Scooter” what “Kleenex” is to “Tissue.” But the scooter I rode wasn’t gas powered and able to fit both a slender Roman beauty and myself. No, this was a tiny electric scooter with a maximum speed of 14 miles per hour. And it had a basket. Not the sexiest thing to drive, especially when you notice an obese, middle aged woman riding on a better version across the street.
I took that baby up to 14, a very light breeze barely moving my hair. I could hear the electric motor squeal out a high pitched noise, mechanically begging me to slow down. After a block, I took mercy on the machine, made an extremely wide turn–the only turn size possible on this thing–and sputtered back to the starting line.
I can only hope Vespas are cooler to ride than that.
What would Don Draper say about this?
I saw this sign at a general store in Reykjavik, Iceland. Now, I know that Europe has heightened its efforts in dissuading people from purchasing tobacco products. They put giant-sized warnings on cigarette boxes, and if memory serves me, they sometimes include hideous pictures of lifelong smokers’ lungs. But Iceland, at least let a guy get in the store before telling him not to buy something.
I’m not a smoker myself, but I do recognize the odd place in society smokers now dwell. They want to smoke, and tobacco companies want to sell them cigarettes, but now in order to do so legally, companies need to say how unhealthy their product is. It’s like that waiter at a restaurant who, after you order the brownie sundae for dessert, condescendingly asks, “You’re actually going to order the brownie sundae? Do you know how many calories are in that?” No, waiter, I don’t know how many calories are in the brownie sundae. But you’re selling it. It’s on the menu. So why don’t you just tell the chef and brace yourself for a crappy tip?
I don’t know how this turned into me defending cigarette companies. That wasn’t my intention. Tobacco products cause harm to millions of people a year. And people should be aware of the dangers of smoking. But if governments are so concerned about people’s health, why not just make smoking illegal? It’s already banned from bars and restaurants. Just stop producing and selling tobacco products. But that’s never going to happen, because this vice is more acceptable than other vices. Or, at least the money’s better. But now Europe (and the World) face a bigger problem than smoking: obesity. I wonder if one day will come when, on every dessert menu, we’ll see a picture of a morbidly obese person in a much-too-small jumpsuit with a written warning that “eating highly caloric desserts can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and rolls of fat.”
Oh, and I think I finally understand why an Icelandic store might put up a sign like this. They’ve had enough ash in the air from all the volcanoes erupting.
