Great menagerie of game meat

24052019

The ship booted is pretty early in the morning. And they killed our WiFi that morning so we couldn't figure out how to get to apartment.

We sniped wifi from the boose cruise terminal to order an Uber. Thank goodness they have them here. We got taken to the immediate neighborhood of our apartment. We are staying in the Gamla Stan neighborhood, which is the oldest part of Stockholm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamla_stan

The original fortress and the current palace are on the island.

Given that it is so old, it is predominantly a pedestrian area so our car could only get us so close.

That's ok because it was only 0900 and we can't even think to drop our stuff at the apartment until 1100. So we squatted in a local cafe that had WiFi. We began planning out our day drinking coffees, and then beers waiting to hear back from the apartment people's on when to drop our stuff.

We spotted our dinner locale, and how easy it was to tour the palace museum complex.

After waiting the appropriate amount of time we got into our apartment to secure our stuff, we headed out to the Royal Palace.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Palace

It's a neat museum complex, you buy one ticket and it gets into 4 subordinate museums. We started with the Royal Apartments, where previous Swedish Kings/queens lived. It is still used today for ceremonial purposes, including recognizing new ambassadors to Sweden.

The lighting isn't great sorry.

From here we went into the Royal treasury. This was obviously in the basement of the palace, because that's the most secure place to keep crowns and sceptors and such. I don't have any pictures, because it was strictly forbidden, and I was intimidated by then probably high school aged docents.

From here we hit the armoury, but that was under maintenance so all we saw was the Royal carriages.

The next museum was that of the Gustav IIIs antiques. The swedish king Gustav III reigned in the late 18th century, and was actually related to Russia's Catherine the Great (I'll write about her later, i need to catch up on the cruise days).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_III_of_Sweden

He travelled to Rome incognito to buy art, but everyone knew who he was, so they still probably upcharged him.

That piece right there is a statue of Endymion (who has a cool story of his own
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endymion_(mythology) ).

Gustav purchased it from some art dealer in Rome, and at the time everyone thought it was from maybe the late 17th century. And until recently everyone just figured it was indeed
300ish year old. When in fact it actually dates back to the 2nd century.

And the final portion was the Tre Kroner.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tre_Kronor_(castle)

This was pretty neat, the museum was built into the excavated portions of the castle. As with most palaces/castles it has been expanded upon and partially destroyed over the years. The museum traces the development of the structure while providing snippets of history of the larger Swedish kingdom.

Above you can see he earliest iteration that could reasonably be described as a castle, and below the castle at it's height in the 1700s.

Completing our museum run for the day we wanted to go to dinner, but the place wasn't open yet. So we went to an Irish bar for beers and bar snacks. The food was ok, but the building was fascinating.

We went into the basement and it was huge, it sprawled much larger than the footprint of the building above, but none of it was uniform. You had to duck under doorways, step up uneven floors, and squint through ill-lit hallways.

After wasting enough time, we went to dinner.

http://www.restaurangbrinken.com/

The food was fantastic. We opened with a knäckepizza, a thin crispy rye bread with cream cheese spread, with peaches and pumpkin seeds, and a balsamic vinaigrette reduxion drizzled over it. It was a little sweet, and a little savory, very interesting. We also got the smoked reindeer with horseradish on rye. Reindeer is a little less gamey than deer, I would describe it as if deer were domesticated like cows and fed well, they would taste like reindeer.

For the mains my mom got the pulled boar burger, burger is a bit of a misnomer, I think it's a miss-translation, it was really a pulled meat sandwich. The boar was rich, and they used a very sharp mustard that proved a solid combination. My father got the wild sausage, which was combined boar, reindeer and spices. It was very spicy. Laura got the swedish meatballs, pork, and slathered in a tasty mushroom sauce.

But really, I got the best meal. I got their pork stuffed dumplings. It was exceptional. I am worried that the frequency with which I describe something as being "one of the best things ive ever eaten" in this blog would lead out to believe that I use that term fleetingly. In reality, we have done a good job finding good restaurants, and making the right choices at said restaurants. The pork was ground and perfectly browned. The pork had spiced folded in, dominant flavor of clove or nutmeg I'm not sure, I'd have to re-smell both spiced to determine which. The dumplig dough was thick and rich enough to support to wholesome flavors of the pork, it was soft enough to not need chewing.

I would highly recommend you come to this restaurant if I Stockholm, hell if you are within 50 miles off this city come in and eat here.

We went home and staved off the it is long enough to finish this post.

So much dancing

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Another little bit later start, the bed is so great. We went back to the Osaka Caste Park to visit other of the attractions there.

The Osaka Peace Museum, Officially the International Peace Center. The musuem was built ib 1991, and focuses on the destruction of the city during WWII. The tragedies of war in general, and how Osaka has recovered.

The first exhibit was the most informative, and across the spectrun of historical exhibits I would rate it in the top 10 as for amoubt of information presented in a digestable manner. That sounds awkward, I dont know the first room was great. It was mostly a video describing the turn of the last century through WWII.

Many Westerners forget that Japan was a big deal back then, the Meiji Restoration catapulted Japan into western modernity in 50 years, doing the took the Russian Empire 125 years. Japan not only fought alongside Britain and France in WWI, but played a prtty important role tying up Triple Alliance colonial assets in the Far East.

From 1895 to 1945 the Japanese were fighting major conficts, first the Sino-Japenese war kicked up as Japan invaded the Korean Peninsule (a Chinese vassal state at the time) and then Chine proper, to "protect" it from the Russians. Shortly there after got into fisticuffs with Russia, which by most accounts was the first battle of modern times, less than 10 years after that the Japenese got caught up in WWI, stuck around for the White War, then started aggressing into SouthEast Asia, promarily to get resources to continue the war in China. And then unfortunately allied themselves with Hitler and Mussolini, and then attacked the US, and managed to fight off the US, until we switched all of our factories from butter to guns.

All of this was presented in a manner such that Laura, lacking the history-boner that i have for the time period, had an appreciation of what set the stage for the events of the rest of the musuem.

The rest of the museum had various displays of life in wartime, household goods, class room textbooks, soldier diaries, civilian accounts of the firebombing during WWII.

Then went on to talk about reconstruction, and what happened after the allied proscribed reconstruction.

The final section of the museum seemed to be atleast endorsed by the UN. Describing what can be done to help prevent these things in the future, how the world has changed since then and how shitty the world often is.

(There were no pictures allowed in the museum)

Concluding the musuem we wandered north, heading towards the Osaka City Hall, and surrounding river island.

On the way we stumbled into a Curry shop, ate some delicious, inexpensive curry.

The island in the river, is made of parks, museums, the city hall, a public hall and various otherminor municipal buildings.

Nekanoshima park is pretty cool, wide open green spaces for children to run, or hipsters to play ultimate frisbee, while we saw niether of these taking place, we did see a bunch of teenage boys practicing a choreographed dance, which was neat. Also, they had a beer garden, though given the previous uses of the term "bar" and "cafe" around here i have my doubts about just how "beer gardeny" the place is.

There was an extensive rose garden, with more colors than i have ever seen in roses.

We decided to poke around the very cool 19th century styled public hall building. They had a little display in the basement referencing the construction, and reconstruction (you know, after the use sent a 329 bomber sortie to flatten the town) of the building.

While free, this was a little underwhelming, so we meandered about. Getting upstairs we heard music heading towards it, an older gentlemen in a nice shirt and slacks comes out of what appears to be a ballroom, we peek in the crack, he comes back from the toilet, and seemingly invites us in.

Initially we thought it was a wedding, then we noted not only was everyone dressed up, and dancing but they were dancing well. Moments later an older lady in a purple dress pointed us to the seating. We sat down and observed, an open dance broke out, and nearly everyone got on the floor, ballroom dancing to whatever the DJ was playing.

As best we can figure this was a ballroom dance club, that was having their regular meeting, we got out of there before they invited us to dance...

We headed home to figure out our evening activities. At the train station laura sniped some wifi, and we got the news of who our next president was. Stunned, we went home. On the way home we came upon another set of choreograph dancing kids... When we got home we watched a movie in bed, put pants back on and ventured out for some chicken based ramen (its traditionally pork). It was very light, and honestly,i liked the slices of chicken better than all but the BEST slices of pork (see earlier entry). We then looked through Dotonbori for sweet snacks, laura got a banana-nutella crepe, and i got a frozen fermented french butter cone. At least that was what thes sign said, I am pretty sure it was cultured butter, tossed into a soft serve machine. IT was fantastic.

We got some yogurt and pastry for an earlier roll out tomorrow, as we intend to hit up ANOTHER CASTLE YAY!

markets and people, and being right

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managed to sleep in late (but not too late) after the fun-having of Saturday night. I made myself a peanut butter, nutella, and dulce de leche sandwich for breakfast. and then me and mike headed out to meet up with people at San Telmo Market ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Telmo,_Buenos_Aires ), we took the bus, the bus we always take, and it was great, and easy, it just took like 80 minutes. so the bus took us right to the square which has the antiques stalls, which was Plaza Dorrego ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Dorrego ), but the rest of the group we were trying to meet were literally at the other end of the Feria de San Telmo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feria_de_San_Telmo ), which is a good 1500m long. so mike and i ducked and darted through the crowds to meet up with them, and believe me, the crowds were thick with tourists and locals so it took us a little while.

we finally ran into them as they were wandering into a parking lot, which had a grill for choripan, everyone purchased choripan, and everyone exclaimed how good they were, and praised me for suggesting such a fantastical gastronomic experience. this constituted pretty much the highpoint of my day.

we then wandered around the market, i got separated from the main group with 3 girls, who were fortunately meandering through the market faster than the rest. we got to the end, and then hunted for a coffee or some such thing.

after getting kicked out of one place for not having a reservation (which is a funny story in itself; we very slowly and obviously moved over towards a table, i made eye contact with at least 2 employees gesticulating at the table as we were to sit down, and after sitting for about 3 minutes, they came and told us to leave because the table was promised to someone else) we found our way to a pleasant place that had excellent coffees, I had an irish coffee, and their version included cinnamon on top, which was interesting. the cinnamon did not improve the coffee, but it certainly didnt improve it either. the two girls we were with got a coffee drink with creme de cacao in it, which was equally delicious.

hopped the subte home, and did nothing until i fell asleep.

Not so green fairy

23512 I am pretty sure today is like the midpoint of the trip, it passed by rather unremarkably. woke up again later due to the lack of Czech language class, which is cool, but then the sun rises here absurdly early (like 5 am), and there are very few curtains in this region of the world capable of doing anything but looking like crappy lace. anyways the discussion was some more intro on Hungary, im excited cause its a REAL old city, with Roman-time ruins stuff, while i dont immediately recall seeing any last time around, im sure they were there (being as the Romans pre-date my international travels by a few years). the class was then picked up by our English major-PhD student guy discussion of the Under A Cruel Star Book. he kinda fell into the trap of being an english student, he analyzed the bejeezus out of the text, pulling meaning and metaphor, and symbolism and reasoning out of everything, like during his leading of the discussion i thought "shiet, (colloquial term i use all to frequently in my inner monologues) i read this book very wrong". and to make it doubly concerning, he will be the one grading the papers. so i have resolved to dig deep into my educational archives, and dredge up the know-how on writing about literature, i mean, this is a personal account, it actually happened, but it reads very much like a story. in the past 4 years i have been reading thousands of pages a week for history and poli-sci type classes, all of which very cut and dry, not really open to interpretation, so whenever i read anything else (namely sci-fi) i read it for consumption, i dont want to think and absorb and analyze and reach, i want explosions and boobs and aliens and FTL and then more explosions. so i kinda read this as another of my sci-fi stories, (again not to diminish the reality of this woman experience, but it was fantastical). ill peruse through it again to write up a good paper about how this book provides a micro example of the appeal of communism to a post-war Europe, and particularly post-war-European-Jewery. that was the class after which i went home to nap, cause you know, sleep is awesome. we went here

a good number of us enjoyed the symphony. it was Leif Ove Andsnes, who is i guess some kinda bigshot composer? and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra? i dunno, its what it says on the ticket. i dont know nearly enough about symphonies to tell you whether they were good or not, i enjoyed it. the music was pleasant, and the musicians seemed to be into it and know what they are doing, my limited concert experience on the trumpet didnt help me much. though i did notice a classic brass in a symphony moment, when the two trumpetlike (i nor my buddy could identify the instrument, it had the 3 keys, and the bell and whatnot, but it was like longer, like 3/4 size valve trombone. anyways, when everyone was applauding and whatnot, and the violinists were bowing, and the conductor was waving his flowers, the brass players in back were chillin, caring very little, so little infact, that he took the occasion to empty his spitvalve. it was awesome. anyways, after that some of the troop wanted to try absinthe, and we found a place nearby, i did not try any, as i had not done my research yet. not that i am afeared of the hallucinations and all that, cause i know damn well absinthe isnt supposed to do that (i could go into a huge diatribe about why people who think that are wrong). i have a distillery in Milwaukee that produces pre-ban style absinthe, and now that i have researched it is of the French/Swiss type, so you can do the whole icewater dropping over a sugar cube into the fancy glass to get the Ouzo effect and blah de blah. but apparently historically bohemian absinthe is different, in that it has less anise, so it doesnt go all milky like that, so thats where the fire thing came from, it was a gimmick thought up in the 90s. ANYWAYS, i have found a few local made absinthes, i just gotta find a place that sells em now. others continued out for a drink at another bar, i bailed and went home before they found a place (and now they got home somewhat disappointed with the evenings turn of events, i guess i do make the party). tomorrow to Bratislava, fingers crossed for good internetz

Tuesday 19711


left Belgrade, hopped on our bus for a good 2 hrs, all the while it smelled of burning oil, and grinding gears, till finally it died

so yeah there it is dead on the side of the road about 20km outside of Nis, also Kim is there. yeah we sat ariound for about an hour waiting for another older, more characterful bus to come pick us up and take us to some Roman Villa that the emperors used to chill at while visiting the frontier regions, it was particularly special for Constantine, being that he was born around here. the villa was apparently very large and awesome with gardens a full three bath bath house, storage for both local garrison and foodstuffs for the patricians traveling though. here is a shot of some of the lead pipes used to bring in water for the baths from the river, or maybe pipes used to bring drinking water in from the "mountains" (large hills), also to help induce insanity.

also vanit's legs

we also saw the tower of skulls which was a symbol of Ottoman badassery, turned Serb heroism. during one of the Serb uprisings in the 19th century was quashed by the Ottomans, and the Ottoman general Hersid Pasha ordered that a tower be built with the skulls of the Serb rebels embedded into the mortar.

im sure wiki knows more than i do
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Tower

now we are at our new hotel in Nis, its definitively ex-communist style hotel, funstuff

its still hot, very very hot, prolly will fall asleep early tonight, and wake up stupid early.