tales-from-the-black-sea
type: Article
content: Walking to the port from Batumi is not super easy. It's not far - about 20 minutes from the cable car - but not a pedestrian friendly route. Also the layout of the roads is different from what I could see on maps.me. If you think you can follow the road around, you can for a while until the pavement literally crumbles into nothing. I traipsed through smashed up concrete on the side of the road for a while, as I thought that was the only way, but eventually it was just fenced off, just as the road starts sloping up and curving around to the left. It's a big and busy highway, so I didn't fancy walking along the side of the road. I contemplated squeezing past the fence, but then wondered if I'd fare better on the other side of the road, presuming of course I'd be able to cross back again when I reached the actual port. By this point there was a large bollard in the middle of the road, so I backed up to where the pavement was whole again, and there was no bollard, and crossed. It became apparently on this side that the road forked; one sort of side road, which initially I thought was more of a layby for trucks, ran alongside the main highway. There was clearly no pavement on the other side of the highway either, so I walked along the layby road a little way.. and a little further. I'm not sure why some instinct told me to keep going, even though it was really not clear where it led, because this turned out to be right way. The layby turned into a real road which went under the curving highway and.. led to the port! There wasn't any real footpath here either, but it was much much less busy than the other road, and vehicles that did pass were going a lot slower. Under the bridge/highway there was a carpark of sorts; pass straight across that and over the next road, and the ferry waiting area appears. It was visible due to the huddle of other soggy passengers under a small shelter. I saw two friendly looking people with bikes, and confirmed they are waiting for the ferry. …
name: Tales from the Black Sea (aka the ferry from Batumi to Odesa)
published: 2018-07-31T15:32:00+03:00
tag: vegan
tag: ukraine
tag: georgia
tag: travel
tag: ferry
tag: transit
tag: life
tag: food

peanut-milk
type: Note
content: I thought I'd tried all the plant milks by now but yesterday I discovered PEANUT MILK and yes it was everything I dreamed.
published: 2018-08-03T09:22:00+03:00
tag: food
tag: https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan

vegan-in-ukraine
type: Article
content: One evening I spent with a table full of locals, including a variety of dietary preferences, trying to think of a Ukrainian dish that was ordinarily vegan. The criteria being that you could walk into any Ukrainian restaurant and order it without modification. Nobody could come up with anything. The closest we got was borsch without meat - nobody was sure how common it would be, but seemed fairly confident you can request it without. And you need to make sure they leave it to you to add sour cream, and don't dollop it on for you. Someone said they were sure in some places varenyky (dumplings) must be vegan, but I understood the traditional recipe for the dough to involve both eggs and sour cream. Nonetheless, there were a handful of lovely vegan cafes in Odes and Lviv, so I did not starve to death. Vegano Hooligano (Odesa) There are two branches, though I only visited the one closest to the train station. The food is healthy Asian-inspired-fusion. A variety of soups, wraps, burgers, salad bowls and cakes, featuring lots of tofu. Also an extensive drinks and breakfast menu. I ate in a couple of times and took food to go on the train. There's an English menu, and one of the waiters was very friendly and happy to speak English. There's power and wifi, and plenty of seating, and they take card. Zelen (Odesa) A vegetarian cafe near the train station... which was not open during the hours on happycow. True (Odesa) A fancy feeling place, pescatarian, with everything well labelled and an emphasis on health. Lots of raw dishes, and many of those containing honey can be veganised. I took the waitress's recommendation and ate a very delicious mushroom steak with lentils. It was a pretty big portion. Also latte with hazelnut milk. Agrus (Lviv) A vegan (except for occasional honey) bakery 30 seconds from my hostel. I had breakfast here several times and afternoon snacks too. There is a lot of space, power and wifi, and they also sell various eco products like bags. On one occasio…
name: Vegan in Ukraine
published: 2018-08-07T09:30:00+03:00
tag: ukraine
tag: vegan
tag: food
tag: travel

aesthetic
type: Note
content: Why is the aesthetic of vape shops globally the same as vegan restaurants?
published: 2018-09-14T14:18:00+03:00
tag: life
tag: vegan

curonian-spit
type: Article
content: Remember that time I walked to the (Kaliningrad) Russian border from Poland? I wanted to do that again, from the Lithuanian side. This is a slightly longer ordeal, requiring better transportation than feet. Long story short, I didn't actually make it to the border, but I did see it from the top of a sand dune. I got pretty close though. Anyway, I'm sure that border is less exciting than the Polish one, because you can actually cross it (in a car, not on foot). The Curonian Spit is not connected to Klaipeda, but the ferry takes 5 minutes. They run every hour, from 0700 out, up to 2215 returning. It costs 1 EUR return for foot passengers, or passengers with a bike, and you can buy tickets from the machines at the port in Klaipeda old town. I rented a bike from my hostel for 24 hours for 5 EUR (we managed to lower the seat all the way so I could just about use it). Most bike rental places in town are 10-12 EUR. The spit is well furnished with cycle paths, in various states of decay, but mostly well-maintained. This route is pretty popular. The northern most coast is an enormous long sandy beach. Very glorious. It's backed by epic dunes, and you can only access it at designated points from cycle paths running down the middle, because tramping around on the dunes is a no-no. Large portions of the spit are also do-not-enter nature reserves. After I got off the ferry in Smiltyne, first I went right/east (not the direction of Kaliningrad) to check out the other end of the spit for completeness. There's a sea museum, a dolphinarium (ugh) and the start of the beautiful beach. I pushed my bike along the beach for a while, which wasn't so bad on the wet sand, until I could join one of the main cycle paths, peeking out between the dunes. It was easy sailing for a while; the path was in good repair, and either flat or any ups were well compensated with excellent downs. It weaves through the forest, with views of dunes on the right and pine trees on the left, or sometimes trees on…
name: Cycling the Curonian Spit
published: 2018-09-11T14:17:00+03:00
tag: vegan
tag: curonian+spit
tag: travel
tag: lithuania
tag: cycling

vegan-in-estonia
type: Article
content: Tallinn There are a small number of veg*n places in Tallinn, and many places are vegan friendly. Loads of regular coffee shops and cafes clearly mark vegan options on their menu; varying quality though, if the reviews on happycow are anything to go by. Also many homemade ice cream shops have vegan flavours. Despite staying there for a few weeks I didn't actually try them all (I was having a budgetarily-challenged month, for a start). Food in Tallinn is fairly cheap overall, but the vegan places are a bit pricier, and cafes and coffeeshops in the old town certainly are. I mostly cooked for myself. Groceries Biomarket seemed like a good candidate for vegan supplies, but actually there was very little specialist stuff there, and it was pretty expensive. They have bulk grains and organic food. But many of the same things can be found for much cheaper in regular supermarkets. Plant milks are common in all supermarkets, but not particularly cheap. Rimi is the cheapest for everything. You'd be hard pressed to find a litre for less than €2, but you might if you shop around for special offers. The food shop in the basement of Solaris has a good selection of not-meats and not-cheeses, and other vegan goodies. They're in their own dedicated display near the front of the store. Everything else here is more expensive than Rimi though. Vegan mayo in a squashy packet can be found in Solaris for 79c and Rimi for 65c. This is the cheapest vegan mayo I've ever seen. The sachet is not as big as a jar but one lasted me for 3 weeks. Tofu seems to be expensive everywhere. I never found it, but apparently if you look hard enough it's cheap in Rimi. Veg Machine Behind Balti Jaam train station, through the market and into the main hall on the left. It's a small stand with a few seats and healthy all-vegan junk food. The pulled sweet potato burger looks fantastic. But for €4 I had a cheesy tofu melt sandwich. Toormoor Also in Balti Jaam, right behind the fruit market in the entrance, this is…
name: Vegan in Estonia
published: 2018-09-05T22:00:00+03:00
tag: tartu
tag: helsinki
tag: travel
tag: food
tag: vegan
tag: estonia
tag: tallinn

wrong
type: Article
content: Holy Donut has this thing called a 'freak shake', one of which is vegan. It looks fantastic in the picture and description so finally I managed to give it a try. The only thing 'freak' about it though is how many things are wrong with it. Get it together people. Issue 1: They were out of coconut cream. No dairy cream is not okay. So okay, I go without. I resent that it's still more expensive than the non-vegan ones though. Issue 2: The chocolate crumbs were glued to the inside of the glass, with chocolate. How am I supposed to eat this? I object to such delicious chocolatey goodness being used solely for decoration. I chipped them off with my spoon and made a mess everywhere. Issue 3: Chocolate may look good swirled around the outside of the glass, but it set rock solid in the cold soy milk. I made a lot of noise and not much progress chipping away at it with my spoon. I. Want. To. Eat. The. Chocolate. Issue 4: The menu advertises 'lots of bananas'. There was only half a banana involved in the whole affair. How can I count this as a portion of fruit now? I spent a long time eating this milkshake and eventually got most of the chocolate out. It was a loud and messy process, and people definitely looked at me funny. In conclusion: I do not recommend the Holy Donut 'freak shake'. Also it was €7 which is EXCESSIVE. I had such high hopes.
name: Everything wrong with this Holy Donut milkshake
published: 2018-09-24T20:20:00+03:00
tag: holy+donut
tag: vegan
tag: food

week-in-review
type: Article
content: Started NaNoWriMo a month early. Wandered around Vilnius some more and went on a walking tour. Met a local old lady named Dalia. Cafe worked with treora. Bussed to Riga, Latvia. Holed up and thought about tooling around the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard for a few days. Claire came for the weekend and we comprehensively ate our way around Riga's vegan food scene, went to Jurmala, and did general touristing. Decided at the last minute to radically change my plans for next week...
name: Week in review: 1 - 7 October
published: 2018-10-07T23:59:59+03:00
tag: vegan
tag: latvia
tag: week+in+review
tag: travel
tag: lithuania
tag: food

week-in-review-4
type: Article
content: Various wandering, touristing, and eating around Riga. Explored the National Library of Latvia. Hung out with some local Semantic Web nerds :) Bought amazing unfamiliar mushrooms from the market and cooked and ate them. Went up the Riga TV Tower. Behind on nanowrimo but passed 40,000 words and still having fun. Messed around with CoVE.
name: Week in review: 22 - 28 October
published: 2018-10-28T23:01:00+02:00
tag: tourism
tag: travel
tag: week+in+review
tag: vegan
tag: food
tag: nanowrimo

best
type: Note
content: I found a place that serves peanut and jalapeno hummus for breakfast. This life is best life.
published: 2018-11-21T08:55:00+01:00
tag: vegan
tag: food
tag: travel

sarajevo
type: Note
content: Cold, but would have been a beautiful day for a walk by the river in Sarajevo today. BUT THE SMOG. I walked an hour by the river anyway, to go to the new vegan cafe. It was closed. *splutters and dies*
published: 2018-11-27T17:44:00+01:00
tag: life
tag: travel
tag: vegan
tag: sarajevo

week-in-review
type: Article
content: Arrived in Sarajevo. Bounced between friends, the OCCRP office, and my favourite restaurants for a few days. Did some refactoring to improve i18n for various CoVE libraries. Soft launched a redesign of my homepage. Ate at Karuzo twice. Smog reached deadly levels. Finally made it to the new vegan place in Sarajevo. Took a bus to Belgrade; this took longer than expected.
name: Week in review: 26 Nov - 2 Dec
published: 2018-12-02T23:59:59+01:00
tag: travel
tag: week+in+review
tag: vegan
tag: sarajevo
tag: sloph
tag: hacking

week-in-review-4
type: Article
content: Walked to Anaxos around the coast and back. Cafe worked in Petra, on scrapers and infrastructure for OCDS data. Gazed at the ocean. Found an amazing Dutch lady who gave me the best haircut ever and dyed the long parts dusty purple. Made a minimal PHP image resizing proxy and started piping the image-heavy parts of my website through that. Added some new features to sloph and switched over to the new version for my homepage. Massively fixed up my photo slideshow JS so it should be less buggy and easier to browse my photos with keyboard shortcuts now. Finished Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (it's really good). Went for a day out in Kalloni and Agiasos and ate secretly vegan Greek food.
name: Week in review: 17 - 23 December
published: 2018-12-23T23:59:59+02:00
tag: sloph
tag: hacking
tag: food
tag: vegan
tag: week+in+review
tag: travel
tag: greece
tag: ocds
tag: hair

yeast
type: Note
content: Rarely do I see a tweet so relevant to my interests. In my professional opinion, the Tesco Yeast Extract is the *perfect* middle ground between Vegemite and Marmite, I was very impressed. And it's cheaper. Vegemite is better than Marmite.
in reply to: https://mobile.twitter.com/karenblakeman/status/1069914714275221504
published: 2018-12-04T12:41:00+01:00
tag: vegan
tag: food
tag: vegemite
tag: marmite

ferry
type: Note
content: Bought dinner and breakfast on this ferry. Living the INDULGENT life. (by which I mean, I didn't bring enough food and paid a lot of money for some slightly aged fruit this morning.. but still, the coffee is good)
published: 2019-02-25T09:15:00+01:00
tag: travel
tag: vegan
tag: food
tag: ferry

harare
type: Article
content: My travel plans and no-fly rule took an unexpected turn this month when I decided to visit Elizabeth in Zimbabwe. Having spent the last two years begging friends and family to take advantage of my various temporary residences in Europe, I was sympathetic to her plight of struggling to persuade people to visit in Southern Africa. I try to put into the world the energy I'd like out, so I tracked down return flights from Vienna for less than $500 with Ethiopian Airlines. I also really wanted to hug Elizabeth. Life In Zimbabwe, it is sunny every day. I was there at the start of winter. The sky was consistently brilliant blue, and the temperature was mostly in the late 20s Celsius. The climate is basically vacation-perfect. Never raining does not bode well for the crops though, and even though the temperature was good on paper the sun felt hotter and closer and more vicious than I've ever felt it anywhere before. Harare is a super green city, with lots of trees, bushes and maize or millet fields filling the wide open spaces between roads and blocks of buildings. Often the maize was looking dead and dried up, while decorative plants in public spaces or peoples' gardens are alive and well. Roads are concrete or dirt, scattered with enormous potholes in both cases. I was frequently a passenger in cars that needed to steer all the way around a hole rather than dipping into it or going over. The CBD is fairly built up, with some tall office buildings and malls, although I only passed through in the car a couple of times. Most of my time was spent taxiing between little pockets of reasonably well maintained commercial areas in the various suburbs. The self-enclosed bubbles of shops and cafes, supermarkets and cinemas, which depend on cars to travel between reminded me a lot of the US. It seemed like the other form restaurants and bars took were as stand alone properties in what felt like residential buildings in the more upscale residential areas. Many have lots of outside sea…
name: A couple of weeks in Harare, Zimbabwe
published: 2019-05-31T21:59:00+02:00
tag: life
tag: vegan
tag: zimbabwe
tag: africa
tag: travel
tag: harare

vegan
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items: curonian-spit
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