The first meal of the day to break your fast from the night. I don’t give much thought to breakfast. It’s actually a meal I typically skip or I eat something small like a fruit and have some tea. I don’t typically enjoy so many breakfast food like cereal, eggs, bacon, hash browns etc. it just felt too heavy. I don’t even drink coffee. I did enjoy brunch sometimes with friends but I’d typically order lunch food like a sandwich or something protein heavy like an omelette. I really do enjoy chilaquiles but then again its not a daily thing.

Breakfast was something I ate because I woke up too early (before 9am), and I would be dying of starvation if had to wait till noon to have lunch. I typically wake up late 9:30am-10am in which I wait until 12 to have my first meal anyway. Those mandatory breakfast days, I used to eat oatmeal to keep my hunger at bay. Breakfast served a purpose: to get me through lunchtime.

When I visit a new country, I really enjoy trying the local customs and cuisines. So I’d love to try what the locals eat for breakfast. In France, its a croissant, in Mexico it’d be tamales, in Germany it’ll be Brot and cold-cuts with cheese, in Brazil it’d be açaí or pao de queijo. These dishes allowed me to look forward to eating every morning, because they are distinct breakfast foods, you only get the morning to enjoy them, you don’t eat them for other meals. It is the exclusivity and limited access gives breakfast foods some novelty. Maybe breakfast in the States doesn’t appeal to me because it’s not “new” and “different” or maybe it just doesn’t tastes very good.

When I went to Vietnam, I’ve realized I’ve taken breakfast for granted. In Vietnam, they don’t specifically have breakfast food, they eat all types of foods at all times of the day. Anything you want at any time. The novelty of breakfast was gone, because I could just eat the same phở at 9am, 12pm, and 6pm. After a couple of weeks in Vietnam, I missed having specific foods for breakfast. It’s not the fact I missed having eggs and bread, it was not having specific foods for breakfast only. I went from a person who didn’t enjoy breakfast that much, to really missing it, after 5 weeks in Vietnam.

Landing back in Germany after Vietnam, the one thing I was looking forward to having was freshly baked bread from the local bakery. Weekly, I’d get fresh bread from the local bakery (even Aldi’s is tasty), and I would have breakfast toast, jam, muesli either with milk or yogurt every morning. No matter if I wake up super late, I always make sure I have breakfast. I actually look forward to breakfast every morning now. Maybe its a German cultural thing that I’ve adopted, because they take their Frühstück very seriously. Actually my favorite breakfast memory I’ve ever enjoyed was at Hotel Markus Sittikus in Salzburg, Austria. It was a typical German breakfast with 4 different bread rolls, jams, butter, eggs, yogurt, fruits, and tea. It sounds so simple but it was so comforting.