A lot. Make it yourself, apparently. Like actually cure it yourself. Which requires a few hours of prep and about 10 days to marinate it, according to Google.

Which will make it hard to have a traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner ready for tomorrow like I was planning to do, after having already gotten my husband excited about trying corned beef for the first time. Ooops.

How did this happen again? Yep, again. I already had trouble finding what we would consider a “normal Christmas ham” aka a cooked ham roast in December, despite the fact that I started looking for one several days in advance. I even scoured the area for butchers since the meat counter at the grocery store only had cooked ham in thin slices for lunch meat.

After finding a specialty butcher nearby and describing what I wanted to the lady behind the counter who recognized that I had an English accent and knew the cut I wanted, I brought home an uncooked ham roast for Christmas dinner, or so I thought it was.

Nope, was not ham. After 2 hours in the oven it was gray colored, so just a normal pork roast. Not ham. After all that searching and convinced I had found the right meat.

I thought pork was Germany’s main meat? I thought Germany is the land of meat? I mean, good luck trying to eat something typical German as a vegetarian! Even potato noodles or fried potatoes have bacon with or in them.

So I explained exactly what I wanted to the butcher over the phone today, pre-ordering as I was prompted to do back in December for any future specialty orders, and he said “sure! Will set it aside for you!”

Upon arrival and waiting in line (since it is a nice, country-style butcher), he happily brought out what I wanted and my heart sank. It was a cube of something resembling corned beef, apparently corned beef chopped up, jellied, and formed into a cube to be sliced for lunch meat. Just not sliced yet. I was like “uh…”.

Turns out he actually had no idea what I wanted, even after I explained about it being a whole chunk of beef (“roast beef you mean?”, he says) marinated and pickled with spices. He was nice enough anyway, and said next time I can send him a picture and recipe of what I want on WhatsApp and he can make it for me! Had to laugh, but I thanked him, apologized, and left empty-handed.

Takeaway: Laughing about stuff like this is all you can do since this kind of thing happens often enough. Yet it still surprises and frustrates me – who would have thought it would be so hard to just get a ham or corned beef, something so seemingly typical? Of course they have different traditions and culinary options here (it’s no problem to get schnitzel or pork belly) and I have seen corned beef lunch meat at the store, so what about this one time when I just wanted something familiar?

When you are new in a country, the exotic is interesting at first. It still is after being here a long time, but even if I do like schnitzel, “home” is ham for Christmas. This is a feeling that you can’t and don’t just give up forever just because you are living in another culture and even consider yourself “integrated”.

To me, integration does not mean giving up who you are. You can’t and don’t want to. It is not being true to yourself and that’s no way to live! You automatically change, adjust, and take on parts of your new home, recognize and analyze how things work, and then get blind-sided by no corned beef.

Living abroad keeps you on your toes and is an adventure even in day-to-day life! Even simple, insignificant objects have more value than they would if you were in your home country.

So what helps? Most of all, not taking yourself too seriously and trying to keep a sense of humor about it all. Easier said than done, especially if you’ve had encounters like this a lot lately, but at the end of the day, what choice did I have?

I found myself chuckling over the fact that I will have to plan so far in advance for a silly corned beef dinner, and literally setting a reminder on my phone for March 3rd, 2020, 2 weeks before St. Patrick’s Day next year. Adequate time to find the roast, cook it, and marinate it.

…barring any other unforeseen events, ha!