venta

Yesterday, an email arrived to a mailing list I'm on, saying the following:

Today, I had the pleasure of introducing a German colleague to his first ever pie :).

I read that a couple of times, and was very confused. Subsequent emails clarified:

1. You don't really get pies in Germany. Certainly not savoury pies.
2. Said German colleague has been living in the UK a few years, and has regarded pies as suspicious, peculiar, scary British things to be avoided.
3. You really don't really get pies in Germany.

Yes, yes, I know that things like steak-and-kidney pie are regarded as Proper British Food, but I hadn't realised the extent to which the rest of the world doesn't really do pie. The Wikipedia page for pie describes meat pies as "popular in the UK, Australia and New Zealand".

Now. Really. In this age of multiculturalism, where the hell is the rest of the world? Why haven't they caught on? Admittedly, subsequent pages (eg for the Scotch pie) mention popularity in Canada, and they have that pot pie thing going on in America, but even so...

Where is the rest of Europe in the pie stakes? Never mind your galettes and your tartes, savoury pie is something they really should know about. More to the point, why aren't we going out there and setting up pie stalls for their education? They keep sending us their peculiar comestibles in fancy markets, we should reciprocate. "Getting an English" on the way home from the Bierkeller could be the new fashionable thing in Bavaria by summer.

Incidentally, the occasional European market in the Broadway, in Ealing, has a stall whose sign reads:

German Bratwurst

After Party

There are many readings of that which are just Not Right.