Zagreb Vegan Scene: Green Point

I have a theory, and it’s not about people who live in Lake Erie, although I have been listening to the cast recording of “Bandstand” a lot lately. (I have to throw some bones to the theatre readers when it’s not Thursday.) I think the most vegan-friendly cities are places that are extra-trying to show how progressive they’ve become since their not-so-great pasts, whether consciously or not. In Europe at least, the places that were hit hardest during World War II, whether literally by being destroyed or politically by falling prey to fascism, have been incredibly vegan-friendly in my experience. When I’ve been in Berlin, for example, with its endless vegan signs and tattooed yoots and overall sense of freethinking and tolerance, it seems like the people are on a particularly passionate mission to prove that they’re no longer Nazis, and with that sort of progressive thinking comes veganism! I got the same vibe when I was in Warsaw, Poland, which was decimated by the Nazis during the war as we learned last week. Warsaw’s rebuilding after the war came with sort of a rebirth similar to Berlin’s, and I was delighted to find that it is a bona fide vegan paradise. 

We didn’t have too much time planned in Warsaw, because this was intended to simply be a quick stop off the train on our return journey from our months in Asia. However, as we left Kyiv, I finally looked into my food options in Warsaw. I had NO idea. My HappyCow app was blowing up and every place I found, I added to my list. We had time for maybe three meals and I had a list pushing 50! Luckily, we made fantastic choices and had some of the best meals ever. With all of its vegan options, Warsaw is at the top of my list for must-return-to cities, because there’s so much incredible-sounding food I didn’t get to try. Of course, I’d have to make return visits to my favorite two restaurants, which we’ll talk about below, so I’ll need a lot of eatin’ time on my next visit, or a bigger tumnus. 

Before we talk about those meals, I have to say how, with all the many options in the Old Town, vegan food is usually convenient. On the morning when we were meeting our walking tour, we had only a few minutes to find breakfast (it was early! it was probably not that early), and the closest coffee shop was a HappyCow entry called Organic Coffee Stare Miasto! They had a green smoothie for me! They also had a few vegan baked goods, like cookies (which we tried – twas decent!) and cakes. They had a very interesting sounding porridge kind of thing that I don’t remember too much about except that I would have had it if we had more time (I am not a cookie for breakfast person!) but anyway, it’s a great thing to know about since you can literally see Sigismund’s Column from inside. The smoothie was fine; it would have been better blended with ice but hey it was a green smoothie while traveling. 

Okay, onto the stars of the show, the talk of the town. During the short break in between our day of INTENSE walking tours, we found ourselves close to a few lunch options: one of the burger chains Mango Vegan Street Food, or Veg Deli. The former is a popular, casual joint with burgers and fries that I’m sure are all great, but I am weird and enjoy healthier or at least healthier-seeming food more. And I needed vegetables! 

Veg Deli gave off a sort of Scandinavian vibe, with its modern, simple, and clean interior and its slightly upscale menu. The options all sounded great, so true to form we over ordered, getting two starters and two entrees. First up was my choice, as it always has and always will be when they’re on a menu: salad rolls. Or summer rolls. Whatever you wanna call them; it’s veggies in rice paper rolls. I love them, which is weird because I usually hate everything with that gummy consistency. (Don’t you EVER double up on the wrapper to make it more durable, future restaurants. I’d rather the wrap break and everything pinata out then deal with mochi-like gumminess GAG.)

These were filled with red cabbage, mint, basil, coriander (that’s cilantro for non-Europeans), and avocado. So many herbs! So many good things. The sauce was, I wanna say peanut, which seems weird but hey I love peanut sauce. 

Our second starter was the Mexican soup, with black beans and corn and so that makes anything Mexican. Very good! 

For our mains, I of course ordered the closest thing to a salad – this mess of greens and avocado with balls of some sort. Hehe balls. They were like cake-y bean-y beancakes or whatever and it was great. They went a little heavy-handed on the dressing, and that tomato is too big I mean look at it I am NOT going to eat that, but otherwise I loved this. My perfect kind of dish – greens, avocado, beany thing. 

But Z always orders best, because while I get distracted by GREENS and SALADS he always zeroes in on the best thing on the menu, like these fried giant oyster mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms are THE SHIT(ake), and this dish was hella ethics as my man Pillboi would say. That white creamy sauce for dipping was PHUH NOM. I don’t know how they made it but it was not tofu or cashew, just thick fatty white cream gunk I don’t know it was delicious. And it came with fried spinach so it was well-rounded. 

That amazing lunch set us up nicely for the rest of our day walking all over tarnation learning about how horrible humanity can be. But if you can believe it, it wasn’t even the best meal I had in Warsaw. It’s not too far off from the lead, but I guess I’m a sucker for pierogies because I’d give the edge to the vegan town favorite Vege Miasto. I think miasto means city so it’s an appropriate name for what I took away about Warsaw, that and Nazis being so bad. 

Vege Miasto’s claim to fame is that it’s doing traditional Polish food, but all vegan. Well it also has non-Polish food like wok-fried vegetable stirfy (wat) and spaghetti with pesto (huh) but stick to the Polish food since it’s such a treat to get it veganized. As we learned when I ate in Beijing by myself that time, I am obsessed with dumplings of all sorts, and that’s what pierogi are really, so in honor of the sequel coming out soon and starring CHER, (what), sing it with me “MAMMA MIA (2)! HERE WE GO AGAIN!” 

So Vege Miasto is FORKING AMAZEBALLS. Again, true to form guys, do you expect anything else from us, we ordered wayyy too much, so much that most of the non-dumpling dishes came back to the hostel with us (and did not get stolen! praise the yoots!). We got two of the five pierogi options (one is a sweet pierogi, like blueberries and tofu! so weird!), which can come pan-fried or boiled. I think we did one fried, one boiled. I prefer boiled. If I recall correctly (I probably don’t), we got spinach & tofu pierogi and cabbage & mushroom ones. All sooo good. The best part was that both enormous dishes of pierogi came with little salads! It’s like they saw me coming and were happy​ about it! Omg this was sooo much pierogi and I want it now! Is there anywhere like this in London? I guess I have to make them, and I do make very good pierogi (ask Z!) but it takes time. 

For our mains (lololololol), it was a hard choice but we went with super traditional Polish options of Buckwheat Crepes and the Cudak. The Buckwheat Crepes, oh man, these were CHOCK FULL of veggies which are my favorite kinds of pancake type things, AND it had a little baby salad in the middle too! THIS IS MY DREAM RESTAURANT! EVERYTHING COMES WITH SALAD! I’M NOT SHOUTING! The mini buckwheat crepes (BLIN) were topped with a tomato-based stew of chickpeas, kale, spinach, mushrooms, and then also pumpkin seeds and herbs and sprouts and it was hearty and earthy (anything with buckwheat is automatically earthy I guess) and delicious. I wasn’t a huge fan of the orange-y sauce that was also on top but everyting else about it was great. It’s extraordinarily filling too, especially after you have eaten dozens of pierogi, so we had that show that everyone tells us to watch. (Leftovers.) 

Lastly, we got the Cudaki, because supes traditional. Talk about filling – these were halved potatoes stuffed with tofu, nuts, white cheese, spinach, tempeh and like 100 kinds of creamy sauces. Hot damn this was deeeelicious. Creamy potato things are delicious! And I adore tempeh, even just plain, so this bacon-y version of tempeh was a treat and worked so well in the dish. We ate like one potato. Damn it was good. And it came with a pickly salad, with marinated zucchini, carrots, pickles, and fennel. Such a smart salad for this super heavy dish. 

I must add that Vege Miasto has a very impressive Main Salad section, and left to my own devices I probably would have ordered one and been happy but would have missed out on this traditional food! Thank goodness we made sure I wasn’t led to the dark side. Stuffed to the absolute gills, we nevertheless had to order dessert. I mean, LOOK at this dessert set up! Luckily they were able to pack up a few pieces of cake so we could eat them later without exploding, and since we were already taking home bags of food a few pieces of cake thrown in on top wouldn’t be a problem. We decided on the chocolate cake and the Bounty-inspired cake (Bounty is a famous coconut-chocolate candy bar). Here I made a fun little slideshow for you. 

The Bounty cake was the best. Cake is good. I’ve been watching a few episodes of Susan Blackwell’s Broadway interview series, “Side by Side with Susan Blackwell”, and at one point she asks everyone the same five questions, including ‘Cake or Pie?’ and everyone always says Pie and she gets SO UPSET and screams NO ALWAYS CAKE! and I think we could really be friends. 

At the train station the next day, I was excited to see this huge Juice Factory outpost in the center of the terminal. I got a Cleansing Green elixir – kale, avocado, parsley, kiwi. It says vegan on their sign! I don’t think they are all vegan but it’s nice to see. 

So if you are planning a trip to Warsaw, a) bring me pierogi and b) get ready to eat so much delicious food! I’ll share a few places that were on my list but we didn’t have time for. 

• Vege Bistro: more pierogi and traditional Polish food, veganized! 
• Mango Vegan Street Food: the popular burger chain I turned my nose up at earlier but I do want to try it! 
• Falafel Bejrut: falafel chain with locations around the city. There’s lots of other falafel outlets too, as it should be in every city.
• Hocio Vegan Hot Dog Truck: self-explanatory. I don’t even like hot dogs but I’d eat a vegan one from a food truck in Warsaw just to be like whaaaat fuck you Jurgen Stroop! 
• Keboom: vegan kebab shop with three locations! What is life
• Krowarzywa: vegan burger joint with three locations! Again I ask you! 
• Leonardo Verde: a vegan Italian place with lots of good reviews and pizzaaaa! 

So that was my Warsaw visit, and I am now sooo  hungry and sooo without anything resembling pierogi. Le sigh. I can’t wait to go back. I really loved this city and not just because of the food. I hope you want to go now! 

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In case you missed it: WARSAW CITY GUIDE

​We’ve been together on this journey for a while, right? So it’s okay to get a little personal. Today we’re going to talk about what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World: China. No we are going to talk about health issues we faced in Beijing, and then be rewarded with a look at our hilarious attempt to fix the little baby laptop in a huuuge Chinese computer parts superstore center where no one spoke English. It’s like an interlude. La la la la…

Just to clear up any potential confusion, no, that lead picture has nothing to do with anything. We just saw it on the street.
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So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so. 

We made our way on our first afternoon to Torana Clean Air, a smaller store than we expected with a small range of face masks and room air purifiers. They did have the masks we wanted in the sizes we needed, just not a big range of colors, so we were stuck with this weird octagon color pattern. Whatever, I don’t care what I look like if it’s keeping my lungs safer. The mask is called the Vogmask, and it helps protect from airborne particulate matter and “non-oil airborne particles” like dust, pollen, and, best of all, SECONDHAND SMOKE! I’m gonna wear this baby on the trains so hard! I know that obviously this sort of mask isn’t perfect, but it is good at filtering big and tiny particles, according to studies, and decent at the dangerous sort-of-small particles, so as long as it’s better than nothing and better than a doctor’s mask, I’m happy. I would like to get one of those total face covers with the mouth hole that you blow out of but like I’m already stared at enough here I don’t think I would be able to handle more. 

They were a bit expensive at about $30 USD, but that’s super worth it for something that is helping you not get asthma and lung cancer and all kinds of shit. I do feel like I can’t catch my breath sometimes here, so I will have to see a doctor when we get back about whether China-induced asthma is a thing, but overall it’s okay. Hooray for us looking like fools but acting like smarties! I like being healthy!

So, about that…

After we left Mongolia (hip hip hoorayyy!), I had some abdominal discomfort, like, in and around the kidneys. I was peeing a helluva lot more than usual, which by now you know is a lot anyway, and it wasn’t because of drinking much more fluid, so I was concerned. We decided to go to an international health clinic we had on our emergency list (we have a list of all the hospitals and clinics where we are going where mostly expats go, so they speak English), called Parkway Health. They made a same-day appointment for me and were so nice and professional and I love them. 

It was a hilarious experience, if you forget the part about me not feeling great. With my symptoms, they pretty much just needed to do a urine test. So one of the many nice nurses led me to the bathroom upstairs, but it was locked. She got another nurse, and they both tried lots of random keys to unlock it, but nothing worked. I was just standing around for like 20 minutes. Finally one of them said, “Can you just hold it?” I did my best to communicate, “Um, I don’t just need to pee, you need to test my urine, like that’s the whole point of why I’m here??” Finally they got it open and took my sample off to the lab. Meanwhile, I met the doctor. She was a lady doctor so in your face, riddles. Her English was slightly less wonderful than all the main nurses’, but still good and I felt comfortable with her. She asked if we had been traveling hard for a while, and I explained that yes, we don’t sleep we just take trains to random places for like months now. I said I had just gotten to China from Mongolia AND SHE SHUDDERED. She gets it. I said how we were pretty much in a car for 7 days there where I had to hold my pee all day and I was also dehydrated. She was like no no no this is all bad! Are you sleeping? No I’m not sleeping as much as I should be or usually need to. She was SO CONCERNED. She kept putting her hand on my shoulder like for moral support, that’s how upset she was with like, these very minor complaints. It was like if I became a doctor. I would SO be the doctor telling everyone to sleep more and drink more water and getting so upset if they weren’t doing enough of either. She was like, listen, you need to sleep more, you need to drink more water, you need to eat berries, especially red ones (amazing medicine). Then she hit a language snag and said, “You need…it’s in Chinese pingwan (or pingyan I don’t know)…just….lying down on the bed is good.” I THINK SHE WAS TRYING TO TELL ME TO TAKE NAPS. I love this doctor! The results came back and showed signs of infection, and given the symptoms was 99% a UTI. Which, given how many jokes I made about getting UTIs in my recent posts, shows that the universe looooves messing with me. 

​We went over the things that can cause a UTI and kind of just laughed:

Dehydration – CHECK
Holding urine – CHECK
Long car rides/travel – CHECK
Squatting instead of sitting when urinating – CHECK CHECK (all that business about how it’s better anatomically to squat is just for #2; for #1 for women it leads to incomplete emptying which leads to infection in the urinary tract which issss UTI)
Poor hygiene – CHECK did you READ the Mongolian outback post?

I mean, every single thing! Man alive! She put me on a cycle of antibiotics (and I’m all better, p.s., this blog is on a 2-week tape delay). I went to the waiting room and told Z the good news (not sarcasm; it’s a simple easily treatable thing, that’s good news). Then I said, “The doctor said I need to sleep more, drink more water, and eat berries.” Z responded, “Oh SURE she did. Did she also order you to pet more small dogs??” I almost passed out laughing so hard and had a very hard time convincing him that doing more of my favorite things was indeed doctor’s orders. 

 I’m relieved that we went to a real doctor who believes in medicine and fixed me up. And mostly, I’m super grateful for our UK health insurance, which covers us worldwide and immediately gave the clear when the receptionists contacted them so we didn’t even have to pay out of pocket first. We area so lucky to have such good insurance that covers us everywhere we go  – well, except in the USA. It covers us in freaking China and will continue to cover us in Kazakhstan and everywhere else, but it can’t cover the USA because their healthcare system is too much of a mess. Every other country is fine though! Jesus America. 

Okay that’s enough about my insides! Here’s the treat I promised you (plus one more hilarious treat at the bottom) about our adventures in Beijing’s super intense electronics scene. One whole section of the city seems to be electronic parts superstores, selling all types of gadgets but most of all doing repairs and crazy customization of gadgets. Little baby laptop’s fan stopped working, so we took it to this section of the city and just dove in headfirst. We entered one of the giant buildings, and were greeted with four floors of indistinguishable counters with Chinese guys gadgeting huge messes of gadgets. We went over to one counter that we chose randomly and showed the guy the computer and mimed a fan turning with our hands and then did a NO gesture. He got it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the part. We tried the next counter, and a guy was just not into trying to figure anything we were miming out (not as many English speakers as you might expect in such a city!). Onward! The guy at the next counter was in, and he rebooted the computer a few times and determined that the fan wasn’t actually broken, but that something was stopping it, so he needed to just go in there and clean the parts instead of replacing them. How we communicated this is a feat of human interaction and behavior because it did not happen with actual language. 

So we watched as he took apart the entire little netbook, because since it’s so small everything is under the keyboard, and he really had to take every last piece out. Like, we went down to the motherboard. Little baby was in 30 pieces! And to check if what he did worked, he had to put it all together again, all the tiny little barely visible screws that each have a very specific part they go with so you have to keep all these tiny screws straight and it’s a mess! Of course, the first go-round didn’t jive well with the computer, because it refused to work! So back apart it all went, a little more fixing, and then back together. Oh it was EXCRUCIATING to watch. How can people watch actual surgeries?! Finally he did a few more rounds of fiddling and it was back! It took over an hour of stress and just sitting in the super hot warehouse with people staring at us like whaaat are these tourists doing here. We also increased the computer’s RAM (I think that means it has horns now!) and we got a Chinese power cord so we don’t have to keep plugging it in with an adaptor, and it all came to I think 230 RMB, which is less than $35. Not bad! It was kind of fun to have the kind of electronics experience usually reserved to locals who have a clue what they are doing with electronics. It was definitely out of the ordinary and cool to see. 

Okay, one more random thing, I guess relating to health? At the checkout at most grocery stores we went to, they have tons and tons of condoms where in the USA there would be, like, gum and candy bars. It’s a little disconcerting but hey, China is serious about birth control which is good! But one brand jumped out at us and we were CRACKING up. 

UH HUH, that’s a condom brand called JISSBON. So shocking and hilarious! But it gets better, if you can believe it. Our Chinese friend said that jissbon is ACTUALLY WHAT CHINESE PEOPLE CALL JAMES BOND. So this condom line is named after James Bond! And it JUST HAPPENS TO SOUND HYSTERICALLY PERFECT FOR A CONDOM. Omg I can’t even believe. The writing underneath says something like “you can’t even see it”, something very 007 spy-like. Ahh it’s so funny! 

Okay that’s all the random thoughts I have for today. And don’t worry Mom I’m all better and it was like nothing!