Given all the chaos that ensued this past year, borders have been closed and reopened, flights have been canceled, and hotels have been shut down, making it hard for anyone to travel outside of their hometown. Given this, traveling is not only just a stress reliever, a getaway with the family, or just a series of late nights, but it is an experience. A huge part of these experiences is the different cultures that exist outside of the United States. 

Despite these setbacks, a group of friends and I are able to bring you four different countries by staying just 20 minutes from our own homes. Aside from only knowing English and a little Spanish, walking down the same aisle 10 times, and not knowing where Mochi came from, we successfully made it out of World Market in one piece. We were able to experience the culture through food from four different countries: The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey. One snack/dessert was chosen from each of these countries so a comparison could be made through a taste test.

From the United Kingdom, we chose to try TimTams. A TimTam is made of two chocolate biscuits with a chocolate cream filling in the middle and fully coated in a thin layer of chocolate. Aubrey Maher describes this snack  “much like a Thanks A Lot Girls Scout cookie.” 

From the Netherlands, we had the opportunity to try Daelmans Caramel Mini Stroopwafels. These are soft, wafer-like waffles, filled with caramel, cinnamon, and bourbon vanilla. In my opinion, these were the best out of the four and they were the opposite of what I was expecting at all. Megan Lokuta reviews them as “kinda chewy and not too sweet, but overall good and I like the texture.”

From Italy, the Delizia Hazelnut Cream Filled Puff Pastry was a perfect fit for the culinary culture in Italy. These are a Tuscan puff pastry with a chocolate filling in the center of the long-shaped dessert. I had very high hopes for this dessert based on the looks from the package. However, the pastry part was very crumbly, dry, and there was a microscopic amount of chocolate in the middle. 

From Turkey, the Truede Mini Turkish Delights were not a fan favorite as it is not what we are used to in America. Lizzie Padva describes them as, “orange and lemon just like gummies but the rose kind of tastes like perfume and I don’t really like it. It had a nice chewy texture! But I would rather have scooby doo fruit snacks.” 

In this little experiment, a lot was concluded. This just goes to show how different each culture truly is. Each country of the four had its own little twist and staples that were very obvious. As we walked around World Market, there was a common theme in each of the country departments. In China, all the packaging was very colorful and cartoon-like. In Italy, all the food had some sort of bread or pasta worked into it with very elegant packaging. And, in the United Kingdom, all of the foods had a very simple and plain look to them. Given this, you can’t go wrong with any foreign foods but we, as Americans, are very accustomed to our Americanized ways, making it hard to break away from our everyday normality.