Glengarry Glen Ross on the West End: Salesmen Can Be Pathetic and Also Monstersby Randi / January 18, 2018
Dear little baby laptop diary,
The day has arrived! We are finally leaving Uzbekistan! Who would have thought we would be so happy to return to Russia? We feel a little bit like traitors to our country (obviously not as much as our government heyooo) but we really loved Russia and the thought of soon returning to a more modern place is exciting! But first we have to get through this train journey, crossing two borders. First we will go back through Kazakhstan, around the north part of the Caspian Sea (maybe we will see Ursula!), and then into Russia to Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. They changed the name from honoring the scary man to honoring the river! I like! What I don’t like is that this will be our second longest train journey of the entire epic adventure, and I believe our third longest ever. Two nights and parts of three different days! Ahhh! Luckily we bought the entire 4-person cabin so we can relax without scary strangers.
The day has arrived! We are finally leaving Uzbekistan! Who would have thought we would be so happy to return to Russia? We feel a little bit like traitors to our country (obviously not as much as our government heyooo) but we really loved Russia and the thought of soon returning to a more modern place is exciting! But first we have to get through this train journey, crossing two borders. First we will go back through Kazakhstan, around the north part of the Caspian Sea (maybe we will see Ursula!), and then into Russia to Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. They changed the name from honoring the scary man to honoring the river! I like! What I don’t like is that this will be our second longest train journey of the entire epic adventure, and I believe our third longest ever. Two nights and parts of three different days! Ahhh! Luckily we bought the entire 4-person cabin so we can relax without scary strangers.
Or so we thought.
We boarded the train and made our way to our cabin, holding our four tickets for beds #5, 6, 7 and 8. Remember in China how we often had to kick someone out when they were in the wrong place? Well, gird your loins, because not only did we have to kick someone out again, we had to kick FOUR someones out. People were laying on every single one of the beds in the cabin we booked out. Are you FLIPPING kidding me. We got the conductor and explained that they were in our beds. He appeared to be mute. He went into the next few cabins and started counting spare beds, looking for spots where we could go. Hell no! I yelled out to him in Russian explaining that we bought all four beds you fat dink! Ahhh such bullshit! Finally it clicked for him and the four people moved into the next cabins. Like FFS why would you not go to the places you had tickets for? Why are PEOPLE?! Did they not have tickets in the first place, maybe? Why is everything such bullshit?
So this was quite the start to the next three days. Man alive. The toilets were disgusting, as expected. I am so pumped to get to Europe, I really can’t wait. I am counting the minutes…which isn’t very efficient because there are too many minutes so I guess I am counting the days. We have three left. Sure the third day is just a baby sized bit of it but what if we experience delays?! I have to be ready for that. Oh my god please don’t let there be delays. Remember our 11-hour delay from Urumqi to Kashgar? No don’t think about that. Think happy thoughts! Everyone who voted for Brexit should be forced to ride Uzbek trains for weeks so they can experience the unmatched joy that the mere thought of being in Europe will bring. (But they should get stranded in Uzbekistan FOREVER. Europe was too good for you asshats? THEN YOU DON’T GET TO GO.)
I cannot wait to eat lunch at Fresh in Moscow again! Big fancy salads! My favorite!
The mute conductor keeps making funny faces at us, which I don’t really understand, maybe he is trying to apologize for the trouble with the four lunatics who don’t know how to use trains? No that can’t be it. Maybe he is making fun of us. Cool game bro.
The mute conductor keeps making funny faces at us, which I don’t really understand, maybe he is trying to apologize for the trouble with the four lunatics who don’t know how to use trains? No that can’t be it. Maybe he is making fun of us. Cool game bro.
That first night, we went through Uzbek exit customs at 1:20am, which lasted until 3:30am. I REALLY don’t understand the need to have such long exit customs. It’s so unnecessary. Just make sure none of the people are criminals you don’t want to lose track of and then let us gooooo. I had to pee so badly! Remember, they lock the toilets during stops. Hoo boy. We got to the Kazakhstan entry point at 5am, which was an hour early, which you think sounds great but that just means we stay stopped at customs longer. Longer without a toilet! The guards loved asking us questions about our lives, which is so fun to do when you haven’t slept or peed in so long. We left the border at about 7am, back in our old friend Kazakhstan, and after we moved a few feet Z said to me: “Guess what – we are out of Uzbekistan!” and we embraced and cried tears of joy like the diplomats at the fucking end of “Argo”.
At this point, we hadn’t really slept more than an hour so we slept till about 11am. Then we made ramen for lunch with our little emergency stash that we could finally burn through (back to civilization means back to guaranteed food for me!), adding braised canned tofu from the Marigold brand, which was actually really good! This was my favorite meal in days!
At this point, we hadn’t really slept more than an hour so we slept till about 11am. Then we made ramen for lunch with our little emergency stash that we could finally burn through (back to civilization means back to guaranteed food for me!), adding braised canned tofu from the Marigold brand, which was actually really good! This was my favorite meal in days!
name one person who takes better food pictures
There is this little girl next door who keeps coming in and staring at us. She isn’t responding to our Russian shouts of ‘go away’ and ‘leave us alone’ and ‘why are you the worst’ and it’s really annoying. I bet you think that sounds adorable but she is a monster who literally keeps opening our door and coming into the room! No! Devil child! Devil child! And a man on the other side of us sits right up against the doorway so his legs are in the narrow hallway. It’s like he saw the news about how manspreading is a problem in the west and he was like, I can do that and then some! He stares too.
Oh man I have such a headache and I’m so nauseous why! I hope it’s not from my bulk pretzels from Nukus. Pretzels would never betray me right? Even ones that are out in uncovered bulk bins?
Oh man I have such a headache and I’m so nauseous why! I hope it’s not from my bulk pretzels from Nukus. Pretzels would never betray me right? Even ones that are out in uncovered bulk bins?
Speaking of bulk bins! In our cabin, up top where you are supposed to be able to store your luggage, there were plastic…I don’t know, bed pans??? And lots of them! What the heck was this nonsense! I’ll admit, part of me liked having these buckets of unknown origin – they might come in handy during our super long border crossing stops.
Okay so the conductor omg we saw him talking to someone! He is not mute! He just refuses to talk to us! What the hell man! Now we don’t know if he’s just being rude to us or if he is just frugal with his words. This is so f-ing weird.
The next car over is the restaurant car, so I went to explore. It was dire. There’s no menu; I asked the cook what they had and she said plov. That’s it, just plov. The cast of characters sitting among the booths looks the same as in our sleeping car, down to the old man at the far end wearing a smelly white tank top and not much else.
After an afternoon of reading, we crossed the Ural River – meaning we were officially (maybe? how does it work?) back in Europe! For the first time in almost three months, since we left Yekaterinburg! Omg! We did a little dance.
When we stopped at Atyrau, Kazakstan, it was 35 degrees out! That’s in Celsius, which I still don’t know well enough, so that’s 95 in Fahrenheit. We were baking in the sun through the window, and no wind was coming through (more like a wind-no am I right). I like saying Atyrau.
To celebrate our imminent return to Russia, we made kasha with the boiling water from the samovar, to mix with the jar of tomato sauce with mushrooms and beans, the jar we had been carrying since, well, since Yekaterinburg actually! So we had this emergency food jar keeping us company/adding pounds to the bags for literally all of Asia! That’s ridiculous. It was really good too!
To celebrate our imminent return to Russia, we made kasha with the boiling water from the samovar, to mix with the jar of tomato sauce with mushrooms and beans, the jar we had been carrying since, well, since Yekaterinburg actually! So we had this emergency food jar keeping us company/adding pounds to the bags for literally all of Asia! That’s ridiculous. It was really good too!
of course we had tomato ‘salad’ too, of course
I’m so nervous for the 4 ½ hour exit customs stop from Kazakhstan. Four and a half. WHY. Someone explain to me why that is necessary.
Oh I know why! It’s because every single guard on duty wanted to come into our cabin and ask us about America!! Every single one, I’m not joking, came in, sat down, and asked us what state we were from. They didn’t believe me that I was from Pennsylvania, because they didn’t believe that Pennsylvania was a real word. One kept saying ‘No…Washington D.C. or New York??” and I was like listen Joe, there are more places in the USA than D.C. and NYC. And Joe (not his name) would look confused and then repeat “Washington D.C. or New York!” and I would say Pennsylvania! And he would be like ughhhh that’s not what I mean! I mean what state are you from! I eventually pointed to where it says Pennsylvania in my passport and he actually got angry.
We were done with the border business in less than an hour, so this is just incredibly stupid to be waiting here for three extra hours. The train men are sleeping in their cabin. After almost two hours of that 4 ½ hour stop, I couldn’t take it anymore and I asked mute/nonmute conductor to open the toilet. He laughed and said ‘not for four hours’ and I was like, listen this is not funny, you lied to us about not being able to speak, so unless you want to talk about how I’m going to pee on the floor, you will open this.” He opened it and said ‘bistro bistro!’ which means fast, and I realized that no one else had used the bathroom in almost 2 ½ hours! What are people!!
I listened to music for the next two hours, not able to concentrate on reading when my brain is so anxious, and then I couldn’t wait again and went to the toilet and praise jebus, it was still open from the last time! The guards are outside having conversations over the loudspeakers. At first we thought it was kind of funny and we were imitating what we thought they were saying in a most hilarious skit, but now it’s annoying because this is an insane waste of time.
We finally left, we finally entered Russia, and we finally got to sleep. The next morning, we landed in Volgograd. We said goodbye to the possibly funny, possibly really mean and rude non-mute conductor. We were super smelly, exhausted, hot, thirsty, and so excited to be reunited with the motherland. We have a lot of trains left but none would be quite like the central Asian horrors of the past few months, so this might be the last entry I need to write in the baby laptop diary. I hope you enjoyed our time together.
Oh I know why! It’s because every single guard on duty wanted to come into our cabin and ask us about America!! Every single one, I’m not joking, came in, sat down, and asked us what state we were from. They didn’t believe me that I was from Pennsylvania, because they didn’t believe that Pennsylvania was a real word. One kept saying ‘No…Washington D.C. or New York??” and I was like listen Joe, there are more places in the USA than D.C. and NYC. And Joe (not his name) would look confused and then repeat “Washington D.C. or New York!” and I would say Pennsylvania! And he would be like ughhhh that’s not what I mean! I mean what state are you from! I eventually pointed to where it says Pennsylvania in my passport and he actually got angry.
We were done with the border business in less than an hour, so this is just incredibly stupid to be waiting here for three extra hours. The train men are sleeping in their cabin. After almost two hours of that 4 ½ hour stop, I couldn’t take it anymore and I asked mute/nonmute conductor to open the toilet. He laughed and said ‘not for four hours’ and I was like, listen this is not funny, you lied to us about not being able to speak, so unless you want to talk about how I’m going to pee on the floor, you will open this.” He opened it and said ‘bistro bistro!’ which means fast, and I realized that no one else had used the bathroom in almost 2 ½ hours! What are people!!
I listened to music for the next two hours, not able to concentrate on reading when my brain is so anxious, and then I couldn’t wait again and went to the toilet and praise jebus, it was still open from the last time! The guards are outside having conversations over the loudspeakers. At first we thought it was kind of funny and we were imitating what we thought they were saying in a most hilarious skit, but now it’s annoying because this is an insane waste of time.
We finally left, we finally entered Russia, and we finally got to sleep. The next morning, we landed in Volgograd. We said goodbye to the possibly funny, possibly really mean and rude non-mute conductor. We were super smelly, exhausted, hot, thirsty, and so excited to be reunited with the motherland. We have a lot of trains left but none would be quite like the central Asian horrors of the past few months, so this might be the last entry I need to write in the baby laptop diary. I hope you enjoyed our time together.
Related Posts
Traveling through Kyrgyzstan Part 3: Do I Prefer Wilderness Now?
Now that our time in yurts is over (forever?!), I could fully relax (well I still had to worry about bathroom breaks) and enjoy the rest of our journey around Kyrgyzstan. This country kept surprising me! The people were nice, the food was plentiful, the watermelon was given to me, the roads were in existence. Most of all, the landscape kept enthralling us with its extremely varied beauty. We still had a few more days driving with Sacha around Lake Issyk Kul and in small villages and towns before we landed in Bishkek, the big city capital. I liked the activities almost as much as I liked the fact that we had activities, but I started to get sick of the little villages. (Literally.) Hence my completely shocking personal revelation mentioned in the title.
Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Snow capped mountains never get old
Day 5
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
Our lovely be-gardened guest house in Tamga village continued delighting us on this new day, with a lovely breakfast in the lovely little dining space surrounded by the beautiful flowers and tons and tons of…bees. Bees? Bees. I guess with flowers come bees. We had forgotten this since bees are super endangered everywhere else in the world save for this garden, apparently. I had oatmeal and watermelon and apples for breakfast so it was a great start, aside from the bees.
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
Our lovely be-gardened guest house in Tamga village continued delighting us on this new day, with a lovely breakfast in the lovely little dining space surrounded by the beautiful flowers and tons and tons of…bees. Bees? Bees. I guess with flowers come bees. We had forgotten this since bees are super endangered everywhere else in the world save for this garden, apparently. I had oatmeal and watermelon and apples for breakfast so it was a great start, aside from the bees.
We set off on our drive, stopping shortly again at the lake shore for a few minutes just to take more pictures and enjoy the view for a little longer and so I could pee in the most picturesque outdoor pop-a-squat location yet. You’re welcome.
We drove through a valley called Jeti Oguz, which is famous for its enormous cliff-face stretch of the same name, which means Seven Bulls. The cliff face is of dark reddish brown bumpies that symbolize “furious bulls” standing together. I am a taurus; is that the bull one? If so I would like to be called Furious Bull from now on. If not I don’t care astrology is dumb as a trump.
furious bulls
The plan was to continue our eventual complete loop around Issyk Kul Lake by heading to our next stop of Karakol, but we had a surprise stop at the most amazing geo park (eco park? both). Seriously, it was a surprise to us at least, because the itinerary for today pretty much just said ‘drive to karakol’. So unforch that means I don’t know what this geopark was called (I’ve been trying to find it online! Maybe it existed just for us like a Brigadoon situation OMG IS KELLI O’HARA GOING TO SING WHEN I’M THERE??? oh no chill out this already happened and she didn’t, time doesn’t work like that no matter what McConaughey says (just kidding I totally believe him). The whole big area is Jeti Oguz and it might just be the resort or park or the same name but I can’t confirm.
For a few hours we drove along (and across!) the most beautiful somehow jade-colored rapids, up and around the rockiest of paths (I almost didn’t care because it was so beautiful but man alive that was some shaking) and hills and the scariest little bridges across the river rapids. Those bridges, man alive, I saw the first and was like ‘who would be dumb enough to walk across that little plank of a bridge!’ and then we DROVE across it, across ALL of them, in an SUV.
taken from a rickety little plank bridge erma erma erma
This valleypark was enormous! There’s security at the entrance (I guess it works because the whole thing is surrounded by mountains that sneakers can’t drive down so) and then you can just drive and hike for miles and miles and hours and hours like we did, all along this insane colored water. I know it doesn’t look amazing in the pictures (no filters!) but it was like pure jade and so incredibly beeyoot.
After we drove through most of this amazing valley, Sacha parked the car in a clearing and was like ‘there’s a waterfall about 40 minutes hike that way’ he literally just nodded his head upwards. That way just meant ‘up’ the mountain. And he said we should go check it out. We were hey so how do we find it exactly, like how much upping and in what part of the ENDLESS MOUNTAINS AROUND US ARE WE TALKING. He pointed to a person on a horse about halfway up the mountain and was like ‘they’re going to the waterfall so you can follow the path they are taking.’ Guys this was not helpful. The horse was like already a kilometer up the mountain and we couldn’t tell how he got to that point or what came next. We started up the mountain and the ‘trail’ was pretty much ‘do you see a way you can go that will let you continue your journey? does it seem a little ridiculous but less ridiculous than the other options you observe? follow that one!’ It was scary! Thank god Z was a boy scout because he could tell MUCH better than I could which fork prongs (tines?) were probably the right ones. The scary trail (or lack thereof) put me in a mood something terrible. AND of course I kept skidding the whole time because it was gravelly!
Finally, after lots of treacherous rocky crossings and tree branches that gave way when I tried to grasp them, we found the waterfall. IT WAS FINE.
“just go up” “okay, monster man”
who dat ninja
view from our waterfall trek
So apart from the skidding and the constant fear of tumbling down the mountain because of the tiny little narrow not-trails, this whole geo park majig was amazing! It’s so beautiful and so fun. I wish I knew its name.
I couldn’t know it betterrrrrr if I knew its name! (anyone?)
Because we had to enter (with tickets I think) at the entry point (you don’t say), we had to drive allll the way back through the valley and across the rapids and over the bridges and through the woods in order to leave. Haha ‘had to’ like it wasn’t such a treat to see it all again. We continued our drive towards Karakol in order to reach that town by lunchtime. I was sooo pumped for lunch because, are you ready for this? You know the website (and super useful app) HappyCow that I talk about all the time? If you don’t know, it tells you what restaurants near you (everywhere in the world) have vegan options. It’s magic (no it’s crowdsourced so if you find something incorrect it’s on you to fix it). Well, the ONLY HappyCow listing for ALL of Kyrgyzstan that wasn’t in Bishkek (the big fancy capital) was in Karakol! I was so so excited. We found the place, called The Fat Cat Cafe, sat down and looked at the menus and…there was not one thing veg on it. Well there was a grilled cheese for vegetarians CAN YOU SEE HOW HARD I’M ROLLING MY EYES? I asked the worker ‘hey so I was told that you had vegan food?’ and the woman said “Oh yes I can make you lentil soup if you give me like a half hour, 45 minutes? I haven’t been to the market yet today so I would need to buy vegetables and lentils.” THA FUCK? I reread the only other HappyCow review of the place (there’s a second on on there now with the TRUTH you’re welcome) and it said there was vegan food ‘on request’. So, first of all, no way in hell this place should be on HC if it doesn’t have any regular menu items that are veg. Second of all, WHAT KIND OF RESTAURANT ISN’T PREPARED FOR THE DAY AT 2PM ON A SATURDAY? Isn’t that your busiest time, all restaurants in the world? What kind of place is run like that? And I don’t just mean for the vegan request. Like, she hadn’t been to the store yet, at all, on a Saturday afternoon. And she had other employees just sitting around. What kind of fuckery I can’t even. I reported them to HC hoping to get them deleted but they are still on there. Le sigh.
Luckily Sacha has been to every restaurant in town and knew good ones with vegetarian options. If I’m reading my blursula picture of the menu correctly, it was Dastorkan restaurant, a good restaurant and an amazing name for a JK Rowling character. The menu even had 3 green-tipped pages that were all the vegetarian options.
do you think they put my salad on a heart-shaped plate because they knew how much I love salad
vegetable soup!
broccoli to share! I share my vegetables I”m such a good wife
This place was great! We also got the requisite basket of fluffy lavash bread. It was great…except, I don’t know if it was the food here, or the food the night before, or the spring water from a few days ago, or who knows how many endless factors, but I started to feel sick soon. We were staying in Karakol that night, at a nice little guest house about 10 minutes drive from the restaurant. We arrived and relaxed for a little and I had a little of the Travelers’ (TM(i)) but thought nothing of it. Z and I soon walked to a cafe to use their wifi (yay!) and after a little while I Traveled (TM(i)) again. I started to feel worse so I said let’s walk back to the house, I don’t feel so good. We had made it about 2/3 of the way when I vomited the hardest I ever have right on the sidewalk. Well in a grass patch but still. It was very violent and horrible and so painful that I thought I was choking. LUCKILY it happened, if you can even believe it, in front of what can only be called “Apteka Row” (the russian word for pharmacy) – a whole string of pharmacies. Z ran into one and I think just pointed out the window to me and was given anti vomit and anti nausea pills. It seemed to help a little, despite the fear of taking unmarked Kyrgyz pills (I still have some if anyone wants to try! or examine). When we returned, I told Sacha I wasn’t going to eat dinner and he was SO mad because the owner lady had already started making it and I was like okay if you really want me to try I will happily vom again on her little white tablecloth. I didn’t say that but I should have. But like come on dude.
So, I just slept the whole evening and night. Luckily I had some saltines from China in my pack and had those in the morning. Saltines are amazing. You watching The Good Place (also amazing)? You know when Ted Danson is like “I wish I could have tried a saltine”? I feel him.
Someone tell McConaughey to get a message to this girl in the past and alert her ‘girl you gon vom’
DAY 6
“Suuuuunday morning TIME FOR CHURCH!”
The mean old lady and the mean old Sacha made me drink tea for breakfast even though I HATE tea especially strong black tea and, guess what, tea makes me nauseous, because they both thought that my drinking bottled water instead of tea was what made me sick. This is the kind of ‘bullshit science’ that republicans can only DREAM of taking hold in America. FFS. It’s funny, actually – our Trans Siberian guidebook mentioned offhand that old Russians in Siberia had a weird rampant distrust of ‘dangerous’ cold water, warning against its consumption for no reason other than that it had become a rural myth. But now in Kyrgs we actually meet the old (ethnic) Russians who believe this! Ahhhhh! Shut UP!
We had a busy morning planned with lots of activities and somehow we still had to end the day at our guest house in Chon Kemin – more than 300 kilometers away! First we had a visit to Karakol’s mosque, called the Dungan Mosque, which is really cool because it was built like a Chinese Buddhist temple! We haven’t seen nearly enough of those! No it was really cool to see how the roof had dragons and other traditional Chinese symbols carved all over, and the structure as a whole was very China.
buddha mosque buddha mosque
What was not cool, was that this mosque made women wear these RIDONK heavy coverups like f-ing WIZARD robes. So smelly and so extra hot in this weather and just ugh annoying. I try to be chill about all religions but I can’t get behind any of the parts that require women to cover up so the mens don’t get too excited. Control YOURSELF, Aaron.
who dis ninja
it me
After the mosque, we went to the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. So much religion! The church was built in 1894 in the ‘six-pillared’ fashion but it has only 4 pillars! Fan thyself!
I really dig the whole decaying wood thing they have going on here. Very wool.
After all the gods and everything, we were to see a local museum in the town of Cholpon Ata, which is a really satisfying name to say. Unfortunately, the museum was closed, despite the sign on the door with the museum’s schedule clearly stating that they should be open right now. Guyssss. Sacha made a few calls and we amused ourselves in the small grocery store next door. GUESS WHAT I FOUND.
MANNER!!! Why didn’t I get more than one? (Ed. note: Don’t cry for me. Have you seen my instagram? Thanks Emmeline & Josh!)
When we returned to Sacha, he had bad news: The museum people said it was closed today because they had no electricity. Sacha didn’t buy their excuse and said “I think it’s really because they are sleeping.”
We still had more to do though, so no harm no foul. Next up was the Open Air Museum of Petroglyphs – a whole field of rocks and boulders with ancient drawings made from carving or scraping and such. Some had miraculously retained their clarity, but most had faded in the like thousands of years.
After we burned in the dry sun to a sufficient crispiness, we had lunch at a terrible cafe on the side of the road that was giant and full of tourists and had wifi but had a terrible waitress. She brought me my vinaigrette salad with fish on it even after Sacha made sure she knew no fish! Who puts fish on a vinaigrette anyway! Also people were smoking in the bathroom. It was an OUTDOOR restaurant. I don’t understand. I ate some vegetarian borscht instead (soup is always a good idea) and then we continued the drive to Chon Kemin and our last guest house, one run by the popular tour agency CBT (we were looking at CBT and NoviNomad when we were deciding who to go with, but CBT was terrible at answering emails and our questions so NoviNomad luckily won out. If you like loud hostels with giant dorms full of yoots, CBT seems the choice for you.) Because it was a CBT house, it was full of the most tourists we’d seen in weeks! It was a nice enough place and it had wifi! It was just a shock to have all the noise and PEOPLE when we’d been mostly in isolation for so long. I love isolation from other tourists.
The best part was the saddest part – our last gorgeous communal dinner in a yurt with the traditional set up. How wonderful is this kind of meal!
There were many plates of tomato salad (course) and vermicelli and carrot salads all over, and then the main event was plov, the main dish of Kyrgyzstan (and Uzbekistan and like the entire region I think). Plov is a rice pilaf usually with giant hunks of mutton or other gross meat (spoiler all meat is gross) on top. It’s a lot of rice. Mine was rice with bits of carrot. It was a lot of rice – the vegetarian platter was almost as big as the meat version but the meat plate was for like 11 people and the veg was just for me! How much rice do you think I can eat! I have to save room for watermelon!
We made some small talk with the other tourists and met some that didn’t make us too angry or annoyed (progress) but then, as is our wont, spent most of the night trying to get the weak wifi to connect. We heart wifi. Then we enjoyed our last night’s sleep in a shared space! We hate sharing! From here on out – hotels! (Well and hostels but private rooms!) Tomorrow we leave for Bishkek!
In Bruges: Man Alive It’s Like a Forking Fairytale
come with meeee and you’ll beeeee in a wooooorld of chocolate shops and bridges
HOT DAMN Bruges is adorabullllll. I finally went to this charming lil baby city in Belgium recently and I gotta say, just based on the human-to-chocolate-shop ratio alone, it’s one of my favorite places. The scenery is pretty great too, and other people would rave about the beer, the food (though not the vegan food – you must do research and know where to go), the beer, the quaint old-timey vibe, the beer, and the delightful ease of a visit. I am mostly enamored of the chocolate. OH and the cone-shaped fruit candy too. See I have more than one interest. At this time of year, the Christmas markets are all over Belgium, and while Bruges’s didn’t have anything of particular interest for me, it was still a pretty sight, not that the town needed any help in that department.
We were supposed to go to Bruges this past summer for the bank holiday weekend, but we had to reschedule because of TINGS, I tell ya, TINGS. Honestly, it was fine that we had one less day to spend. I’m not saying more time wouldn’t be nice here, but having all of Saturday, one night, and then Sunday morning was plenty for seeing the highlights and getting a feel for the town. Also it was suuupes crowded. I think it’s always full of tourists, but now that it’s Christmas-market season, it’s packed. (Doesn’t detract from its loveliness! You got nowhere to go!) We’re usually go-go-go travelers, so I think it worked out that we had less time since this is the opposite of a go-go-go place.
Our first stop once we arrived was, naturally, THE BLOOD OF CHRIST CHURCH. This place is seriously called Procession of the Holy Blood, because apparently the blood of Christ is in a vial and you walk by it one by one with a guard watching. Considering all the vials of blood I’ve seen, this one definitely ranks high and isn’t going to come back telling me I have another auto-immune disorder, so.
There’s actually a line-guard to make sure everyone stays in line orderly and like doesn’t make a fuss, don’t make a fuss, and then there’s a lady standing with the vial at the top of the altar/stage and you say ‘hi’ and ‘thanks I guess’ to her as you look at the ancient glass vial. Since you cannot take photos of the blood of Christ (it’s like a vampire it can’t have its essence captured), I’ll splain: it is a very ancient glass vial covered with gems and crusted over with…well I guess with the holy spirit?
It’s 2.50 euro for the museum inside the blood church, but it’s free to see the blood vial in the church. Not sure what’s in the museum part, probably like information on where the blood came from and all that lore which you will not get from me.
(the song is called “Charming”)
After we saw the blood of Christ, we went to see him as a lil baby with his mama at the Church of Our Lady, or the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk if you nasty. This church/museum houses the famous Michelangelo sculpture Madonna of Bruges, which depicts the Virgin Mary and her magical baby. It’s a lovely sculpture, but the whole alcove it stands in is currently under construction. Thankfully, the museum knew that visitors were coming just for that so there is a hole in the scaffolding so you can still see it.
I’m not sharing a great picture (we do have some of them) because GREAT ART can only be APPRECIATED in PERSON ask Bette Midler
The best thing is the information on the wall for this piece. It begins “Contrary to the habits early in the sixteenth century, Our Lady does not look tender and sweet here, but rather glum and sad. She thinks deeply and expresses the fear that her large and naked child will soon run away.” LARGE AND NAKED CHILD. I sent this to Rob Delaney obviously, the king of large and naked children.
So that’s the main thing in the Onke museum, but there are other treats that make it worth the ticket price (which I just checked and it was only 4 euro so go nuts). Across from the sculpture, there’s a painting that made us go ‘huh, that looks like a Caravaggio’ (and by ‘us’ I mean ‘husbo’ because I am just like ‘oh art’) and it WAS! And also was not. Facts: This painting, The Disciples at Emmaus, was long attributed to Caravaggio because, as husbo can attest to, it looks like his work. However, experts now believe it’s the work of Hendrik Ter Brugghen in the style of Caravaggio; he liked to copy him. Fun fact we learned, Caravaggio’s first name was Michelangelo too! He must have been pissed!
(Oh dear, upon further investigation it looks like Caravaggio was not his last name but the town he grew up in??? and it’s a ‘da Caravaggio’ situation like ‘da Vinci’ which ISN’T LEONARDO’S LAST NAME it means FROM VINCI and oh my god I really really hope Michelangelo Merisi is okay with everyone referring to him by the name of his town ahhhh.) (Okay upon even further investigation it appears Caravaggio was a murderer? so call him what you want.)
Here’s a scenery interlude for making it through the museum bits.
As you can see, taking little boat rides around the canals is a Big Thing, though no one sings (however, they do use an intense microphone setup that we could hear in our hotel room; luckily they stop tours at night). I decided not to join in the fun though, because I guess I hate fun. No I think I had good reasons: a) it was cold to be stuck in a boat b) I get seasick (okay man it’s not ‘the sea’ but you never know) and c) the best pictures are of the boats on the canals, not from the boats.
How about a quick look at the Christmas market? Just a quick one because it was pretty meh for me. In the main square, there were the familiar wooden stalls of European winter markets with the familiar wares: fried meats and fish and fries, alcohol, more non-vegan food, touristy gifts that put “Bruges” on magnets and towels and shirts and ornaments &c., and more alcohol. It was pretty-ish, but overrun with drunk men who had no idea whose space they were intruding into so we peaced rather quickly.
I mean I’m not going to share pictures of meat stalls (which was all the food, except for the cheese) and bar stalls so there’s really nothing left except woollen socks and ornamenti. The belfry looks great though; maybe we should climb that later.
Here’s the best thing we saw:
No not you lady, I don’t even know you
Before, between, and after the sights we visited, we bought chocolate. We bought a lot of chocolate, and sadly, even though it has been like a week, I’m out. My favorite shop was La Belgique Gourmande, because the staff was helpful AND they didn’t even have to be – their bowls of various chocolates were really well marked with all allergens!!! Eeee! I love a good labeling system!
The funniest thing was that, by our second day in Belgium, we learned that this is pretty much the most popular chain of chocolate shoppes in the whole damn country and we were treating it like a tiny little artisan find, HILARIOUS. Who cares, I love that they have more of these in Brussels (next post) than Starbucks in NYC. We shopped at three of them.
Below you can see the best chocolate they make that I should have gotten 100 pieces of instead of 100 grams. It’s like Ferrero Rocher with an amazing hazelnut butter filling but there’s no dairy! You can see on the tag their allergen legend, which shows that this contains nuts and soy, and NOO DAIRY! woot! I love them for this guidance! I love labels. Except for people, obvs.
We also bought some-but-not-enough of the famous Belgian fruit candy called cuberdons, which is like little cone-shaped pate de fruits and they are really good! They are also accidentally vegan so go nuts! Although I’d avoid the cherry because it tasted like medicine. We learned that these famous candies are only really found in Belgium because they don’t last long enough to export; the quality would suffer and people would be like ‘these aren’t so great’ instead of like ‘moar pleeeease.’
Alright, time for another sightseeing adventure before we get to the food. On Sunday morning, before we left Bruges for Brussels, we planned to climb the belfry in the main square. It’s one of the city’s most prominent landmarks, and is heavily responsible for the historic centre of Bruges attaining UNESCO world heritage status. The bell tower was built in 1240 but rebuilt after a fire in 1280…which is still super super old. There were several fires over the years, including one that wiped out the spire that was never rebuilt, so the tower today is shorter than it once was.
Here it is at night, GORGE.
And here in the daytime:
Unfortunately, the day we climbed it – the only slot we had available – was foggy mcfoggerton senior. Visibility was like, maybe three inches in front of you. Once you got a foot off the ground NOPE couldn’t see shite. Even the ticket man was like ‘are you sure you want to climb today…’ and we were like ‘no but we have no choice.’ We had to climb the thing, because we climb things (except ice mountains) so it had to be during the fog.
Kind of hilarious! It reminded us of our INCREDIBLE (as in cannot believe it) experience in Huangshan, when we climbed all day up a mountain in China and saw literally nothing. We had fun though; we do like climbing towers, and it’s good exercise (more on that below) (I mean sort of, like 2 words).
Alright, y’all bitches made it. It’s time for the vegan food. So, the food in Belgium is not surprisingly not the greatest for vegans, unless you like living on frites (that means fries), which I do not, because – hot take alert – fries aren’t that great. The HappyCow app is indispensable for Bruges, alerting us to the vegetarian restaurants or at least the veg-friendly ones. We only had two meals in Bruges but we had experiences (run-ins) with a few restaurants.
First, I took advice from HappyCow reviews and went to Brasserie Forestiere restaurant for lunch, a slightly upscale (meaning, expensive (as all of Bruges is) and doesn’t do tap water oof) cafe that promised to know what vegan meant and in fact has a tofu wrap on the menu. It was fine, they definitely do and that’s definitely true, but it was mostly soy sauce and a lot bell peppers, which I don’t like, so if I knew better I would have chosen the falafel place ‘t Brugs Pitahuis (I get the pitahouse part and I guess I can accept Brugs but I do NOT get the ‘t business (I understand that it’s their abbreviation for the word for ‘the’ but still it’s difficult for me)). But then again, I do get falafel all the time since I live next to a Pilpel (best falafel in London alert) so I’m not mad. I’m especially not mad because the pile of peppers came with a side salad AND a scoop of avocado/guacamole (best not to ask), and you know how much I love a surprise salad. And salad in general. Why do I love salad so much? Hot tip: mix the whole avo scoop into the wrap and everything is better.
Anyway, it was decent and incredibly filling, but a wrap it was not. A wrap has LITERALLY one requirement:
And this clearly failed that. I wouldn’t call this cornucopia of onions and peppers spilling out of an open shell a wrap. Of course I did try to pick it up and eat it as intended, which was forking hilarious (it did not work).
If you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll pass the Frites Museum on the walk back from Forestiere to the main square. Yes, it’s an entire museum dedicated to fries. No, we did not go but knock yourself out.
For our one dinner in town, we were eager to try the all-vegetarian restaurant Des Plaats. However, the guy who greeted us was kind of a dick. Fun fact that we did not know: You cannot eat dinner in Bruges without a reservation. And I don’t just mean at this little dick boy’s restaurant; I mean everywhere. We were turned away from several places that were ‘fully booked’ even though they were absolutely empty at the time. Bruges just WILL NOT FEED YOU without a reservation, which okay, I understand, it’s crowded, but we didn’t know. Except instead of just saying ‘no, we’re fully booked sorry’, the Des Plaats bellend was like supes rude, unnecessarily. Fork his boring plaats anyway.
Luckily, one restaurant remained to check out, one I’m not sure why we didn’t go to first since it’s entirely vegan: de Brugsche Tafel, a small family-run restaurant that has a small but solid menu and two adorable kids helping their parents out. I wanted to hug them I was so happy they agreed to feed us. It was great, too, and we were happy to support a family.
We read a lot of good reviews about the ramen, but they had two specials that sounded good: the mushroom palak with basmati rice, and vegetables in vindaloo sauce, so both Indian-esque dishes. To fit super well with that theme, we got bruschetta to start (I’m funny). The bruschetta was on regular sliced bread, which is funny, but toasted, so it all worked out. It was one the garlickiest foods I’ve ever eaten and I FORKING LOVED it. Husbo, who is less garlic-oriented, said it was almost too garlicky, but I, a person with eye-tal blood who has garlic coming through her pores at most times, do not think so.
The mains were great; I think the mushroom palak is the winner but overall everything was, as the Brits say about food which I just do not understand but I guess I have to now, ‘nice.’ A weird thing we both noticed was that they didn’t use any beans, tofu, seitan, &c. Usually we see this lack of protein sources at restaurants that aren’t vegan, especially if they’re trying fancy tasting menus, but not at all vegan places, so that was quite odd.
The best part about de Brugsche Tafel (aside from the hospitality, the ability to feed us without buying into the Bruges Booking Malarkey, the family-helping jawn, and the fact that every once in a while we’d see the tiny little girl child climb CLIMB up onto chairs to remove empty dishes from other tables and it was hilarious and adorable) is that THEY HAVE VEGAN BELGIAN WAFFLES.
Baby’s first vegan Belgian waffle! Granted it’s my first time being back in Belgium since being vegan but still, wowee! I remember when I was first in Brussels, I guess 15 years ago, and I had a street waffle with maybe speculoos? and it was great obvs but this was EXCELLENT. The waffle part was so amazing it didn’t even need the chocolate sauce (but I wanted it). They are 4 euro and this little carton was the to-go container but whatever I ate it as soon as we got outside and it was magical.
As for our lodging, that was a bit of a predicament. Very, very few hotels in Bruges will let you book for just one night. The place we were going to stay in in August was going to be for two nights, so they wouldn’t let us change it to one. (Well, then they said ‘for you, we will make an exception!’ and offered a one-night rate…at the price of two nights. Cool guys.) Luckily, we found the adorable restaurant and inn Hotel Duc de Bourgogne. It’s right on the canal, super quaint and old-fashioned and perfect for the broogie vibe. The old-fashionedness means there weren’t enough outlets, and I wish each room could control its own heating, but there were no real problems on those fronts. The staff was super nice and accommodating.
The hotel/restaurant is the white building on this canal. One of those windows was ours!
Aside from the loveliness and the chocolate, the best part about Bruges is the dog-human ratio. EVERYONE WHO LIVES THERE HAS A DOG. We saw so many adorbsy puppos my head almost sploded. I took lots of pics (more in my instagram stories, Bruges highlight) but here are my best friends I made:
Ok bye babies!
