Eats Across Europe, Part One

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned food much in talking about this trip. If you know me at all, you might find this suspicious lack of food talk puzzling, since I can rarely get through a normal conversation without:

1. Talking about a food I've recently cooked and/or eaten,
2. Expressing a desire to be cooking or eating either at this moment or in the very near future, or
3. Actually eating something during said conversation.

Well, if you've been wondering what's up with me and my non-food-centric blogging, here's your lightbulb moment: I've been reserving an entire blog post to devote to food. AN ENTIRE POST. You're welcome.

This is part one of many, since I'm obviously only about a week into this trip and still have many, many foods to sample and enjoy--especially now that I'm in France, the land of macarons, cheese, chocolate, Gratin Daupinois, ratatouille, croissants (au chocolat!), tarte citron, quiche, and SO MUCH DELICIOUS BREAD.

So without further ado, here's the rundown on my trip's cuisine so far. (This isn't every meal; just the ones I deemed noteworthy for whatever reason.) Keep an eye out for the next food post, which will focus exclusively on European candy bars! (I do this for you guys! It's tough work but someone needs to tell you non-travelers what a Daim bar tastes like.)

Grilled vegetables and goat cheese (Prague)

In Prague, I got dinner with Jenny, a fellow American I met on the Prague tour. We asked our guide to recommend a good restaurant where we could try some Czech specialties, and she sent us to a bar/restaurant a couple streets away, telling us it had vegetarian options as well as the more meat-based Czech dishes.

I wanted to get fried cheese, since it's sort of a Czech specialty (and it's cheese! That's fried!) , but the restaurant was all out. If I couldn't have THE fried cheese, I at least got SOME fried cheese. The meal was good, nothing to write home about really (although, ironically, I am LITERALLY writing home about it right now), but it was so cheap: the meal plus a soft drink cost me the equivalent of about seven US dollars. Go Prague!

Donut and butterbreze (Munich)

I wanted some German food. The German vegetarian place near my hostel was closed and I was feeling quite lazy, so I swung by the train station and was like, "Okay, here we go, fine German cuisine." I got a standard sandwich for dinner but accompanied it with a donut and a butterbreze (butter pretzel), since they're both sort of Bavarian things. No Bavarian cream in the donut, unfortunately, but it was still chocolate-frosted deliciousness, a little fluffier and cakier than donuts I'm used to.

Butterbreze is pretty much what it sounds like: it's a pretzel. Filled with butter. Literally, they slice it open and then spread butter on each half before smooshing the sides back together. The fattiest, most delicious sandwich ever.

Tofuschnitzel (Munich)

Delicious. I don't even know everything that was in there...some kraut, I think, definitely mustard, lettuce, tomato. The guy named off a couple of spices, ginger for sure and, I think, cumin. Had a couple bites where I could really taste the ginger and it was quite unexpected and refreshing.

I ate this magical meal at Royal Kebabhaus by the Hauptbahnhof in Munich, after having read about it on happycow.net, a vegetarian restaurant review site. The proprietor was super nice and friendly, really patient with me even though he spoke only a little English and I speak absolutely no German. Since schnitzel is kind of a thing in Germany (but is traditionally made with super-tenderized meat), I was excited that I got to experience it in my own vegetarian way.

Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln and Augustiner Hall beer (Munich)

I'm not typically a fan of beer, but in when one is in Munich it's kind of obligatory to try the beer. I'd already passed on famous Czech beer in Prague, so I felt like my hands were tied on this one. The beer was okay if you ask me, a non-beer-drinker, but my evaluation is probably not the one to go by, especially if you actually happen to like beer a lot.

The Käsespätzle was really delicious, though. "Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln" means " cheese noodles with fried onions." I'm not sure if it's specific to Bavaria or Germany in general, but it's delicious, like macaroni and cheese but even better. (And you know how I feel about mac and cheese to begin with.) The spätzle, or noodles, are made of eggs and semolina, generally, and they are softer and more tender than the sort of pasta I'm used to eating. The cheese was sharp and salty and perfectly balanced by the sweet sharpness of the onion, which had not been cooked very long and had therefore retained a pretty strong flavor. Yummy, yummy, yummy. The picture does not do it justice at all.

As a side note: I got this dinner with Amanda and Rachel, two women I met on the tour to Dachau. Amanda had somehow found out about this place--the restaurant of the Oktoberfest Museum--and had suggested it. It was a fantastic choice--the restaurant itself was cozy and labyrinthine, with long shared tables and bench seating. Very atmospheric, and a good way to cap off my admittedly brief time in Munich.

Socca (Nice)

Delicious. I'll admit that I was predisposed to like it because I like chickpeas and I like crepes and these are essentially chickpea crepes, but OH MY GOD.

While socca is eaten around the entire Côte d'Azur region and into Italy, Nice is particularly known for socca. There are rivalries between different restaurants in the same way that New York pizzerias all claim to have the best pizza in the city, and people's socca tastes vary just as some people prefer one place's pizza over another. Some restaurants make crispier socca, some do it softer, but I think it's safe to say they're probably all delicious.

The traditional way to eat socca is with a little bit of black pepper. I'm not a huge fan of pepper so I put only a very little, and I didn't think the peppery bits were any better than the plain parts. In fact, I think I preferred it plain. It is definitely a savory dish but the socca I tried (I got mine at Lou Pilha Leva in the Old Town) had a really subtle sweetness to it and an almost peanut buttery flavor. Think of it in those terms to understand the sweet/savory balance...it's sort of got the same ratio of sweet to savory as peanut butter. As a result I'm inclined to say (blasphemy?!) that socca would taste good drizzled with chocolate, but if you ask me there are few foods that wouldn't be improved by that.

Gelato from Fenocchio Glacier (Nice)

Fenocchio is an institution in Nice, a famous ice cream/gelato place offering 70 different flavors. I was only in Nice for two days, so I couldn't try all 70, but I made an honest effort and tried six. I went for the weird ones, too.
You're welcome.

Vanilla with pink pepper: Really weird at the first bite (weird but good!), but I got more used to it as I plowed through it. Pink pepper, in case you've never tasted it (I hadn't) is milder than black pepper, and tastes surprisingly good with vanilla. The only way I can think to describe the taste/texture combo is "sparkly."

Cactus: Mild, sweet, and perfume-y, with some strangely citrusy undertones to it. I wanna say it tasted like aloe (it may have actually been straight-up aloe), but I can never remember actually trying aloe so I have no idea where I'm getting that frame of reference.

Speculoos: This is what made me stop for ice cream in the first place. I'm crazy for Speculoos anything (if you've never tried Speculoos, they're like gingersnaps but better), and this ice cream did not disappoint. It tasted a little like the cinnamon-gingersnap ice cream Tracey and I made once.

Honey and pine nuts: Can I just eat this for the rest of my life? Okay, thanks. The warm sweetness of the honey was in perfect proportion to the savory pine nuts, which kept things from getting too sicky-sweet.

Rice and milk: Creamy taste, chunky texture, delicious overall. If you like tapioca pudding, you would love this. If you don't like tapioca pudding, then I feel sorry for you but you should probably just pick a different flavor of ice cream.

Mojito: My love of mojitos is well-documented (see: every picture from my twenty-first birthday) so I figured I'd love this sorbet. And it turns out it was only okay. It tasted like it had dried mint, not fresh (which I suppose is more practical, but it's just not the same) and there was a sour/bitter aftertaste. It wasn't bad, per se, but I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. On the plus side, I wolfed this down because I was quite thirsty after a day spent hiking in the mountains near Nice and this was definitely a thirst-quencher.


Well, that's it for this round of "What's Renée Been Eating?" Tune in next time for Speculoos macarons, famous Marseille cookies, long-lost favorite French foods, and more!

Sightseeing in Prague? CZECH.

Okay, awful pun, I know. You know what the only appropriate response is? PRAHAHAHA.

So it's my second day in Prague/Praha (first full day, really) and BOY did I do a lot of sightseeing. It was a great day, though, and I felt much better/more confident than yesterday, when I sort of felt like I was the guy in the third verse of "You Can Call Me Al."

The morning started out overcast and drizzly, so my umbrella and I left at around 10:15 to meet up with the free tour that leaves the Old Town Square at 10:45. By the time I'd made it into town it was POURING, so I was quite happy to have my umbrella with me.

I wasn't thrilled about the rain or anything, but Prague is one of the things on my itinerary that I wouldn't mind having wet weather for. I'd much rather tote an umbrella around Prague than on a hike in the Alps or the Cotswolds.

We covered a TON on the tour, which lasted into early afternoon, and then I decided to take the Castle Tour in the afternoon, which covers the part of the city on the opposite side of the river. It ended up being a really good choice, so hooray.

Prague is actually a very interesting city. Architecturally, it came through World War II with almost no "casualties"--the Old Town Hall was destroyed by a Nazi bomb just days before Prague was liberated (or, if we're going to be real about things, we'd say that it was just days before Prague was taken over by the Soviets instead of the Nazis). Otherwise, the city has tons of buildings that have survived for literally a millenium.

We visited a whole bunch of these (I was walking around from 10:45 until after 6, with only a couple of 20-minute breaks in there) so there's no time to talk at length about them--or even mention all of them. I'll try to cram as many as I can in, though.

I unfortunately cannot remember the name of this church on the Old Town Square, but it's noteworthy (among other reasons) for its "Adam and Eve towers," meaning that one (Adam) is bigger than the other (Eve). The explanation is that Adam is meant to protect Eve from the elements, but it's actually more likely that two work crews working with inconsistent measurements were the cuprit (so says my tour guide, anyway).

Church and statue of Jan Huss in the Old Town Square

We stopped by the astronomical clock, a must-see Prague site. On the hour, the clock comes to life as figures of the twelve apostles parade across. Unfortunately we weren't there at the right time, but we did learn about the stationary figures on the clock, meant to represent vices--vanity and greed--along with death and pagans (the guy with the lute). The "greed" statue used to have a very stereotypical and anti-Semitic pointed beard, but it was removed because the Communists (in power from the 1940s to the 1980s) thought it looked like a caricature of Karl Marx.

Continuing around the city, we got to listen to these guys play a song written about the Vltava River, which runs through Prague.

By the time we reached the Jewish Quarter, the sun had come out and it was a beautiful day. (I haven't checked in a mirror yet, but I can tell my face is sunburned. Oh, well, it's a small price to pay for a day in Prague.)

We visited a number of synagogues constructed in several different styles and used for a number of purposes. Only the Old-New Synagogue, where the famous Golum of Prague supposedly lies hidden in the attic, still has services. The others are all museums or concert venues or the like. The Czech Republic, it turns out, has the highest number of atheists of any officially Catholic country in the world--70 percent. For that reason, many of the churches are used for a myriad of purposes as well, housing bars, restaurants, concert halls, and so on.

I'd had the chance to visit the Jewish Quarter yesterday afternoon. It was a quick visit, since it was evening and the sites run by the Jewish Museum were closing, but I did get to see Pinkas Synagogue and the Jewish Cemetery. The Pinkas Synagogue was sad and fascinating: it's inscribed with the names of the 80,000 Czech Jews who lost their lives to the Nazis during World War II. It's a really striking, impressive sight and I would have loved to take some photos, but they were not allowed. (Two other women were unfazed by this and took copious amounts of photos. I was quite annoyed by/jealous of their wanton disregard for rules.)

Upstairs there was an exhibit of art produced by children while they were imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp. It was really moving, especially since each drawing with a known artist was accompanied by their date of birth and death--and a lot of those dates were far too close together.

Outside, the Jewish Cemetery was an odd combination of peace and chaos, as the headstones all compete for space. Since Judaism forbids cremation and Jews in Prague were not allowed to be buried outside the ghetto, bodies in the cemetery had to be layered on top of one another, making the cemetery rise above street level and leading to a mish-mash of stones jockeying for positions in the tiny graveyard.

The Jewish Cemetery

But back to the sites we covered today. In the afternoon we went across the river to the so-called "Lesser Quarter," where many nobles once had their homes. (Today most of the buildings are owned by the state or are home to foreign embassies.) The gardens of Valdštejnská zahrada, which are free and open to the public, are steps from the entrance to the Malostranská metro station (such a weird juxtaposition...to me, anyway).

Valdštejnská zahrada. There are peacocks living in the gardens!

We took a tram up the hill. (Prague is built on seven hilltops, and some of them--this one, for example--are doozies.) Our first stop was a monastery famous for its beer. The monks no longer make it themselves, but a brewery on-site uses the same recipe. I did not partake in any beer-drinking due to my general dislike for it, but I really debated it for awhile because hey, in the Czech Republic you've gotta try the beer, right? I ultimately decided against it because I was running low on cash (many places here still don't take credit cards) and didn't want to find another ATM.

We headed for Prague Castle, stopping on the way to admire the Loreta, a shrine to the patron saint of women in bad relationships. (As our tour guide noted, there really is a patron saint for everything.) Loreta wanted to be a nun, but her father forced her to marry. The night before her wedding, she asked God to prevent it. The next morning she had a full beard and her husband-to-be was like, "Awwww hell to the no!" The story ends with Loreta dying anyway, so it's still a downer, but hey, at least she scored a pretty pilgrimage site (a lot of comfort to her, I'm sure).

Step right up, see the amazing bearded laaaaaaaady!

Next up: Prague Castle. It's sort of a misnomer, really, because it's actually sort of a village unto itself--more like a quarter or borough of a city than a separate, private complex. We got to watch the changing of the guard, and then we explored some gardens. One of the highlights was a sort of ampitheater-in-reverse (an antitheater? DONE. Coining it now, you heard it here first). Anyway, you stand on the raised platform in the center and speak normally. Everyone around you hears your voice at a normal volume, but you hear it amplified back to you. Even though part of me suspected this was some story meant to lure gullible tourists into proclaiming "Hi, my name is ___!" in the middle of a little ampitheater (ANTITHEATER! Darn it!), I tried it anyway. And not only does it work, it's the WEIRDEST. You can't really understand what it feels/sounds like without experiencing it, but the closest description I can give is that it sounds like one of those toy echo microphones kids love. Super bizarre.

The castle grounds were lovely and lush. One of the emperors--I forget which--used them as a hunting ground. It's not an odd fact except that he would shoot the deer from his bedroom window and then make servants go and get the carcasses. Even weirder: he would dress in full hunting gear to do so. Personally, I would stay in my pajamas, but that's just me. It's not like I spend a lot of time hunting, though, so what do I know?

Inside the castle proper, we visited a few sites. The second courtyard is surrounded by buildings whose facades were all altered to neo-classical style (I think) by Empress Maria Theresa of the Hapsburgs, who thought that Prague Castle didn't look enough like a castle because it was too much of a collage of architectural styles and historical periods. Once you're through the second courtyard, you can begin to see some of the different architectural styles, like the Gothic and neo-Gothic St. Vitus's Cathedral. Construction began hundreds of years ago but was halted when the Protestant workers didn't feel inclined to continue construction on a Catholic church. The cathedral was finished in the 1920s--a fact referenced in the engravings above the door, which feature the twentieth century architects in business suits.

Let's play "Spot the Stylistic Anachronism"!

We also passed a huge building--the largest non-secular hall in Europe at the time of its construction--that was built so one emperor (sorry, they all run together after awhile) could have indoor jousting matches with his pals (oh, the royals).

We then checked out the Golden Lane, named, according to legend, after the alchemists that worked there. The houses were rented out as homes until the end of World War II, and one of them belonged to Franz Kafka. I personally can't imagine how anyone could live in these tiny houses, especially in modern times. I practically had to duck through some of the doorways, and we all know I'm no Paul Bunyan myself. But the street was very cute and picturesque.

Franz Kafka lived at number 22.

After some views of the city we checked out the site of the Defenestration of Prague (the second one, the one that in 1618 started the Thirty Years' War). There have actually been three defenestrations of Prague, but this one is the only one that didn't end in fatalities. Or it didn't end immediately in fatalities, I guess I should say, since it did kick off a war that killed 8.5 million Europeans. (The Catholics who were pushed out the window--which is what a defenestration is, in case you weren't up on your obscure methods of medieval murder--landed in a dung heap and survived. According to the Catholics, this was a miracle and it meant there were angels guarding them. According to the Protestants, the Catholics were both full of and covered in shit.) The history nerd in me LOVED this. It was worth the price of the tour ticket for that alone.

It's not as high up as I'd imagined.

Whew, it's getting late and this is long so I'll wrap things up. I know you guys really only want the pictures anyway.

So we checked out the view from the castle hill (where we were serenaded by a cellist playing the most beautiful and badass rendition of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song):

It was "Otherside," in case you were wondering.

Checked out the John Lennon Wall:

Originally painted (and painted over) in the Communist era, it contained Beatles lyrics and paintings of the band. Today it's open for anyone to decorate.

Observed this European phenomenon:

Couples inscribe their initials on locks and then attach them to bridge railings as a symbol of lasting love.

Crossed the Charles Bridge:

Possibly the top tourist attraction in Prague.

Rubbed this statue for good luck (only the right side, which grants good luck and a return to Prague. The left side gives you bad luck and apparently guarantees that you'll never return. This was one of many things I rubbed for good luck in Prague. Also on the list: golden curlicue designs and a statue's golden penis. I really ought to have the best luck ever now.):

You can't really see it in this picture, but there are two engraved panels on the base of the statue. Those are the parts you rub for good (or bad) luck.

After that I grabbed dinner with Jenny, a woman my age who I'd met on the tour, and then we walked back to the tram as the sky whipped itself up into a fairly impressive thunderstorm. Not a lot of rain, but a lot of thunder and lightning.

Ooh, ominous!

And now it's off to bed with me. I've been typing much longer than I'd anticipated (and I initially got on here to do some freelance work--aka the writing I'm actually paid for). Since I have to catch the train to Munich at 9:15 tomorrow, I should probably head to bed. I expect to sleep quite soundly tonight, but not as soundly as yesterday, when I fell asleep, exhausted and jetlagged, at 9 pm (after an hours-long struggle to stay awake for the sake of a normal, non-jet-laggy sleep pattern). There were some German guys talking loudly (one of them was mere feet from my pillow), and they had the lights blazing and were banging doors shut and whatnot, but it didn't even matter. I was dead to the world for a good ten hours and woke up feeling loads better than when I'd fallen asleep. WIN. If I can recapture even a fraction of that level of rest tonight, I will be so very happy (but it's Saturday night and people are definitely in a partying mood, so we'll see how this goes and what the noise level is like).

See you in Munich!