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. It was about 8pm by the time I got there, having been told to go for boarding at 2130. The couple, W and A, are from Ukraine and had been cycling around the Georgian coast. We chatted about travel and Georgian politics before eventually boarding well after 2130. After fleeting passport and ticket checks, before finding the way to the ferry itself, I met another young couple with backpacks, in good humour despite the weather and the wait; P from Germany and R from Mexico. Day 1, after boarding In the line to pick up our room keys at the ferry reception, I met yet another couple; O1 who carries a UK passport but doesn't sound British and handwaves "long story" when asked, and O2 from Belarus. O1 found many things to complain about. Upon collection of our keys, our passports gained a green sticker with a number on it, and further information was scribbled onto our tickets - "first shift" (for meals) and an assigned table number (I was on table 18, it turned out, with O1, O2, P, R, and a family of three). Amongst the other passengers, all of whom seem to be Russian-speaking (except for three grey-haired queue-jumping German biker-types) are a few families with young kids. The rest are either lads on a booze cruise, or the drivers of the various transport vehicles on board. I'm in room 8020, which has two beds in bunk formation, a table with a chair, a wardrobe, three power outlets, a servicable bathroom and a view of the ocean. I waited with baited breath to see if my other bunk would be filled, and to my relief I remain alone. It was always unclear from the website whether I was booking a bed or a room. Even now, I don't know; it does say it's 'shared'. By the time I got to make a reservation, the 4 and 6 berth shared cabins were long gone. I walked on the deck and took some pictures of Batumi after sunset, with all it's silly lights. We didn't leave and didn't leave, and I stayed up late writing blog posts and waiting to sleep after we left. I gave up, and slept anyway. Day 2, after breakfast I woke at 6 and looked out of the window to see we were still in the Port of Batumi. I woke again at 7, just before an announcement came through a little speaker right next to my head announcing it's time for passport control on the deck below. Mercifully an English announcement followed the Russian. I met O1 and O2 in the line, and we waited for some time. Queuing was not particularly orderly, constrained only perhaps by the narrowness of the corridors. Eventually my passport was stamped, and kept. I returned to my room until two hours later, on Ukrainian time, breakfast was announced through the speaker - "don't be late." Breakfast was the most distressing pink sausage, a plasticky looking omelet, and a single slice of tomato and cucumber. The salad was gone before my butt hit the chair, and I tried to chew on some white bread, but it was quite quite terrible. No coffee, only tea and lemon. O1 was particularly upset about the coffee dearth, and I promised to bring the remains of my Turkish grinds the next morning, and gave him my omelet. Nobody wanted my terrible sausage. Back in my room, I ate Georgian bread and adjika. We finally started moving after 1030. I have no idea if this was the expected schedule, and passengers are normally tricked into boarding the night before departure, or if we are running late. Guess I'll find out. I kind of hope we're late. I went out on deck to take pictures as we passed Batumi seaside. I heard the kids in the room next door violently throwing up. I slept, and read, and thought about writing. Day 2, after lunch I was even a little hungry by lunchtime, but as soon as I saw three glistening parts of a bird with bones protruding on top of my heap of rice and smattering of presumably sweet and sour vegetable goop, my appetite deserted me. P the German offered me his salad, which were thankfully in separate bowls, so I ate two paltry offerings of lettuce, pepper and cucumber. I picked at the edge of my rice but the disembodied legs really weren't doing it for me. I thought I'd be able to eat around it; after all, meat on other peoples' plates at the same table doesn't usually put me off food unless it's particularly grotesque. But to get at the rice I had to get closer to the body parts than I could stomach. The kitchen is staffed by tall, sultry Russian speaking skinheads, but there is one lady who was helping to clear dishes more on my eye level. On the way out of the dining room I managed to catch her, and pleaded on behalf of myself and O1 - who is vegetarian - for a plate without meat at the next meal. She asked if eggs are okay, so I elaborated.. yes for O, not for me. She relayed this message to one of the tall dudes, and everything seems to be okay. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I'm going to eat my Uncle Feng's Chinese noodle leftovers. Day 2, after dinner Rumour has it that we'll arrive late on Monday, around midnight. The 'guy in the bar' said so, via O2. Dinner was successfully meat free for O1 and I; potatoes and pickled vegetables. It was plenty. The side salad had a liberal sprinkling of grated cheese this time so I ignored it. There were chocolate marshmallow things too. P seemed to really enjoy his, so I gracefully donated mine to the cause of the hungry German. I watched the last 20 minutes of Sully, all of After the Ball - both movies I'd caught snippets of on buses this month. I photographed every page of my full notebook so I can trash it, and backed up my laptop onto my harddrive. I spent some time reading Blindsight on the 9th deck in the sun. I might return there before sunset. Day 3, after breakfast I took coffee to breakfast, but O1 didn't come down. I told O2 that if he wants to knock on my door for extra food, I have way too much. Which I do. My meat-free egg-free breakfast this morning was of course a bowl of cottage cheese. But there was optional oatmeal with didn't seem to be milky, so I ate that instead, and it was more than enough. I really need to eat more of my own supplies though.. I have a slight encroaching headache, so I'm going to go back to sleep a bit.. I watched Wonder Woman, which turns out to be all about Chris Pine, and A Wrinkle in Time which is also all about Chris Pine (I did not know Chris Pine was in either of these), read Blindsight, and napped. Day 3, after lunch Apparently the ferry stopped for two to three hours earlier, to do tests because the weather is good. Now we're due to arrive at 8 or 9am tomorrow. Updates courtesy of P, who asked at reception. Not sure what I'll do. Maybe go to Orpheus Hostel anyway, where I am booked to stay tonight, and drop my bag and take a wander around Odesa. I could take a night train straight to Lviv and arrive on Wednesday. Maybe that's better, work-wise. And general timing. Then I can leave Lviv at the weekend and have some time in Tartu before Tallinn. Or I could spend one night in Odesa and go to Lviv on Wednesday. I guess it just depends on the bus or train options. It'll be nice if I can get a train straight to Lviv.. and I suppose a two hour change in Kyiv isn't so bad. But if I'm going to Kyiv, I should spend a day there too perhaps? I'll think about this more when I have internet. Lunch was a giant pile of cold spaghetti, with orange mush of unknown origins. Everyone else had chicken on a stick. There was soup, as usual, and two bowls of a meat-free edition on the table for O1 and I. It had mushrooms in, and was pretty good. All I needed was soup, but I ate spaghetti anyway.. Feeling bloated now. Also melon. We were summoned to reception to fill out customs declarations. The forms were in Turkish.. obviously.. so every single passenger needed help filling them out, which wasn't the most organised affair. One of the questions I was told which box to tick, but the guy couldn't tell me in English what the question was. OH WELL. JUST SIGNING THINGS I CAN'T READ. NO BIG DEAL. Think I'm gonna take Blindsight up on deck while everyone is fucking around in reception. Day 3, after dinner I finished Blindsight, and tinkered with sloph and read through the parts of Quest for Brothers I've already written and maybe one day soon I'll write some more. Oh, and I learned most of the Russian alphabelt, so I can sort of read signs now. Dinner: potatoes! And pickles! The salad had solid chunks of something feta-like in; I picked mine out and traded for O1's olives. There was chocolate cake (and fish), for those who wanted it. Day 4, arrival Announcements only in Russian this morning! Great fun. Especially the important ones, like the 7am "pack your stuff immediately and go to reception to change your room key for your passport." Fantastic. Good job I bumped into O2 at just the right time so she could tell me what the instructions were. No breakfast today. Instead, waiting in non-lines for many hours. First to retrieve passport and hand over room key. I just dumped my backpack in a corner in reception, it didn't seem to be going anywhere. A line was forming for passport control / customs, but we were definitely still in the process of mooring, so I figured border agents aren't coming on board any time soon and went to wander around the deck. I was right. I joined the line when people in uniform eventually appeared. Swathes of people skipped the line, for whatever reason, and we waited at least an hour to get our passport stamped. I was asked "why are you going to Odesa?" Good question mate.. cos that's where the ferry stops? I mumbled something he probably didn't understand, and that was enough. He also wanted an address.. so I showed him the address of the hostel I had booked for the night I'd just missed, where I wouldn't end up going.. which was also fine. After passport control, it took a while for them to actually let us off the ferry. When they did, we were met by more dudes who wanted to see our passports, and ask us what we had in our bags. They were happy for P to speak for both R and I as clearly he must own the womenz who were trailing behind him, and then pointed us at a minibus. We got on that and.. waited some more. 20 minutes maybe. Eventually all foot passengers made it, and it drove us.. 30 seconds around the corner, to the customs office. We definitely could have walked. There we - you guessed it - waited some more. The next level of the process was to pass our bags through a scanner of some kind, and then we were free. Only.. we were in a carpark. By a port. Freedom sucks. We (O1, O2, P, R and I) bumped back into A and W, and between the Russian speakers they extracted the location of a bus stop from someone, and A and W guided us. A bunch of other random people followed us too. It was quite a trek along some bumpy roads, until we reached a main road that busses were clearly passing by on. W took off on his bike to find the actual bus stop, and returned a while later having found a spot where "people are waiting but the bus didn't stop." Well, that was the best we had. A and W cycled away, and the rest of us trekked to maybe-the-bus-stop. Eventually the number 25 approached and we waved it down. It was full, but somehow there was still space for five people. Our backpacks went in the boot, and we crammed in standing sardine style. It was a marshrutka, so it was already a tiny cramped minibus type thing. It cost 22UAH each for person + baggage to Odesa train station. I think it took at 30 minutes, but it felt like eternity of balancing, swaying, and smooshing into other sweaty people. I paid the bus fare for P and R, cos they didn't have any local currency yet. No biggie, that's like 0.60EUR each. All photos from the voyage. Day 4, Odesa at last! We milled around in the street for a while, and eventually got ourselves together. O1 and O2 went to find a cab to their lodgings, which turned out to be very far away, and I followed P and R to their hostel, which was a 20 minute walk away, and was closer than the one I'd booked for the night before. Hostel Komuna was absolutely invisible from the street. With the help of an old woman on a balcony and another guest attempting to get in (who was on the phone to someone in the hostel, I think) we made it. For reference, it's at number 41 where there's a small alleyway. There are absolutely no signs, in any language. There's a door on the right of the alley, with a keycode. The other guest got the code (417 all at the same time) on the phone, and we followed him up several flights of stairs, to another unlabelled door, perhaps on the top floor. We buzzed and were let in. It felt like an apartment, and a bit of a dingy one at that. P and R had a double room, and I had a bed in the dorm. It felt very much like there are many long term residents. It's not super clean, and certainly not new, and there's no air conditioning. But it'll do for a night. The people who welcomed us are friendly. Every time I checked in the last couple of weeks, there were absolutely no available trains from Odesa to Lviv. But the Ukrainian woman I met in the Batumi hostel had said there are sometimes last minute tickets available, so I looked again.. and sure enough, an almost empty train was available tomorrow morning. It's 11 hours :O but there are no night trains, so it'll have to do. I spent an hour in the dorm calculating my onward travel plans - a few days in Lviv, then Tartu, before I reach Tallinn - and I think I'm all set. I ate some delicious healthy stuff at Vegano Hooligano, a lovely place conveniently around the corner from the hostel, and now I'm going to wander around the city.. (Photos from Odesa.)
Tales from the Black Sea (aka the ferry from Batumi to Odesa)
I thought I'd tried all the plant milks by now but yesterday I discovered PEANUT MILK and yes it was everything I dreamed.
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 occasion I also took a pie to go for lunch later. A welcoming atmosphere, and the food is very good quality. Omnomnom (Lviv) All vegan with a nice vibe in the evening, and extensive menu. I regret that I only went once. I ate a burger; it was good, but I should have ordered fries too. The burger had pickles including pickled ginger which was fantastic; and an omnivore at the table revealed he hadn't realised the cheese is vegan. The hotdogs look amazing. I also tried peanut milk for the first time here! In a flat white. Great. Pear tart with caramel sauce was a delicious dessert. Dogs Like Ducks (Lviv) A small hotdog place with power and wifi but fairly minimal seating. A very friendly atmosphere. Also great hotdogs! They're quite small; I ate one which included beans as a topping. Good for more of a snack than a full meal I think, but only 55 UAH (about 1.50EUR) each. They also have some healthy raw cakes, homemade lemonade and milkshakes, and a few vegan groceries for sale. Green (Lviv) A fairly large restaurant with more of an upscale vibe and no wifi. They have a really varied menu, all vegetarian with vegan labelled. Fortunately I went with a large group so I got to sample several things. For myself I chose the most unusual dish on the menu; a foamy sponge ball with cashew cheese and vegetables in the center, with salty bubbly not-caviar on top. They have interesting fruit cocktails, which can be requested without honey or sugar, as well as some fantastic raw desserts. They have a large range of groceries to buy in the entrance as well. Little Green (Lviv) Owned by the same people as Green, but with a completely different menu and vibe. Still no wifi though. Thai noodles and soup are good options, and they have several pitas with seitan and tofu. Marusia (Lviv) This is cheap fast food, Ukrainian style. Lots of kinds of dumplings, including a hummus filled one which is ostensibly vegan. Not quite traditional, but at least I got to try varenyky. Pretty good, well seasoned with paprika and very filling. Other stuff Lviv and Odesa are both absolutely bursting with cute coffee shops, stands, and windows. None of them have plant milk on the menu, but most of them carry soya, almond and even hazelnut if you ask for it. Probably best to learn the Ukrainian (in Lviv) and Russian (in Odesa) words for these to be on the safe side. Ukraine is pretty damn good at bread, so dropping into a bakery for some interesting rye or fruity loaf can be a good snack option. Many bakeries also offer coffee and wifi. I tried kвас (kvass), a traditional drink made from fermented rye bread (non-alcoholic). It's sweetened to varying degrees with fruit or sugar. I had some handy locals in Lviv to directy me to a place where it wouldn't be too sweet. Apparently we don't trust the old ladies selling it from sketchy barrels on the side of Castle Hill. It tastes like across between coca cola and beer.. but like in a good way. In any case it was very refreshing on a hot day. What else did I do in Ukraine?
Why is the aesthetic of vape shops globally the same as vegan restaurants?
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 both sides. It took me two hours from joining the path to get to Judokrante, the next village. Here I stopped for lunch at Pamario Takas, a super nice place with loads of outdoor seating and.. lots of vegan options! The food was homemade and delicious; I ate lentil patties, coffee, panna cotta, and a wheatgrass shot for a boost, which all came to about 14 EUR. But I hadn't had breakfast. Judokrante has a nice seafront, with lots of restaurants and sand sculptures. My lunch break was 45 minutes. My butt was already aching a bit, and it was nice to relax, but I tried to resist temptation to linger too long. I followed the coast through Judokrante - featuring some amazing sand scupltures - and rejoined the main cycle path. The next leg was long and same-y, through the woods. I occasionally detoured to check out a side road to a beach or a cape or a birdwatching tower. Mostly when I needed to hop off the bike for a bit. Sometimes I tied the bike to something and took a little walk through sand or a non-bike-friendly track. Walking was becoming a relief. Sometimes the bike path got pretty sketchy, with holes and sand. Sometimes it arched over dunes, making hills I couldn't quite summit. The freewheeling down was fantastic though. There were quite a few people, but not so many that I didn't have long stretches with nobody in sight behind or in front of me. The next villages around the coast are Pervalka and Preila. Little bits of scenic ports, a few restaurants and signs to things of interest I did not stop to check out. Though they are small, there's plenty going on in all of the villages. Lots of people - mostly Germans and Lithuanians - come here for holidays, so there are tons of guesthouses and plenty of restaurants. There are also a disproportionate number of museums, galleries, open air art and sculptures, and other historical artefacts. Also many viewpoints (marked on openstreetmap at least), and natural features with mythological significance. I skipped by most of these, keen to get to the border, and still at this point thinking I could see them on the way back. The final (agonising) stretch between Preila and Nida is a wide, smooth concrete road. It looks like it's designed for cars, but I think it was just the cycle path. I limped into Nida (as much as one does so on wheels), followed the coast around and saw the port. I found the bus stop, and confirmed the times. It was 1630 when I arrived, and the next bus was at 1800 (and one after that, at 2000). It's 4 EUR back to Smiltyne, and an extra 5 to take a bike. This seems like a horrible ripoff, but what can you do. I parked my bike at the supermarket, and went for an amble to the 'Death Valley' sand dunes. This is just one of many exciting things to see in Nida, which is the biggest town on the spit. I considered walking all the way to the Kaliningrad border anyway, but that would have taken an hour and a half. There was no way my butt was getting back on the bike, and if I somehow missed the last bus I was pretty screwed. So I opted for seeing the Russian bit of the spit from the top of the dune instead. Close enough. The bus was waiting half an hour early when I got back to town. Two other people had just had the driver load their bikes into the compartment on the back. I felt like he could have awkwardly stacked a third one in there, but he didn't. Nope, you can't come. I drifted a few meters away, fumbled with my phone, looked presumably scared and confused. I'd already considered my options if the 1800 bus wouldn't take my bike, and I didn't like any of them so I hadn't settled on a backup plan. Whatever my expression was doing made the driver sufficiently sympathetic that he came over and led me around the bus and opened the side luggage compartment. My bike went in there sideways. I offered him my eternal gratitude (and an extra 5 EUR) and went to wait in the bus. The ride all the way back to Smiltyne is an hour exactly. The bus only stops in the villages, and won't be flagged down on the road. I got to see a slightly different bit of the spit for most of the stretch, as the cycle path I used on the way out tended to swap spit-sides whenever the road did, to the opposite one. I had three ferries remaining to me by the time I got there, and considered sticking around in Smiltyne a bit; sitting in a coffee shop (there's one with a hammock in the yard) or on the beach for a while. It was getting grey and cool, and I was just exhausted and achey though, so I took the 1915 ferry right away. I pushed the bike back to the hostel. Overall it was a great outing, but I definitely overestimated my cycling abilities. I'm entirely convinced my sister would have managed to get there and back, and included a nice lunch, swim in the sea, and most of the museums and points of interest, with no problem. I guess I should practice. All photos are here and GPS trace on RunKeeper.
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 a place specialising in raw food. They have a few seats downstairs and on the roof (which is still under the cover of the market building). I had a breakfast here, and tried a creamy fruit coconut milk porridge, and a raw wrap with sprouts and veggies and really good sauce. The coffee was nice too. Two dishes and two coffees came to a reasonable €12.60. Vegan Inspiratioon A nice restaurant in the old town with a variety of dishes, all vegan, and many raw options. Somewhere to go for a casual lunch or a fancy evening meal equally. I tried a burger with black bread and an incredible stack of fillings. Including tofu 'egg' salad, and a great coleslaw on the side. There was a dessert on the menu called 'Estonian spotted cake' so I ordered it. Turned out to be a chocolatey block with fruit, biscuit chunks and candies throughout. Pretty rad. Vigri Pirita is just north of Tallinn around the coast, and with the botanical gardens, TV tower, gorgeous stretches of beach and peaceful forests, it's a great place to go fro a day out. Stopping at Vigri is the icing on the cake. Seriously. The cakes at that place. I showed up ravenous, having been walking for hours and badly mistimed my meals. I restrained myself bravely on the buffet - which was a selection of hearty vegetable based dishes (one with tofu). Bread is unlimited for free outside of the pay-by-weight buffet. Then I induced a food coma with a giant sticky caramel-y nutty cinnamon bun. And rolled to the beach to sleep it off. Also in the vicinity were a branch of New York Pizza (with vegan cheese) and a beach foodstand with a 'vegan' menu on the side! Vegan Italy An Italian restaurant near Ulemiste, south of the old town. At lunch there's a buffet, as well as a la carte. They make their own vegan salami on premises, as well as bread. The buffet had a selection of pasta dishes, lasagnas, vegetables and salads; all good, I tried a bit of everything. It's €9 for all you can eat, and includes a portion of the dessert of the day. It was good food, and very friendly stratosphere. The dessert when I went was plums in white wine sauce. Green Bakery This small cafe has narrow opening hours and isn't central, so I dropped by when I was in the neighbourhood hoping for cake or pastries. Despite the name, they had none. Maybe I was just late. It was pretty busy, and serving a buffet. I didn't get anything, with lunch scheduled at Vegan Italy nearby. Karu Talu An all vegan chocolate shop in the dead center of old town. Abso-fucking-lutely fantastic. Most chunks of chocolate are €2 and they're all dark and rich, fresh handmade. A cascade of different flavours. I tried mint, cherry, almond, snickers, chilli, sugar-free peanut and chocolate-covered kama. Kama is a local cereal, and for coating in chocolate it was puffed into crispy balls. The piece they gave me was as big as my head, and so easy to eat too much of. Adjoined with the main chocolate shop is a section which also supplies teas, coffees, ice creams and savoury and sweet pastries at very low prices. There's not really any seating though. Tea and Coffee Shop A small cafe in the old town. They mostly wholesale loose leaf tea and coffee beans (a massive selection of both) and related equipment. There are a few tables though, plus power and wifi. They offer every plant milk you can think of for drinks, and have several homemade vegan cakes. I had a spectacular banana bread and spent a quiet afternoon there. Bliss After getting locked in Tallinn City library for a few hours, I went to Bliss. The buffet is extensive, all vegetarian (and well labelled) and pay-by-weight. It's in the Solaris mall, and you have to go through a book shop to get there - look for arrows on the floor. Loads of seats. Desserts and smoothies too. The food was good, and a big variety. Sushi Plaza A regular sushi place, but with a large vegan menu and most of the desserts are vegan too. The sushi is excellent and a good price. Nice atmosphere, too. New York Pizza A regular pizza place with vegan cheese and loads of good veggie toppings. It's above average price, but hits the spot. There are several branches around Tallinn, including one in Pirita right by the beach. NOP Neighbourhood Organic Place was around the corner from where I was staying. It sells groceries, as well as meals and bread. I dropped by, but they had nothing I wanted, and the groceries were really expensive. I never got around to going back for a meal. Pop-ups On a day of wandering I happened upon a flea market type thing in Telliskivi. There were vegan food trucks of course, but I was already full from lunch at home with friends (whom I'd met earlier in the month at a vegan potluck picnic in the park..). Nonetheless, we forced some doughnuts upon ourselves.. Tartu Pahupidi Kohvik A very cute cafe with lots of space and a really nice menu. Good quality healthy food at great prices, and friendly service to boot. I ate courgette ravioli with cashew cheese and it was delicious. I was angling after churros but they were out, and no ice cream either.. the waiter strongly recommended to me the last of the daily cake, which was a truly spectacular salted caramel cheesecake and clearly fate decided I had to have it. Ruunipizza A pizza and pancake restaurant with several vegan options for both. I ate a pizza and a massive plate of fries. They have vegan pastries and cakes too, plus good smoothies. If I'm ever back in Tartu I'm definitely returning for a not-cheesey mushroom bean pancake! Mahemarket A cafe inside a bio/health food shop. There's a small pay by weight buffet and some cakes and salad. And you can take anything from the shop to accompany your meal. It's a nice space in a block of hip shops with a courtyard. When I was there, next door was a popup ice cream shop with vegan flavours. Not sure if that's a permanent fixture though. Parnu It's a small place. I found one vegetarian cafe and went there twice, for dinner then breakfast. Piccadilly Wine and Chocolate More than half of the menu is vegan, and really delicious. The Greek soup was hearty and filling, packed full of veggies accompanied by crunch black bread and only €4 (which after Tallinn felt great). They have a few vegan cakes, mostly raw cheesecake style. I tried chocolate and blackberry and approve. For breakfast I had an unusual savoury porridge with vegetables, mushrooms and green salad. It was incredible actually. Helsinki I'm going to throw Helsinki in here because it intersected with my Estonia time, and was just a couple of day visit. Main point: it's expensive. Everything is expensive. Best bet is just.. don't eat here. In two days I spent all of my food budget for Lithuania. Well, it felt like that. There are plenty of vegan places, and many of them are co-ops. There were two I tried to go to which mysteriously weren't open during the signposted hours. Frustrating, but.. there are plenty of alternatives. Soi Soi Finest vegetarian junk food; most items are vegan but there is some cheese flying around. I enjoyed a seitan burger with vegan cheese, deep fried cauliflower, and sampled sweet potato fries. €10.50 for the burger and side. Very satisfying. Roots A healthy cafe that's part of a yoga studio; good food, but on the pricier side (relatively!). A burger packed with root vegetables, amazing melty vegan cheese and cracking salad, plus a flat white set me back €17. There's lots of space, it's a nice place. Jänö A junk food stand very handily right by the Finnish National Museum and open until midnight most days. I believe it doesn't operate in the winter. They offer various not-meats on a bed of fries, ice cream, candies and fancy juices. Cheap (relatively) and filling; I had not meatballs and sampled soya sausage. They come with several blobs of different sauces. Kippo An all vegan outlet on the 3rd floor of the Forum mall. Obviously a mall environment, but nice food. A sandwich and a smoothie combo will be around €14. They make their own cashew cheese and there's a choice between that and mozzarella (which my educated tastebuds suggest is Violife).
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.
Everything wrong with this Holy Donut milkshake
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...
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.
I found a place that serves peanut and jalapeno hummus for breakfast. This life is best life.
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*
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 seating, surrounded by trees and statues and generally pleasant environs. In the northern half of the city houses are pretty big, with gardens, balconies, sometimes pools; massive driveways and huge security gates, often with guardhouses. I dropped by the homes of a few of Elizabeth's friends while I was there, and whether local or expat they were all preeeetty fancy. On the other hand, there's an ongoing energy crisis which affects all areas of the city. Whole neighbourhoods have scheduled power outages for load-shedding, which is documented on a website but not always reliably. While I was there, Elizabeth's power went out for three days straight, unscheduled. When visiting a friend's to charge my laptop, their power went out too one day. Fortunately they had a generator. The lack of electricity is, I believe, due to a combination of fuel imports being from Mozambique (recently hit by a devastating cyclone), lack of money and corruption and inefficiencies in the government. Everyone is similarly affected by the fuel crisis. Fuel queues were pointed out to me often; people line up in their cars for hours at a petrol station when they hear it has fuel. One friend queued for 3 hours only to find they'd ran out by the time she got to the front of the line. There are some stations which only accept payment in USD (not Ecocash) so if you have enough of that you have a better chance of filling up, with less of a wait. Obviously this benefits foreigners, people who work for embassies, and those recently arrived with a fresh batch of cash. One day on the radio I heard that the country had petrol for a month and diesel for 23 days. Groceries and household goods are not cheap. Things like cosmetics and furnishings are particularly expensive. There's relatively little light pollution at night - especially if you're in a neighbourhood with a power outage. So there were plenty of stars and an often brilliant moon to gaze at. On both Sundays I joined Elizabeth, Sarah and Andrew at church. It was a totally different church experience to the cold, formal, boring CofE affairs that had been imposed upon me by my schools as a child. There was lots of singing and dancing, but also a slightly unnerving occasion of laying of hands, and the messages conveyed by the sermons were definitely at odds with things that make sense to me from Buddhist philosophy. The theme of the month had been fathers, and some members of the congregation across a range of ages gave very moving, funny, and heartfelt stories of the ups and downs of their paternal relationships. Food Zimbabwean food mostly consists of sadza, an enormously filling cereal (maize) mush that definitely expands in your stomach after you've already eaten too much, with greens (rape/canola) and beans, usually accompanied with a meat stew, chicken or fish. You can read about all the vegan food I found here. Transit Harare is not particularly solo-non-driving-traveler friendly. For the first few days I felt pretty trapped by my inability to move around independently. The city is very spread out in itself, and natural sights and hiking trails are really far away. Places are linked by wide, poorly maintained dusty roads that mostly don't seem very pedestrian friendly even if it was safe to walk around alone. I was told repeatedly that public transport is not safe for different reasons (dangerous drivers, dangerous passengers, ..) and even if it wasn't I don't know how I'd have figured out how to navigate the fustercluck of marshrutka-style packed private minibuses with no signs or numbers. Fortunately E already had some trusted taxi drivers on hand, plus a few very hospitable friends with cars. Still, not even feeling comfortable to walk to a shop or a cafe by myself from the house is not my favourite. Advice I got about which neighbourhoods and distances were safe to walk varied drastically between people I talked to. Money Another thing I don't love a ton is dependence on a mobile phone. Fortunately I have a moderately functional HTC One to use while my Fairphone is still out of action, otherwise I'd be pretty helpless. ATMs and credit cards basically don't work here, and it's illegal to change money. The official currency was changed to USD a few years ago, but also in circulation are Bond notes, aka RTGs, at a variable rate from 3.5 to 4.7. Most places accept USD, but with poor conversion so the price is higher than paying with Bond. The best option, used universally, is to set up an EcoCash account and find someone who will send you EcoCash in exchange for a fistful of USD (also illegal). Setting up EcoCash required purchasing a SIM (2 bond) and filling in a form with a local address (I used E's) and providing ID. They photocopied my passport, didn't need most of my info in the form, and misspelled my name when setting up the account (henceforth, Amy Huy). I topped up 100 USD, and bought some mobile data too (350mb for 1 week for 10 bond). After that I could pay anywhere, from streetside fruit vendors to the farmers market to chain supermarkets and restaurants with EcoCash using USSD codes. Market stalls have their numbers scrawled on pieces of paper on their tables. That is, typing *151*1*1*{mobile number or merchant code}*{amount}#, followed by a prompt for a confirmation PIN which I set when I made the account (in plaintext). It displays the name of the recipient so you can increase your chance of not sending it to the wrong number before you commit. The recipient's phone goes bloop, and I immediately receive an SMS confirmation of the transaction, plus my new balance. This is horrifyingly insecure, but also a bit cool. There are small fees for each transaction depending on the amount you send. It's not a percentage, there are brackets of fees. Another thing that was kind of cool while I was there was that Ecocash were running a promotion; for every 20 bond I spent I earned a point, and every 5 points gets me entered into a monthly prizedraw. The top prizes were a house and a river cruise in South Africa; but the better ones were goats, cows, generators, and school fees. I was checking the t&c to find out when the prize draws happened, but made the even better discovery that goats and cows may be requested live or dead; if dead, you have to pick them up from an abattoir of your choosing. If alive, you must pay the necessary transport fees. I'll find out if I was a lucky winner in the first week of June and I'm psyched to make Elizabeth take care of a goat in her yard for me. If you're gonna be here a while, you can also hook your mobile EcoCash up to a bank account, and get a swipe card to pay with too. At one point, the network glitched out and Elizabeth was a victim; her EcoCash stopped working for sending money, claiming she had reached her daily or monthly limit when she clearly had not. This was a mahoosive inconvenience; we went to the Econet store to try to troubleshoot, and they did not solve the problem at all and there were a ton of other people in line experiencing similar issues. Centralisation at at its finest. By the end of my visit, the exchange rate had fluctuated so much that it was now cheaper to pay for things in USD. I naturally had just topped up my Ecocash right before the surge; the digital currency I held lost significant value overnight in terms of what I could trade it for. What a nightmare to live like this every day. Many (most?) local people are paid in bond, hold their savings in bond, and as the exchange rate changes their salaries do not. Coders in the suburbs I was fortunate to meet Peter and Alana from the Sprout Coding project at a party one night. Their organisation, based in 'high density suburbs' of Harare, teaches locals to code and to teach, and then the locals go into schools to teach kids to code in turn. They invited me to visit and talk with their tutors. I spent one morning at their premises in Dzivarasekwa, sitting in on an informal meeting where the tutors had some forms to sign and got their final pep talk before classes with kids began the following week. I heard amazing stories of how each of them had got into code, including from some who learned with paper and solar panels, without access to electricity or internet for the most part. I spent some time with one of their earliest recruits, de-mystifying git. I asked as many as I could whether they were in it for the teaching or the coding, and everyone I asked said they just loved teaching. The next day I joined them in Kuwadzana for a braai. This was super fun, and I spent time with the group talking about privacy, surveillance, encryption, and hacking, while we ate sadza and greens. Dzivarasekwa and Kuwadzana are a far cry from the residential parts of Harare in the north. The roads are still wide and dusty, but there are no more security fences, gardens or driveways. The houses are single storey unpainted brick and breezeblock, often with small vegetable patches in whatever area around them is available. There are many makeshift food stalls, 'tuck shops' and the like, with hand painted signs, or just a table at the side of the road staffed by an entire family. The braai in Kuwadzana was under a tattered awning beside what appeared to be a large shed or market-type building that contained a bar (and pool tables). Besides the bar, the building also hosted meat and vegetable stalls, as well as the people who would prepare the produce you just bought for immediate consumption, and a sink with soap that we could all use to wash our hands before we ate. Adventures My first grand adventure was with E's Finnish friend and his Russian guests. We drove to Lake Chivero nature reserve, less than an hour west of the city. In a totally inappropriate small car, we crawled through the trails spotting zebra, impala, wildebeest and even a giraffe. Periodically we had to get out of the car so it was light enough to take a particularly jagged bump or canyon in the road. We took one trail that dwindled into nothing, and got out and walked to the lake where we saw lots of monkeys and interesting birds. Later we found our way to the park headquarters and talked with the rangers. They offered to take us on a little walk to see some more animals. The ranger Gladys guided us, and after five minutes we practically tripped over a rhino. He stayed snoozing in the undergrowth, and we moved on. A few minutes later he changed his mind, and charged us. I fell over, thought I was going to die, and Gladys rescued me. I posted more detail about the rhino story closer to the time. Later we saw more chill rhinos, and ostriches by the lake. One evening I joined the Fin and the Russians in climbing a small hill in the south of the city. I'm not sure what it was called. It was a reasonably well maintained public space, with trees and walls and a small sculpture like thing at the peak. From there we watched the sun set. In the distance, Harare looks like any other city, with high rises in the center flattening out to residential suburbs around the edges. The Harare Botanical Gardens are somewhat in a state of disrepair, but they contain many interesting trees and not much signage about them. Still, nice to wander through for a couple of hours for the low entry fee of 3 bond. We considered taking a nap, but the ground-level insect life deterred us. Just outside the city are balancing rocks. We got there and they wouldn't accept our ecocash, and we didn't have enough USD between us. Not to mention the USD price was more than 10x that day's bond price, according to that day's exchange rate. Harumph. So we took some pictures of the ones we could see from the carpark and the road, and left. I spent an absolutely beautiful evening with Elizabeth and Andrew at Domboshava, a granite hill formation about a 45 minute drive north of Harare. The perfect time to go is in the hour or so before sunset. There are incredible views in every direction of the surrounding countryside, as well as balancing rocks and other geographical phenomena, and cave paintings. It is an incredibly peaceful place, even despite all the other tourists who were around. Longer trips I considered but failed to arrange were Great Zimbabwe, Paradise Pools, and Victoria Falls. Great Zim is an ancient abandoned city that looks way cool. I was pretty disappointed not to be able to make it happen, but the fuel crisis meant none of E's friends were up for driving that distance (about 4 hours) and I couldn't put together enough people at the last minute to make a guided tour good value. Paradise Pools was also a victim of the fuel crisis, after a friend sat in line for hours and wasn't even able to refill. Vic Falls would have been great but required some planning ahead on my part. It's at least a four day trip - one full day on trains and buses to get there, two days to appreciate the city, and a full day back. I could have done it when E was at work (might have been a good use of those days without power at home) but visiting Elizabeth was really the point of the trip and our time hanging out in the evenings was way more important. Photos Photos and more notes are as follows: Chill weekend at markets The Rhino Story (Lake Chivero) Botanical Gardens Markets, sunset Dzivarasekwa and Kuwadzana with Sprout coders Amazing views from Domboshava Sunday BBQ Last days