Really, the only Jew in Europe

I tried to go to food shopping for Passover, but it turns out there are no Jews in England. This is probably the biggest culture shock I've had since I've been here, probably because I wasn't expecting it. I knew the food would be different, I knew the vocabulary would be new, but I didn't think that I would have so much trouble finding matzo. First I went to the closest grocery store, Waitrose, which is a little more expensive than Sainsbury's, which is further away. They didn't have matzo or Manishevitz, even though their wine section is pretty expansive (they're actually allowed to sell all types of alcohol in supermarkets here). I asked the guy working there if they had it, but he said they stopped carrying Kosher wine, and so had Sainsbury's. Next I went stopped at Partridge's, this little shop around the corner from me that has a lot of gourmet foods and carries a bunch of American items, like Mac n Cheese, for high prices. The guys there didn't even know what matzo was.

Last, I stopped in Oddbins, a wine store across the street. A wine store. But guess what they didn't have? At this point I was pretty flustered, because I've never walked into a food or convenience store before that didn't carry matzo and this whole no-Manishevitz thing was freaking me out, so I asked the guy, "Are there, like, no Jews in England?" I tried to make it clear that I was just curious and not annoyed or anything, but I think I made him uncomfortable. He said he only gets asked about Kosher wine twice a year, so, "no offense," but it doesn't make sense to carry it. Just by the "no offense" I could tell he wasn't used to Jewish people. Weird. Then, he asked what holiday it was for. I told him Passover, and he asked, "Is that like your Easter?" "Uh, yeah, kind of... except there's a totally different reasoning behind it..."

On a brighter note, I've been published! Haha. I've blogged about how I love to read the London Lite on my way home from work every day, and I especially love the text-in section because it's really funny. On Friday I decided to respond to one of them, in which a girl said something like, "Are we Brits too polite? Just bumped into a lamppost and said 'sorry.'" So I wrote back, "It's OK, accidentally apologized to my reflection once when I bumped into a mirror," which really did happen, and they put it in. Brightened my day :)

And I totally forgot after my trip to Brussels to upload this video. We were walking and passed this street performer who obviously heard us speaking English, because he started playing "Sweet Home Alabama." Except it was really bad. And funny.