How do you approach differences?

Today is my first working day again, after my long holiday back home. I brought some cookies for my colleagues in my lab here: ledre pisang (kind of banana crispy pancakes), satru kacang (green beans cookies) and brem (cookies made of fermented sticky rice). All are typical snacks from my province, East Java. I already suspected that that the brem would be the strangest new taste for them. But I thought they would be able to enjoy at least the ledre pisang.

Today again, in the coffee break, I got a chance to see an interesting human reaction. Most of the people sat there, looking half-scared, torn between being polite and fear to try new things. When somebody passed the plate of cookies to some people, some unconsciously pulled away their bodies, as if they were offered a disgusting animal on a plate :D For me, this gesture was funny since the cookies, trust me, looked very safe (can you imagine if they were offered some strange-looking meal instead? butter-fried frog, for example :D). Some people were in between curious and afraid of the new things. So they were staring at the cookies all the time or asking several questions, but refused to try a bit even though I said they could just throw it away if the taste was too bad for them :D

If this happened in my first year here, I guess I could be sad or offended. My lonely or isolated feeling, as a result of being different than the rest of my colleagues, would escalate and I would react strongly against the cliché that Western people are more free or open minded, that they are more progressive and tolerant, that Zürich is very international, and so on. But today, I felt it was funny and interesting. Although I could guess already how my colleagues would react to certain things, I still wondered and wished I could penetrate to their minds - I could not fully comprehend why they were so afraid. Did they think the taste could be so bad and they would vomit it? It was just cookies after all. Or did they think it was not hygienic enough? Or was it simply a natural reaction to something unknown? (what a protected life they have!)

The way people react to small, unusual things actually reflects their approaches to bigger matters – that’s the only interpretation I can say, with the least bias ;D