Zhangye Danxia, China: The "One Beautiful Place in West of China"by Randi / September 4, 2017
It’s unclear when exactly we should say we began our exploration of the ancient Silk Road, not one road so much as a cross-continental network of trade routes and passes from China, across most of central Asia, and possibly all the way to Rome. (Sea routes stretching from Indonesia to Africa were also part of it, but we didn’t do any watersports; it’s all desert from here on out.) Xi’an was considered a terminus of it, but today it’s such a modern busy city that it didn’t seem very ‘Silk Road-y’ to us when we were there; we were still in ‘China’ mindset and not ‘incredible desert history’ mindset. But there’s no question that once we landed in Dunhuang, our journey through the Silk Road had begun. Dunhuang was one of the most important historical sites of the Silk Road both then and now, and it has provided tons of insight into the dealings and relationships among people, religious groups, and states from ancient times. If you go to Dunhuang, you are unquestionably there to go back in time and learn about its role in the Silk Road.
So, like I said, the Silk Road was not a road, and not even just because of mountains! It was formed by local traders determining which routes they could travel without dying of thirst, pretty much, and mainly went from one oasis to another. It also included the least deadly mountain passes, though you had to be careful of the season (snow!). Also, contrary to the idea that individual traders ventured from China all the way to Europe, most evidence shows that traders stuck to their local routes, like a very extended game of telephone but for trading. Or I guess a more appropriate comparison would be to the track and field race where you pass the baton. At camp we called it the…I wanna say Fenchurch Street but that’s just because I miss my tube line. Um…steeple chase! That’s it! (Those are similar phrases, right.) Is that a thing people say or is it just passing the baton? Whatever. It was like that where you go just a bit of the way yourself and then pass your crap to an associate or new trader friend. So the romantic notion of traders with endless caravans crossing the desert with innumerable treasures to bring to western Europe is not very accurate.
But actually, the idea of the Telephone game works too, because these traders shared information of all sorts with each other that blended into new cultures, traversing the continent and beyond along with the silk, but also with all kinds of other goods, animals, cultural and religious ideas, and Yom Kippur breath. The most important item passed throughout the lands was not silk but paper – documents, books, and even scattered personal notes are what teach us the most about this history and how people traded and what spread successfully and how far it went. And while there are many famous Silk Road sites that have provided immense knowledge through excavations, we’ve learned the most about this spread of communication and ideas (and goods) from one place – Dunhuang, and its Library Cave.
Dunhuang is an oasis town in Gansu province, squeezed in between the Gobi Desert (yes we made our way allll the way back around) and the Taklamakan Desert (fuck it was SO DRY my eyes hurt in my head). An important early Silk Road city, it’s now known for its outstanding Mogao Caves, an extensive cave system that served as Buddhist temples and housed (and still house) incredible examples of religious Buddhist art – in fact, the largest collection of Buddhist art in the world (painted on the cave walls, mostly). Constructed for meditation spaces in the 4th century, the caves were not well preserved (and still aren’t very) so what there is to see is pretty miraculous. No pictures are allowed inside the tiny dark caves – great idea to try to preserve what’s there, although some caves were closed due to ‘excessive carbon dioxide’ (meaning they aren’t regulating the number of visitors well enough. Also, smoking is allowed. If you have a problem with air quality and too many people affecting the condition of the cave preservation, maybe don’t allow smoking in there FFS, CHINA).
In addition to the art, the Mogao caves gave the world its most important contribution to history with the Library Cave, a hidden room in the caves which was walled up to hide thousands and thousands of documents – in fact, over 50,000 documents, including over 15,000 books and over 1000 scrolls. Some scrolls date from as early as the 5th century and all dated from before the cave was sealed in the 11th century. The earliest complete printed book was found here, The Diamond Sutra, from 868. The documents are in at least 17 languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Uigur, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Sogdian, proving how far peoples and ideas travelled.
The walled-up cave was discovered in 1900 by a monk known as Daoist Wang, at least according to the book I’m reading (Z’s book calls him something a lot less fun). Daoist Wang was self-appointed as the caretaker of Dunhuang when it had long been falling into disrepair. One day he noticed something going on with the air in them there caves and knocked an inner wall down, and found a room positively crammed with piles of documents stretching 10 feet tall. Hoo boy, this was a big deal, and he knew it. He asked the Chinese government if they wanted to pay for him to have all the documents shipped – he knew how important these were to Chinese history – and the govvies were like nah we don’t have the money to pay for that. Big mistake. Big. Huge. An explorer named Aurel Stein soon heard about the discovery and made his way to Dunhuang to charm Wang into letting him buy some of the documents and take them out of China (to Britain and India). Stein gave Wang like a Benjamin, maybe two, and took TENS of thousands of documents. He is a controversial figure, for many reasons. One, he knew they were worth more, but like, so did Wang, and Wang could have charged more. Also what was Wang gonna do with that money he lived in caves. Two, people are mad at Whitey McSteinface for taking the documents away from their home (are you too good for your HOME?), but the Chinese government wasn’t interested at first so why not bring them to a place with better preservation methods and people and universities who actually want to study them? (NB, you’d think this string of me siding with colonialist kinds of thinking would mean I side with the British Museum on the Elgin Marbles controversy but I saw IN PERSON the whole f-ing modern advanced thing that Greece has since built for them so there’s no reason now! Shaaame!)
Aurel Stein was also the first person to describe in great detail everything he saw at the Dunhuang caves (see it’s historically necessary to describe everything you see and do in too much detail, for posterity!), and contributed most of what we know about how they were before the onslaught of other explorers, researchers, universities…and tourists. Today, foreigners can’t really book tickets. The website doesn’t have functional English, but also I think hotels and hostels and tour groups just do it for foreigners and there’s no discussion. But you do need to book tickets in advance, because they only let in 6000 tourists per day – and it REALLY should be less, considering the aforementioned CO2 problems harming various caves. We hired a guide and driver from VisitOurChina to get our tickets, pick us up and drop us off at our guesthouse, and provide a private tour of the caves. Well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, I guess. No, they are a bad company and I strongly urge you never to use them. The local guide they hired for us was great, but what they didn’t tell us (and I don’t think she realized we had paid (through the nose) for) was that private guides cannot lead anyone through the caves – you are put into large (LARGE) groups with other (AWFUL LOUD RUDE) tourists and led around by an official site guide. So we paid all that money for nothing. We were livid, and not just because the huge Italian tour group we were put with was full of rude awful people who snuck photos in the caves despite that being prohibited. I know, Italians betraying me, my own people.
I do not take that shit lightly and we got a partial refund of our money, but if we didn’t have to deal with the excruciatingly frustrating Chinese tendency to deny blame and never apologize and make things as hard as possible (and also, what contract law?!), I would have fought for all of it. YOU HEAR ME, SOPHY? YOU ARE A LYING LIAR WHO LIES AND YOU HAVE TAINTED THE NAME OF TOY GIRAFFES EVERYWHERE.
Despite my blood pressure being at red alert the whole visit, both at our being cheated and at my own people betraying me with insane rudeness, our visit to the Mogao Caves was pretty special. You start in a newly built visitor center and you watch two movies, one about the caves’ history and one about the visit. I mean at least I think that’s what they were about. It was dark and comfy and cool in there and I had a very nice nap.
After the movies, you get on a giant bus to the actual caves. We did not know about this. It’s a 15 minute bus ride away from the visitor center to the caves, down a freaking highway! WHY NOT BUILD YOUR NEW VISITOR CENTER A TINY BIT CLOSER TO THE ACTUAL THING WE ARE VISITING? FFS CHINA.
Then you find out your tour company is a bunch of lying liars and you fight but can’t do anything about it because the official site guides are the only ones with keys to the caves (they remain locked at all times except the few minutes you are in them) so you piss and moan like an impotent jerk and then you acquiesce and try to enjoy the damn thing. And it was indeed amazing. The paintings on the cave walls are of varying degrees of preservation, some barely visible, but some (a lot) are gorgeous and clearly visible still. It’s pretty awesome. It’s also very very hot (SANDWICHED BETWEEN TWO DESERTS I SAID) so bring water and a hat and whatever you have that might reflect the sun away from you. My hands have aged so much I can hear them saying “Muriel? Muriel hasn’t lived here for 50 yeeeeears…”
We spent probably 3 hours between both the sites of the cave complex. After we got back to our guesthouse, we wanted to go into the desert to see the enormous dunes and the famous oasis of Crescent Lake, about a 30 minute walk away. Unfortunately, my dry eye syndrome has been exacerbated, to say the least, in this climate, resulting in ocular migraines like I’ve never had before, so I had to take my contacts out and lay in the dark for a while while Z explored what he said (so meanly) was the most amazing place. He took good pictures but I’m so mad I had to miss this. Stupid dry climate.
SAND EVERYWHERE
Once I could stand the pain, I realized it was like 9pm and I was hungry, so I went into our little fake adobe village to find food. Oh so we stayed at a place called the Silk Road Yododo Inn, a hostelish guesthouse with one nice woman and a very rude man working, nice rooms, but the common spaces were just enormous sandboxes. Not joking, the space in the middle of the guestrooms was all sandbox. Complete with little plastic shovel. It was insane. The room seemed nice but we saw later that it was dirtier than it first appeared, with sand in the sheets (blech) (but of course; it was a sandbox) and dirty walls and quilts. Outside, a bar played super loud music until midnight. And when that music finally stopped, a neighbor down the hall seemed to be hammering into the wall. I think he was moving furniture because Z saw a man carrying a vanity table or something absolutely ridiculous even disregarding the time of night. We can never get away from ridiculous. The guesthouse was on the second floor of a sandy adobe village looking place. So weird but cute.
the ground outside was sandbox too
I thought I might have good luck at the Western Restaurant (full name) but no, they did not speak English or understand my phone asking for no meat (what do you mean no meat! Okay I bring you chicken). I got them to bring me a bowl of rice covered in bok choy, which is better than nothing. The next day, we went to a little food shack hole in the wall place and got delicious noodles and veggies. Shacks are always better, we are learning.
yummiest shack food
Overall, despite my eyes and my head and my eyes in my head and the lying liars who lied to us, our short visit to Dunhuang was nice – very informative and interesting. We are lucky to have gotten to see some of the amazing caves and their art from so long ago, even if most of documents are back home in the British Museum (where we are members, lol). The history here is incredible and it was exciting to begin the real Silk Road section of our journey. Even if it mostly means dry air and burnt skin.
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Vegan In Mexico City Part 2: Coyoacan! Frida! Nacho Libre!
What’s up party people! We’re back and ready to talk more about Mexico City! We have so much to talk about because as usual we packed an absurd amount of Activity into our short time there. (Okay other practiced travelers are probably saying ‘no you do a normal amount of Activity for a travel blogger since we need to see as much as possible when visiting a new place’ but you forget how much sleep I need.) As I said in Part 1 of the CDMX posts, we’re breaking up the info roughly by neighborhood to give it at least a chance at making organizational sense.
ok these might not be bears but you get it
In this post, we’re moving south to the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, where we find the famous blue house of Frida Kahlo, Casa Azul. I mean I guess it’s the famous house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera but he seemed like a bit of a wanker so I’m going to focus less on him. Just a few blocks away is the Leon Trotsky house, where the Soviet revolutionary/Marxist/politician/Bolshevik/ Communist Party leader/&c lived and died in exile but not before partying with the Kahlo fam bam. I almost used a photo of the Trotsky house as the banner picture for this post but thought that might be weird/get me on lists. Anyway, aside from those two house museums we’re gonna eat great food and then go to a spectacular spectacle that I shockingly loved: Lucha Libre, the crayballs Mexican wrestling extravaganza.
Let’s start with the Commies!
THE LEON TROTSKY MUSEUM-HOUSE
Since I’m American, let’s start with the commies. You know how into all things Russia we’ve been for the past few years, learning as much as we can about the people taking over America, &c (and their language! правда!) so we weren’t missing this. I recommend a visit – it’s pretty quick and fairly interesting. It costs 40 pesos and would not take you more than 40 minutes to visit, so it’s like a peso per minute, a ratio that bothers me much less for museums than it does for theatre, strangely.
Trotsky was kind of a big deal in the USSR in the early 1900s, which is pretty much the time of all the big Soviet leaders whose names you know, like Stalin. Trotsky did not like Stalin. I mean no one ‘liked’ Stalin but he did it to his face. I really want to give him the nickname ‘The Trots’ but he’ll probably haunt me for that so no. Okay, so Leon was big into Marxism as a teen, as all teens are (?) and helped form the South Russian Workers’ Union. Since that sounds kinda nice, unions are good, he was exiled to Siberia, while I on the other hand paid to go there which is hilarious. (It’s not bad.) An enterprising young Trotter escaped to England, changed his name to the one we know now, and met up with fellow Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, and they drank and argued in all the classic English pubs every night till closing about which of them would be commemorated in the future in every single Russian village and city with a giant and I mean GIANT bust of his head. (It was Lenin.) Mista Trotterrrr returned to Russia in 1905 for the Russian Revolution and was again exiled to Siberia and again escaped. This f-ing guy, am I right?
His radicalism got his azz thrown out of lots of otherwise nice places like Paris, Spain, NYC, and Switzerland (I mean but ‘neutrality’ favors the oppressors so fork you) (I know I know it is bothering me too that that list goes city, sovereign, city, sovereign but that’s how the source material I’m referencing does it ugh) and then he went back to Russia in time for the 1917 revolution. I mean he shows up for the important events, you gotta hand it to him. He was instrumental in the Bolshevik’s successful power grab, and he became Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs. He did lots of stuff, yada yada yada, learned English from Seinfeld, and seemed to be the successor to Lenin, but as The Death of Stalin taught us, once a leader gets sick all hell breaks out and the succession struggle falls into chaos. When Lenin died, Stalin emerged as leader, and since Trottingham East didn’t like him and in fact openly criticized his polices, Stalin propagandaed him, removed him from his posts, and then exiled him from the Communist Party and then the Soviet Union. After some time in Turkey and a few other Euro stops, Trottingham North was granted asylum in Mexico! Yay Mexico! He and his fam first lived at the Casa Azul with Frida! Did you know! Trotavarius had an affair with Frida, a fellow Communist (Alexander did you know), but like who didn’t (we will get there). I imagine he also ate some amazing food that must have been a welcome respite from cucumber-tomato salad (what I had all throughout the former USSR). After a few years and a few too many fights with Diego (I can imagine what about), the Trotskys moved a few blocks away to their own house, which is now the museum. Despite being probably as far away as possible, Stalin was still mad and prob jealous of the food so he ordered Trotsky’s assassination. The first one, using guns, was a failure, but the last one, with an ice axe, well, the details make it seem like also a failure (I wish I didn’t know the details) but he died the next day from his wounds.
So the museum! So fun! The entry building has lots of photographs from Trotsky’s life and info about his work. It was fun to practice reading Cyrillic again and to listen to all the Russian tour groups (I think when we were there it was just us and Russian tour groups). It’s not super informative but some of the photos are interesting. The real focus of the museum is his actual house and gardens. It has been kept just as it was when he lived there, which means it’s dark, due to bars and shutters on the windows. That also means some of the interior walls still have bullet holes from the failed attack. In the kitchen, his pots and pans are still out; in the bedrooms, shoes are still lined up; and in Leon’s study, his papers and glasses and books are still on his desk. Out in the lovely gardens is his tomb.
So, it’s not the most popular tourist attraction, but I definitely recommend a quick visit before the Casa Azul, especially since his relationship to the Kahlos can help you understand them more.
CASA AZUL: THE BLUE HOUSE OF FRIDA KAHLO
When you visit the Frida house, you buy tickets online in advance. It’s too busy and popular to risk otherwise. But even so, you’ll wait in an endless line snaking around the house, around the block, and several blocks away to enter. Yes, when we arrived in what we thought was good time for our ticketed slot, ticket holders were waiting in a queue for almost an hour. In the SUN, guys. It was rough. If it was for the theatre I would have missed most of the first act and demanded an exchange and better seats.
Is it worth it? I mean I’m not a Frida nut but it’s pretty interesting and, ya know, it’s the big f-ing thing to do. If you really don’t care, then by all means skip it; there’s no reason to set aside a whole afternoon for it. But if you have the time, it’s fairly interesting. You learn a lot about Frida, what she went through, what kind of person she really was. And the house is lovely.
Once you enter, they will try to shuffle you straight into the museum part of the house, where you look at Frida’s and Diego’s paintings with lots of tourists taking selfies with them even though, if I recall correctly, you aren’t allowed to take pictures. Don’t let them manhandle you though – there are no bathrooms until you finish the entire inside tour of the house, so find them first and then go back. It’s a MADHOUSE, wall-to-wall people, and you’ll get agita trying to read about all the works when people are blocking everything. There are some interesting works in these initial rooms, but the better stuff awaits when you see the rooms as they lived in them.
I especially liked the kitchen. I don’t think we were allowed to take pictures but we have this one, so.
Surprisingly, the super long video that’s playing on a deck out in the garden space was incredibly interesting. I usually zone out in museum videos, especially ones that are this long (it’s like a whole movie) but it was great. As we already learned, Frida had an affair with Trotsky, but did you also know she probs had one with…Georgia O’Keefe? Yah. More important than her affairs is the information about Frida’s chronic pain. She had polio as a small child and its effects changed her body forever, leaving her with one leg shorter and significantly weaker than the other, due to muscle atrophy. As a teenager, she would suffer even more after a streetcar accident, which left her with fractured ribs, spine, clavicle, pelvis, leg, a crushed foot, a dislocated shoulder, and an iron railing through her hip and pelvic floor, causing the infertility represented in many of her paintings. They didn’t think she would survive the accident, but she did, and was left with a lifetime of pain.
Her father encouraged her to start painting as she recovered, and that’s how she met Diego. If you’re more familiar with her art than I was, you’ve seen her pain and suffering, as well as her strength, in her works.
In fact, her famous clothing style was a direct result of that: her corsets were really back braces helping her stand up. The square tops of her Tehuanan ethnic heritage could fit over and hide the brace. Flowers in her hair, her famous braids, and other interesting adornment above the neck would lead people to look up instead of down at her broken, withered legs, which were also hidden often by big skirts.
She went through a lot, is what I’m saying. And I knew some of her famous work and some generalities about her life, but I never knew she was disabled. She was an artistic pioneer in large part because of her pain, and it’s worth noting how her disability is largely erased from the popular narrative (and of course the cinematic portrayals). Of course, she still had quite a life – people long thought of her as a victim to Diego’s infidelity, but girl could get it too, and did – but you understand a lot more about her when you know how she was constantly suffering.
Also, she and Diego were Communists. I think it fairly hilarious how much she would despise the capitalist pigs who make endless tee shirts and tote bags with her face on them and how bewildered she’d be by the people wearing them. She’d hate the gift shop on her property selling all kinds of shit with her face. I think she’d hate the Christmas ornaments most of all, or she’d find it all utterly hilarious.
Okay, that’s enough of the serious stuff for today, right? Let’s switch to Arizona trash-bag mode and talk about food and wrestling.
VEGAN FOOD
Coyoacan is a fantastic neighborhood for vegan food. We planned on eating lunch at Aura Vegana (at Malintzin 199), and we stick to most plans, but we were almost enticed away to several other vegan establishments we discovered just as we wandered!
First, we saw Pan Gabriel, a bakery billing itself as entirely vegan! According to HappyCow, it is all vegan, but heads up – inside, we found several products with egg, and several others that reminded me of that one doughnuttery that appeared at the UK Vegan Fest like 9 years ago and told everyone that their giant amazing doughnutty things were vegan even though they looked exactly like another company’s products that were not vegan and then they disappeared from the face of the earth, so, ya know, be wary.
They have a lot of gorgeous bread products, cakes, rolls, sweet empanadas, all kinds of bakery treats that made me absolutely lose my shit and overpurchase in a glutinous fit. However, the actual goodies were disappointing. Everything was very bready, even the things that weren’t supposed to be bread, like doughnuts and cookies and brownies and cakes and well I guess that’s everything. And nothing was sweet enough. Honestly I would skip unless you hear of improvements, or unless you like your treats to be shiny bread.
LITERALLY NEXT DOOR to Pan Gabriel is a restaurant called Temictli, which is billed as ‘Plant-Based’ on the awning but even though I despise the cowardliness of people using that phrase all the time now instead of just saying vegan, they get a pass because they sound amazing and the lady was so nice (also because it’s not in an English speaking country so they can do what they want with words). Temictli’s menu looked OFF THE CHIZZ:
This is not even all of it! We were so tempted to stay put and skip Aura Vegana, but unforch the lady explained that even though she let us in and gave us a menu to look at, they weren’t actually open yet. Oops. Next time Temictli, you sound AMAZ.
So that means we stuck to our plan of Aura Vegana, which was pretty good.
Aura Vegana is a small cafe on the ground floor, right at the entrance, of a larger building with a bar up top and other restaurants inside. They have English versions of their menus, and they have green juice. I was sold before we sat down.
I assume I ordered an ‘Emerald’ juice, which mixed my classic hits like celery, orange, coocoomba, kale, spinach, parsley, and lemon, but I have a slight memory of husbo saying something like ‘you always have stuff like that at home’ so there’s a chance I actually had the ‘Turquoise’, which is celery, parsley, grapefruit, prickly pear, and pineapple. Either way guys, they have various green juices and it’s cool.
Since apparently I share pictures of menus now, here’s one from Aura:
I don’t know why these are called ‘Morning Dishes’ and the next page of the menu – all food from other cultures, like ravioli, various hamburgers, curry, hummus, Vietnamese noodles? – was called ‘Afternoon Dishes’, but definitely stick to Morning because you’re here for Mexican food.
We decided to share an order of enchiladas and an order of chilaquiles. This was baby’s first chilaquiles, which means I didn’t realize what I was getting into: it’s like, fried tortillas with sauces and junk on it, and it’s pretty delicious but was pretty heavy for me. Also, for being called ‘tofu chilaquiles’, there wasn’t much tofu. In fact, there was one piece on top, so, you know. The enchiladas were great, a bit more my speed though it was all heavy, creamy, filling food. We chose the little hogweed and portobello version, although there was not enough little hogweed – I found one strip of greenery which I’m assuming was the little hogweed. Maybe that’s why they said little.
It was all delicious, if heavy, but I should have known that going in. The cashew cheese on top was excellent, as was all the sauciness. Mexican food is amazing.
Outside, we passed a local park that was literally covered in paleta and gelato shops. Paletas are the Mexican ice pops that are made from incredible fruit purees (if you are cool and want vegan ones), which we enjoyed throughout the Yucatan. We decided on watermelon and horchata sorbets from one of the parkside shops, and we liked it, and we loved it.
LUCHA LIBRE
Alright I’m here, she’s here, we all made it to the craziest thing we did in Mexico City, the thing you have to do if you visit CDMX even though it seems ridiculous and if you’re like me you are probably like ‘really?’ but if you are like me you will give it a shot and you’ll be glad you did because it’s HYSTERICAL and SO FORKING ENTERTAINING. On a Friday night after our exploration of Coyoacan and communism and everything, we took the metro to the Arena Mexico for some Mexican wrestling, straight out of the Jack Black movie Nacho Libre but probably not entirely like that but honestly I’ve never actually seen it so shh but it doesn’t matter because now I’ve seen the REAL THING, BABIEEEES!
Lucha Libre is Mexico’s professional wrestling, of the sort you’d see on TV where you know they were faking it but it doesn’t matter. The wrestlers wear masks and costumes and have specific characters to play. The wrestling is as boisterous and raucous as the crowd, and they favor dramatic flips and crashes and bams (I don’t know all the terms) over rule-following and it is RIDICULOUS and it is HILARIOUS and it is AWESOME. I cannot recommend it enough.
When we arrived at the Arena Mexico, there was a line longer than the Frida house line, but it moved. We didn’t have tickets, and neither did the many western tourists in line with us. We had fun talking about our travels and Nacho Libre with the other tourists (I’m really good at lying about movies), and we also bought some amazing swag. Ingeniously, the sidewalks along the side of the building/blocks and blocks where the line travels are filled with souvenir stands. We bought husbo’s brother a Lucha Libre mask, then a few minutes later at another stall we bought him a cape (he’s a fan), then a few minutes later we got t-shirts. It’s like a neighborhood version of the rack by the supermarket checkout.
When we got to the main entrance, we were told there were good 200 peso tickets left for great seats. If you want to spend less, I’m sure you could. The place is freaking enormous, and I don’t think it’s possible for it to sell out, so don’t worry about tickets being available. There were lots of high sections that remained empty.
The only downside to going to Lucha Libre is the venue security, worse than any I’ve dealt with yet. Not only did they take my water – and they didn’t have any free water in the venue, only bottles for sale, which is illegal??? – and my snacks, they took MY GUM. My gum that I can only get in the USA and needed for the plane home so I didn’t vom! Dammit security lady! So so weird.
Aside from that though, it was stellar. Such a spectacle, such a loud ridonk spectacle, and so much fun.
We saw a lineup of 5 matches, I think, including group fights, a random parade of women? I forget, it was bright and loud. But it was awesome. We had recently enjoyed season 2 of Glow so we were jonesing for some well choreographed wrestling that looked painful but wasn’t.
I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this. I definitely recommend it for a touristy but fun cultural experience that you kind of cannot miss. Once we were seated, it ran from about 8:30pm-11pm, about the length of a regular show we’d be at on a Friday night anyway, so it was a new super fun kind of evening entertainment for us.
Here’s my absolute favorite part: all the Mexican babies that are not only up so late but exposed to the UNBELIEVABLE NOISE of this place (bring earplugs if you’re sensitive…not that this baby had any…)
Alright, that’s it for this post! Which of the things that you are probably surprised to have found in this post did you enjoy the most, the Communism or the wrestling?
Oh oh one more thing, found in a shopping mall:
“The Essential Vegan Travel Guide” & Interview with the Author, The Vegan Word!
This is Caitlin! Caitlin says hi!
Hello everyone! Today we have a special post about the very helpful book “The Essential Vegan Travel Guide”, by Caitlin Galer-Unti of The Vegan Word. The book has been out for a little while but Caitlin and I are both very very important people so this is more of a reminder to buy the book rather than new news. Not only am I going to share my thoughts, which you love, but we have a super awesome interview with the super awesome author herself, CGU! Caitlin Galer University! I ask the tough, hard-hitting questions that we all wished Megyn Kelly had the balls to ask, so gird your loins. Just kidding I ask fun questions. Also buy it here!
A shot from CGU’s travels in Romania! Romania! She knows what she is doing. Photo cred: Caitlin Galer-Unti.
Before we get to the interview and find out about all the drama that went down during it (zero drama), let’s talk about this book. I haven’t been so happy reading a book that felt like it was written just for me since I read the backstage account of the “Wicked” run in San Francisco called Unnaturally Green. If you are vegan and if you ever traveled, you will connect with this book (the vegan travel one, not the Wicked one) in many ways. And if you are vegan and want to travel ever again, this book has some great tips to make it easier and better.
Right off the bat, the introduction will have fellow seasoned travelers quickly commiserating about the worst thing that happens when you’re traveling – finally getting to that restaurant you’ve been so excited to go to and finding it closed. Ew and oh no! Luckily, CGUniversity gives great advice for how to avoid such heartbreak. I appreciate how the book actually describes new-to-me research methods for finding vegan food in any location instead of just saying ‘use the internet, it’s all there.’ I know how important and how frustrating research can be for any purpose, so having new tips and tricks at my disposal is going to make such an important difference in this most important purpose of research, finding food.
Cake in Stockholm! I didn’t get any cake in Stockholm! What the hell! It’s because I didn’t have this book yet! Photo cred: Caitlin Galer-Unti
You’ll also be commiserating hard with her recap of a terrible American Airlines flight (is there any other kind) where not only did they forget her vegan meal, but they also LAUGHED at her. Guess what? American did the same thing to me! Well they didn’t laugh (CGU that is AWFUL) but they just didn’t believe me that cheese and eggs weren’t what vegan meant and tried to persuade me that I was the one mistaken. Moral, don’t fly American if you can help it. What a bunch of shittoboggans.
But most of the book is inspiring, and you will feel not only excited but ready to make your next trip a slam-dunk. Or you will be ready to slam-dunk it. How do basketball words work? I love loved how the book strongly suggests making friends with vegan and vegetarian locals. Honestly, I never do this and I really want to now. It’s clearly the best thing to do – these people will know where you can eat and where you can eat well, and they’ll know the best things to do in their town! Why haven’t I done this more? Why haven’t you? Another, very different, thing I never considered doing is making oatmeal in a coffee maker! Dude! That’s hilarious and also brill! I don’t even make coffee in a coffee maker (I don’t drink coffee) so I never really considered their usefulness to me. This is a game changer for places where your only other breakfast option is maybe a piece of bread with nothing on it, or, you know, if you love oatmeal, which everyone does.
CGU offers lots of tips like these and more, all while maintaining an optimistic tone. I cracked up several times at her blunt humor. For instance, when responding to the common refrain we all hear about how we will ‘insult the local culture’ if we don’t eat their traditional foods, Caitlin points out the very true, very persuasive fact that ‘even non-vegans might refuse to participate in [some local traditions] – like bullfighting, child marriage, or stoning gay people.’ Cracked. Up.
The only thing I wanted more of was how to deal with the non-food part of your travels, the activities in places where everything you can do seems non-vegan. I almost went on a trip like this, where the only things to do were like hunting and ice-fishing and bear-riding or something like that and decided not to go. But maybe I missed other things I could have done. But obviously that is not the intent of this book, which is a great help about the most important part of your travels – eating. Go buy it! Here’s a link! I get a kick-back!
But most of the book is inspiring, and you will feel not only excited but ready to make your next trip a slam-dunk. Or you will be ready to slam-dunk it. How do basketball words work? I love loved how the book strongly suggests making friends with vegan and vegetarian locals. Honestly, I never do this and I really want to now. It’s clearly the best thing to do – these people will know where you can eat and where you can eat well, and they’ll know the best things to do in their town! Why haven’t I done this more? Why haven’t you? Another, very different, thing I never considered doing is making oatmeal in a coffee maker! Dude! That’s hilarious and also brill! I don’t even make coffee in a coffee maker (I don’t drink coffee) so I never really considered their usefulness to me. This is a game changer for places where your only other breakfast option is maybe a piece of bread with nothing on it, or, you know, if you love oatmeal, which everyone does.
CGU offers lots of tips like these and more, all while maintaining an optimistic tone. I cracked up several times at her blunt humor. For instance, when responding to the common refrain we all hear about how we will ‘insult the local culture’ if we don’t eat their traditional foods, Caitlin points out the very true, very persuasive fact that ‘even non-vegans might refuse to participate in [some local traditions] – like bullfighting, child marriage, or stoning gay people.’ Cracked. Up.
The only thing I wanted more of was how to deal with the non-food part of your travels, the activities in places where everything you can do seems non-vegan. I almost went on a trip like this, where the only things to do were like hunting and ice-fishing and bear-riding or something like that and decided not to go. But maybe I missed other things I could have done. But obviously that is not the intent of this book, which is a great help about the most important part of your travels – eating. Go buy it! Here’s a link! I get a kick-back!
On to the interview!
TEN QUESTIONS FOR CAITLIN GALER-UNTI OF THE VEGAN WORD
Italics are my words, non-italics are CGU’s. I mean also try to look at what’s in the form of a question.
Italics are my words, non-italics are CGU’s. I mean also try to look at what’s in the form of a question.
1. First of all, I’m going to ask something that only I really will care about. In the book, you mentioned a boat hostel in Stockholm. About ten years ago, I stayed in a tugboat hostel in Stockholm! The Red Boat something? Did you stay here? Because that was awesome and I haven’t thought about it in ten years!!
CGU: That’s the hostel! Unfortunately I didn’t stay there though. It looks so cool though!
(thus ends the questions I asked for personal reasons.)
2. Everyone knows you are a baller of a vegan traveler, but did you travel a lot (or at all) before going vegan? If so, how do the experiences compare?
CGU: I’ve done more travelling since going vegan but I did travel quite a bit in my pre-vegan days. I’m a lifelong vegetarian so all my pre-vegan travel experiences were of vegetarian travel. I went all over the U.S. with my family as a child, mainly on road trips. I don’t know exactly but I think we visited between 40 and 45 states! I also went to Canada and 7 countries in Europe as a vegetarian, some of which I later visited as a vegan.
So, I’ve visited a few places as both a vegetarian and a vegan and can directly compare. And honestly, the main difference is I eat SO much better as a vegan traveller!
It does involve a bit more upfront planning – now instead of reading a guidebook, I find myself looking up vegetarian and vegan restaurants in advance of my trip and reading reviews. It means I never end up at just any old tourist trap – not that I ever set out to eat at tourist traps, but I definitely didn’t take very much care in choosing restaurants prior to going vegan, and would often just eat at the first place I saw. And sometimes the result was some pretty dissatisfying meals!
For example, I remember eating at several bistros in Paris in my pre-vegan days and being told the only vegetarian option they had was chips and a side salad. We actually ate pretty awful food the whole time we were in Paris. I’ve been back many times since then as a vegan and I’ve eaten so well! Although Paris has historically had a bad reputation for vegan food, it’s improved a lot in recent years and I’ve had some great food there, from vegan fondue at Gentle Gourmet to a burger at East Side and even an all-vegetarian bistro experience that was miles beyond my experience eating vegetarian at a non-vegetarian bistro.
Taken in Barcelona, where CGU now lives! Lucky! Photo cred: Caitlin Galer-Unti
3. The advice in this book will definitely help in avoiding such situations, but how do you cope in those rare times when everything goes wrong, you can’t find food, it’s pouring rain, you’re lost, you’re homesick, you’re actual sick — aka, the amalgamation of travel nightmares?
CGU: I had pretty much that in Beijing and I just allowed myself to feel really sorry for myself. I had a really bad flu, and coupled with the pollution had developed a hacking cough. It was raining and I couldn’t find a vegetarian restaurant which wasn’t where it said it would be on Happycow (this is why I suggest in the book that you always double check the address and even call in advance!), and I was nearly an hour’s walk from the nearest metro. I was hungry and angry and I just sat down on pavement and cried. I got all the frustration out with my tears and once I was done I actually felt a lot better, and was able to pick myself up and go back to the only vegetarian restaurant I’d been to previously and was able to locate easily. I got myself some takeaway and went back to my hostel to have an early night. Then I found a vegan on Meetup.com who arranged the vegan meetup in Beijing, sent her a message and she suggested a traditional tea I could pick up for my flu – within a couple of days I was feeling better!
4. You’ve recently moved to Barcelona! How cool is that? I went to Barcelona for a week in 2006 but haven’t been back since; I really can’t wait to return! Where did you live before and how did your traveling prowess help with the move?
CGU: Barcelona’s such a great city and it’s really improved for vegans in recent years! The first time I visited was in 2011 and there weren’t many vegan options but the vegan scene’s really exploded in the last few years and now a new veggie place seems to open every month.
I moved from the US to London in 2008 and lived there until moving to Barcelona last summer. While I was in London I had the chance to travel around Europe a lot so I got pretty used to finding vegan food all over.
5. How does Barcelona’s veganness nowadays compare with your hometown’s? What would be the first piece of advice to you give someone traveling to Barcelona?
CGU: Hahaha – my hometown is in the middle of the cornfields and fields of cows (in the summer when the wind blows the whole town smells of manure) in the Midwestern US so Barcelona is about a hundred times more vegan! Actually, I hear there’s a vegan restaurant in my hometown these days so it’s made some progress (just goes to show you veganism’s growing everywhere!!).
Barcelona’s really vegan-friendly today so my advice would be to start familiarising yourself with the vegan restaurants here! I’ve got a lost of the vegan dishes you absolutely must-eat in Barcelona and I’m actually working on a vegan guidebook to Barcelona right now (you can sign up for updates on the book plus get my list of Barcelona’s best-kept vegan secrets here). The vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Barcelona are pretty concentrated in the centre and the alternative neighbourhood of Gracia, so you’ll run into most of them just walking around, and if you’re seeing the main tourist sights you’ll never be too far from one! While there aren’t as many veggie places as in London I’d say they’re more concentrated here in Barcelona so you’re more likely to stumble across them. For example in my neighbourhood, Gracia, I live within 10 to 15 minutes’ walk of an all-vegan supermarket, vegan bakery, vegetarian bar, a vegan deli, plus a couple of vegetarian and vegan restaurants and countless small health food shops.
6. Part of being a good traveler is having respect for other lands and cultures, buuuuut, if you could change one aspect of a place you’ve been lately, what would it be?
CGU: Apart from making everyone vegan? 😉 I’d say I’d get rid of the ham here. Barcelona’s really good for vegetarian and vegan restaurants but I’d definitely get rid of all the jamon (Spanish ham) if I could. People eat way too much of it, they put it on absolutely everything, rendering otherwise vegan dishes non-vegan, and there are giant ham legs hanging from ceilings all over the city – so gross!
7. Do you prefer traveling alone, or does it depend on where you’re going?
CGU: It depends who I’m going with! Haha. I generally prefer travelling alone, because I feel like I see more. I get really distracted when I’m talking to someone and don’t really pay attention to my surroundings. Plus sometimes when you’re travelling with another person or a group, you end up in a little bubble and don’t interact with locals. However there are some places I haven’t been that I’ve heard are generally safer to visit with someone and I’ve saved those to travel to later….Now I just need to find someone I can travel with without wanting to kill them.
8. Do you collect souvenirs or something similarly tangible on your travels? When I was younger, I strongly eschewed souvenirs and claimed I was ‘collecting experiences’, but now I’ve started buying personal souvenirs to remember those experiences. My stance fully switched. Have you completely changed views on some aspect of your traveling?
CGU: I tend to spend most of my money on food so I never have any left over for souvenirs! However I do fairly frequently end up buying some item of clothing that I forgot at home, like a scarf or gloves, and I always enjoy looking at it later and remembering where I bought it.
I used to try to spend the absolute lowest amount of money on travel I could (like so many 20 year old backpackers!), which often meant taking a flight at some ridiculous hour of the morning. I always insisted that was absolutely fine and I’d never pay extra for a flight, but now I have completely changed my mind and I’d much rather pay extra to not have to get up in the middle of the night to catch a plane!
9. Name three people that you wish would buy your book, whether you know them or not. What do you hope they will gain from it?
CGU: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, because they are my vegan heroes and their book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World made me go vegan. I’m sure that Isa and Terry are vegan travel pros though so they probably don’t need it!
And then this is cheating a bit because it’s not a specific person but I’d say anyone who is vegan but struggles with travelling. I’ve heard so many stories of people eating non-vegan stuff on their travels (like this) and it makes me super sad! I usually end up reaching out to them and offering them a free copy of my book – which is probably bad for my bottom line but I think it’s way more important to make sure that people are informed about finding vegan food on the road. (this is a cheater answer I really just wanted to know if you knew any celebrities just kidding really nice answer 😛 )
10. If an anonymous benefactor wanted to bankroll one month of travel for you, where would you go and what would you do? Is this a place you’ve already been?
CGU: Ooh! If an anonymous benefactor’s reading this (hi! 😉 ) I have this dream of doing a vegan Lenten tour of Eastern Orthodox countries. In the Eastern Orthodox church, devout followers eliminate meat, dairy and eggs (though sometimes not fish) for Lent and for other religious festivals during the year. I found out last year during a trip to Romania that these countries become incredibly vegan-friendly during this time. Most restaurants offer vegan Lent menus, even in really unexpected places like fast food restaurants. I’ve heard in Georgia Dunkin Donuts does vegan Lent doughnuts! So one of these days I’m going to plan a road trip through Eastern Orthodox countries during Lent so I can report back to everyone on vegan Lent delicacies. I’m just waiting on that anonymous benefactor… 🙂
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That’s all folks! Go buy “The Essential Vegan Travel Guide” and have better vegan travels!
