Original subtitles

The Adventure of The Wonderful Potato

In the beginning, the big Motherpotato was laid.

It was the sun!

And the sun sprouted and grew tubers, and one of the tubers became Earth.

In South America, high up in the Andes, the Motherpotato created a tuber in its own image.

And it sprouted and grew tubers in the ground.

And thus, the wonderful potato came to Earth!

What's wonderful about that thing? It is edible!

No no no, not the plant, it's poisonous!

It's the tubers down in the ground that are edible.

And if you leave one of them in the ground,

then you can dig up 10 just a few months afterwards.

The indians in the Andes are the first people to know the potato.

They understand that it is a wonderful gift for them.

And they praise the large Motherpotato in the sky.

Through thousands of years, the Indians learn how to grow potatoes on large terraces in the mountains.

They discover that it tastes great if they boil and roast it.

Or mash it, for that matter.

And that it keeps fresh for years if they press the water out of it and freezedry it.

They make potato beer as well.

Sometimes, they come across some useless chunks:

Gold.

It's not edible, but it shines like the great Motherpotato.

As a thanksgiving for being well-fed each day, they build sun temples filled with gold.

They call themselves the "Inca", and their king, "son of the sun".

In the year 1532, the sun king is named Atahualpa.

He could've been eating his potatoes for a lot of years,

if just the rumour of all of his gold had not been so widely dispersed.

On the other side of Earth sits the emperor of the half of Europe,

Charles the V,

who is in debt.

So the rumours of the Inca and their gold is sweet music in his ears.

Charles sends a bunch of conquistadors from Spain towards the Inca; Their leader is called "Francisco Pizarro"

A reckless adventurer.

The Spaniards are quickly to the point.

They kill Atahualpa and most of his people and steal their gold.

They can now return to Spain with pride.

But wait, the Spaniards' chef, Carlos, needs something to fill the cauldrons on the long trip home.

They plunder the Incas' storage of food where they, among other things, find the potato.

The Spaniards have never seen anything like that before.

Even though the taste is unfamiliar,

Carlos decides to take them back home anyway,

just to be sure.

And now the trip home commences,

with the cargo heavily loaded with Inca gold.

Carlos is serving boiled, salted meat,

and his new discovery; Potatoes.

Most of the crew sticks to the meat,

that's what they're used to.

On the months long sea trip, the meat has trouble staying fresh, though.

While the potatoes are doing just fine!

Those that still deny eating potatoes,

become sick with scurvy,

and many of them dies.

While those that eat their potatoes are thriving well!

At this time, they are still unaware of the presence of the vital vitamin-C,

but Carlos understands what amazing present the potato is.

The ship returns to Spain,

Charles takes all the gold,

and Carlos gets what is left of the potatoes.

Proudly, he returns home with the best he has found in the foreign, home to his wife.

The potato has come to Europe.

And here, it shows another wondrous ability;

It can set roots nearly everywhere it is placed.

Carlos tries to convince his breathren that the potato is absolutely fantastic!

But no one can see the fantastic: "we've been growing all sorts of cereal for thousands of years, why not continue with that?"

Carlos must once again take a job as a chef, and wanders around Europe with the Spanish army.

Along the way, he preaches of the potato and its abilities, and puts a single potato in the ground here and there,

but meets the same answer everywhere;

"What's wonderful about that?"

Carlos gives up.

He goes to sea once more with his potatoes.

In the year 1588, the Spanish fleet "The Invincible Armada" sails up North to conquer England.

But the English fleet is waiting in ambush.

It's a catastrophy!

The Spanish tries to escape, directly into a horrible storm.

And that is how the potato came to Ireland!

The Irish are a very poor and starved people.

Their land is controlled by Englishmen,

*SPOOKY JUMPSCARE*

who have been setting up large mansions,

and made the Irish into poor peasants.

The Irish loan small plots of land by the English, which they use to grow their cereal.

But the resulting harvest is so small, that they have difficulty living off of it.

Therefore, they see the great in everything edible.

Carlos teaches the Irish the art of potato farming,

and finally rests with his beloved tubers.

The Irish realises that they can exploit their farmland better.

Where they once grew cereal, they now grow potatotes.

And the harvest is four times as large!

The English realises as well, that they can exploit the Irish better.

When one peasant gets four times as many crops on one plot...

Then one peasant should be able to live with a quarter of a plot!

The poor Irishmen are now relying completely on the potato.

The rest of Europe is still sceptical when it comes to the potato.

It's not mentioned in the Bible,

Alas, it is not accepted by God.

It is said, that which grows above the ground belongs to God and the living,

while that which grows beneath the ground belongs to the Devil and his underground Hell.

In 1618, Hell is once again present on the surface.

The Thirty Years War breaks out in Europe.

The peasants' cereal farms are burned down;

The potato fields as well.

But the potatoes have taken no harm from the fire.

They are lying nice and safely beneath the ground,

like an emergency storage of food for the survivors.

And it is in war and need, that the human begins to love the potato.

A big creator of war and need is in 1740 the king of Prussia, Frederick the Great.

He sees the potato as a saviour for his starving people.

He knows that they are sceptical, but he gets his way.

Not everyone needs to be force-fed, though.

The french officer and scientist, Parmentier, is a war prisoner of Frederick the Great.

Here he learns how to love the potato;

It's the only thing that the prison serves.

Sent back to France, Parmentier tries to convince the poor peasants to the great nutritional values of the potato.

But realises that he has to be more cunning.

He introduces the potato as the center of a feast for the king, Louis the XVI.

The queen, Marie-Antoinette, is gifted a bouquet of the beautiful potato plant's flowers.

A potato doesn't go any higher than that!

From now on, it's a luxury to eat potatoes in France.

To make it even more precious, Parmentier sets up a fence and guards at the potato farms.

However, the guard is sent home at night, and everything happens according to Parmentier's plan.

Through cunning and cleverness, fine potatoes now grow in poor people's gardens.

At the same time in the Nordic Countries, the potato becomes well known with the natives.

It is discovered that the potato is great at producing aquavit.

More death and suffering is on its way, though.

In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte becomes emperor of France.

He decides to go to war with the whole of Europe at the same time.

Hunger follows in the tracks of the war, and the potato becomes vital.

In 1815 Napoleon is totally defeated,

and the only real victor left on the battlefield is the potato.

The potato has conquered Europe.

From being deemed a worthless piece of trash, the potato is now the most important food for millions of people.

In 1845 is the Irish potato harvest looking excellent.

But what's that now?

All the potatoes are rotten!

They are inedible!

Everywhere in Ireland, all the potatoes are rotting at the speed of light, and there's nothing they can do.

A horrible and until now unknown potato sickness is spreading.

The potato pest is the reason for hunger and death.

The Irish that are living almost exclusively off of potatoes are the ones experiencing the hardest impact.

From 1845 to 1847 over 1 million people die of starvation.

The Grim Reaper wanders through Europe.

Some people believe that it is God's punishment against the sinful people,

while others are intensively trying to cure the sick potato.

They find out that the sickness is caused by a quickly growing mold,

but they are helpless to stop it.

When everything looks darkest, it is the potato itself that takes up the fight.

The best specimens slowly build up resistance against the mold.

The potato has defeated the sickness!

In the following 100 years, until our time, the potato wanders all around the globe, fulfilling its success.

The potato has now become yours, and mine, and the whole world's gold nugget.