Travel Adventure Announcement! I Go To Old Country…a lot of themby Randi / June 13, 2017
I’m writing this from the train to St. Petersburg! Just like Anatole! Except he was probably writing love letters (written really by his sister ewwww) to married or betrothed women, his faaave. Okay that’s enough of The Great Comet (just kidding I already listened to the whole album once today and it’s like 11am). We just pulled out of Helsinki (so it won’t get preggggnannnnt) and there’s wifi on this business so here I am! We really didn’t have much time at all in Helsinki, Finland, but it was a charming place that had vegan milkshakes so I would happily return once we are in a position to think about future travel.
After not sleeping at all Thursday night (how could we with this super exciting adventure just hours away! also I was saving my Ativan for the trip), we “got up” in the 5 o’clock hour and left for Gatwick airport. At the Pret a Manger there, they had this new coconut milk-quinoa oat porridge that was very decent. Hooray for all these new vegan options at Pret. Now if they stop feeling the need to put red pepper in every single veg sandwich like the US dairy industry sticks whey powder in every commercial product we will be even better friends. We flew Norwegian, and despite its semblance of civilized behavior, I spent the 3 hour flight fighting a turf war with a giant man over the armrest. I will NOT BE MOVED. I will NEVER SURRENDER.
At customs, we met and became best friends with literally the nicest customs agents in the entire world. They were curious about our trip but not in a customs-agent way, they were just like aw have fun. What a great start. I dare Russia to top that with their agents. Ha. We took various trains and trams into the city center, which took about an hour and change. It’s kind of daunting to figure out what the right train is because the language is super confusing, but as usual in European countries, everyone speaks great English. We headed over to the Eurohostel on the little peninsula hanging off to the east of the city, where we dropped our bags in our literal college dorm room. Seriously, I think the producers at this here Truman Show just borrowed the set from the Penn State dorms and used my concrete wall-tile floor-two tiny twin beds- room with the separate men’s and women’s group bathrooms down the hall for this set as well.
Hey the border control guy just came around to check our passports and our visas! They worked, yayyy! I’m obsessed with how my name is spelled in cyrillic on the visa. Well not Randi because it just looks like pahdi, but Jill is hilariously complicated. Fun with languages!
So after we dropped our stuff in college, we walked around the city, which like I said is super charming. Like Sweden, it’s on little lakes and marinas and it was really nice to see water, especially because this trip is going to be super landlocked (look at that map!).
At customs, we met and became best friends with literally the nicest customs agents in the entire world. They were curious about our trip but not in a customs-agent way, they were just like aw have fun. What a great start. I dare Russia to top that with their agents. Ha. We took various trains and trams into the city center, which took about an hour and change. It’s kind of daunting to figure out what the right train is because the language is super confusing, but as usual in European countries, everyone speaks great English. We headed over to the Eurohostel on the little peninsula hanging off to the east of the city, where we dropped our bags in our literal college dorm room. Seriously, I think the producers at this here Truman Show just borrowed the set from the Penn State dorms and used my concrete wall-tile floor-two tiny twin beds- room with the separate men’s and women’s group bathrooms down the hall for this set as well.
Hey the border control guy just came around to check our passports and our visas! They worked, yayyy! I’m obsessed with how my name is spelled in cyrillic on the visa. Well not Randi because it just looks like pahdi, but Jill is hilariously complicated. Fun with languages!
So after we dropped our stuff in college, we walked around the city, which like I said is super charming. Like Sweden, it’s on little lakes and marinas and it was really nice to see water, especially because this trip is going to be super landlocked (look at that map!).
We strolled along the waterfront and the main bits of the city, passing the giant white Helsinki Cathedral on the way. But we were strolling with a mission – find food! At the top of my list was a little vegan-friendly cafe named Well, really close to the main train station which means we went all the way out and then all the way back but we really needed to drop our bags before dealing with food because we have reallllly heavy bags. I need my toiletries! Well, well, well, Well did not disappoint because despite the limited selection, they had vegan pastries, sandwiches, and – what I was after – a salad! It was full of literally all my favorite foods – lettuce, red cabbage, radicchio, CHICKPEAS, QUINOA, broccoli, AND tofu! It was like I kept uncovering layers of greatness. It was really huge too and I couldn’t finish it. Yay for all my fave healthy foods in one. Except kale but I’ve come to terms with the fact that my smoothie on Thursday was the last kale I will probably have until October. It’s okay!
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After healthy food came literally the only thing I had on my to-do list for Helsinki – vegan milkshakes! Kitty’s Milkshake Bar was a little hard to find because it’s actually inside a food hall, but thank goodness they were still open despite a lot of the market being shuttered already. So Kitty’s is a pure American-themed milkshake bar (I guess because milkshakes are American! USA! Your best export!), with actual license plates from all 50 states decorating the walls. It’s so fun. When we said we were from the States, the guy working got nervous because we would be the most knowledgeable critics. It was funny. He was super friendly and fun and made us laugh a lot, though I was already full of nervous laughter because I was SO EXCITED FOR A MILKSHAKE! In London, ‘milkshake’ means flavored milk, like as thin as regular milk, and it is the saddest thing probably ever. Even at the places now advertising American-style milkshakes in London, they are still thin as water. SHAME! SHAME! But the shakes at KItty’s, holy cow! They were properly thick and required the spoon end of the straw for a while! And yes, this place was so legit that they even had the 711 slurpie style straws with the spoon at one end. They only have three flavors – peanut butter, caramel & popcorn, and apple cinnamon. I was tempted to get all three but that’s ludicrous and Husband had just had ice cream beforehand, because his entire food list was just finding salamiaki ice cream, which is that gross Finnish salty black licorice (blech!) made into ice cream. He liked it but dayum. He also likes durian. So obviously we got the PB, my favorite thing ever, and I was tempted by the caramel but the guy recommended the apple cinnamon. I’m glad we listened because it was delicious! Not as spectacular as the peanut butter but that’s only because the peanut butter one had peanut butter in it. The guy gave me a punch card which is the saddest thing I’ve ever had to leave behind. Amazing food stop even though they were big and I of course felt super sick all night because it was like eating a gallon of ice cream. WORTH IT.
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Then, we met up with Cousin Adam and chatted for a while as it got colder out, but not darker, because this is the north and the sun never really sets! Seriously, even in the middle of the night, there was still a bit of sun you could see! So weird. Definitely bring an eye mask. Anyway, we walked around the town more, and saw that there’s nothing really to do in Helsinki for young people except smoke and drink. SO MUCH CIGARETTE SMOKE. We also noticed that there’s zero vaping, so coming from London where vaping is (thankfully) catching on, the widespread use of just cigarettes was extra revolting. But there’s no clubbing or anything really, no nightlife, with things closing around 7pm a lot of the time, so yoots just hang in the parks and smoke and drink and wear black and be yoots.
There was one place open late, Iggy’s Bar and Food Joint, which was on HappyCow. They have thin crust pizzas and a few, according to HappyCow, are vegan. On the chalk menu at the joint, a few did indeed have green V’s next to them so we ordered a few to share. But it came out with cow cheese and the lady was not very sorry about it. She said they are vegan if you ask for it to be, which of course I should have done but when the info I read in advance just said ‘they *are* vegan, not they *can* be, I got complacent. Oh well I really didn’t have room for pizza in there with all the soy ice cream anyway so it worked out fine, just mad that I let my vigilance slip for a minute. NEVER AGAIN. NEVER SURRENDER.
There was one place open late, Iggy’s Bar and Food Joint, which was on HappyCow. They have thin crust pizzas and a few, according to HappyCow, are vegan. On the chalk menu at the joint, a few did indeed have green V’s next to them so we ordered a few to share. But it came out with cow cheese and the lady was not very sorry about it. She said they are vegan if you ask for it to be, which of course I should have done but when the info I read in advance just said ‘they *are* vegan, not they *can* be, I got complacent. Oh well I really didn’t have room for pizza in there with all the soy ice cream anyway so it worked out fine, just mad that I let my vigilance slip for a minute. NEVER AGAIN. NEVER SURRENDER.
By the waterfront, there were tons of farmers market type stalls, so we bought some fresh fruit for the train journey. Nota bene: do not buy strawberries when you don’t have a fridge and are not going to eat them until the next day. They do not taste good once they are squished in a bag and virtually cooked. But we got cherries too, which are hardier. OH that reminds me! At the milkshake bar, we were sitting at a little table drinking of cups of pure joy, when we heard the guy tell a woman at the counter that the raspberries were finished. Oh, she said, so I guess I will pick a different flavor. No no! the guy said, not finished, FINNISH! Ha I love language. But he wasn’t just saying hey these are local berries – there’s a much greater significance. Apparently, if berries are imported from outside of Nordic countries, they have to be COOKED to be served! So random! So because these were Finnish berries, he could mix in fresh ones. Fun facts! We’re already learning so much!
So, that’s all there really was to our half day in Helsinki! We got up this morning, tried to rezip our backpacks that somehow feel heavier and harder to zip despite not adding anything to them, and headed for the train station. We stopped again at Well Cafe so I could get another of their amaaaazing salads for the train journey, PLUS a vegan croissant and a vegan pastry! Considering how expensive Finland is, this place seems a little more reasonable. Like those milkshakes were 9 euros each! But this gigantic salad was 10, I think. So a lot (even for London) but not for Helsinki. Oh your Nordic countries and your super high prices! This Allegro train is pretty nice so far. I hope the longer train journeys we have planned are as nice! We will see! Now we await our arrival….. TO PETERSBURGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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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.
Mandalay, Ancient Cities, & the Scariest Train, Myanmar (Burma)
Leaving Bagan like the horsey
When our time in Bagan ended, it was pretty hard to leave the natural wonder of the region. However, Mandalay and the ancient cities in the Mandalay region were up next with their own wonders and amazing sights. I was also secretly most excited about Mandalay because Rudyard Kipling’s poem about it has the most perfect rhythm ever:
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!
U Bein Bridge
Upon landing in Mandalay (after, if I remember correctly, the scariest flight yet), we drove to our first destination, Amarapura. Once (actually, twice) the capital of Burma, Amarapura is most known for U Bein Bridge, the longest teak bridge in the world. Walking along U Bein Bridge is the thing to do. It’s a nice stroll, guaranteed warm and sunny, and buggy – make sure to use extra mosquito repellent.
A few boaters off of U Bein Bridge
The line for lunch at Mahagandayon Monastery
Amarapura, besides being the most fun name to say, is also home to a pretty happening monastery, Mahagandayon. Actually, I’m pretty sure all the monasteries in Burma can be called happening; it’s pretty common for young sons to be sent away to study, and they all seemed pretty crowded.
I’m (almost) on a boat
Next, we took a boat across the river to visit the ancient imperial capital of Inwa (or Ava). Inwa is a very lush, unkempt place, very much for travelers to visit and not so much for living. A few monasteries, pagodas, and other sights await.
WARNING: Due to the whole ‘for visiting/not for living’ setup and the whole rural, unkempt land thing, Inwa has no roads, no cars, and isn’t very walkable. The only way people get around is by horse cart. Upon landing on the Inwa riverbank and seeing what our guide was leading us to, I was vehement about absolutely not forcing a horse to cart me around. I tried to find a bike or something, anything else to use to get around. But after some effort, we learned that the choice was either to use the horses or to skip the visit. So, we went. Hard decisions regarding cultural clashes with veganism always come up when traveling, and I guess I was lucky that this was the worst one I faced in Burma. I still feel badly about it, but I’m not sure skipping Inwa would have been the right decision.
The guide didn’t speak English and didn’t understand what my problem was, so she thought I was scared of horses, and throughout the day kept holding my hand and stuff. It was weird.
WARNING: Due to the whole ‘for visiting/not for living’ setup and the whole rural, unkempt land thing, Inwa has no roads, no cars, and isn’t very walkable. The only way people get around is by horse cart. Upon landing on the Inwa riverbank and seeing what our guide was leading us to, I was vehement about absolutely not forcing a horse to cart me around. I tried to find a bike or something, anything else to use to get around. But after some effort, we learned that the choice was either to use the horses or to skip the visit. So, we went. Hard decisions regarding cultural clashes with veganism always come up when traveling, and I guess I was lucky that this was the worst one I faced in Burma. I still feel badly about it, but I’m not sure skipping Inwa would have been the right decision.
The guide didn’t speak English and didn’t understand what my problem was, so she thought I was scared of horses, and throughout the day kept holding my hand and stuff. It was weird.
Inwa’s rice paddies and pagodas
Maha Aung Mye Bon Zan Monastery. Much bigger in real life
Inwa was home to one of my absolute favorite buildings in Myanmar, the Maha Aung Mye Bon Zan Monastery, or Me Nu’s Brick Monastery. Huge and colored with age, the imposing building was really beautiful. And, you get to walk around and explore all the tiers (barefoot, of course. Everything is barefoot).
The last great sight in Inwa was the Bagaya Kyaung Teak Monastery, another teak wood wonder.
The last great sight in Inwa was the Bagaya Kyaung Teak Monastery, another teak wood wonder.
Bagaya Monastery This beautiful monastery had a little classroom inside! We spied on some future monks as they learned. So cute.
After Inwa, we visited Mingun, one of my favorite stops in this region. I like to think that I loved Mingun for its wondrous temples and monuments and not just because it’s where I ate my first custard apple, the most delicious thing in the world. |
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Mingun’s Unfinished Pagoda
No, Mingun’s sights really are astounding and almost as great as a perfect custard apple. The Mingun Pahtodawgyi, the unfinished pagoda, is freaking massive. It would have been the largest stupa in the world, but astrologers predicted that the king would die upon its finishing, so the work stopped. Astrology causes so many problems.
Hsinphyumae Pagoda
Near the enormous unfinished stupa is Hsinphyumae Pagoda. I love the facade of this one because it looks like waves in the ocean. It’s named after a princess who died in childbirth.
Mingun also has the world’s largest uncracked bell, a distinction I appreciated as a Philadelphian. Visitors can ring the Mingun bell by smacking it with a big piece of wood. It’s harder than it sounds, and when you do it you look ridiculous, hence no pictures.
Besides perfect custard apples, Mingun’s other culinary claim to fame is its spirulina beer on tap. As a vegan, I’m pretty hip to the spirulina, so I had to try this even though I despise beer. You know what? It tasted like kombucha!
The sign for spirulina beer After my spirulina hit, it was time to see the lovely Sagaing, known for its hill facing the Ayerwaddy River. The hill is literally covered with monasteries and pagodas.
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The only time you’ll catch me drinking beer |
Sagaing Hill from across the Ayerwaddy
One of these is not like the others
My favorite pagoda up on Sagaing Hill was the U Min Thonze Temple. It’s known as the Thirty Caves Pagoda because it has 30 Buddha statues with a little cave-like entrance in front of each Buddha.
This was not our boat, but ours was pretty similar
After seeing all of these wonderful ancient cities, we crossed the Ayerwaddy River to finally see Mandalay. I loved taking all these boats; it’s cooler on the water.
Women washing in the Ayerwaddy
Center of Mandalay
Welcoming sign
You might recall from the first post about Myanmar when I said something about the Tatmadaw crushing all who oppose the military government. It’s because of this frightening, enormous sign warning all to obey the Tatmadaw or, well, be crushed.
Thankfully, the rest of Mandalay was pretty welcoming, although not very comfortable. It’s a very dilapidated city, with makeshift sidewalks built by laying stone planks down over holes in the ground. I near sprained my ankles multiple times. So, in summary, tread carefully around Mandalay!
You’ll likely visit the Mandalay Palace, the royal residence of the last two kings of Burma. Most of the grounds were destroyed during World War II, so this is a replica.
Thankfully, the rest of Mandalay was pretty welcoming, although not very comfortable. It’s a very dilapidated city, with makeshift sidewalks built by laying stone planks down over holes in the ground. I near sprained my ankles multiple times. So, in summary, tread carefully around Mandalay!
You’ll likely visit the Mandalay Palace, the royal residence of the last two kings of Burma. Most of the grounds were destroyed during World War II, so this is a replica.
Mandalay Palace
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My favorite pagoda in Mandalay was Kuthodaw Pagoda, better known as The World’s Biggest Book. Separate little huts house single (huge, stone) pages of the book, and with more than 1000 pages, you probably won’t get to see all of it. Biggest book indeed! This is such a cool sight.
One row of many housing the book’s pages |
One page of the book |
Mandalay had great food. We found this insanely delicious Nepalese place called NVC, that had unlimited thali for about a dollar or something insane. (It’s probably what eventually made us sick.) Also, Mandalay had a truly vegetarian restaurant! The food at Marie Min restaurant was delicious, and more importantly in this country, the produce was washed with boiled water! I could have salads! We had a variety of curries and vegetable spread, and of course whatever raw produce we could get. If you go, order the eggplant dip. So good. I loved this place, especially the sign that hangs out front:
How amazing is this!
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A very famous pagoda in Mandalay is the Mahamuni Buddha Temple, home to a very important Buddha that pilgrims can touch and coat with pieces of gold leaf. NB: pilgrims are only men, obvs.
Rude |
Mahamuni Buddha |
After a few days in Mandalay, we embarked upon one of the scariest adventures of my life. My boyfriend loves epic train rides, so when he learned there was one in Burma, we had to go on it, no matter how insane the idea. This ride was famous because it crossed the Goke Hteit Viaduct, a treacherous pass.
That skinny little track across the cliffs of insanity is the pass we just had to cross! So scary, isn’t it? Here we go…
I KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
How petrifying is that view! Oh my goodness! You can bet that I had my seasick bands around my wrists and I was gorging on ginger chews during this! Obviously, we made it across, but man alive was it scary! And pretty cool. It was built in 1902 by the Pennsylvania and Maryland Steel Co., so that’s pretty neat! We met really nice Burmese people in our train carriage (which rivaled the Bosnian trains) who helped make the ride more pleasant despite the language barrier. That’s always the best part of traveling, meeting great locals. (And getting to the other side of this viaduct.)
The takin
The last place we visited in the Mandalay region, before flying to Inle Lake, was Pyin Oo Lwin, which used to be called Maymyo when it was a British hill station. Pyin Oo Lwin’s biggest draw is this huge fancy nature park, the Kandawgyi Botanical Gardens. We saw so many incredible plants and animals, including my first black swan, and this guy, the takin. I’m not really sure what kind of animal he is, but he’s cute! They kind of just roam around in the forests and we probably shouldn’t have been so close.
We also saw this peacock! How gorgeous is that! I had never before seen a peacock do its dance before. Love it!
Stay tuned for the last leg of my travels through Myanmar, to come next week.
We also saw this peacock! How gorgeous is that! I had never before seen a peacock do its dance before. Love it!
Stay tuned for the last leg of my travels through Myanmar, to come next week.
Last sunset over Mandalay
