A few months ago, we took our first ever family holiday to the UK. Sadly, our luggage was unable to make the same trip. As we excitedly boarded the plane, it was decided that all our possessions should instead remain incarcerated deep in the bowels of Munich airport. After waiting hopelessly for our baggage to appear on an increasingly empty carousel at Newcastle Airport, we accepted our fate and left empty handed. My first thought turned to buying the multitude of replacements we’d need for our two week stay. My wife’s first thought was slightly different; her biggest concern was for the impressively large bag of bread she’d packed the night before. Whether we’re travelling for two days or two weeks, regardless of distance, my wife always packs bread. Sometimes it’s bread rolls, other times it’s a whole loaf, and in this instance, since we would be away for fourteen days, it had been both. ‘Well’ I said nonchalantly ‘I guess you’ll have to hope we get our bags back soon’. ‘You mean you’ll have to hope’ she said smirking, ‘I put it all in your suitcase’.

I’ve never questioned my wife’s pathological need for a ready supply of German bread, to me it made perfect sense. Most Germans believe that their bread is supremely better than any other nation’s. French baguettes are nice, but they’re white bread and therefore categorised as junk food. Italy, which has an excellent bread tradition, is disregarded because their bread becomes hard as rock after a few short hours. The British? Well, in Germany’s opinion, “die Engländer” don’t have bread, instead they have “Toast”, which is to say highly processed, pre-sliced, low quality loaves. In fairness to Germany, they do have a point. German bread is amazing, with a level of quality that’s consistent across the country, and usually at a very affordable price. If there’s decent bread in the UK, it’s usually prohibitively expensive.

When I tell British friends and family about my wife’s travelling suitcase Backerei, their first reaction is to take offence, they can’t help it. When you’ve grown up on Warburtons, Kingsmill and Hovis, it’s hard to imagine anything else. Additionally, many of these companies have a range of different products, from basic and cheap, to luxury “special edition”, or what my family would refer to as “posh bread”. This means that even when someone is eating at the high end of the British bread spectrum, it’s still a processed sponge, only with a higher markup. Like so many parts of British life, its low quality is masked by some clever marketing that taps into nostalgia for a bygone era that never really existed.

Germany’s derisive opinions on the baked goods of other countries isn’t so weird, after all, Britain has similar obsession: tea. For the British, there is nothing better than a nice cup of tea and there is a certainty that the only place such splendour will be found is at home, in the UK. Even China, with its ancient tea culture, cannot hope to compare. Britain took tea and used it as the foundation for most of its culture, using it in the way that many assume we use alcohol. We drink it in any and all situations: to celebrate, to commiserate, to get through the day or simply to relax. Not only is it a beverage, but a topic of conversation. The British will argue for hours over the best tea bag, the correct brewing time, and whether milk should be added before or after the boiling water (for the record, the answers are in this order: Ringtons, 2.5 minutes, and after the tea is fully brewed you animals!). In other moments we use it to shutdown conversations, or avoid social awkwardness. When someone starts oversharing or asking difficult questions, a simple ‘You fancy a brew?’ moves things along to safer ground.

Though British people might find it strange that someone would bring bread on holiday, they wouldn’t bat an eyelid if my wife had produced a small Tupperware box filled with tea bags. Rather than ridiculing her, they would have praised her resourcefulness, although they probably would also have noted that the tea bags were German and therefore a far inferior product. As any self respecting Briton knows, German tea is awful.

It’s not for a lack of effort, after all, find the tea section in a German supermarket and you’ll be presented with a wall of options. There’s Italienische Limone, Mediterraner Pfirsich, Türkischer Apfel, Kräuter, and Brennnessel-Mischung. For those who just want something closer to home, there’s Darjeeling, Earl Grey, or Englischer Schwarztee. Despite having all these options, the average British person will quickly point out that it’s not as good, the tea bags don’t diffuse properly, and anyway, it all tastes a bit odd.

It isn’t just the tea bags, it’s the whole German tea culture that seems weird to some British people. Tea is seen as a cure-all for most low level illnesses, and not an everyday essential as it is in Britain. Equally, Germans will drink tea in unexpected places. Seeing someone drinking it on a night out can be jarring, and often an invitation for some British amateur tea aficionado to opine on the failings of a German brew. Even the cup can be criticised, either because it’s made of glass or that it’s too small/big/round or whatever other critical point must be shared with some baffled looking German, who’s only crime was wanting to enjoy a nice cup of Bio Gute Nacht Tee.

There’s another level to the British tea fixation, one that will often be heard from British people who’ve only just arrived. With a sense of anger and disappointment, they will announce loudly that “There isn’t even a kettle in our hotel room!”, as if this constitutes some terrible malfeasance. It might seem shocking to them, but it’s perfectly normal to Germans. Why would there be a kettle in a hotel room? It’s a kitchen appliance, and as such has no business being in a Schlafzimmer. For the British, the lack of an in-room kettle is an affront to God; how else are they going to brew their tea bags they brought especially from home?

Just as the Germans have a point about their bread, the British have a point about their tea. The water in Germany isn’t great for making a cuppa, its calcium levels are higher, meaning that only certain tea bags will produce a good cuppa. Nevertheless, the disregard that Germans have for non-German bread and the British have for “non-British tea” is deeply annoying, no matter how you look at it. Sure, it’s nice to have things in common, but I often wish it wasn’t a snooty and disparaging opinion for anything other than what is comfortable and familiar. After all, that’s the whole point of travelling, or even living in a different country. Why would we want everything to be so boring and homogenous? Embrace the difference I say, unless of course it’s Pfefferminz Tee, that shit can go straight to hell.

There is one thing I can say for Britain’s tea fixation that may well give it the edge on the German bread superiority complex: a small plastic ziploc of tea bags is unlikely to become a bio hazard if left unattended for over a month. When our luggage finally resurfaced five weeks after our return from the UK, I’d totally forgotten that my dear wife chose my suitcase to store her bready contraband. In my desperation to check that everything we packed was still in good order, I unzipped the case and was met by the unmistakable smell of yeast and mould. As I bemoaned the possible ruination of all my clothes, sniffing a favourite shirt for signs of contamination, my wife commented sadly ‘It’s a real shame, that was one of my favourites’. I turned to agree with her, and realised she wasn’t talking to me, but to the transparent green sack that had once been a prime loaf of Volkornbrot.

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