Europe 2014: Air, Water, Food

One of the things I noticed while traveling this summer was how different the air, water and food was in each of the three places I spent significant time.

Air

Behind Sacre Coeur, Paris

Madrid has an arid climate, so the air is fairly dry (though not as dry as, say, Bend, Oregon). Smells carry well, especially in the summer when the sun heats the air. It smells mostly of urine and feces, both from dogs and from humans. On occasion one also smells delicious food, but it's hard to know how to react when you're simultaneously smelling delicious food and sun-heated urine.

The only two things I remember about Paris's air is that it was humid - once you started sweating, you never dried off all day - and that at times it smelled so strongly of the sewer that I felt nauseous.

I don't recall that Vienna smelled a particular way, nor that it struck me as either humid or dry. What I do remember is that the air was somehow greasy. At the end of the day my skin felt greasy and my hair looked as though I hadn't washed it in three days. I'm not sure what causes this...perhaps all the street-vended meat?

Water
I've heard people say that when you travel you should pick a brand of bottled water and stick to it no matter where you go. Part of the problem with this is that you can't count on everywhere you go having that same brand of water. But also bottled water costs money, and it seems unnecessary to me to pay for it when, technically speaking at least, the tap water is safe to drink in Madrid, Paris and Vienna.

That said, the next time I go to Paris I'll be buying my water. The tap water is absolutely disgusting; it tastes strongly of chlorine. Yuck, blech. The tap water in Madrid tastes fine, but perhaps the most surprising thing was that the tap water in Vienna was not only safe but it was actually really delicious. Unless you've had delicious water, I don't know if you'll get what I mean by this.

But yes: avoid tap water in Paris, seek it out in Vienna.

Food
There was delicious food in all the places I went this summer, but the challenge for me (having been on an extremely restrictive budget) was finding delicious food that was also cheap. This turned out to be far more possible in Madrid and Vienna than in Paris.

One of the things that makes Madrid so affordable is the tradition of free tapas. Unless you end up at a restaurant or cafe-bar right next to a popular tourist attraction, if you order a beer, glass of wine or Coke, you will get a free little something to nibble on. Sometimes this is just a little bowl of olives or potato chips, but if you play your cards right, it could be a piece of tortilla española (Spanish omelet) or even a little sandwich. It is possible to end up getting a decent dinner just ordering drinks and eating the free tapas that come with.

Ropa vieja at El Sur

But if the free bite-size morsels aren't enough, you can also order tapas or raciones, which are slightly larger plates. Plus you get to pick what to eat, as opposed to being at the mercy of whatever they want to give you. And while you can certainly find expensive restaurants to eat at, that isn't the norm. Some of my favorite restaurants in Madrid are the Chinese restaurant under the Plaza de España, Mexican restaurant La Panza es Primero in Tribunal (C/ La Palma 6), Antigua Taquería in Embajadores (C/ Cabestreros 4), and for traditional Spanish dishes and high-quality aceitunas, El Sur near metro Antón Martín (Calle de la Torrecilla del Leal 12).

I really only found two things in Paris that were both cheap and delicious - pastries and baguette sandwiches. Everything else seemed incredibly expensive, but perhaps I just didn't know where to go. As a consequence, I ended up spending the majority of my food budget at the grocery store. One thing Paris does have going for it (as does most of the rest of Europe) is that food at the grocery store is cheaper than it is in the U.S.

From Viktor Adler Markt

In Vienna I found lots of great cheap food at the open air Viktor Adler Markt. There I could buy a huge tub of delicious chicken & vegetable fried rice for €2,50; an enormous hunk of ham on the bone that lasted me at least 3 meals for €4; and cashews, fresh hummus and stuffed olives at the Turkish vendor's booth. Nom nom nom. The restaurants were too expensive, though, and coffee in Vienna was the most expensive out of any of the three places.

On another note, the consequences of eating in Europe were different than at home. For several months earlier this year, in an attempt to feel better and lose some weight, I cut out refined sugar and cut way back on alcohol, bread and cheese. While in Europe, however, I threw all my rules out the window. I spent two and a half months eating pastries, putting sugar in my coffee, drinking cheap beer and wine, and eating all the bread and cheese and I could stuff into my mouth. And I lost 10 pounds doing it. I am trying to understand how this happened.

Possible reasons for the weight loss:

• What one eats and drinks while traveling doesn't count
• Portion control - I only had one big meal a day (lunch), ate smaller portions for breakfast & dinner
• Taking 2-3 short walks per day is more effective than one big long walk that's followed by sitting around for the rest of the day
• Tapeworm
• Wasting disease
• A thinning curse (like in the Stephen King story Thinner)

Since I have lost another 5 lbs. in the three months I've been back in the States, I'm going with the thinning curse.