Location: Hamburg, Germany

Published: World Hum

I was struck with mixed emotions recently—most disarmingly, a feeling of cultural rootlessness—while perusing the section labeled Amerika in the international food aisle of Real, a mega grocery store in Hamburg. The Amerika section was right next to the Turkish and Russian sections, with their arrays of pickled vegetables, vodkas, Moldavian wine and tinned fish, canned olives and bags of bulgur and couscous. And as much as I struggle with the concept myself, what this grocery story in Germany had deemed typical American foods had me feeling combative.