'B' is for Belgium...and coincidentally also for Beer

(ps, sorry for the backlog of blogs, I've been lazy lately... I blame my current location :-)

It is no secret that I've pretty much been on a food and booze tour of Europe. This is hard to avoid, besides wanting to sample the local "flavors", the usual case is that beer, wine, or liquor (whichever is native to a particular place) is usually cheaper than ordering water or juice.

I went Belgium on recommendation from my Dutch friend Sander (who is my cousin's boyfriend's best friend). Bruxelles and then Brugge. Belgium is in my opinion the best beer country in Europe. (bollocks to all of you who think the Czech Republic is the best simply because the pilsners there are cheap and 10% Alc...I don't like pilsners, so we'll just agree to disagree on this matter) Here are my reasons:

1) Belgian people take pride in their beer making. Beer:Belgium::Wine:Italy or France. So you will usually always be presented with a quality beer no matter what you order.
2) Beer comes in 8%, 10%, and 12% varieties and is mostly Ales, Brown ales, Cask ales, Trappist, wheat beers... all types that I enjoy.
3) When you order a beer, it comes in a glass or goblet from the brewery, specially designed for that particular beer, which makes me feel special for drinking that beer (and also appeals to my food and drink snobbery)
4) There are literally hundreds of beers to try, which leads to inadvertent drunkeness, which always leads to a good time.
5) Once you are done drinking the fabulous beer, you can go out into the street and eat waffles and frittes (delicious french fries with choice of sauce... I am a fan of joppisauce and curry catsup) to your drunken munchies heart's content.

Per-capita belgium is a beer lover's paradise. It offers many different quality varietals of beer, they are all lovingly crafted and served.

Mind your "p's" and "quids".

Subtitled: Daley does economics and exchange rates.

So I recently arrived in the UK from central Europe (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Praha, Ceske' Krumlov, and Salzburg) and experienced quite the culture shock to my bank account.

Well first of all I could not get over the novelty of everyone speaking English and being able to eavesdrop on other people's conversations and having the automated voice on the metro talk to me in English. It was very odd, as I have not been in an English speaking country since the end of October.

That said, London is damn expensive. The pound sterling as of right now is worth a little under double the US Dollar. One would think that because of this crazy exchange rate the prices in the UK would adequately reflect this and things would be half as expensive (note, not that I was expecting this at all, but you would think thats how things should work). Nope. Things in London cost roughly the same as they do in say, NYC or Washington DC, except a sandwich that costs $5 in NY and costs £5 in London, really costs you $10. Whereas, say, Budapest, it is really cheap and the Hungarian florent is about 200 florents to the dollar or something like that. And everything is way cheaper.
(I'm rich, I'm rich...11,200 HUF... oh wait, this is only about $30 USD)

Moral of the story, after spending 3 days in London, I spent triple what I spent in 10 days in Central Europe.

WTF. plus the weather here sucks. I'm going back to Portugal!

ps. for those of you that have no idea, like I did until recently, "p" is british slang for Pence, and "quid" is british slang for the Pound.

Cheers!

The hunt for hot sauce...

If there is one thing that I really dislike about Europe is its lack of acessibility to Hot Sauce and spicy food. You really can't find it anywhere. The locals just don't care for it or something. (with the exception of the hot paperika in Budapest, which wasn't even that hot, but it at least had a little kick)

For instance, I once asked for salsa piccante/caliente on my kebap in Spain, and the kepab dudes snickered at me and gave me the "are you sure you can handle it girly" look. It was not hot at all.

So...after 2 1/2 months of craving (like a pregnant woman craving) Mexican food (Taco Bell, tacos, enchiladas, burritos...etc), tonight on some back alley street in Prague, I found a decent mexican joint, had an ok (but right now, it was probably the best I've ever eaten) burrito and I feel whole again.

The bartender who took my take-away order even gave me the remainder (about 1/4 left) of a bottle of that generic mexican chili sauce with the wooden cap that all mexican restaurants seem to have, he threw that into my to go container for free.

Needless to say...I finished the bottle and could have used more.

I apparently do not exude american-ness.

Which I have to say is a good thing while travelling. I'm not sure why this is, but I have not really been correctly mistaken as an American traveller.

Case in point, the other day as I was walking through the park to the Louvre, I encountered some unwanted attention from a French person of the male genre. I didn't even make eye contact with this guy and he still cornered me and started speaking to me in french... of which I did not understand (it was probably the french verson of che bella)so I replied, no no. He replys..oh english, you are Dutch?.....

Dutch, granted I had just come from Holland, I don't personally think that I look Dutch, for one thing I am about a foot too short (even for some of the women)and I in no way have a Dutch/English accent. I thought this was odd. Later that evening some french guy automatically assumed I was an Aussie, in the Hostel I stayed at in Paris a CANADIAN dude thought I was an Aussie because I was reading a book by Bill Bryson and apparently he's seen many an Australian reading it. Go Figure.

In the Netherlands over New Years, Sander (my cousin Colleen's boyfriend Arjan's friend we were staying with)who is Dutch saw a picture of me, didn't recognise me and goes "hey that girl looks portugese".

In Portugal I was mistaken for Canadian, although that was probably because I was with 3 other Canadians and just kept my mouth shut when someone commented, "oh you're Canadian".

In Italy and Spain if I even tried to speak the language, no matter how bad I was, someone always assumed that I was completely fluent and prattled back to me at breakneck speed. Granted, I suppose my physical features could reasonably pass for any number of north-mediterranian type countries. The morrocans all assumed I was spanish.

I don't get it. Not that I'm the steriotypical American or anything, but lately I've had to TELL people I was from the US and not some other place. Which is bad when you are trying to dispell the americans are assholes rumors. But then again, I'm not going to complain too much.

cheers!

THE HOLIDAYS in EUROPE: Flamenco, Nationalism, Wine, Fondue, Mountians, Street Fests and Waffles

The past two weeks or so have been rather crazy (5 countries lots of culture, sometimes I didn´t even need to leave the country I was in to be in a totally different country. Here is a brief recap of the past two weeks of Holiday birthday/Christmastime:

Bryon (in pic) and Jeff (my new Canadian friends that I met in Granada and ran into in Lagos) cooked dinner for me on my Birthday in Lisbon, which was very sweet of them.

Went to Madrid for a day, stopped in a Dunkin Donuts looking for coffee and a bagel (two things I miss alot, along with 2am Taco Bell), ended up with a mango filled donut (delicious, US Dunkins need to get your act together and get these) and some warm milk flavored with a little coffee (not so much, Spain, get your act together and give me a large cup of joe) Saw some amazing Picasso (including Guernica), Dalí, Miró, and other modernist artists at the usea Reina Sophia... which I would highly recommend if you like modern art.
Got lost on the way to see some cheap Flamenco with some people from the hostel... hailed a cab and he brought us to some expensive but amazing Flamenco.

Then it was off to San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque..or Euskia) Was there for the fiesta de San Tomas. It was great, street food, sausages, cheap hard cider, tons of drunk locals dressed in their traditional Basque outfits dancing polka, drinking sidra, having fun, and blowing up buses. Yes, you heard me right. (below are before and after shots)


Don´t worry, it was more of symbolic thing than actual violence, no one seemed too concerned for their own well being, so I decided not to fear for mine. Besides, most of the Basque people were nice... like the Abrazos Gratis (free hugs) guy:








From there it was on to drinking wine and eating fois gras in the French wine region of Bordeaux.
I stayed on a vineyard, which was awesome! and the frost on the vines in the morning was really spectacular sight also.






I decided to tackle the Swiss Alps for Christmas. Christmas eve found me eating cheese fondue, which is very tasty with bananas (who would have thought)and looking for some nightlife. Did you know there is a Hooters in Interlaken, Switzerland? Well, there is. And I went to it on Christmas eve and ate chicken wings and drank beer with some people from the hostel. (so it was like the only bar open, but it was packed!) The next day I hit the slopes. After a brief forrey into being a snowboarder (about 2 hours before I got sick of falling on my ass) I switched to skis. I´ve decided that the alps are way more fun sitting outside on the top drinking beer and eating brats than to ski down. oh well. I also spent a day in the spa area of a health club, which was fabulous, except for the fact that it was co-ed and most of the old men were not shy about changing and going into the saunas naked... AWKWARD!

Finally, I arrived in Brussels, Belgium the other day. I forgot how much I loved Belgian beer, it is delicious. So many different kinds. The Waffles and frittes from the street vendors were fantastic also.
Here I am with my first waffle of belgium and some hot mülled wine.

By far, the best and most random "street meat" vendor was the Escargots man.
Of course I HAD to get some. They taste a little like clams, but chewier and slimier (but the chewy/sliminess may have been because they were street meat snails and street meat anything is usually not the best quality.



I have been hanging out at the Christmas Street festival in Brugge for the past couple of days, and have eaten nothing but waffles, frittes, warmwine, and beer. The street festival has kept me from actually seeing most of the city, but I don´t care, I love street fests and they are good here around the holidays!

The best beach day

Location: Lagos, Portugal - the beach
Thought I would share the best beach day I've had in a while. Myself and this really cool Canadian girl, Andrea went to the beach today and sat there in the sun with the waves on the lovely sandy beach goodness with some port wine (this is Portugal after all) some cheese and crackers, and cigars.

AMAZING. That is all.

Oh yeah, its December 14th and I spent the day at the beach. Go me.

I'Mo roccan in Morocco

So I ended up taking a slight detour thru Morocco while travelling thru the south of Spain. I found a trip through this really cool company in Sevilla while I was chillin in Granada, and bam, 2 days later I was in Morocco with a bunch of cool people (mostly US study abroad students)

Moral of the story, Morocco is bad on the digestive system...and no one even drank the water!

It is really funny how people seem to bond over mutual suffering...in this case, pooping, the runs, having to pee outside, and to a lesser extent some puking also. I know I'm painting a fantastic picture here, but this was the "A- #1" icebreaker the morning after our first day... "So did you get sick last night?...most people answered yes to some degree" Some people politely covered it up by referring to the Moroccan D, or the Full Moroccan Experience. I thought it was interesting. It was also an interesting social study into how people in a group go about solving problems.

People always seem to gravitate towards an answer that is finite and specific. For example... I wonder what made everyone sick last night, I've heard the Vegetarians don't get sick as much, so it probably has something to do with the meat, and you drank the tea last night, but I didn't so it must not have been the tea, I bet it was those tomatoes you ate, because they washed them in the water, or that apple because you didn't peel it or wash it with bottled water.

My theory,
a) much of Moroccan food is veggie based, which has more fiber and gives you the shits (also Vegetatians' systems are more used to this and it effects them less) b)travelling in a bus for many hours a day sitting and being uncomfortable does a number on the digestion
c) they do grow things differently and the sanitary conditions are not as good in Morocco, so it is going to effect you a little, your body just isn't used to it...

so keep popping those imodiums, the only way to avoid getting sick is to have a stomach of steel or a goat, or import your water from Europe in bottles, don't eat the food, don't breathe the air,don't touch anything... or smoke a lot of pot.. I hear its good for nausea.
**crotch hole update, see the patch in the hookah picture, yeah, I salvaged my pants MacGuyver style...or I borrowed some Canadian dude's needle and thread in Granada.. that his mom told him to bring and he was happy it actually went to some sort of use. Just thought I'd throw that in there in case any of you were thinking I went completely hippie chic.

I loved Morocco though, it was so much more than I expected. Yeah,we rode camels in the desert and jumped around on the sand dunes in the Sahara and camped out with a Berber tribe and played bongos around the camp fire with crazy Moroccan drummer guys, smoked some hookah... but Morocco is a very culturally and topographically/climaticly diverse nation also. Case in point, in one day we went from Desert to Oasis, to high plateau and SNOW.. yes, my first experience with snow the 06-07 winter season was in AFRICA... blows your mind doesn't it? We went thru mountian ranges, rain forest, played with Apes outside of Chefchouan in the Reef Mountians (I later learned that this is where 90%of the marijuana crop from Morocco is grown, hence the term "reefer" given to marijuana by some hippies in the 60s) and saw a developing country struggling to become modern while still holding onto tradition. (and in many cases traditional ways are easier and more economical) I was however impressed with the infrastructure of the highways, they were large, wide, had modern toll booths. It was pretty funny to see a random Moroccan farmer riding a donkey down the modern toll road. Lessons in modernization, I guess. All in all it was a very eye opening and awesome experience!