Interested in some Taiwanese Hakka?

Sheng Xiang & Band

I have their I-Village vinyl from Eslite.

You could do ABBA which is a brand of pickled herring and a band for Sweden. Not sure if there is a book in the same spirit.

I lived in several places, I’ll try to give some, they’re not the most authentic, or the best by any objective measure, but are things that exemplify very well my experience. I’ve added savory and sweet entries for each, and also a movie if you want to (to compensate for the fact that I don’t know many books from most of them, so most countries are just the only book I could think of)

Argentina:

• Food (savory): If you can find them, Sandwich de miga are great, but they’re very hard to find outside of Argentina, many places say they sell them but they sell just a crustless sandwich. You might have better luck with Empanadas
• Food (sweet): I you’re okay with making them, Bombon de Avena are one of my favorite treats, and they’re very easy to make. I doubt you’ll find anywhere that sells them, though, so I’ll leave another option Alfajor
• Album: This one is difficult, I’m going to have to go with Poncho Al Viento from Soledad, but also anything from Los Chalchaleros would be great. I tried to go with Folklore because everyone knows about Tango and someone had already mentioned Sui Generis before.
• Book: La autopista del sur, it’s not particularly good but it’s the only one I could think of
• Movie: 9 Reinas, one of my favorite movies, it’s a heist movie about stealing some post stamps.

Brazil:

• Food (savory): There are many options here, I thought on going very specific with Nord eastern food, but you might have difficulty finding it. Instead I’ll go with Coixinha, I think it’s the ultimate Brazilian snack, for a full meal Brazilians prefer rice and black beans, but that’s also found in multiple other cultures, whereas the Coixinha, specially the one of Frango Catupiry, is very unique.
• Food (sweet): I’m tempted to say Brigadeiro, even though I find it extremely sweet it’s the default Brazilian sweet snack. However I’ll go with the close second Beijinho which is similar except coconut flavored instead of chocolate, and IMO much much less cloying.
• Album: uff, this is hard, I wanna say Construção by Chico Buarque, but I feel you’re likely to have been recommended it in the past. I’m going to go with a very weird choice here and recommend Transpiração Continua Prolongada from Charlie Brown Jr, it’s very different from what people think as Brazilian music and everyone who was in Brazil in the 2000s knows them.
• Book: Os Sete from Andre Vianco, most of the Brazilian books I had to read were for school and they’re old so not a good read, plus they’re social critics that if you don’t know the culture can be missed. Os sete is a Vampire story, it’s the Interview with the Vampire from Brazil. It’s not great, but it’s enjoyable.
• Movie: Tropa de elite, many people might recommend Cidade de Deus which is also very good, but I feel Tropa de Elite is better to make outsiders understand the state of things.

Ireland:

• Food (savory): Guiness Stew, although mostly a touristy dish I love it, sided with some garlic mashed potatoes it’s a great food for a good winter.
• Food (sweet): I honestly can’t think of any Irish sweets besides adding Bailey to some other sweet.
• Album: Very cliche, but when I think of Ireland the first thing that pops to mind is The Dubliners.
• Book: I’m gonna go with Dracula, if you haven’t read it give it a go, try to forget he’s a vampire, as that makes the book a lot more enjoyable.
• Movie: Drawing a blank here too, but since you didn’t asked for movies and this is an extra category I thought the rest was worth including.

I skipped Italy as I wouldn’t have book recommendation and whichever food I was going to recommend it’s likely you have had it or are not able to. Similarly for Spain plus the added juggling of whether to recommend Spanish or Catalan things.

Check out geography now, he has covered every country

How many hours of Mongolian throat singing are you down for?

Norway: kjøttkaker i brun saus (fried meatballs in gravy). “Grand Declaration of War” by Satyricon is a good introduction to Norwegian Black Metal. Any book by Jo Nesbø is a page turner, but if you want a true classic, go for Edda (collection of old Viking poems).

Canada: Poutine/Rush-Moving Pictures or 2112/Margaret Atwood - whichever title interests you.

New Zealand here. The most traditional Pacific Island foods are cooked in an earth oven - cover the food in tinfoil, wrap it in wet sacks, place it on hot stones in a hole you’ve dug, then cover it with earth until enough time has passed to cook it. Chances are you won’t find that in a restaurant, so I’m going to recommend our favourite dip. Take one can reduced cream (like condensed milk but thicker and unsweetened) and mix thoroughly with one packet dehydrated onion soup. Cover with film and leave in the fridge for an hour to set. Simple!

For an album I’m going to recommend We Rise by alt-metal band Devilskin. It’s uniformly good and singer Jenny Skulander has a powerful voice.

For a book, try Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir. Sci-Fantasy necromancers in space. How can you go wrong?

Russia: Eat Beef Stroganoff+buckwheat+chanterelles, read “Master and Margaret”, listen to “Целлулоид” (Celluloid) album by Tequilajazz.

It’s Album Time by Todd Terje is Norwegian electro jazz and one of my all time favorite albums

Laufey is an Icelandic singer of the traditional jazz pop style, I highly recommend her live albums. One was recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Australia has a lot of fun hyperpop influnced acts and influencing acts. Skin by Flume is an all time classic but recently I would recommend I Love my Computer by Ninajirachi

choke enough by Oklou is a French dreamy bedroom pop album that I really enjoy, great for rainy days.

AAA is a great collab album between South Korean indie band HYUKOH and the Taiwanese synth jazz group Sunset Rollercoaster

Music Can Hear us by the German DJ Koze is a meandering exploration of sound that’s bound to have something for everyone eventually

KISS OF DEATH is a heavy hyperpop/hip-hop type deal from the Russian duo IC3PEAK, not dissimilar to the somewhat famous south African duo Die Antwoord.

And Philharmony is a wonderful synth pop album from the influential Japanese artist Haruomi Hosono that brings hardcore 80s vibes.

Those are just off the top of my head (and thus heavily skew towards recentish releases) let me know if anything piques your interest as I can find many more album recommendations.

I was about 60% international travel for 15 years (Industrial Automation) and got into a similar thing:

Basically I feel that in order to experience somewhere, you have to get out of the tourist zone, then eat where the locals eat.

One of my coolest experience was in Port Harcourt, Nigeria where my wife and I partook in what can only be described as a Yoruba (language) BBQ featuring a lovely dish of Esunsun (Termites) and rice while drinking some Kegite Club (fermented palm date juice) and singing yoruba songs with drunken dancing.