On (Vegan) Diet and Customer Service and Travel

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Today I was a match to a blog post by Teal (Swan! But I say just "Teal" because I imagine us being best friends at the least) and now I feel the urge to write about a certain topic, and that topic is veganism.

This is what Teal writes in her blog post Berlin, Germany:
”And the attitude towards vegetarians and vegans in this part of the world is not good. They treat you like an aggravating space alien when you ask for something with no animal products. It doesn’t help that in Europe, customer service is terrible too. The attitude in the US is “do anything to make the customer happy”. The attitude in Europe is “You’re lucky to be eating here at all.” I have even been told by a restaurant host “go back to where you came from” in response to me asking if the restaurant could manage non-meat alternatives. And since I’ve been here, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been completely guaranteed by a server that a dish has no dairy in it because it’s totally vegan only to find that it’s drowning in cream.” (https://tealswan.com/teals-blog/berlin-germany-r428/)

Being a European, I was surprised to actually understand the European point of view that Teal is discussing here. Being mostly vegan myself (in Europe, you have to be quite flexible with that) I have had my share of struggles with European restaurants and customer service. I can't tell you how many times I have felt exactly like ”an aggravating space alien” when asking for vegan or even vegetarian food!

Many Americans will call European customer service ”terrible”, and I get it. The service and tips are mostly included in the price and therefore customer servants don't need to do everything to please the customer to get a good tip like they do in the US. It's much harder to lose your job in Europe as well, due to workers' rights and their protection and all the bureaucracy.

The situation in Europe has its downsides but it has its upsides too. When you're having a horrible day, you're not forced to fake a smile and act happy in the fear of losing your job. And when you are in a good mood, you can show your genuine happiness to the customers, and they catch it too. In Europe, the customer service is mostly genuine, albeit sometimes awful. In America, it is often fake smiles and howdoyoudos. That gets very old very quickly too. When I can tell that a person is suffering on the inside but is forced to pretend like they love me – the customer – that just breaks my heart. And there's a lot of that in the US, and much less in Europe.

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The attitude ”you're lucky to be eating here at all” is due to the fact that Europeans are very proud of their delicious food. Everyone knows (or thinks) that the most delicious meat comes from Germany, the best cheese and wine from France, the best chocolate from Belgium and Switzerland and so on. Asking for vegan food in Europe is like going to a fish restaurant and asking for a steak – a little offensive. They will be proud to tell you that they don't have a steak on the menu. And I can totally see how they would ask you to go back to where you came from – if their food (which is the best in the whole world) doesn't suit you, why did you come? Critisizing food is considered offensive when Europeans hold their food to be the best – and in fact the only edible food – in the world. Simply put, a general consensus in Europe (and Russia) is that the animal products are what tastes good in the dish. The more fat, the better. Remove the animal producs and you have something completely devoid of taste. Why would you eat that? And before you say the word "spices", I know! Apparently they don't grow here or something.

I have had awful experiences with veganism in Finland, and it's not even Germany! Most of those I had in the countryside. It was completely staggering to me to see how people who live in the countryside eat so little plants, and how people in cities eat so much plants. In Russia, it's reversed and therefore logical to me. City folk eat meat and country folk eat vegetables. As it should be. I still cannot understand why it is the other way around in Finland. If you know, please tell me.

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Dining out in Finland, I have been told that a dish is vegan only to find out that it's non-vegan so many times that I can't even count! And this is despite all the explanations that I've offered. ”No meat, please, and no dairy, no cheese, no chicken, not even fish! No butter, no mayonnaise, no eggs. Yes, no eggs too...” I have gotten so flabbergasted looks that it would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. ”Then what do you eat?” they ask. And this happens in a restaurant that has vegetarian options! They just have no idea what they are, why they are vegetarian, what is vegan, what ingredients go into the dishes and how to make them vegan. To me, an experienced vegetarian, it's a piece of cake of a couple minutes to turn a vegetarian dish into a vegan dish. To a rural Finnish cook, not so much. They start to sweat like it's a challenge of the century and they still won't get it right, and it's mostly due to ignorance.

I especially find it funny how many times I've been brought for example a salad without any sauce, ”because the sauce had eggs in it”, when the same restaurant offers at least three vegan sauces with other dishes. They can take the egg sauce out but to substitute it with another sauce is apparently too difficult.

”Excuse me. Could I have a little sauce of some sort?”
”We took the sauce out, because you wanted vegan.”
”Yes, I know. But it's really dry now. Don't you have a vegan sauce?”
”???”
”I mean with no eggs or milk?”
”???”
”Like vinegar, for example. Do you have vinegar?”
”Vinegar? Of course we do!”
”Could I have a little vinegar with my salad? Vinegar is vegan, you know.”

Customer servant walks angrily away and after a while comes back with a bottle of vinegar. They practically throw the bottle at me without saying a word.

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Which brings me to my own experiences in Russia. I knew right from the very beginning that it would be impossible to stay completely vegan while on this trip. I knew I would be lucky to stay even 70% vegan. As a result I was blown away from the amount and the delicious taste of local vegetables.

I came face to face with a fear of mine when a group of Kazakhs offered us to eat with them. I was expecting meat upon meat with a side of meat and with some more meat on top of it. They certainly had all of that, but they also had delicious potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, cabbage and mushrooms - and everything was grown by themselves! All was organic and extremely tasty. I did try a small piece of wild duck, "because you will never taste anything like this ever again!" and they were right. It was extraordinary.

There seems to be a paradox in the spiritual circles that concerns spiritual diet and veganism. There are two points that I'm trying to reconcile. On one hand there is the plant based diet point. Meat production is grossly evil, eating meat causes cancer among other diseases and it's environmentally detrimental too. So I guess this would be the moral side of the issue. It says that eating meat is wrong for these reasons. On top of it all, meat has low vibrating energy and if you're serious about spirituality, you should cut it out, because you will never awaken with death in you.

On the other hand there is God perspective. As long as you are you, you cannot cease to contribute to all the evil in the world, and it's naïve to even try. In fact, by moralizing you are part of the problem. Eating meat is not wrong, because nothing is. Cancer isn't bad either. You can wake up with meat in your veins, no problem. So this would be the after I've become enlightened I understand and no longer care - perspective.

But I guess that the latter perspective is not a problem only if you are enlightened. So if you are not enlightened yet, eat plant-based until you are, and then you can eat whatever you want. :)

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