This is about things I like to do most. Hang out with friends, eat food, experience new things, and break schedules over my knee. It’s about other things that tire me out, but still have some worth – covering distance and enjoying the front and tail ends of each day. That means sunrise and sunset.
See? I haven’t even started my trip and there’s conflict happening.
It was long ago that I became addicted to food slash travel shows. Not one or the other; it has to be both! People like Anthony Bourdain have become my television heroes – himself a guy who, had he strummed a few notes in his youth instead of tossed a few salads, would most likely be a rockstar. Ironically enough, someone I wouldn’t like. He’s a man of some experience who has had it pull together whilst everyone else from his youth is only just figuring it out… or dead.
Luckily for me I don’t hang out with a load of drug addicted criminals. Still, I can appreciate the contrast and humour of his life – being a celebrity chef who harbours a lot of dislike for celebrity chefs, and whose favourite foods tend to be a culinary version of his own tainted upbringing. Few things are as cool as describing a particular meal in Berlin as ‘a roadmap of deprivation and poverty’ and still enjoying it.
It was on April the 20th, 2008, that I started planning this little blog. It was, in fact, the day I wrote this very entry. It kind of began on the 19th though – I had woken very early to find myself somewhat comatose whilst waiting to catch a bus to an airport. Seven hours later, I was on a plane. Four hours later, I was at home. Two hours later I was at a big Italian family gathering (not mine!) for a 50th birthday, feeling a little out of place but very welcome. Copious amounts of good food can help do that – if make a man feel queasy at the same time. Dead on my feet – held up only by the stubborn sinews of my legs, strung and lashed into place through several gruelling walks the week before – I managed to pull myself together well enough to have a great time whilst simultaneously forgetting the name of every single person I met that night. It was good company though. Six hours later I was at home and in my own bed.
Fast forward to the next day, lying on a sundrenched couch and watching another food slash travel show. I saw Rick Stein amble down a canal on the barge Anjodi on his French Odyssey and I thought to myself… ‘I should be taking notes.’ And so, with great pomp and fanfare, I wrote down ‘Toulouse Sausages’ on this very page. It was the start of a list that might slightly change my course around the world, or at least one that will no doubt enhance my enjoyment of it. Each region has its specialties, and some of these specialties look very appealing. Hopefully by crisscrossing the continents with stepping stones of such specialties I can avoid coming across any specialties. I’m fine with most parts of pork, with beef, with fish, with duck, with goat, whatever. I just hope that I never come across any specialties that deserve such emphasis as italics offer - Cobra hearts pickled in their own bile, and I wish to stay well clear of any testicles that don’t belong to me!
Such methods of preparation and specific parts aside, my limits aren’t too bad - I did eat sheep tongues once. They were quite good once I got past the feeling that I was making out with livestock.
Safety & Peace
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