I speak, need, and eat FOOD

Food is one of the most important things for me when I travel somewhere new. I like to try new things and specialties/traditional food of the country I go to. Knowing English makes things a lot easier when you go somewhere where you don't know the language since most of the restaurants have English menus. This way you know what you're getting and also learn a few new words in another language. If they have German menus, I always look if I 'agree' with the translations. Sometimes they are really funny.

But I'm digressing. Food is not only important while travelling but also when you're at home. Wherever I lived so far I had one favourite restaurant/snack bar I would go to all the time. I will present them to you now and translate the menus.



1. Veggie Voodoo King (Stuttgart)

Probably the best falafel I've ever had. It is a small restaurant that serves hand-made falafel in flatbread, fries, soup, and cakes. I used to go there a lot, especially after going shopping as it is in the center of Stuttgart close to malls and a huge shopping street.

http://www.veggieplaces.co.uk/images/1483.gif

They only have vegetarian food and use mainly organic products. Doesn't taste like it, don't worry.
This is their falafel in flatbread and fries menu. Every falafel contains three chickpea-balls, lettuce, and a sauce of your choice. My favourite is the one with sesame or mango chutney.

http://blog.kangaroo.cmo.de/wp-content/gallery/vegi-voodoo-king/cimg3090.jpg

Translation:
Falafel Sesam (mit delikater Sesamsoße, Salat): falafel with delicious sesame sauce and lettuce
Falafel Joghurt (mit Joghurtsoßce und Kräuter, Salat): falafel with yogurt-herb sauce and lettuce
Falafel Chumus (mit orientalischer Kirchererbsencreme, Salat): falafel with Middle-Eastern chickpea cream and lettuce
Falafel Obama (mit Ketchup, Tahina und Zwiebel, Salat): falafel 'Obama' with ketchup, tahini (a paste made from ground, hulled sesame seeds), onions, and lettuce
Falafel Schlossplatz (mit exotischem Mango Chutney, Salat): falafel 'Schlossplatz' with exotic mango chutney and lettuce
Falafel Franz Josef (mit süßem Senf auf bayrische Art, Salat): Falafel 'Franz Josef' with sweet Bavarian-style mustard and lettuce
Falafel Aubergine (mit saftigem Auberginengemüse, Salat): falafel with juicy eggplants and lettuce
Falafel Tibet (mit scharfer Asiasoßce und Sojasprossen, Salat): falafel Thibetian style with hot sauce, bean sprouts, and lettuce
Falafel Rot-Weiß (mit 4 Kichererbsenbällchen, Sesamsauce und Chilisauce): falafel 'red-and-white' with 4 chickpea-balls, sesame sauce and chili sauce
Pommes mit Ketchup, lecker auch mit Soße nach Wahl (50cent extra): fries with ketchup, also delicious with any sauce of your choice for an extra 50ct

http://www.stephiekochtvegan.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Falafel-Voodoo.jpg

2. Zapiekanka (Plac Nowy, Kraków)

Very delicious and cheap fast food. It is located in the Jewish district of Kraków, close to the old town. I went there at least three times a week. Many of the zapiekanka stalls are open 24 hours, also on holidays. Zapiekanka translates to casserole, but the kind I'm talking about is half a baguette baked with cheese and mushrooms and many other toppings you can choose.
My favourite one is the zapiekanka z prażoną cebulką (with roasted onions).

 http://tropemsmoka.pl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/plac_nowy.jpg

There are many stalls that all sell pretty much the same. Some of them also had vegan options, but this is the one I went to most of the time.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ePMrmQDkHcEkoz4iQmzlKIDbuW2zL7ClRhNY6PGhUsTCfO_VplJDxZdsn2Pbb27-kmTGgXjr7nAflqo3Fh3Lb61wVKa2VSgH8xB56OOdDxnkkXuxPDTxKd0o4mpyHQJgvRh37pKuS3E/s1600/cennik.jpg

Translation: 
zapiekanka zwykła (ser, pieczarki): the ordinary zapiekanka with cheese and mushrooms
zapiekanka z prażoną cebulką: zapiekanka with roasted onions
zapiekanka z bekonem: zapiekanka with bacon
zapiekanka z salami: zapiekanka with salami
zapiekanka z szynką: zapiekanka with ham
zapiekanka chłopska (bekon, śliwki wędzone): the peasant's zapiekanka with bacon and smoked plums
zapiekanka ze szpinakiem (+kukurudza): zapiekanka with spinach and corn
zapiekanka z tuńczykiem: zapiekanka with tuna
zapiekanka węgierska (kurczak, papryka): Hungarian zapiekanka with chicken and peppers
zapiekanka diablo (bekon, ogórek, sos pikantny): zapiekanka diablo with bacon, cucumber (pickles) and spicy sauce
zapiekanka góralska (kiełbasa wiejska, oscypek): the highlander's zapiekanka with country sausage and sheep cheese
zapiekanka grecka (warzywa, ser feta, oliwki): Greek zapiekanka with vegetables, feta cheese and olives

The prices range from PLN4.50 (~€1.2) to PLN8 (~€2).

http://zrobmycosfajnego.brandlord.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/zapiekanka_new.jpg

This is what a zapiekanka looks like. It doesn't seem very special, but you can choose so many different things as topings that it meets nearly every taste. 


3. Bier Baron (Graz)

Most of you probably know this one. For those of you who don't know it, Bier Baron is one of many 'Bausatzlokale' in Graz where they have pizza, burgers, salads, donuts, sandwiches and many more things that are quite affordable. You can choose almost everything as a topping, from normal things like onions or tomatoes to odd things like gummy bears or Nutella.

http://www.herold.at/FS/picture/9/6/0/2571069.jpg

Vivien and me love going there together at least once a week. We always eat burgers with the exact same toppings.

This is what the typical Marion-Burger looks like.
vegetarischer Burger (Gemüselaibchen): veggie burger with a veggie patty
Zutaten: Emmentaler, Tomatenscheiben, Champignons, Spinat, Essiggurkerl, Curry Soße, Rucola
toppings: Emmental cheese, tomato slices, champignons, spinach, pickles, curry sauce, arugula


I hope I could arouse your appetite with this. Mine definitely definitely stimulated, so I think I'll just get some chocolate cake and at least try not to think too much about burgers, falafel, and zapiekanka. (It's not going to work anyways.)

Who am I?

Uki ja Mummi - grandpa and grandma

As a young man my grandfather, former skidoo champion of Finland, used to work at a car-rent that only rent luxury cars to celebrities and politicians. When he went on the first date with my grandmother, who was quite a diva, a real mannequin, he wanted to impress her and told his brother to dress up like his chauffeur and drive him in one of the most expensive cars to pick her up. Indeed she was quite impressed and started getting interested in this young, supposedly wealthy man. The next date another car, his brother in drivers uniform, my grandmother in her red, satin vintage dress. It continued that way for some time and I don't know at which point my grandfather admitted that he was only a poor sales clerk, and I think only at their wedding she realized that the chauffeur for real was her brother in law.

Papa und Äiti - mum and dad

My father used to be a paratrooper in the military. After his military service he started studying architecture and that was when he met my mother, who had come from Finland to study architecture too, returning to the city she had spent parts of her childhood in. Anyway, after finishing her studies she returned to Finland and my father went to Japan, where he shared a room with an internationally wanted IS terrorist and modeled at a fashion show, representing an ancient darter. Years later he was getting wasted in a hotel room in Denmark with a friend, when he decided to call my mother. They met, got engaged, but when he followed her to Finland he had to find out that she still had a boyfriend there.

Me

To learn something about me it helps to know a little bit about my family. They are all my inspiration and with their stories have aroused the curiosity to travel and get to know places and people. They have all travelled a lot, lived in many different countries and cultures, learned several languages and risen me with the attitude, that the world is wide and worth exploring it. And it's the results of this mental education that I'm going to talk about in this blog post. Here's a little bit about me...

Since I was a child I've spent most of my summers and parts of my winters in Finland. I've always loved it and in my eyes it was the most beautiful country in the world. With 15 I moved there for a year, found my first love, drank my first beer and started thinking that Austria might be the country I've born in, but needn't be my home country. When I came back to Austria I fell into a one summer long teenage-depression, thinking that everything was better in Finland.
After graduating I left home again, this time to Bolivia. I fell in love again, had adventures and grew up. When I returned to Austria, I had become another person. I had seen poverty and suffering and the European life style seemed ridiculous to me. Rules and order, that's what it all seemed to be about. Closed minds and high standards. I started working and studying, trained a lot and missed Bolivia. My aunt once told me that all her life she has spent with one foot in Austria and another one in Finland, what was beautiful but exhausting. I realized that I was about to do the same-again. My thoughts were constantly jumping from one country to another which made it hard to concentrate. I spent way too much time on my phone, trying to stay in touch with my second life 10 thousand kilometers away while I missed too many things right here.

I returned to Bolivia this february and well, everything was like I had left it and that tranquilized me. My chico was still waiting, my kids growing and my room still smelled the same. I think what I feared the most was getting forgotten. I hate to see time passing and friendships ending. I hate to leave a country and see friends leaving and if there's one thing in this world I wish existed, it's teleportation. I spent five weeks there and lived like on another planet, in another universe. I'm a different person there, I dress differently, I speak differently, I have another kind of friends and love latin music. But it's already getting easier for me to return. I don't get culture shocks anymore and adapt in just a second. Anyway, that doesn't alleviate the separation and does not make the distance shorter. The only thing that helps is to know, that things don't change that fast, that people wait and cities don't change- at least not too fast. 

I find it hard to write about myself, I don't like to list my hobbies and analyze my personality. More interesting and helpful I find it to talk about my passion and the forces that drive me. I hope that text gave you a little impression about my personality, my thoughts and desires, and wasn't too boring to read. 

Who am I?

"Please allow me to introduce myself

 I'm a man of wealth and taste"

Call me crazy but this song got stuck in my head ever since I heard that we have to write an introduction post. But now that I think about it, it is probably not a good idea to start a text about myself with a song called “Sympathy For The Devil”..

Ok, can we reset please?!

Hi guys! My name is Simone, but everybody calls me Simi, so feel free to do the same – I never really identified with my real name anyway. I am 20 years old and I was born and raised as the last of four children, in the middle of Carinthia’s countryside. Sound idyllic, right? But boy, let me tell you, idyllic can be SO boring! Luckily my parents were always endeavored to show us kids as many places around the globe, as they possibly could.

So, I guess the first thing I can tell you about myself is that I am infected with wanderlust. I really love to travel and I know many of you share that hobby. My last journey took me to Tanzania, where I taught at an elementary school for nine months. It was an eventful, unpredictable and incredibly formative experience.

Besides exploring our mad world, I am crazy passionate about any kind of art. Whenever I need to relax and escape from my currently very stressful life, I start to draw… or edit a video… or decorating and rearranging my room – pretty much anything that lets me be creative.

To me artistry is a great way to unwind and relax. It allows me to gather new energy and recharge my batteries. Others meditate – I start painting my walls.

Now in order to let out all the energy I am gaining while tapping on my creative vein, I introduced something quite contrasting into my life. Boxing has been my go-to sport ever since I was 15. It gives me the perfect opportunity to vent and burn off all my energy. I know some people think, that this sport is all about aggression, brutality and mercilessness, but to me it combines strategy, accuracy and subtlety with a lot of exercise and hard training.

So there you go, these are my three great passions (minus rock music, because I don’t want to bore you with a paragraph full of cheesy love declarations for AC/DC and the Ramones) and I think, those say an awful lot about me.

To be honest, I don't really know who I am jet. But I am figuring it out, every day :) I guess at the bottom line I am just boringly normal..

At the bottom line, I am just a goofy, chaotic fool who makes a lot of really bad jokes and screams at her TV during Ice Hockey matches…   

Who am I?

Hi everyone, I am Julia.

For me, always the most difficult questions are “Who are you?” “What makes you special?” “What are your hobbies?” I seriously have no idea what makes me special or what my hobbies are. I am an ordinary girl from a small town in Upper Austria. However, I might have a wild guess what brought me to where I am today.

After graduating from High School, I decided to live abroad for a while. I’d always known that I definitely don’t want to immediately continue to go to school or to start going to university. I needed a break and that’s what led me to Cultural Care Au Pair, an agency which supports you and finds a fitting family for you in which you will live and take care of kids. My perfect match was living in Concord, Massachusetts, which is very close to Boston. In September 2013 I flew over to Boston to start my adventure and meet my new family. I knew from the first moment on that this will work. I immediately fell in love with Felix and Lily, the two-year-old twins I had to take care of. The first month was a challenge, though, since the kids needed to get used to me and I needed to get used to them. I had to get to know them and find out what they like and what they hate and most importantly I needed to gain their trust.

After some complications at first, I managed to get used to my new life in the USA and also got the kids to be happy about that they could spend time with me. But most importantly I finally knew my way around and managed to drive somewhere without getting lost. (Probably the biggest challenge throughout the whole year!)

I met amazing people from all over the world. I travelled across the USA. From Maine to Florida, over to Chicago and San Diego to Seattle. I enjoyed the sun in Key West on the beach and went skiing in the Rocky Mountains in Utah. 

I went to concerts which I'd never seen before, because those artists have never come to Austria. I had to manage everything by myself, I was forced to grow up and stand on my own two feet, which made me who I am today. For example, now I am no longer impatient – two-year-olds know how to convert you to a patient person – and I definitely got more open-minded, I am no longer the shy girl from next door, I got more self-confident and more extrovert.

To finish up, I am now back in Austria, studying “Transcultural Communication” at the University of Graz. Because of my gap year I chose English as my first foreign language and there’s also a reason why I chose Russian as a second language. My host-mom’s brother is a translator and he knows over 15 different languages. However, not common languages like Italian or Spanish, he knows Mandarin, Japanese and other small languages like these, but most importantly he never managed to learn Russian and I accepted the challenge. I wanted to know what’s so hard about it and I definitely know now, but I’ll manage ;-)

I guess, after reading my text, you can figure that I love to travel and even if I don’t have that much time and money anymore like during my gap year, I definitely want to continue to travel the world. Next on the bucket list: Australia ;-)

I hope you enjoyed my little story. Take care :-)

Who am I?

Hello everyone, my name's Evi. 

Some of you may know me already, but some of you don't. So who am I? 

Born and raised in Italy, I decided to come to Graz for my studies, which I did a year and a half ago. My real name is Evi. Yes, really it's no abbreviation. Not the most typical Italian name, actually not the most typical name at all. Despite being Italian, my mother tongue is German. This is due to living in the north of Italy, in South Tyrol. It used to be a part of Austria not even 100 years ago. But as I am here to tell you something about me and not about the history of my country, let's go on. My father was born in Germany and my mother in Italy. I haven't got any siblings, but two cats called Trixi and Indie. I've got Austrian, German, Italian and Hungarian roots. Even my surname is Hungarian, but unfortunately no one was ever willing to teach me the language.

The view from the old flat in Tyrol

Trixi loves to sleep on my shoulders

Alex and I in Maribor

When I was 17, I was a year abroad, as an Exchange student and it was probably one of my best times so far. I stayed in Bournemouth (UK) with the most awesome host family one could wish for. After that year, I had to come back to Italy to finish school. I spent a year in Innsbruck with my best friend  Alex and in September 2013 I finally moved to Graz.  When I came here, I joined the Red Cross and I'm doing night shifts almost every Saturday night. Since a few months, before the night shifts I am also working in a shop during the day. It's quite a busy weekend, but it's really fun.

Yes, I do love languages, but I think or hope every one of you does so; otherwise we would be quite wrong at the ITAT. Most of my leisure time I spend with my friends doing all kinds of activities. I like painting a lot, but since I am in Graz I almost never find the time to do so. Normally I'm a rather extrovert person, still I can be really calm and thoughtful at times. I enjoy the little things in life. A gobsmacking sunset, the mountains, a good laugh, that's pure heart-balm. Also I'll probably never say no to a glass of wine,

especially not if I can enjoy it with friends or family while admiring the landscape. I always try to involve some dolcevita in my life, as I truly believe that otherwise you get depressed. Cooking with friends, having delicious, mouth-watering food and a drink, feeling sunbeams on your face, just enjoying these little things, embracing the moments, laughing a lot, these things will make you a happier person. At least that's what makes my friends and me happy, balanced people. 

Hiking

I also do love to travel, but who doesn't? So at the moment I'm saving my money to go to Japan within the next few years. I will go with a friend and we would like to stay there about at least a month. We still don't know when we will go, but our goal is to have the money together before we are both 26. 

Now you know a little more about me, I hope you enjoyed it. 

Who am I?

Good morning friends!

It's a pleasure to introduce myself to all of you :-) 

My name is Mathea and I was born in Kaprun which is a small town in Salzburg. Growing up in a rural area I early developed a strong appreciation for the environment and our beautiful earth in general. When I was a child I started skiing as well as snowboarding and being surrounded by astonishing mountains and crystal clear lakes made me care a lot about the environment. At the age of seven I started dancing and I enjoyed it but stopped when I moved to Graz. I’m still into sports though; currently I am attending a yoga course and two other fitness trainings. Whenever I am at home I try to hike as much as possible. Besides trying to stay in shape a little bit I am utterly interested in music. I have to admit that probably three quarters of my money run into music festivals, concerts and CDs. Actually I just went to a mind-blowing concert in Graz yesterday. I learned to play the guitar when I was a child but unfortunately I wasn't very talented and I didn't have enough time to practise so I forgot how to play. Music offers us a great escape and I guess that's why it is so important to the people.

Another thing I am extremely passionate about it – surprise – travelling! After my a-levels I travelled around the globe for five months. I went to Thailand, Australia, Hawaii and I visited lots of states in America, for instance Arizona, Nevada, California, New York, Washington DC and so on. It was the most eye opening experience I ever had but weirdly I realized that later when I was back home. You learn so much about other people, you get to know different traditions and new cultures but most importantly you learn a lot about yourself.

I automatically became more sociable and I learned to make friends out of strangers. 

I would describe myself as an optimistic and open-minded person as I always try look on the bright side. 

My goal is to go on as many adventures as I can and create a life that I don't need a vacation from.

If you would like to get to know more about me, here’s the link to my blog: 

http://justaroundthedeepriver.blogspot.co.at/

Thanks :-)