Well, it does suck. I remember when I was in high school and I found some cookbook with recipes from different countries. I tried cooking some of them and was amazed at how intense the taste was. Only later I realized that those recipes were pretty normal, they just tasted amazing compared with my mother's cooking. It's not that my mother's cooking was very bland but Polish cuisine is pretty boring. It's mostly salty and sour, not much variation. And some people never venture out beyond what they grew up with.