Just Try Being a Vegan in Eastern Europe
Greetings from Prague! I'm going to offer you all a lovely (and quite biased, Elisa-ized view) of my trip thus far in Europe!
Airport:
So, we got to the airport in DC, and we were totally, ridiculously late (my fault because I had wanted to shower and didn't really have time to, but I did, anyway). When we got to the airport, my father, Carrier Of Passports, realized that he had left my mother's Uruguayan passport at home, and that he had accidentally grabbed mine. Arguing between the 'rents insued, and my mother said to me, 'I don't trust a lot of people, but I at least had faith in your father. Now I don't have faith in anyone.' Talk about melodrama. After yelling a whole bunch at him, she told him, 'Don't worry Edi. I'll make you regret this for the rest of your life.' Yikes! Anyway, we ran through security, through the whole airport, to the gate. We arrived there about 6 minutes before they closed the door. I think we've done worse.
(I should explain: my mother has an Italian passport, so she can travel into Europe. She just needs her Uruguay one to get back into the US.)
Frankfurt (Airport):
We arrived at the airport the next morning, having lost 6 hours of time. I only got about two hours of sleep on the plane, and I watched this really dumb Ashton Kutcher movie my mom convinced me to watch (she watched it again with me, and cried at the end both times). I was totally jetlagged, and we got to the place where they check your tickets before security, and my parents went by like a breeze. But the guy looked at my ticket for quite a while and then he looks at me and says, in a thick, German accent: 'Eliza. Fernandez. Arriaz. Eez like muzeek.' And he hands me back my ticket. My dad asked me what happened, and when he found he just shook his head and looked at me like I was crazy to think the guy had said *that*. Then we arrived at our connecting gate, which was going to Munich, and we randomly ran into my brother! My dad was yelling at the Lufthansa lady telling her that it was obviously not possible that his son could be at our gate, considering he was departing from AMSTERDAM, but, it turns out his flight had been cancelled. My brother tapped him on the shoulder, and, as my mother says, we were 'la familia unita.' At least I wouldn't be in the middle of my parents arguing, at this point.
Quote:
Me: I'm very thirsty.
Mami: Elisa, don't annoy me presently. Eat some yogurt, or something.
Me: It...doesn't really work that way...
Munich:
We finally arrived at Munich and had lunch (vegan pizza!) and some coffee there. We just walked around in this little old plaza, and it was cute, but a bit too many tourists for me, I think. Still, it was really nice to just kind of wander around. I love walking! It was even better, though, when we went a little bit out of the area and went to the old Olympics Building and the BMW building (they're basically right across from each other). We only saw the outside of the Olympics Building, but the BMW building, we went in there, and oh God! It's totally beautiful. Very classy, very expensive. James Bond kind of thing going on, you know. You can even watch a car being made in the factory, but we didn't have time for that. Then we drove and got to our hotel around 9 p.m., which was a bit far away. It was a little small town near a castle (I'll give the castle name later, but it means New Swan Rock, and that's what I"ll call it for now). We went to a 'typical German place' and I remembered how wonderfully wine calms me in the presence of my parents. Surprisingly, it's quite easy to make things vegan, because things aren't really pre-made much in Europe, so I was able to just say 'no cheese' to this awesome dish, and ta-da! Delish! We went to bed soon after that, and I complained a lot because my parents kept the TV on while I was trying to sleep.
New Swan Rock:
The next day we woke up at 7 a.m. and all showered and went to the New Swan Rock castle. The castle, apparently, was the architectural basis for the castle in Beauty & the Beast. My father said, happily, "You know, Beauty & the Beast was...always my favorite disney movie!" And mother said, dryly, "Hmm...I wonder why that is." My poor daddyo. Ah, well. Anyway, we went inside after a bit, and it was lovely! The king of Bavaria had based a bunch of rooms on Wagner opera and concert scenes! So beautiful! There was even a room with a bunch of secret doors shaped like a grotto. In fact, there were lots of secret doors. And the guy was obsessed with swans, so there were lots of Swan-related things there (totally reminded me of The Swan Princess, if you've seen it). He died very mysteriously: a government official told him he was unfit to rule, as he was crazy, and the next day he was found dead in another city where he had been taken by the government official, in the office of the psychiatrist who was supposed to examine him. He probably was crazy...but his aesthetic senses were so powerful!
Czech Repubic (ish):
The rest of the day, we spent driving to the Czech Republic. We stopped at one small town for dinner, and it had a fountain in the middle and looked very beautiful in sunset. My parents were quite disappointed with it, but I liked that there weren't so many tourists, and that a woman had leaned out her window with only a bra on to light her cigarette. My parents disapproved and said she was a whore (literally). Let her be a whore, I say. Also, my parents and brother think that gambling is an ultimate evil. I don't think prostitution or gambling are really that bad. It's okay for my parents to think that, but how can my brother already *think* things like that? Anyway, we arrived at Prague at like 11 p.m., and everyone's in the hotel room sleeping, and it' s...oh man...2 a.m. here. I don't see how I'm not exhausted. Well, actually, I am. But as I'm having problems with my charger, and don't know how much internet reception I'll have in the future, here's my trip so far! I'll post more when I can.
Ciao!
Elisa
Airport:
So, we got to the airport in DC, and we were totally, ridiculously late (my fault because I had wanted to shower and didn't really have time to, but I did, anyway). When we got to the airport, my father, Carrier Of Passports, realized that he had left my mother's Uruguayan passport at home, and that he had accidentally grabbed mine. Arguing between the 'rents insued, and my mother said to me, 'I don't trust a lot of people, but I at least had faith in your father. Now I don't have faith in anyone.' Talk about melodrama. After yelling a whole bunch at him, she told him, 'Don't worry Edi. I'll make you regret this for the rest of your life.' Yikes! Anyway, we ran through security, through the whole airport, to the gate. We arrived there about 6 minutes before they closed the door. I think we've done worse.
(I should explain: my mother has an Italian passport, so she can travel into Europe. She just needs her Uruguay one to get back into the US.)
Frankfurt (Airport):
We arrived at the airport the next morning, having lost 6 hours of time. I only got about two hours of sleep on the plane, and I watched this really dumb Ashton Kutcher movie my mom convinced me to watch (she watched it again with me, and cried at the end both times). I was totally jetlagged, and we got to the place where they check your tickets before security, and my parents went by like a breeze. But the guy looked at my ticket for quite a while and then he looks at me and says, in a thick, German accent: 'Eliza. Fernandez. Arriaz. Eez like muzeek.' And he hands me back my ticket. My dad asked me what happened, and when he found he just shook his head and looked at me like I was crazy to think the guy had said *that*. Then we arrived at our connecting gate, which was going to Munich, and we randomly ran into my brother! My dad was yelling at the Lufthansa lady telling her that it was obviously not possible that his son could be at our gate, considering he was departing from AMSTERDAM, but, it turns out his flight had been cancelled. My brother tapped him on the shoulder, and, as my mother says, we were 'la familia unita.' At least I wouldn't be in the middle of my parents arguing, at this point.
Quote:
Me: I'm very thirsty.
Mami: Elisa, don't annoy me presently. Eat some yogurt, or something.
Me: It...doesn't really work that way...
Munich:
We finally arrived at Munich and had lunch (vegan pizza!) and some coffee there. We just walked around in this little old plaza, and it was cute, but a bit too many tourists for me, I think. Still, it was really nice to just kind of wander around. I love walking! It was even better, though, when we went a little bit out of the area and went to the old Olympics Building and the BMW building (they're basically right across from each other). We only saw the outside of the Olympics Building, but the BMW building, we went in there, and oh God! It's totally beautiful. Very classy, very expensive. James Bond kind of thing going on, you know. You can even watch a car being made in the factory, but we didn't have time for that. Then we drove and got to our hotel around 9 p.m., which was a bit far away. It was a little small town near a castle (I'll give the castle name later, but it means New Swan Rock, and that's what I"ll call it for now). We went to a 'typical German place' and I remembered how wonderfully wine calms me in the presence of my parents. Surprisingly, it's quite easy to make things vegan, because things aren't really pre-made much in Europe, so I was able to just say 'no cheese' to this awesome dish, and ta-da! Delish! We went to bed soon after that, and I complained a lot because my parents kept the TV on while I was trying to sleep.
New Swan Rock:
The next day we woke up at 7 a.m. and all showered and went to the New Swan Rock castle. The castle, apparently, was the architectural basis for the castle in Beauty & the Beast. My father said, happily, "You know, Beauty & the Beast was...always my favorite disney movie!" And mother said, dryly, "Hmm...I wonder why that is." My poor daddyo. Ah, well. Anyway, we went inside after a bit, and it was lovely! The king of Bavaria had based a bunch of rooms on Wagner opera and concert scenes! So beautiful! There was even a room with a bunch of secret doors shaped like a grotto. In fact, there were lots of secret doors. And the guy was obsessed with swans, so there were lots of Swan-related things there (totally reminded me of The Swan Princess, if you've seen it). He died very mysteriously: a government official told him he was unfit to rule, as he was crazy, and the next day he was found dead in another city where he had been taken by the government official, in the office of the psychiatrist who was supposed to examine him. He probably was crazy...but his aesthetic senses were so powerful!
Czech Repubic (ish):
The rest of the day, we spent driving to the Czech Republic. We stopped at one small town for dinner, and it had a fountain in the middle and looked very beautiful in sunset. My parents were quite disappointed with it, but I liked that there weren't so many tourists, and that a woman had leaned out her window with only a bra on to light her cigarette. My parents disapproved and said she was a whore (literally). Let her be a whore, I say. Also, my parents and brother think that gambling is an ultimate evil. I don't think prostitution or gambling are really that bad. It's okay for my parents to think that, but how can my brother already *think* things like that? Anyway, we arrived at Prague at like 11 p.m., and everyone's in the hotel room sleeping, and it' s...oh man...2 a.m. here. I don't see how I'm not exhausted. Well, actually, I am. But as I'm having problems with my charger, and don't know how much internet reception I'll have in the future, here's my trip so far! I'll post more when I can.
Ciao!
Elisa