Vegetarian Meals on Planes Are Lacking

After an tedious, but productive wait of 20 months from the beginning of the inception of planning for this adventure until its commencement, Grumpy and Evil have taken off again on their latest adventure - to The Balkans.

The Balkans Peninsula is a region in the southeast of Europe that is bordered on all sides (except the north/top) by various seas. There is the Adriatic Sea to the northwest, the Ionian Sea to the Southwest, the Aegean Sea to the south and southeast, and the Black Sea to the east and northeast. While Turkey, Greece, and Italy all have parts of their respective countries that inhabit this region, typically when one uses the term The Balkans, they’re referring to the countries that now make up what was once Yugoslavia: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. Em and I intend to see a portion of most of these countries.

But before we get to The Balkans, we’re taking a small detour through The City of a Thousand Spires, otherwise known as Prague. When I was 16, I like many other teenagers decided that I wanted to run away from home, I just figured out how to do it without ending up on the side of a milk carton - I became an exchange student. By the time that I got my parents to understand that I was serious and leaving somewhere, there weren’t a lot of countries still excepting students and therefore I told my case manager to just pick for me. The end result, I spent an amazing year living in the golden city of Prague in a time before commercialism and it being a “hot ticket” destination. It was a fantastic year and gifted me with a second family. Since Em and I decided to travel to Eastern Europe, I decided we were close enough for a visit and made sure to plan a few days in.

Our journey to Prague was relatively smooth and comprised of only two flights with a small layover in the middle. Besides only paying for “cattle car select” seating on our transatlantic journey, thus ensuring we were well and truely cosy with our neighbors, the AC being cranked to max, and not understanding why people seem to equate “vegetarian” with “health nut”, there weren’t really any issues.

Because Em is terrified of what airlines call “meat” on flights, she convinced me to preorder the vegetarian meal for both legs of the journey. Here’s where I don’t understand how airlines operate; in this case, the airlines actually gave us all menus to choose from a selection of three meals, one of which was vegetarian and actually sounded good. So thinking we’re getting that meal, we were surprised to see that, nope, we get something completely off book. While the vegetarians on the plane who hadn’t stated a preference beforehand are enjoying a nice pesto pasta with cake for dessert, we get some lentils, geriatric green beans and carrots over watery over cooked orzo and fruit for dessert. I guess I don’t understand why if you already know you’re going to have a veggie meal on the flight, you don’t just put some aside for the veggie people instead of having something completely different. Also, why if I order a veggie meal do I get fruit, while every other meal gets cake or pie or some other sugary goodness. Being vegetarian (which I’m not even really) doesn’t automatically mean you detest sweet things, case in point...I want a cookie! Just something meaningless to ponder.

So almost a day after heading out from my abode, Em and I arrived in Prague and were met at the airport by my second father, Pavel.

Day 2: Still jet lagged but determined to see some sites

Em and I woke early due to a combination of jet lag, excitement to be out exploring again, actual sun shining in the window (a novelty for me as my room at home gets zero natural light), and a few super persistent mosquitoes, and headed into the center of Prague for some early morning exploration. 

The nice thing about being up near the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning is that not a lot of other people are up with you. This means that you get to wander unmolested by hordes and get in some nifty pictures sans a thousand of your new best friends. While this quiet time was fleeting, it was nice while it lasted. Since we had a lunch date with my host family, the morning was only a quick walk down Václav Namesti, through Old Town, across Charles Bridge, and then up the hill to view the city from Prague Castle.

Em and I headed back home around 11 to meet the family for lunch. My second grandparents were excited that I’d come for a visited and made one of my favorite Czech dishes, Svickova a kledniky - a creamy sauce with bread dumplings that are usually served with beef, but my host grams made chicken specifically for Em and I. The dumplings are amazing and used to soak up the sauce...I can’t make them in the US unless I find a special flour mixture, so it was definitely a treat. Seeing my host grandparents, parents, and sister after more than a decade and it not feeling like any time has gone; priceless. Grandmothers everywhere are universal in making sure you eat and therefore I practically had to be rolled out of the apartment after lunch.

Sated from lunch, Pavel, Em, and I dropped Jana (my host mother) off at home and continued on to Kunta Hora.

Kutna Hora is a small town about an hour outside of Prague. It sprang up in the mid-1100s as home to the first Cistercian monastery, Sedlec Monastery, in Bohemia. Then 100 years later, Germans came and started mining the silver that was discovered about 100 before the monastery was settled. For the next three centuries the town became a Mecca for miners, culture, politics, and economics. The area for a while was the richest in the region. By the mid-1500s, war, plague, floods, and fire put an end to the town’s golden era.

While the history of Kutna Hora is grand, Em and I were far more interested in the Sedlec Ossuary. The ossuary is located under the Church of All Saints and is estimated to contain the remains of anywhere between 40,000 and 70,000 people. 

In the 13th century, one of the abbots was sent to the Holy Land. Upon his return he came back with some dirt from Golgotha and sprinkled it on the ground. This pious act sparked a belief that the graveyard was henceforth blessed so that if someone was buried there then they would skip the messy state of decomposition and turn into perfectly clean white bones within three days...people started lining up to buy spots to be buried. 

Fast forward a hundred years or so and you get the Black Plague making its way across Europe. Fast forward another 30 years or so and the Hussite Wars kills thousands more. The end result is the cemetery at the Sedlec Monastery needs to expand and the mass graves that are dug up need to go somewhere; so the bones of tens of thousands of people are piled beneath the gothic church. These piles are originally stacked into piles by a half blind monk in the 1500s and then made into wonderful and macabre creations by Frantisek Rint in the 1700s. Rint’s art is what makes this small church one of the most popular tourist destinations in the whole country and what piqued Em and My’s interest.

After taking our time admiring all the creativity put into decorating with the medium of human bones, we all wandered down the street to visit The Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist (if that isn’t a mouthful I don’t know what is). The church is a UNESCO heritage site and a lasting example of Baroque Gothic architecture; a style created by Jan Blazej Santini-Aichel in the 1700s and popular within the region. The ossuary also got an overhaul by Santini around this time.

While I might not be very up on the aesthetics of the style, I could appreciate the the effort put into the place and enjoyed the spiral staircase towards the rear that lead to an attic with some of the original, pre-makeover ruins on display under the roof beams.

The last stop in our short tour of Kutna Hora, was to walk through the town center to Saint Barbara’s Cathedral (or Church depending on who you ask). This is another UNESCO site and example of Gothic architecture, although it has some baroque in it as well from its mixed heritage. Ground breaking for the Church began in 1388, but the construction was halted, changed hands, and adapted numerous times until its completion in 1905. That’s a super long time to be building a church.

And thus day two of this journey comes to a close.