The next topic is my favorite topic: food. I have never eaten Indonesian food in Germany so I was really looking forward to try as many different dishes as possible. Before coming to Pontianak the only thing I knew about Indonesian food was, that people here eat a lot of rice. Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. I have not found one single person here who does not like eating rice and people here even eat their noodles with rice. Maybe one can compare the meaning of rice for Indonesian people with the meaning of bread for us Germans. We have all kinds of bread: dark bread made from whole grain, white bread made from wheat, rye bread, spelt bread and I did not even mention the sweet pastries that can be found in every German bakery. Bread is a popular breakfast, sometimes, when we have a cold dinner, we also eat bread with cheese or cold cuts. The next thing that surprised me was, that almost every dish is accompanied by meat. For your understanding, meat is usually expensive in Germany, so it is still kind of special to have meat. But here people eat a lot of meat, especially fried chicken. In general, meat and also vegetables are usually fried in Indonesia, I have been asking myself if there was a special background as to why almost everything gets fried before it is served. The first time I had nasi with ayam in Indonesia I was astonished to see people eating by using their hands. A thing I could never imagine doing in Germany! Also I would have never thought Indonesian food could be that spicy. Many dishes are accompanied by sambal, which for my taste is usually really spicy. At the beginning I accidently put too much sambal on my chicken and could therefore hardly eat it. Luckily, by now I know better how much sambal I should put on my food.
Impression of Indonesia, particularly of Pontianak
