Moby Dick at the A.R.T: An Epic that No One but Dave Malloy Could Attemptby Randi / January 2, 2020One Short Day in the Capital City: A Quick Tour of Brussels
Obviously (it’s so obvious guys) you’re supposed to sing the title of this post to the tune of the song from Wicked: “one short day in the Emerald city/one short day full of so much to do/every way that you look in this city/there’s something exquisite/you’ll want to visit/before the day’s through.” Except…except (sorry to my Belgian friends) but Brussels is kind of x. X means whatever. Every way you look in Brussels, there’s not something exquisite. And you might not want to visit. But if you are visiting another, more charming place in the country, like Bruges, which we talked about before, you will likely be passing through the capital. So here’s what to do if you find yourself with some time in this Detroit of Europe (no offense to Detroit, just that it’s like…industrial and charmless).
Things
The only really nice to look at part of Brussels is the Grand Place, the central square of Brussels and the most crowded place in Europe outside of Parisian museums and the London tube after work. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Grand Place is often named the most beautiful square in the world, which is…surprising. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but the most beautiful square in the world? Maybe in August every other year, when they do the incredible flower carpet over the entire thing. But in winter? It’s fine. I’m fine.
I enjoyed the pinkish purpley lights and the giant Christmas tree. And while it is very nice, it’s not my favorite thing in the city. For someone who talks SO GD MUCH about how often she has to pee, I know you know exactly what my favorite thing in Brussels is:
Manneken Pis! I know it’s so stupid and so touristy but there is a STATUE in the CAPITAL OF EUROPE of a LITTLE BOY PEEING and it’s the MOST FAMOUS SYMBOL OF THE BELGIAN PEOPLE. You cannot tell me there’s anything better than that. Little Boy Piss is smaller than you expect, about the size of a child his age would be so it’s actually easy to miss on its unassuming lil street corner about 5 minutes from the Grand Place.
It’s said that Little Pissing Man (actual translation) represents the people of Belgium’s independence of mind and sense of humor, which I’d say is true about the fact that this statue exists and is on display, but the actual statue represents their tendency to pee outside.
The statue dates from the early 1600s, and this one is a replica; the real one is in the Brussels City Museum. There are several legends associated with Manneken Pis, and they are all incredible because they all are about a little boy urinating and they all try to explain why that was a momentous event. It’s really extraordinary. They’re all amazing but I’ll share one: in the 14th century, Brussels was under siege by a foreign power, and the attackers placed explosives at the city walls to finish things but seriously. A little boy was spying on the attackers as they prepared and he urinated on the burning fuse and, of course, saved the city. Brussels wants you to know that peeing outside can save lives.
So most people know about Manneken Pis, but did you know about his sister-in-crime, (not me) Jeanneke Pis??!! There’s another little pissing child statue in Brussels and it’s a girl! I honestly cannot.
Jeanneke Pis is located down a dark (and pot-filled) alley so it is not as touristed as Manneken Pis. Gender discrimination, I think. Jeanneke was built as a companion piece to the little piss boy, and she was commissioned in (checks notes) THE YEAR OF MY BIRTH! She’s my spirit statue! She’s behind bars because even Europeans are still lagging behind on women’s rights you’re supposed to throw coins into her fountain and make a wish. Great stuff, Brussels.
Food
Like all capital cities worth their salt, Brussels has some great options for vegans, especially compared with the last time I visited the city like 15 years ago, ugh and oh no. Hooray for progress! Not only is there tons of vegan chocolate even in the chain stores as we saw in Bruges, there’s also now VEGAN WAFFLES!!! But before I share the waffles, you’ll have to eat your vegetables, unless you’re that idiot pathetic man who complained about the Golden Globes going vegan when it’s a) a free meal b) ONE meal and c) he would never be invited, ya basic!; if you’re that guy you don’t get anything.
For lunch in Brussels, I did all my HappyCow research and decided on the most predictable choice for my salad-and-bowl-loving self: Yummy Bowl. It’s a vegetarian bowl joint. They make bowls, like full of all kinds of vegetables. It’s literally perfect.
Well it’s not perfect perfect because I went up to the counter when I arrived and was told to sit and that someone would take my order from the table which is fine but then for the next 30 minutes they took people’s orders at the counters???!!! Like yes all those jackfruits were doing it wrong but they still got served first so the lesson is NEVER FOLLOW THE RULES. But finally I ordered my Super Bowl (not to be confused with the upcoming football game that can EAT my SHORTS because the Eagles are out (are you proud, fam, doesn’t it seem like I actually care? #goeagles (look I did it again!))).
My Super Bowl, like Walt Whitman, contained MULTITUDES: red and white quinoa, young shoots and baby leaves salad, gomasio tofu, avocado hummus, garlic grilled green beans, red cabbage, roasted sweet potatoes, edamame, marinated zucchini, grilled broccoli, mango, pomegranate seeds, goji berries, sunflower seeds, and lemon curcuma dressing. I KNOW! ALL THESE THINGS MIXED TOGETHER! Obviously I sang like the boy in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (“Oh Happy DAYYYY”).
I know some of you are like ‘um you know they have vegan burgers and fries and stuff in Brussels, right’ but you know I love a loaded salad like nothing else. And I got a waffle for you! Well not ‘for you’ but for you, know what I mean?
Let’s take a walk through this GORGEOUS arcade to find our vegan waffles!
Here we are!
Vegan Waf is, you guessed it, the vegan waffle joint in Brussels that I say is a MUST VISIT. This was SO DELICIOUS, not to be confused with the best ice cream brand but man alive did you know? Did you know about waffles??!!! Like about real Belgian waffles? I think I had one when I was first in Belgium but I wasn’t vegan yet so I didn’t appreciate it because I was probably like “yeah I can eat this I can eat ANYTHING I don’t even care!” but now I care.
If you aren’t vegan, or you drink beer, or both, I even have a recommendation for you! Before our train home to Londres, we whiled away the hours (conferring with the flowers) at La Mort Subite, which is a very direly named old-fashioned bar that is suuuupes classic and like French if you are looking for that sort of thing. Rude old men waiters, enormous blocks of cheese, amazing beer (so I’m told), so I have it on good authority (husbo’s) that you should go there. We sat at the window and the people at the table outside had a dog so I was set.
Anyway that’s literally all we did in Brussels.
Sleep
I don’t actually have a recommendation for you, I have an anti-recommendation. An opposite torture, as Michael would say. We arrived in Belgium on the late night Eurostar, so we slept in Brussels before leaving first thing in the morning for Bruges. We stayed in the B&B Hotel Brussels Centre Gare du Midi, right across the street from the train station, just for a cheap simple place to spend the night. It was literally the worst, most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve slept in some random places all over the world. So, just a warning.
Brussels might not be the most charming to look at, but there’s lots of culture that you should immerse yourself in, via the many many museums and tours and more. I did that last time so this was just for how to pass your short day in the non-emerald city. Goodbye!
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Eating Vegan in Kyiv: Decent Food Around Town as Veganism Grows
Arriving in Kyiv (that’s the proper way to say Kiev, Ukraine; remember?), I was nervous about the food since my travels as a vegan through other parts of Eastern Europe have been less than thrilling. Luckily, that’s all in the past, it seems, because Kyiv’s vegan game was off the chizzy! Okay no it isn’t off the chizzy – wait till we get to Warsaw and Berlin! THOSE are off the chizzy – but Kyiv at least made a convincing argument that it knows the chizzy exists. It is fully aware of and in close proximity to the chizzy! (Chizzy means chain.) We had a good amount of time to explore the vegan options and traverse the whole range from delicious to disappointing and back again.
The first order of business was to go to Bessarabsky Market. This is a centrally located indoor market full of stalls, farmers stands, and larger restaurant constructions all in a tidy square space (not to be confused with Square Space, the company who has recently acquired this here blogging platform!). There are several vegan options in this market, and so, considering how hangry I was on arrival (remember we were waiting for our room to be ready after getting off another overnight train ughhh) I figured going to this one-stop shop for all things food would be my best bet. It was still early in the morning when we got there and lots of stuff wasn’t open. In fact, we had to wait for the two all-vegan spots in the Bessarabsky Market to get cracking. But it wasn’t a bad wait – because we saw the best sign known to (non-celiac) man:
Georgian bread may be the best on earth, and we are obsessed. So obsessed that just last week we returned from a trip to Georgia, I don’t want to say entirely planned because we wanted that good bread but it kind of was. This stall in the Bessarabsky Market lived up to its dern good name. We watched the bakers ease balls of dough into the giant stone cauldron-like oven, perfect for this witchcraft, and just a few minutes later retrieve gorgeous loaves ready for me to attack.
The handles on these loaves make it easy to hold and fun to pull apart. #breadfacts
So delicious! We ate our amazing bread and explored the just-waking-up market as we waited for the vegan places to open so I could look upon their treasures and see which I wanted. There’s also a natural shoppe in this building, called Eco Chic, which has organic produce and a small selection of supplies. It was closed of course but the vegan options abound here!
Finally the two places I came for opened – Green 13 Vegan Kitchen and Sumasbrod. These two all vegan joints were RIGHT NEXT to each other in the market! It was like the vegan sandwich showdown or something equally awesome. I felt a little awkward going back and forth between the two in order to investigate the menus and make informed decisions, like I would feel bad for whoever’s wares I didn’t purchase first. They don’t care. They’re used to it. I tried Green 13 first but we ended up going back to Bessarabsky several times over our stay so we tried both places several times. Let’s talk about errthang.
As you can see in the picture above, the two vegan places were kind of like buildings within the larger building. You order and get your food inside and then there is general shared seating in the open market space. The seating was actually nice, with cute pillows tossed hither and thither. Save for when we arrived that first day before it opened, the whole place was always crowded with vegan food lovers, which is awesome, and if I wasn’t so socially awkward and/or tired at this point in our trip (not to mention without a word of Ukrainian to my name) maybe I would have talked to some of them. But honestly come on there was eating to do, not talking! We tried a good deal of what Green 13 had to offer, including wraps and burgers – what it primarily does and does well – as well as salads because of my salad obsession.
English menu yassssss
On my first visit, I had to try the grilled tofu wrap. It was AMAZING. Like really amazing. Maybe I just had gone so long without proper delicious vegan food or maybe I had been soyless since China or maybe I was just so magoo from the overnight train and the lack of shower yet that day but man alive this wrap was so good I might cry because I want it now. (I may also just be remembering it in such high esteem because I am hungry.) First of all the wrapping seemed gigantic and poufy so that was fun, and the grilled tofu was nice. Filled with cabbage and parsley and carrot and tomato, the wrap would have checked all my boxes as is, but the sauce on it took it to another level. They call it ‘tartar sauce’ on the menu but that does not do it justice. It was a really delicious white sauce that was like…really good. I might not know what tartar sauce is. Anyway it was fantastic and probably my favorite thing I ate in Kyiv.
We also tried the burger with vegan bacon. If you look at the menu pictured above, you’ll see that the first detail about that burger is ‘loaf with barn’ and I will tell you that nonsense group of words is 80% responsible for why we ordered it. We had to see what loaf with barn meant. We still don’t know what they were going for but the burger was wonderful. Soy cutlet check, soy bacon check, tomato onion cucumber mayo sweet & sour sauce check checkity check check check. Such a great, classic burger! No wonder it has HIT written next to it on the menu. Less impressive was the Green 13 Burger, which obviously I ordered because it says it’s on a green spinach bun and I will never turn down wrongly colored breads. It sounds like it should have been aces with that grilled tofu and tartar sauce that I loved in the wrap but with added pesto and mushrooms and it was good, but not as great as the bacon burger. Not bad but it is third on the list.
As I said, I also tried the tofu ball salad because it’s a salad. It was okay, but I wish the balls were bigger and that there were more of them. Hehe balls. It was fine. I’m fine. Best of all, the staff at Green 13 was uniformly friendly and so helpful, even at my first visit when I was like ‘hey you’re not open but I’m here also what should I order???’ they were still all very nice. And you can see in the picture there’s a little fridge out front that says ‘molochko’ – they make their own nut milks and sell them in glass bottles. I had an almond milk that was pretty good for being unsweetened and not being used in cereal. All around, everything about Green 13 was great and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
You’re probably wondering at this point ‘hey where are all the pictures of the amazing food’. Sorries, but at Green 13 and Sumasbrod the food is packed to go as default (since there’s no seating inside their actual storefront) so everything was ugly with the expected takeaway smush. Even I have limits to what photos I share.
or do I
Moving on to Sumasbrod, a foot away from Green 13. I’ve mentioned their proximity several times now and I think it’s because my god man, if you are there, there’s no reason not to go to Green 13. I’m sorry Sumasbrod but you were disappointing in most aspects. The food was fine – when they had it. Every time I went to their counter, the (quite rude) staff would tell me that they only had this one wrap or this one soup available that day – even though the wraps are made hot for each order so I’m pretty sure they had most of the ingredients (considering they were all very similar). The salads were even more upsetting. See the above picture, how they have salads in plastic cups? Dude, it is NOT EASY to eat salad out of a plastic cup. First of all, that means the dressing (when it existed) fell on like, one piece of spinach and did not reach any of the other ingredients. And you couldn’t mix anything together. It is not a smart idea. And you’d think that if you were serving salad in a tall cup that maybe you should cut the ingredients up small so it would be easier to eat but instead the ingredients were like, extra larger than normal. One stupid long and thick strip of carrot took up half the cup. Also, the cup display salad situation meant that they only offered what was already made and displayed. When I first ordered a salad on the menu, the girl said they only had what was in the case – one option. It was right at lunchtime too but they didn’t have any plans to make anything more that day. I could see the rest of the staff was laughing and joking and eating back in the tiny kitchen instead of making more food for the big crowds but I guess they don’t care.
So the salad was too hard to eat and impossible to dress properly. As for the wraps, our conversation literally went like this: Can I have the tofu wrap? No we don’t have it. (They had tofu and the same veggies as everything else…so…) Can I have the Fishless wrap? No we don’t have it. What wraps do you have? The seitan sausage wrap. That’s it? Yes. Man aliiiive. Honestly considering that everything has basically the same ingredients, they make the wraps fresh for each order, and there was always staff just chilling and not working, I think it’s just down to lazy workers. Anyway, I had the seitan sausage wrap, and it was neither seitan nor sausage but more like pink ham half moons. It was decent, but small and with tiny amounts of fillings, so if you have the choice (and you do), always always get your food from next door. Green 13’s food is much better and the people are much more accommodating, even though on paper the Sumasbrod menu feels much more my style.
The only thing you should go to Sumasbrod for is the dessert.
In that display pictured above, Sumasbrod has those poorly conceived salad cups, but also chia pudding cups and mousses. The best thing they make is this Chocolate Cake Trifle and it was AMAZING. Truly. True I hadn’t had a proper dessert in many moons but Z agreed that this was fantastic and we got it several times. The chocolate cake was probably dry, as most places’ chocolate cake is (it’s not hard guys!) but it didn’t matter because it was covered and moisturized by chocolate mousse that was pretty damn fantastic. So definitely go next door for everything except dessert, and be sure to grab this. We got one for our train out of Kyiv too, and honestly nothing helps elevate an overnight train experience than a cup of chocolate cake trifle. Well except clean sheets and maybe a non-flooded bathroom but we aren’t talking pipe dreams here!
this will be the one non-food related picture in this post so enjoy
Another mixed bag experience awaited us at Tri, an upscale restaurant definitely catering to the Gwynnie types of Kyiv. This place had rave reviews on HappyCow so I made sure it was at the top of our list. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the HappyCow reviewers just haven’t had good food before so they were like ‘oh I guess this is what good food is because it looks cute and is expensive so I’ll just give it five stars so I don’t look bad.’ No. Or maybe we went on a bad day for them, but it’s still unacceptable. The restaurant is lovely inside and clearly gives off a more fancy vibe than anywhere else in town. Some of the food was generally interesting but the service was horrendous. It literally took hours. A family who came a half hour after we did got their food first. I don’t want to hear that nonsense about ‘but you don’t know how long the kitchen needs for each dish!’ because we were the only patrons there and I ordered a salad. It would take AGES to find someone just to ask what was going on with our food – and like I said, there were only two tables in the giant room. It shouldn’t be that hard to find staff. What is this, the National Theatre?
Tartlets? Tartlets? Tartlets?
We started with the raw tarts with cashew hummus and microgreens. It was pretty good, but it was not hummus so much as a definite cashew cheese., tasting like like any other raw cafe’s dollop of raw cashew cheese. Fine, though, whatevers.
Then an hour went by.
Then my salad came. This was supposed to be a ‘guacamole, kale, and hemp seed’ salad.
Ahem. Does that look like kale to you? It is not. It is merely green curly lettuce. Plus sprouts and tomatoes instead of hemp seeds, which I really don’t understand as a substitution so it has to just be a mistake. There was indeed a lump of ‘guacamole’ in there – a very lemony mush of avocado – but come on, this is not what the menu says. It is a green salad though and it was fine tasting so I wasn’t going to send it back (also it took an hour??) but still, what’s going on in the Tri kitchen??
Then we ordered the polenta with grilled vegetables. This one took an extra hour after the incorrect salad. I wanted to leave and really almost did but we were in so deep and I was trying to be optimistic about my beloved polenta. Polenta is sooo good and I was picturing this lovely pile of it with all kinds of vegetables in like a sauce or something amazing.
I got this tiny little tower of terror instead. The polenta rounds were good because it is hard to screw up polenta but yes you’re right, those are discs of eggplant and tomato with it. JFC. I should have known it was going to be grilled eggplant. Even at a vegetarian restaurant I have no other choice! There was nothing else to it, no sauce or anything, just grilled Vegetable of the Summer and two 50p-coins-worths of polenta. Bahhhhh. I wish we could have dined and dashed, I really do for the first time ever, but by the time this came we were alone in that big white fancy room and they would have caught us. Maybe. Actually, maybe we could have slipped away considering how hard it was to find a waiter. Darn. Next time! Just kidding we’re not going back there. I really don’t understand all the glowing reviews, unless everything else is really that much better (doubtful) or maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to have something better to compare it to (literally every restaurant seems more functional).
Next we tried Nebos, the famous raw restaurant. Raw foodists (omg is there a worse word than foodist to describe a person? oh yeah foodie) all over the globe rave about this place, so after our trip to Chernobyl we checked it out. I figured eating a big meal of raw vegetables would undo some of the negative effects of radiation or something? No it’s just right at Independence Square where the tour left us. Anyway, like with Tri, the reviews online were almost embarrassingly effusive. People were going on and on about how this is the best raw restaurant in the world and ‘trust me I’ve tried them all’. Bitch please. I’ve tried them all. This is not the best. But it is fine. Too much of the food had that vibe that is common in raw restaurants of being too…warm and sludgy, like it had been sitting out. Raw restaurants should be better at that but alas. But a lot of the food was really good, so overall Nebos is a positive for me, with caveats on things to avoid.
I started with the Olivier salad. They had a really impressive salad section (I mean every raw restaurant should come on but this is one of the few) and it was hard to pass up things with broccoli and arugula, but Oliviers are so common in this part of the world that it’s required to try them when you have the chance. I had a vegan one before, I think at a Mongolian Loving Hut, I want to say? and it was great so I had to try again. Also, this was the one salad that the Nebos menu had starred as a customer favorite so I trusted the public at large even though you should never really do that about anything really. Luckily it was really good! It was a mix of carrot, cucumber, avocado, peas, peas, zucchini, microgreens, and of course ‘Olivier sauce’ and it was very enjoyable. I also adore how they always come in the same weird shape.
Okay deciding on the Olivier wasn’t as hard as I made it out to be because we also got a Caesar salad! Double salad what a life! I was intrigued by the promise of cashew cheese sticks covered with pitta sauce in the Caesaw. It didn’t sound like a Caesar and it didn’t taste like one, but I really enjoyed it. Those cashew cheese croutony things are legit! They were so plentiful (look at that plate it is positively covered with them) and had a great sharp cheeziness with a z. It could have used more lettuce but it was pretty interesting. And really filling. Cashew cheeze is filling! I just jump back and forth between spelling raw vegan cheese like a normal person and an ass so don’t mind it.
Next was the tasting plate, with flax breaded cutlets (I don’t know either), falafel cutlets, and vegetable balls. I don’t know what the difference between all the different cutlets or balls were – they’re all made of the same nuts and vegetables – but they were all pretty good, and the three sauces they came with added some nice flavors. Approved!
Lastly was the thing I urge you not to order, even though like everything else I chose it is listed on the menu with a little thumbs up to show it’s a customer favorite. Well, the public is wrong so often so I was bound to get screwed listening to other people. Don’t listen to other people. (Well except me of course.)
The Dragon Roll. I’m actually starting to gag just remembering trying to eat this. I was soo excited for some raw vegan sushi – I hadn’t had sushi in ages, and it was even longer since I had good sushi. Well it would be a lot longer, I learned. The Dragon Roll promised epic tales of nori, avocado, cauliflower, cucumber, cheeze, something called ‘false flax seeds’ that I am sure is just lost in translation, sunflower mayo, and more ingredients that sound good but when you stop to really think about it you should think ‘wait how is all of this going to make a sushi roll’? Remember it’s raw, so without the structural integrity afforded by sticky rice, they were going to rely on minced cauliflower to hold all the gloppiness together. It didn’t. Forget Gwynnie’s website (how many times will this post mention her, I wonder), THIS is the real goop. The toppings blended in with the middle and it all mushed into one beige bland blob of oozing warm sludge and I tried to eat one and had that immediate reaction where if you eat any more of the thing you are going to be sick. Shaaaaaame. The consistency was so off-putting and so wrong, like when I try to eat mochi but 100x more. Sushi should not need to be eaten with a spoon! Bleh what a soft slimy mess. Bleh!
The rest of Nebos was decent though. Just never get the sushi.
The last of the vegan food I’m going to share might be my favorite in Kyiv. It’s not a restaurant, it’s more like a counter service. And the place is not vegan, or even vegetarian, but it has a few options. Now, what’s my favorite thing? If you follow my instagram (see link at top corner of page!) you probably know I make soup for dinner 90% of the time. Yes it’s because it’s a one-pot thing and that’s best for me but also because soup is amazing! Well, lords and ladies, Kyiv has a soup counter around town called Soup Culture! And best of all, they serve it in a BREAD CUP. Not a bread bowl, not those things that you don’t know really how to attack and you’re like wait so do i eat all the soup and then this bread but I want bread with the soup I’ll just take a little piece and ahhhh now there’s soup spilling everywhere! No, Soup Culture has perfected the bread container method by putting the soup in a much sturdier carbolicious cup, and so you drink the soup (I hate using the word ‘drink’ when discussing soup because it’s FOOD but here you kind of must because it’s a cup and you drink from a cup anyway) and chew the cup as you go down. It’s splendid.
They always have one or two vegan soups on the daily menu. We tried the lentil, which was delicious. And the bread cup is SO fun. Like I said, it’s sturdy so it retains its integrity as you take bites of it. SO FUN! There are a few locations around town so it’s a wonderful little lunch stop as you explore town.
Kyiv has a lot of vegan options – we barely scratched the surface! Even when we weren’t looking, we would chance upon vegan friendly places, like this place in a major underground food court/mall under Independence Square.
Hopefully, this roundup will help you make decisions about what to prioritize (go to Green 13; skip Tri; bring me back a bread cup). I have heard that even in the past few months, even more vegan food has popped up in Kyiv. I think the scene there is going to get better and better and it’s definitely a city to keep your eye on.
Travel Adventure Announcement! I Go To Old Country…a lot of them
Yay it’s time for our big news! This summer (and some of the fall!), we are taking the incredible sabbatical trip that we’ve been talking about for so long. For years now, we’ve been planning this adventure (well, Husband has), and this summer – THIS FRIDAY! – we finally get to start it. You might have guessed by now that that epic google maps screenshot at the top of the page is a map of our route. Here it is again:
I knowww. For 3 ½ months, we are taking the Trans Mongolian Railway throughout Russia to Mongolia and China, and then traveling all around China and through the Silk Route and overland back to Western Europe. It’s almost as crazy as how much stuff I’m trying to cram into my backpack! Yes, we are backpacking, and staying at hostels (and lots of yurts in mountains!), which we haven’t done in a long time (or ever in the case of mountain yurts alongside Mongol families) so it’s an adventure in every way.
This Friday, we fly to Helsinki, our last flight until the very end of September, and on Saturday we catch our first of many, many, so many trains, this one to Saint Petersburg, which means that that entire train ride I will be singing the following lyric from “Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812”, which is simultaneously impressive for the very high falsetto from Lucas Steele but also f-ing hilarious for the very high falsetto from Lucas Steele:
Sorry Husband I know that’s going to get RILL annoying rill fast but who could help it! Actually I’m going to be singing a LOT of “The Great Comet” throughout Section 1 of our trip. For instance, after PETERSBUURRRRRG I’ll be imitating Grace McLean’s scary shouty belt of “WELLLL WELLLL WELCOME TO MOSCOW!!!” God I’m so excited I LOVE when musical theatre provides the soundtrack to my whereabouts. (It’s gonna be so fun when we finally go to Buenos Aires.) I’ll also have a lot of “Anastasia” to work with, because I’ma need courage to not desert me but especially because my grandfather just told me literally 3 weeks ago that one of his parents was from Russia so it’s like a journey to the past. Didn’t know! Ya Rooskii!! So our first month, the Russia month, is like go to old country for me. P.S. that’s as good as my Russian is after we’ve been taking it for 2 years in preparation for this trip. I can pretty much just say “Where is the toilet?” and then speak English in a very comical Russian accent I hope they don’t srow zee acid in zeh face.
For the first week of our trip, our cousin Adam is meeting us! So fun! He was one of the OG’s at Weebly, which hosts this very blog [ed. note: not anymore! hello WordPress my new friend], so hopefully he can help me bypass any blocks and post updates! After Petersburg and Moscow, we train on through to Vladimir, Suzdal, Yekaterinburg, and Irkutsk in Russia. Then, we minibus for like a whole day (ahhh where do I peeeeee) to Olkhon Island, which is a pain in the ass to get to but everyone says once you get there it’s so worth it. I’m so excited. I hope it’s not too cold to swim in the lake. After we hypotherm it up, we train to our last stop in Russia, Ulan-Ude, before entering Ulan Bator, Mongolia, WHERE THERE IS A LOVING HUT. By that point in our travels, I will be so excited to find an all-vegan restaurant that I don’t even care that Loving Huts make you swear allegiance to the cult of the Supreme Master before they give you delicious food that all tastes the same no matter what you order.
Once in Mongolia, we will be celebrating the annual national festival of Naadam. Naadam celebrates the “three games of men” – wrestling, horse racing, and archery, which (aside from the horse racing which I am crossing my fingers is non-violent but when is horse racing ever non-violent?) is a hilarious concept to base a festival around. I hope Robin of Loxley shows up for archery and I can yell about how someone split Robin’s arrow in twaaaaain. In Mongolia (I can’t believe I’m going to Mongolia), we are meeting up with our crazier-than-us friend Sivani from Ever the Wayfarer because when you say to the California-based Sivani ‘hey we should hang out again soon’ she says ‘sure I will meet you in Mongolia that would be easiest for me.’
After Mongolia, we finish Section 1 by training to Beijing, where we begin Section 2 – literally all of China. Well I guess not literally all but we have more than 40 days there so we are seeing a shittonne of it. Right now, the only song I can think of to provide the soundtrack is Tori Amos’s “China” which is kind of a downer so if anyone can make some suggestions I definitely need them. (Am I having a total brain fart or are there no China-based musicals? Booo.) We’re visiting Beijing, Shanghai (bunsssss! I want steamed bunssss), Nanxun, Hangzhou, Huangshan, Guilin, Yangshuo, Chengdu (origin (not) of my dad’s Chinese restaurant staple, Chengdu triple delight!), Xi’an, and then through the western border via Urumqi and Kashgar. I’m gonna see giant pandas!! And so much other stuff. A lot of stuff. It’s hard to wrap my head around anything past Moscow right now but hopefully I will figure out a way to blog while in China or at least very soon after we leave so I can share everything we do.
We exit China into Kyrgyzstan, which honestly I didn’t know was a real place until we decided to go there. We have a lot of hikes and a lotttt of horseback riding in Kyrgyzstan because that is how they get from place to place, and no matter how much I don’t want to do that, you have to in order to visit this country [ed. note: you don’t! we got around that! we walked!]. The beautiful, remote places we will get to should make it worth it. After almost 2 weeks in Kyrgs, we bus (peeee???) into Kazakhstan, which we are really excited about because we are going to make sooooo maaaaany Boooooraaaat jooooookes. They will hate us but man alive is that going to be hilarious just to the two of us. Chinqui!
After Kazakhstan, we will be going to Uzbekistan, so by this point our trip is a huge challenge for Herman Cain to talk about. We see all the things (it’s not until SEPTEMBER I can’t fit the details in my brain just yet) before returning to Moscow via Volgograd to catch the train to Kiev, Ukraine. We are going to visit Chernobyl when there, which seems a little scary because of radioactivity but we decided to do it because who knows how much longer the planet has left anyway. From Kiev, we take the train to Warsaw, Poland, which I am really excited about because I’ve never been to Poland and that’s where the other half of my paternal ancestors are from (the maternals are all eye-tals it’s a spicy meataball! I’m so good at accents of my people). More of I go to old country! Finally, after Poland, we take our 500th and final train (at least of this trip) to Berlin, Germany, one of our favorite cities in the world, where Husband and I got engaged and the vegan food is beyond belief. Even though we won’t be there for three and a half months, I already know what I’m ordering from that all-vegan French bakery. Oh and vegan doner kebab! I’m going to be hungry. I have so many nuts and protein bars in my backpack.
From Berlin, we fly back to London, where we will probably have to be reacclimated to normal life like astronauts when they come back from space except hopefully we will have gotten better, not worse, at walking.
Jeez I’m tired just talking about everything we’re going to do! It’s going to be quite a challenge for me considering I’ll be doing without my four favorite things in the world (sleep, television, gyms, green smoothies with Vega) but I think I will be better for it. (Ha you thought I was going to say theatre but we already have amazing tickets for the opera and the ballet in the next two weeks dance dance dance emojis!)
I know it’s kind of scary to be going to some of these places at this turbulent time. And I realize how, um, awkward it is to be going to Russia when their involvement in the election is the top issue right now (and should be until it’s resolved). But as we learned in the last month, it’s just as safe, or not safe, in London as it is anywhere we could go. We’re all at risk of some sort as soon as we get out of bed each day, but we can’t let that fear dictate how we live our lives, because a sheltered unexamined life is easily wasted (although there is a good Broadway musical song extolling its virtues hello “Wicked” shoutout). I know that’s high talk coming from me, since I am the biggest scaredycat and worrywart (#scaredywortworrycat) out there, but I want to travel and I want to have fun and see the whole world and I can’t do that from my couch, as much as I love couch. You have to do stuff, is what I’m saying, and live your life without fear of the worst possible outcome, because all the other outcomes are pretty great, and regardless I think we’re all in some version of The Matrix anyway.
But on that note, I’m not going to be writing about any political issues or anything controversial in places like Russia and China, at least not while I’m in their jurisdiction. As outspoken and political as I am, it would be beyond stupid to risk anything in countries whose freedom of speech laws are more restrictive than I’m used to.
I’m not sure about the internet connection I’ll have over the next 3 ½ months, and when I do have internet, I’m not sure which sites will be blocked (except for in China, where I know everything is blocked). I’ll do my best to blog as much as I can, so make sure to keep checking back on the home page for updates (that’s the best way, because I know facebook and twitter updates will be hard if not impossible, and Weebly doesn’t have a program for sending emails to subscribers when new posts are up (dammit Adam!)).
So that’s the big exciting news! What an adventure it will be! Be sure to follow along. And if you have been to any of the places we are going to, please comment or email (link at top) with any tips, advice, and recommendations you have! Da svidanyaaaaa!
2 Comments
That waffle looks so good! And I visited Detroit last year for a few days, so Brussels is next on my list. 😉
Haha you are TOO FUNNY! Would you say that’s an unfair comparison? Not saying that Detroit and Brussels aren’t great cities, but just that they aren’t visually stunning?