Elana Rybak on Baltimore and Biggby

Elana Rybak drove in for Thanksgiving with two other “displaced Michiganders,” went up to East Lansing to catch up with the 'old gang' from college and helped a hometown friend shop for a wedding dress. All in a holiday weekend for Rybak, 27, who left West Bloomfield in October 2009 for a research job in Baltimore.

It's a fast-paced place where people act like things should have been done yesterday, she says, but she's brought a few things, like her laid-back Midwest attitude, with her. “It's funny because I'm consistently picked out as being from the Midwest,” she says. “The accent, and I say 'pop' not 'soda.'”

After attending undergrad and veterinary school at Michigan State University, she graduated in 2008 and worked as an equine veterinarian intern at a horse clinic in Emmett for a year. When the internship ended, there were no equine jobs in Michigan, she says, so she decided to try research.

Now she's a research assistant in a University of Maryland laboratory, where they test drugs to prevent and treat organ rejection.

Rybak, who grew up in Southfield and moved to West Bloomfield in high school, says she misses Biggby coffee, Meijer, and Michigan prices.

As she moved from suburb to city, she says she's learned about alternate street-side parking, how to be city-savvy and know where to go, and how to navigate a fleet of one-way streets and hilly roads. “There'll always be a soft spot in my heart for the Michigan left,” she says.

As for the Jewish scene, she went to Bais Chabad on Maple Road and now doesn't have a synagogue affiliation but tries to go to Shabbat dinners and happy hours held by Chai Life and Moshe House, which cater to young Jewish adults in Baltimore.

She stays in touch with friends from home, and uses her new location in Baltimore to stay connected. “I go visit friends in DC all time, and it's not too far from a friend in Virginia, so I see her a lot, too,” she says.

She has a sister in Lansing, another sister finishing up a Master's at University of Michigan who's headed for Milwaukee, and her parents live in West Bloomfield.

Dani Ungar, and a Search for Hometown Tastes

Dani Ungar, 29, is on a constant quest for Vernors. The Oak Park native has four cases of the signature beverage stacked in his apartment, just in case he can’t find it again soon. “I bought it all at once -- I pretty much bought the store out,” he says of his purchase from a store in New Jersey. “I’m still looking for a local place that sells it.”

Currently a lawyer living in Manhattan, he says tastes of home are always welcome. His last fix: cake from Zeman’s, served at the home of fellow Detroit natives during a Shabbat meal. “They took it out for a special treat,” he says of the unexpected slice of seven layer. “It was pretty good.”

And there’s more where that came from -- he has two more installments of the cake, likely half-logs, waiting for him in various apartments around the city. His sister and a friend each came in this week with it in their luggage. “I have to go pick them up.”

Ungar, who left Detroit after middle school to attend a yeshiva in Baltimore, has since lived in Washington D.C., where he worked in the government’s patent office, and also in Boston, where he attended Harvard Law School.

He moved to New York in 2008, but says he still feels Detroit has a lot to offer. Food and drink from home are just one way of expressing that, and of sharing the sentiment with friends. “It reminds me of my childhood; it makes me feel connected,” he says. “It reminds me of good times in Detroit.”