New York: The Food

Flying over the Italian Alps on the way to Italy for my transfer to New York was well worth the 4 am wake-up I had to endure that morning. There was still enough snow on the Alps that they were well-defined from above. Beautiful!
I had a work conference in New York for two days and then three days off to go around the city with my brother, Oren, who lives there. Since I’d already been to New York with the family, I’d done all the classic tourist stuff. On this trip, I wanted to get lost in New York a bit, walk around a lot and eat a lot of good food. Especially good food I can’t get in Munich – Mexican and Asian!

The work conference went very well and was over before I knew it. Oren and I managed to meet for dinner on Tuesday night when we walked around Hell's Kitchen and found a Brazilian place that was yummy. And we also met for dinner on Thursday night when he took me to a fabulous vegetarian place where we both got sandwiches. Mine was a vegetarian chicken parm sandwich and it was massive! Good ol' America with its huge amounts of food. Thankfully, Oren could take it home with him.

My German colleague commented on the fact that so many people ordered these meals and then didn't eat a lot of the food so it went back wasted. In Germany, they do have big amounts of food, but there isn't the level of food waste that there is in the US.

Oren and I also went to a Mexican place in Spanish Harlem, which I'm happy we went to because the food was delicious, but also because it felt like a part of New York that most tourists wouldn't go to. And for good reason, no one on their vacation wants to see posters on a Harlem school pleading for funding to keep their teachers or parents cursing at their children or the streets littered with trash. But it's a real part of New York; it's a place where people live everyday.

I never did have Asian food in New York, but the places we did go were fantastic!

First Impressions of Prague

After a delayed start to our long weekend, we caught the train to Prague on Saturday evening. It was cold (colder than Munich), but still lovely to walk around amongst all the buildings, each with its own beauty to add to the city. The people were not particularly helpful - we got many blank stares to questions and even had a luggage locker attendant who repeatedly shrugged her shoulders and lifted her hands in antipathy to Greg's requests for change. However, many people knew English and that was a help since we couldn't remember the words quickly enough for thank you (dekuji) or the check please (Uchet prosim) in Czech. Getting an English word out of them was easier than getting a smile or *horror of horrors* a giggle.

Steering clear of Czech food as it is not vegetarian-friendly, we ate at some awesome places - vegetarian hippie place that was actually clean and used their spices in moderation; Spanish tapas (ay, manchego y tortilla espanola); Italian happy hour pizza and pasta; Bohemian Bagels (that's the actual name of the place - great for a bagel fix); and Mexican burritos and quesadillas. Not bad variety for a city! If anyone's going there soon, let me know and I'll hook you up with some names.

And I'll leave you with that because I'm beat and tomorrow is my busy day of the week with German in the morning and work in the afternoon. The one Czech word we were excited to use never came up so I'll use it here: "Ahoy" (hello) as in "ahoy to my bed, good night to you."