Expats, do you ever get homesick?

My local supermarket has recently upgraded it's bakery section with all kinds of decent, baked in store bread. It's really good.

It doesn't sell hugely because most northern Swedish prefer to eat stuff off a thin slice of crunchy rock.
 
kwerk said:
Bread is probably the main thing for me. I reckon it comes down to climate and distance. The Mediterranean is too hot for soft bread, it would go moldy quick. And American bread is dry and loaded up with sugar and preservatives because it often comes from bakeries 1500 miles away. The cheap stuff is about 99% air, you can barely form a sandwich with it. I've only found ONE half decent supermarket bread (Dave's Killer Bread) and it costs $6 a loaf!! And good luck finding a proper baguette. Oh yeah and unpasteurized dairy is illegal so no proper cheese.

British supermarkets are miles better, except maybe Costco (they actually have the best baguettes) and Trader Joes (owned by one of the Aldi brothers so they get a lot of European stuff for cheap).
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Having worked in the buying teams of British Supermarkets in the past, and now supply them, I wouldn't touch half of what they sell with a Barge Pole!! It is amazing how removed and remote the UK general public is from their food, and more importantly the sources of their food. Living overseas really highlighted that for me. I buy meat or veg here, I know where most of it it came from, and it is generally very local. Only 12 hours away from the market in the fields, and this is not the only country I have realised that before. The British Supermarkets are convenient, but they do no one favours when it comes to delivering quality food with flavour, heritage, visibility of source and most importantly, integrity.
 
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I don't miss bread here. German bread is fantastic, none of this preservative filled rubbish. You can't step out your front door without tripping over a bakery, fresh from the oven Brötchen for lunch, mmm.

In Hong Kong you just get used to the lack of dairy and bread. Took my guts a while to readjust on coming back to Europe after living off noodles and seafood. Hardly any salt in asian food too, everything tasted ridiculously salty for the first few months back.
 
I miss good bread, its post rain storms now so things are green again. But for 10 months a year everything is brown.

I miss easy access to public transport for work. Driving everyday means no drinking time after work :(

The weirdest one of all I never expected, I miss old buildings! I never noticed them when I had them but now I am sick of everything being new and how fake the culture in America is. They go all out for the craziest of things whether its St Patricks day, Halloween or Valentines day.
 
I'm a french expat. Been here 18 years (!). I do miss a few things, but I can source them easily enough, and quite a few things are getting 'mainstream' around here too. The "hand baked" bread of Sainsbury is almost as good as french bread these days (they've figured out that crust IS a good idea instead of undercooking until now). Foie Gras is pretty easy to find too.
Only few things I miss is Andouilettes and a few other bits and pieces, but overall that's all. I'm not missing france at all otherwise, it's getting worse and worse over there anyway.
 
JBod said:
I miss good bread, its post rain storms now so things are green again. But for 10 months a year everything is brown.

I miss easy access to public transport for work. Driving everyday means no drinking time after work :(

The weirdest one of all I never expected, I miss old buildings! I never noticed them when I had them but now I am sick of everything being new and how fake the culture in America is. They go all out for the craziest of things whether its St Patricks day, Halloween or Valentines day.
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Sounds like you want to go back to the UK!
 
I recently spoke to an old British guy that's moving back to Kent after 51 years in NZ. He went back home for Christmas and said that's the first time in 51 years he felt like he was 'home'. Crazy to think about. 'Home' is a very powerful magnet, despite what we say.
 
mid_gen said:
In Hong Kong you just get used to the lack of dairy and bread. Took my guts a while to readjust on coming back to Europe after living off noodles and seafood. Hardly any salt in asian food too, everything tasted ridiculously salty for the first few months back.
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Huh there's so much bread in HK? There's usually a Maxim bakery in every MTR station with fresh baked something coming out practically every hour or so, or has that changed? Been a while since I've been back.
 
I have 'officially' been non resident for about 3 years now.

I have houses in Australia and Singapore and used to frequent those with my business but it wasnt until a few years ago that I decided to up root and move the family to India.

Apart from the obvious stuff (friends and family) its the stuff that I never thought I would miss, that I do miss.

-Any British accent. I spend a lot of time in hotels travelling and I find myself gravitating and initiating small talk with anyone who I overhear and recognize as a Brit.
-British radio and television. I have a VPN and usually stream Radio 1 to my car from my phone.
-The countryside. Most of my formative years were spent chewing straw in Lincolnshire. I miss this.....
-Our culture. We are sometimes made to believe that we do not have one........we do.
-British pubs and football (the TV coverage is excellent over here, but its not the same).

I mentioned on another thread that moving away has made me more patriotic if anything towards my country and that concept of 'home' that I took for granted when I lived in the UK I certainly do not take for granted now.

I am lucky enough to travel home frequently with my work but I still miss where I came from.

Part of me believes that perhaps if I lived in a Western country I would not miss some of these elements as much, and there is probably a bit of truth to this because the culture in India is so different to anything that I have experienced previously. Its been a steep learning curve, one that I have had to work with professionally and personally.

I am a member of an Expat group over here, and I do try and go to various meetups in Mumbai and Delhi.

Will I stay over here? Financially it has been the best move I have ever made by a mile, but once my children finish school and look to go to University overseas me and my wife will be moving back home.
 
It wasn't that I missed good bread in Korea, it was that I missed bread in general. In the town that I was living in, Gumi, you couldn't buy any bread. No granary loaf, no pitta, no naan... nothing. Well, apart from garlic bread in Pizza Hut.
 
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