gummy, beige, chunky.

It is not easy to put me off my appetite. It's close to impossible, in fact. One of my conversational pet peeves is when I'm sharing a meal with people and someone tells a story about dogs eating someone's limbs or a mound of shit or a murder and someone else says, "Hey! I'm trying to eat!" I must find this so irritating because I simply can't imagine not wanting to eat because of something someone said out loud. If I'm hungry, it is unstoppable with few exceptions. Additionally, I very, very rarely have trouble finishing meals, even after discovering they're terrible.

The other day, I followed my occasional and somewhat misguided Taco Bell craving all the way to the Taco Bell in Wrigleyville, a horrible place that is a normal Taco Bell by day and a dirty, drunken clubhouse by night. I ordered Cheesy Gordita Crunches, which I don't regret a bit because they are an incredible culinary accomplishment that always satisfy and leave me wondering why we don't use cheese as glue more often. I also made the mistake of ordering a Volcano Burrito, which was the color of the clotted blood that comes after the dog bites off your limb and murders you, and tasted unlike food. I took three bites to try to put my finger on which building material it tasted like. I said plywood. Someone else said dry wall. In the end, I had to give up and stop eating it.

Later, when describing this burrito to someone, I got to thinking about worse things I've eaten, which got me thinking about this sandwich I ate in a train station in Switzerland once. We were going to be stuck there a while, Nena and I, on our last day in the country. We'd spent our time in Switzerland alternating between admiration for the staggering physical beauty of the place and shock over how ridiculously, over-the-top expensive it is. At the train station that day in Zurich, we tried to find cheap food. We looked at the McDonald's Value Menu, even, and calculated that a meal there would equate to 15 American dollars. We wandered around the train station grocery store, and then to the train station health foods store (the Zurich train station is the size of a shopping mall) where everything was well beyond our means but they had samples of nuts and carrots or something, which we ate until they were gone. I also returned to their sample bottle of organic aloe vera at least five times, having acquired a sunburn but unable to buy aloe vera in Switzerland as I am not a millionaire.

Anyway, so we ended up back in the non-health foods grocery store. It should be noted that this grocery store was like the Seventh Circle of Hell and arranged in a way that made it impossible to navigate and it put a lot of pressure on a person, especially if that person was panicking over calculating fucking Swiss francs (also the bane of our existence at the time, especially that really tiny, useless one that was like a 1/4 franc) and trying to not starve. When I look back on it now, I imagine us tumbling out of the store with glazed eyes and frizzy hair, carrying armfuls of weird, bad purchases. Nena bought a giant loaf of fig-filled braided bread. I bought this chicken curry sandwich from the refrigerated cases by the registers, at the last minute. We took our food back up by our luggage locker and sat on the floor. I took one bite of this thing--two slices of soggy white bread, a gummy beige chunky spread of "chicken" "curry" in the middle--and struggled to swallow it. It instantly sank into my teeth like wet concrete and tasted of a dank refrigerator where maybe some pepper spilled. I didn't even try a second bite before throwing it away.

It was the worst thing I have ever eaten. With not nearly enough money to buy more food, Nena and I used our last few francs on a trip to the very expensive train station bathroom, where the stalls were immediately and thoroughly cleaned after each guest. This was probably the best money I spent in Switzerland. The most incredible things there, like the mountains and bike rides next to cerulean lakes, are free. We did have some good meals there, though. Like raclette:

That train station sandwich is, unfortunately, as unforgettable as a raclette feast on a patio next to the Swiss Alps. Do you remember the worst thing you've ever eaten? I'm also offering some balance with another, happier question, in honor of stroopwafels.