Milan, part 1

On Monday, December 26, my flight left Tashkent at 4 a.m. Because it’s an international flight, I had to be at the airport at 2 a.m. I didn’t bother sleeping at all that night. Therefore, I did nothing once I got to the hostel on my first day. I checked into my room at 2 p.m., Milan time, and promptly took a 2 ½ hour nap. I showered, got to know my roommates, then went to a vegan restaurant.

Wait, a WHAT restaurant? Yeah, that’s right, I said vegan as in…NO animal products in the food. The restaurant was this little hole-in-the-wall place called Flower Burger. The “burger” I ordered was called the Cheese Cecio and was a burger made from chickpeas, with a nice vegetable salsa that kind of looked like mayonnaise, but wasn’t. (Again, no animal products in vegan cuisine, which includes eggs and cheese.) As an added bonus, on "Meatless Monday" customers get 20% off their order!

While in Milan, I stayed at a great hostel, the Ostello Bello Grande, right near the train station. This place is fantastic. They offer the following amenities: free breakfast (scrambled eggs, bread, butter, jam, chocolate cream, plain yogurt, fruit) a nightly “aperitivo” which is basically free dinner (pasta, a variety of vegetable side dishes as well as salads, bread, and potato chips). The hostel has a bar, a basement movie room and foosball table, a 6th floor kitchen, another movie room, and laundry room (only 7 euros to wash and dry a load of clothes) as well as outdoor gardens on the ground and 6th floors. Judging from all these amenities, it sounds like a party hostel, right? Well, yes, it is, but once you’re in your bedroom on your own floor, the door shuts and it’s perfectly quiet, allowing you to enjoy a good night’s sleep.





It may seem silly to go to an epic culinary country like Italy and then go to a….Chinese restaurant, but by golly, that’s exactly what I did! About a 10 minute walk from the hostel, there’s a Chinese restaurant called Su Garden. For 14 euros, I got a spring roll, fried rice, a steamed veggie and seafood dish, water, and coffee. I opted for espresso at the end of the meal. HOO-YAH it was strong. But also…really delicious.



Later that day, I was supposed to go on a pre-booked evening tour of the Duomo, but I was unable to find the group. I got kind of stressed out and nearly started crying out of sheer frustration. But, I talked to someone at the tour office, and I can reschedule for next week when I return to Milano. Hurrah! In the meantime, here’s a view of the Duomo that I saw the moment I emerged from the metro.



Milan food tour

I'm excited about this food tour. I apologize in advance for blurry photos; you do NOT have glaucoma. I thought I had my auto-focus figured out. Alas, I did not. I played around with it a little tonight, so it should be okay for future photos. And now: the Milan food tour. If you'd like to see a complete description, please visit www.milanfoodtours.com/milan-food-tour-1.html.

I met up with the tour group in the Brera district of Milan. While walking there at 9:30 a.m., there was a peaceful hush in the neighborhood. The district, our tour guide informed us, is one of the wealthier districts, but also has some of the best food in the city. After sampling different dishes, I must concur.

Stop #1 Our first stop on the tour was at Pattini Panificio, which also served as our meeting point, where we sampled panettone and cappuccino; Panettone is a very old Milanese sweet bread. In the days when many Italians were poor, they could only afford to make panettone once a year, at Christmas. These days, you can get panettone any time of year, but it’s still viewed by many as a special Christmas-time treat. Think of how often you might have egg nog or turkey. You can have it any time, but we usually reserve the consumption of it for the holiday season.



Stop #2 Parma ham (aka prosciutto), aged pork butt (sounds more delicious than it is), parmesan cheese, and beer



Stop #3 arancine means “little orange.” They’re wonderful fried, stuffed risotto balls. I remember seeing DDD with Guy Fieri years ago. He went to an Italian restaurant (in Baltimore, I think?) and that was the very first time I’d ever heard of the dish. It looked so good, I had to learn how to make them. made with the Milanese risotto, made so because of the saffron added to it. I realized today that the arancine I make – stuffed with prosciutto and mozzarella cheese – are the Southern Italian version of arancine. Like panettone, risotto a la Milanese was once a dish that could only be made on special occasions, albeit more often than panettone was made.



Stop #4 aperitivo (cocktail and chips & olives on the side)






Stop #5 meatballs (veal meatballs and then adult beef meatballs fried in butter) and lasagna



Stop #6 gelato we were allowed to choose two flavors, so I chose hazelnut (shout-out to Nutella!) and Venezuelan chocolate. All the stops were fantastic, but I think this one may have been my favorite.



On to Venice!

I’m writing this blog entry on a late afternoon train to Venice.



A seat in business class only cost a little more than an economy seat, so guess what I did? Nice comfy, leather seats plus a free beverage and snack. Yes, please!





Venice will prove to be an exciting few days for me. I'll have updates for you soon. Until we meet again.

RIP Phil Everly

I moved this entry over to my other blog
RIP Phil Everly

Budapest, part 2

The Chain Bridge, day 2. This was the day when I walked across the bridge and broke into song. It seemed appropriate to sing Sarah McLachlan's cover of "River."

I got artsy-fartsy with my phone photos, using the black-and-white and sepia setting.



I walked around the Pest side of the city for another hour or so, just enjoying the view. I walked into a park on the Pest side of the city and did a double-take. Is that...a statue of Ronald Reagan?



Sure enough it was. This statue was erected in 2011 in Budapest's Freedom Square to honor President Reagan's work to help end Communism. Good to know that I wasn't hallucinating dead presidents.

By this point, I was cold and getting a little peckish. I stopped into a place called Farger Kave. I ordered soup, which is always nice on a chilly day.



With the first slurp, I was initially disappointed to realize it was a cold soup. That brief disappointment turned into an "oh wow" sensation. This cold soup had apples, raisins, nuts, cinnamon, and some citrusy flavor, possibly an orange. It was delicious.

I also ordered chicken. The chicken is under there somewhere.



After I finished lunch, I popped into the ladies room. These were, by far, the best "his" and "hers" signs I've ever seen on bathroom doors. One is seated, one is not. Seated, please.



And now, it was time to go meet up with the free walking tour of Jewish Budapest at 3:30.

Our tour guide told us, among other things, that during the 19th century when many countries in Eastern Europe organized anti-Jewish pogroms, Budapest did not. In fact, it seems as though Hungarian Jews didn't face threats during this era until the Nazis were in power.

Now, if you've ever been to Europe in the winter, you'll know that the sun goes down at about 4:00 p.m. As our tour guide was talking, the sky was getting darker, but the Christmas lights came on, yay!



One of the stops on our tour was the Dohany Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe and the third largest synagogue in the world.



The architecture, you may notice, contains elements of Moorish and Gothic styles. This was a real point of contention with Orthodox Jews at the time, for in their minds, a synagogue should not look like a mosque or a church. The synagogue was badly damaged during World War II. Actor Tony Curtis and businesswoman Estee Lauder, both children of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, spearheaded fundraising campaigns to rebuild the synagogue.

Around the block, at the back of the synagogue is the Holocaust Memorial, also known as the Emanuel Tree, a weeping willow made of metal with one name inscribed on each leaf in memory of Hungarian Jews who died in the Holocaust.



I would be remiss if I talked about Jewish Budapest in World War II and did not mention Raoul Wallenberg. I heard that name for the first time in 1999 when I went to Washington D.C. and visited the Holocaust Museum, at 100 Raoul Wallenburg Place. I had no idea at the time that he saved so many lives by issuing protective passports and assigning some buildings in Budapest as safe houses for Jews.

During this walking tour, I learned that Wallenberg was only 34 when he died in 1947, allegedly of heart failure. However, there's more to the story than that. By January of 1945, Budapest was in the hands of the Soviet armies. Wallenberg was taken into custody by the Russians and was never seen again. TWELVE years after he disappeared, the Soviet government produced paperwork, supposedly from 1947, saying that Wallenberg died in July of that year "probably from a heart attack." He was 34, not exactly the prime age for heart attacks.

I was leaving for Prague the next day, so I went to the store and got something for dinner as well as some bus-friendly food for the long 7-hour bus ride. Dinner that night has brought to you by Premium Smack noodles, when you just gotta have some smack for dinner.

Budapest!

I arrived in Budapest on December 10. I hung out at my lodgings, the Black Sheep Hostel, chatting to the two young ladies who worked there. One of the girls was watching 1D videos on an endless loop. (For those of you who don't know, "1D" stands for One Direction, the English boy band.) I wondered aloud which 1D-er would be the gay one, which would be the womanizer, and which would be the break-out star. "Harry Styles" was the answer to the last two questions, but the girls both insisted that none of the young men were gay.

"Ricky Martin from Menudo, Jonathan Knight from NKOTB, Lance Bass from NSync," I replied. "All gay. Statistically speaking, all boy bands must have at least one gay member." I have to admit, it was really fun getting those girls riled up, especially the one who was a massive 1D fan.

Later that night, I wandered out to forage for my dinner. I came across this place called "Lado Cafe" which boasts traditional Hungarian food. I started my meal off with Hungarian schnapps, called palinka. After the first sip, I added some water so that I could continue to drink it. Hoo-yah!



For my first course, I ordered traditional Hungarian goulash.





For my entree, I ordered the pork medallions with potatoes.



And finally, dessert called Somlói galuska. My God!



I'll try to stop drooling long enough to describe the dessert to you. From the first bite, I could taste walnuts, raisins, sponge cake (obviously) and something boozy that I couldn't identify. My research on Hungarian cuisine tells me that it's rum. Whatever was in it, this dessert was absolute heaven in my mouth. I waddled back to the hotel feeling full but lovely.

The next day, after enjoying the free breakfast at the hostel I had big plans: ride around for two hours on the hop-on, hop-off bus tour, come back to the hostel for a nap, then meet in the city center at 3:30 for the tour of Communist Budapest. Well, I missed the Communism tour because I woke up at 3:15. There was no way I'd make it to the city center. I did, however, get some beautiful pictures of the city from the tour bus.















I took an obsessive amount of photos of the Danube, but I've spared you, dear readers, from most of them. Oh, and here I am, on said bus!



That bridge in the first picture is the Chain Bridge. Construction on the bridge began in 1839 and was the first permanent bridge to be built that united the cities of Buda and Pest to become, in 1873, Budapest. When I saw the bridge from the tour bus, I decided that I would walk across that bridge the next day. And I did just that.

For dinner that night, I walked about five blocks to a gourmet soup and sandwich place called Bors Gasztrobár. I ordered the Kobuszos Chili Sutotor, a soup of butternut squash with coconut and chili. I had gulped almost all the soup before I remembered to take pictures of my food so that my fellow foodies could enjoy my culinary journey. Sorry, guys!



I also ordered a Mojky Way baguette which is a sandwich roasted duck liver, pear mustard, and caramelized onion jam.



I know some of you will be grossed out by those sandwich ingredients, but it was really delicious.

Vienna, day 3, and Bratislava

I just walked around a bit on my last day in Vienna. I walked around a little in Bratislava on the first day and stayed inside to sleep the next day. The trip to Bratislava was nothing more than to cool my heels for a little bit before doing a lot of sightseeing in Budapest and Prague. I left for Budapest and did nothing more than check in and go to dinner. Tomorrow is my first full day in Budapest, so I'll have lots to report.

Vienna, Day 2

This was just as eventful as day 1.

Nausch Market

Food, glorious food. There was other stuff at this market as well, but I couldn't help but look at all the stands with fish, sausages, fruits, vegetables, and spices. At the hostel, I met a French woman named Veronique and we went through this market together. After about an hour, we decided to stop for an early lunch and enjoyed wiener schnitzel, the breaded pork dish that Austria is famous for. The menu said that the schnitzel came with "salad." When our lunch was brought to us, I was relieved that this salad didn't include that god-awful substance called lettuce. It was actually potatoes that had fennel seed as a flavoring. Dee-lish-ous!





Vienna State Opera House

I can't wait to upload these photos. The place was...well, "gorgeous" doesn't even begin to cover it. "Majestic opulence" comes close, but still doesn't quite describe the beauty of this place. I went on a guided tour of the opera house and we got to stand backstage for a few minutes, watching the men prepare the stage for that night's show.













Christmas Market

Overrun with tourists and kids, trying to get through this market was like playing a very dangerous game of pedestrian bumper cars. That's okay, I lived in Turkey for three months and was well-prepared to get through the crowds, nudging my way through, if needed. It was well worth it, though, to be able to climb the steps to a concert hall inside the Viennese City Hall, listening to various choirs from around the world as they took their turn singing Christmas Carols.











Until next time.