Foreign Food

Trying new foods should be a staple for anyone travelling anywhere. It can be fun, scary, successful, a disaster...and it can be complicated by not understanding the menu because it's in a foreign language.
The first word I learned in Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and Swedish, respectively, was the same:
Chocolate.
I think the second one was ice cream. We ate a lot of ice cream, mainly because the days were hot and water wasn't free. Not that the ice cream was free, but it was far more accessible than water.
[I have to say, I really have come to appreciate America because we can get a glass of tap water for free. And we can refill water bottles for free. Probably not something the Founding Fathers foresaw.]
Anyway, European food. It can be odd. On one occasion, Mark ordered something (we didn't know what it was, because the waiter couldn't explain it to us in English), and it arrived in an urn on a plate.

he didn't like it that much

Fun times.
We also had occasions where the food description didn't sound that appetizing, but the food itself was delicious. Like with Lithuanian boiled potato dumplings, which also has an odd consistency against its favor, but it tastes yummy.

the dumplings are in the center, with forks in them

And then there is the punschrulle treat of Sweden, which looks delicious, but has the unfortunate name of "vacuum cleaner," and also tastes gross.

Perhaps it was just the places we frequented, but I think most of the food was presented in an appetizing way (we're not counting the urn thing here).

breakfast sandwich with fish. lots of dishes had fish

A couple times, we would just get a snack to eat from one of the grocery stores (Rimi in the Baltic states, and ICA in Sweden) because they had a delicious variety of baked goods (like pizza mini pie, cheese bread, spinach pastry...). It made us feel like we were livin' like the locals.

this was our favorite treat. It's Swedish, and looks like a top, and was commonly in grocery stores

We spent nearly a full week in Sweden, versus a week total for Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia, so most of our food experiences were in Sweden. Which is how we learned about the Swedish "fika", which is like "teatime" or "snack"; just a general time to nibble on something.
We totally nibbled. In fact, we nibbled twice at the place that introduced us to fika. It's a friendly and tasty place.

By the way, we found that one of the easiest ways to explore the local fare was the hotel breakfast buffet. Breakfast had more cheese and fish and fruit than the American counterpart.
So we tried to be sophisticated and eat slower and smaller (per food item; we actually sampled a lot) than what we imagined how the locals imagined Americans ate.