just eastern european things:
- having a drawer full of plastic bags and storing plastic bags in another plastic bag
- uncomfortable family reunions for every single holiday where everyone brings ridiculous amounts of food and several 2 litre bottles of soda
- having to finish your food every time because you or your parents paid for it and if you paid for it you have to eat it
- CABBAGE
- homemade wine from plastic bottles that your family or your uncle’s neighbours’ wife’s cousin made in the countryside
- cheap alcohol and cigarettes
- foreign men always coming to your country and declaring ah yes i heard that eastern european women are beautiful
- that one relative your mom hates and who she always makes polite but slightly salty conversation with at reunions but then after a few glasses of homemade wine you know they’ll get into an argument
- your parents’ and grandparents’ revolution/war/army stories that you’ve heard a thousand times before
- those red plastic candle holders that melt with the candle but everyone is still buying to burn underneath a picture of jesus??
- crochet placemats everywhere
- ‘persian’ carpets that have been in the family forever. everyone always trips on them but there are always the persian carpets
- your grandmother has at least one plastic statue of virgin mary in her house somewhere and at least one wood painting of jesus
- tiny pocket-size, laminated pictures of saints that your grandmother always buys at church and give to everyone every time they visit
- potatoes
- the eternal fascination of every adult with the news on tv. one news hour ends? switch to another channel for the exact same news
- the group of old women gathered outside on a bench, there is always a bench and there is always old ladies and they always tell you that you’ve grown so much since they last saw you even though it was just last week
- the cars are parked on the sidewalks, the cars are parked on the street, to the point where you’re not exactly sure where you’re supposed to be walking
- there is always a queue and it’s always eternal
- growing tomatoes
- a bowl of plastic fruit??
- your grandparents giving you money for your birthday ‘to buy yourself some cakes/sweets’ and you having to pretend you don’t want it ‘no come on you don’t have to’ before inevitably accepting it ‘you really didn’t have to thank you’
- spending that money on cheap alcohol
- as soon as it hits 24 degrees everyone is out grilling food, in the back yard, in the park, in the cemetery, on top of a soviet-time apartment building…
- SAUSSAGES
- these plastic things on every table always in godawful floral or fruit patterns
and finally
- weird shit like this
em-the-fandom-trashcan
I’m American and 80% of the things on this list happen at my grandmother’s house every Christmas.
Except the boxed vodka, why is boxed vodka even a thing?
