21 Sept 2019

AFTER WAR SANDWICH FOR THE SCHOOL

When I was 10 years old, I went to school in Bonn/Germany. In Germany schools don't last the whole day and finish at 4 as here in Belgium, but it depends the age, I had to go from 8 to 12 or 1 pm I don't remember and then I went home for lunch and stayed there for the whole afternoon. This was a big problem for working women because there were no day cares or day schools. Women usually stayed home for the children. My mother never worked so she was always there when I came home.



For 10 am usually when we had a break she had prepared a sandwich for me, which were two slices of dark grey dry bread with something in it mostly cheese or something else. We had no plastic at that time no sandwich paper it was just after the war and people took what they could get. Fortunately we were under American occupation and had bread ! The sandwich was wrapped in grey paper, other children had theirs wrapped in newspaper paper, because they hadn't anything else. Lunchboxes didn't exist either.

Of course the sandwich when I unwrapped it tasted awful because it was even more dry. But if you are hungry you gobble down whatever you get ! and that's what I did.

Then after a while we got the first plastic foil and my mother had wrapped my bread in this new invention ! I can still remember when I took out my sandwich this time, it tasted so good it was not dry anymore and for once I ate it with appetite.

Those who had their sandwiches wrapped in Newspaper paper know the difference between paper and plastic foil !

Fortunately today you have lunch boxes...

My first roll and white bread I ate when I was around 13 ! I didn't even know that other breads existed ! 

The schools in Germany have not changed, but they start more and more to join the all day system, because women want to work and not only doing household things.


Linking to SOCS - Wrap

8 comments:

  1. Our school sandwiches used to be wrapped in waxed paper. At home we have rye seed bread, but when out, always white bread for me. Rye and seed bread often seems stale when out.

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  2. In primary school we had classes from 8.30 to 12.30 and then from 13.30 to 15.00. As I lived about three minutes walk from school, I always went home for lunch.

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  3. Like Mara (above), our school day was 8:45 to 3:15. We broke at 11:45 for lunch and started up again at 1:00. Almost everyone went home for lunch; we lived two blocks from school, so it only took us about 5 minutes to get home. Mom was a teacher and would call us to check on us during her lunch period. She made sure we had bread, sandwich meat, peanut butter etc. so we didn't have to light the stove...

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  4. Nowadays, sandwiches get to be wrapped in echo-friendly paper. But there's still use of wax paper. The main thing is for the sandwich to be tastty and appealing to the child.

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  5. In England we had school lunches prepared for us at school. They weren't always the tastiest but they were healthy. In Australia we always took sandwiches to school wrapped in wax paper, then plastic wrap and then lunch boxes. We often swapped our sandwiches with friends. I didn't do that often because my mum made the best sandwiches. My mum went to work and we went to school from 9 to 3. After school we looked after ourselves. My brother was 5 years older than me.

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  6. That is interesting! Our grade school had a cafeteria, but we lived inky a couple blocks away and I “had” to go home for lunch. It was my fondest wish to be able to stay at school and eat with my friends, but no such luck. (I’m sure I ate better ...my mother didn’t work out at that time, and she was good with balanced meals).

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  7. Sorry ...I hate autocorrect ... that was supposed to say ‘only a couple of blocks away”.

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