Our third meeting took place in the Prisma. We explored the fruits in the supermarket and talked about the similarities and differences between the fruits native to Germany and Sint Maarten. I got a chance to tell Fabian and Hanna about the fruits that I remember growing up like Genip, Soursop, Papaya , noni and mangoes (pictured below) and also shared a little about the way these fruits are used and how they are eaten.
In our conversations we realised that the way we eat fruits in the Caribbean is very different to the way fruits are eaten in Germany. Take mangoes, for example, in the Caribbean we eat mangoes by peeling the skin off with our teeth and eating the mangoes directly. Hanna & Fabian were surprised to know this. Haha, it sounds kind of barbaric but honestly, its the only way mangoes should be eaten.
From Hanna & Fabian I learned that grapes and tomatoes can only grow in certain areas in the north of Germany because of the climate and soil difference. They also mentioned that just outside Hamburg region where Fabian lives is the largest apple region in Germany. I thought it was quite cool that where they are from people give away their excess produce and it was customary to find more organic food. In St. Maarten this is not always possible because we are so small, most of our produce are imported.
Finally after trolling the fruit section in the Prisma and probably getting in the way of other shoppers, I learned two very important lessons:
- Hanna dislikes the natural sweetness of tropical fruits
- Probably best to not do a EOTO meeting in the busy supermarket
My two German words for this week are: Steinfrucht (stone fruits roughly translated, i.e. fruits with a big seed and little flesh) and Kernfrucht (pome fruit roughly translated, i.e. fruits with small seeds and a whole lot of fruit).
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