in preparation for my first trip to taiwan at the age of 9, i tagged along with my mom on multiple trips to Costco as she agonized over what presents to buy for our relatives on the island. i puzzled over the things she picked out: huge packages of ferrero rocher chocolates, anti-aging creme, 90-day supplies of osteoporosis supplements, vitamin E gel capsules that could be squeezed open and slathered onto the skin.
my mom designated an extra suitcase solely for gifts, an idea which i found aggravating for some reason. i guess i didn’t understand why someone would go to all that trouble to bring Costco products abroad - i might have understood if these were handmade or artisanal gifts, but the gray, brightly-lit warehouse backdrop of Costco felt lame and underwhelming. to make matters worse, the more people we crossed off of our “to-gift” list, the more people began to appear on it. it was like a matryoshka doll of gift-giving, where each time we thought we were done shopping for gifts, new distant relatives and friends sprung up in their place. my mom seemed to have a never-ending apprehension of showing up to a taiwanese reunion or gathering empty-handed.
and so it is with some sheepishness that i admit that i spent most of today running around downtown, going store-to-store searching for presents for our U.S. friends whom Ulrich and I will visit during a short trip to pittsburgh starting from this weekend (business for Ulrich, just-tagging-along for me!). as i found myself splitting hairs between a Easter-themed box of assorted Milka candies vs. a similar one from Kinder at the drugstore, I suddenly empathized with my mom’s agony from all those years ago: she wanted to offer things that our family couldn’t easily find in taiwan but had become staples of her life in the U.S., gifts that would give them a glimpse of how far her life had diverged from theirs. of course my mom wasn’t interested in artisanal gifts - those were fancy and nice, but they didn’t have anything to do with our daily life! In the drugstore i found myself poring through memories, trying desperately to remember all the brand names of candy i used to see stocked in U.S. supermarket aisles, not wanting to gift something which my american friends could easily buy at home. were Milka and Kinder part of that list, or was my instinct correct that they were only available in Europe? and of course, each time i settled on a fitting gift, my eyes wandered towards another potential present for someone else - usually a spouse or child of the person i was originally shopping for - another person i could surprise with a small german artifact which might open the door for stories about how unexpectedly, sometimes delightfully different my life here has turned out to be.
a new understanding of travel gifts
I always request Niederegger marzipan when my German friends visit. You can get it here in specialty stores but it is very expensive.
Things I've requested (living in Lithuania): marmite from people coming from the UK, spices (zaatar) from people coming from Israel, a specific polish vodka from people coming from Poland. Getting something you absolutely cannot get in your country is amazing