Author: zora

Summer Break #3: Does Turkey Produce the World’s Weirdest Drink?

Want a real mind-bending experience when you travel?

Don’t worry so much about what to eat. Focus on the odd things there are to drink.

That’s where you get into severe mind-warping territory.

Exhibit A: Salgam Suyu

(Sorry–there’s a little cedilla under the s, and also under a c farther down. I’ve taught myself a lot about code in a decade, but never mastered those special characters.)

Salgam suyu is a Turkish purple carrot drink. Apparently it’s fairly common at juice stands in certain parts of Turkey that I haven’t been to.

I think if I encountered it in a juice stand, I’d be pretty giddy and think it was cool.

But I saw it as a packaged product, in a grocery store–and that was even more mind-blowing. It’s like it proved it was a major part of the culture, not just some health nut’s invention.

Looking innocent on the grocery store shelf

“Is that a…carrot? That’s purple?” I said, squinting at the label. I flipped it around to look at the ingredients. Yup, purple carrot.

At the checkout, the lady looked unimpressed with it, like it was a totally normal thing. I guess, for her, it is. Which is the mind-blowing part.

It’s really beautiful stuff:

Looking lurid out on the street

By now, you’re probably wondering about the taste. The label said in capital letters BEST SERVED COLD.

But we had no fridge. We popped it open near the end of a long walk, standing on the top of a windy dyke at the edge of Edirne, with the massive Sinan mosque on the hill above us.

Peter gulped as I read out the ingredients: “Purple carrot, wheat, turnip, salt, red chili, pepper…”

“Huh. All those things really come through,” he said, scrunching up his face. “In that order.”

I took a swig. It was bracing. I wished it were cold. But for electrolyte replacement or whatever, and in lieu of food, it was pretty fantastic.

This product really made me rethink everything I knew about Turkey, Turkish food and Turks in general. Granted, I’m no expert to start with (the only Turkish I know is cok güzel, and I learned that from an Eartha Kitt song), but this made me realize there’s just so much I don’t know, there and nearly everywhere I go.

Like, what is the significance of this drink? Do grownups drink it? Do kids drink it? Does your mom tell you to drink it when you’re sick with something in particular? Do dudes drink it to feel studlier? Does it go with certain foods? Do you drink at night? In the morning? Is it old-fashioned? Or suddenly cool again? Is this a good brand? The only brand? Do people scoff at seeing it packaged at all?

I have no real answers, but I do see the word afrodizyak on the packager’s website. And, according to the ad, it makes you do backflips.

Each dish in every culture has all this resonance, but we barely begin to learn any of it when we travel. We can read up on some of the most famous dishes–it’s bachelor food, it’s court food, it’s imported-from-China-on-the-silk-road food… But a lot is just never even discussed, until someone thinks to ask.

It’s true for food, but it’s doubly true for drinks, because they’re almost always, by definition, a secondary thing.

Drinks also tend to be more personal, like breakfast–we have our routines, and we don’t want to mess them up (just think of your morning coffee).

And, more practically, travelers often shy away from water-based things for health reasons.

But one huge selling point about trying new drinks is: they’re cheap! Even if something’s disgusting and you’ll never put it in your mouth again, you only spent a couple bucks, max, on it. But you will have seen, for a gulp or two, a whole side of a culture you never knew before.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to drink in another country?

Summer Break #2: Chicken of the Sea, Greek-Stylie

Peter and I were ambling down the boardwalk in Eressos, on some half-baked errand or other, when we saw…a bloodbath. Flashing knives. Bright-red gore.

At first, I thought Costa was butchering a sheep, right there on a restaurant table.

We got closer and saw that the carcass was, in fact, a tuna.

I’ve seen guys cutting up tunas at Hunts Point fish market in the Bronx, but that was a pretty tidy operation. This was a sloppier affair.

Just working on lunch

Costa had bought the whole fish directly from a random fisherman who’d caught it not far offshore. The guy was someone from another island, Costa said, where they’re experts at catching very big fish. (On Lesvos, they’re masters of sardines.)

He'd used a very, very big hook.

Costa had hired the strolling vendor, a Bangladeshi guy who normally walked along the beach, to help him cut it up. He’d put aside his stack of cheap fedoras and board of sunglasses, and was now up to his wrists in tuna meat. He looked pretty pleased.

An older woman was there collecting the scraps for her cat. “Do I need to cook it first?” she asked.

Costa laughed, in his husky way, through his beard. “No!” he declared, and sliced two chunks off the loins he was slicing up. He thrust them at us, to demonstrate.

When you look up 'raw' in the dictionary, this picture is there.

I’d like to say it was the most transcendant sushi ever, but it was almost too intense. Gamey. It reminded me a little of the whale we ate in Norway a decade ago, like they were from the same murky depths. Serious stuff–it tasted like you could live off one scrap for a week. But a cat would be delighted.

The crime scene

Check out those yellow bits in the photo above. Yup: yellowfin tuna. It never occurred to me that those words, which I’ve read only on can labels, meant something concrete, in real life. Somewhere out there in the sea is a fish with little blue bits on his fins too.

We left Costa to clean up. Remarkably, everyone else at the restaurant was placidly enjoying their lunches, not batting an eye. If they’d been butchering a sheep, of course, the tourists at least would’ve run off screaming. Why are fish so different?

Do they not bleed?

We returned that night. Two kilos of tuna, for our party of 12–we barely made a dent in the full 55 kilos the fish had weighed when hooked.

Grilled. Squeeze of lemon. Salt. Pepper. Cooked all the way through–none of that Asian-seared business.

It was perhaps the most amazing fish I’ve ever eaten. With heat, the gaminess dissipated. The fat oozed through the meat, which flaked.

I saw exactly what all that canned tuna was meant to be. And it sure ain’t chicken.

RG in Real Time

Astute blog observers may realize I’m writing about things that happened a bit in the past, which may in turn make you suspect I’m off on another, better adventure. You’re right!

If you want to know what I’m doing minute by minute (oh, so breathless!) right now in Morocco, go ‘like’ Roving Gastronome on Facebook and/or follow me on Twitter.

(Spoiler alert: I am not embroiled in street protests against YouTube videos.)

Summer Break #1: Name That Fruit! (A Mediterranean Mystery)

Help me out here, Internet. I’m trying to identify a mystery fruit. Or maybe fruits.

There are three stories to tell:

Incident #1: Lebanon
A nice Druze woman on a bus in the Chouf mountains in Lebanon told me her favorite fruit was Persian aprict–mishmish ajami. She said it stayed green, and was both sweet and sour, and was not very fuzzy.

Sadly, I was scheduled to leave Lebanon just a couple of days later, and had no time to look for this fantastic fruit.

In lieu of a picture of that fruit, or of that woman, here at least is a nice photo of Peter with a Druze man.

Peter's Photo Pro Tips: Always compliment a man on his mustache.

Incident #2: Greece
After the fantastic ladies at our favorite restaurant in Eressos showed us how to make Easter lamb, they pointed to a crate of fruit and told us to help ourselves.

They called the fruit milorodaxino–literally, “apple peach.” From far away, all piled in the crate, the fruit did look like kind of crappy little Golden Delicious apples. Up close, though…best nectarine ever:

The mystery apple peach

And, as you can see, green all the way through.

Was this the phantom Persian apricot, by another name? The farmer who grew the fruit was there outside the restaurant, all burly forearms like Popeye and a mustache to beat the band. He was the only one that grew this fruit, he said. End of story.

Incident #3: Astoria, New York
When we returned to NYC, one of the 24-hour produce stores (yes, we have more than one) had these “honeydew nectarines” in stock:

Honeydew Nectarines

They looked the same, but they were kinda crappy–a little mealy, not intense flavor. The woman who runs the store admitted they were not at their best. It was hard to tell whether it was not the same fruit at all, or just a typically poor American rendition of it.

And because she’s Greek, Peter asked her if she knew if these were the same as the milorodaxino. No, no, she said–those are part apple, and these were part melon.

Er, I think she’s wrong on both counts, because that would be like serious fruit miscegenation, so unfortunately I have to discount her as an unreliable source. But I appreciate that she makes an effort to source new and interesting fruits and veg–we also got these neat bulbous cucumbers from her, and some great liver-colored heirloom tomatoes.

Second data point: After writing all this, I flipped over an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated, and it had an illustration of peaches and nectarines. The Honeydew variety was on there. The issue was from 2002–so this isn’t a new strain.

Further data point: Turkey
Check out these marzipan fruits in a storefront in Istanbul. A couple of them look like they could be the mysterious fruit.

Check out the top row, next to the "kivi"

Ala elma = “ala apple” according to Google translate, which is maybe just the variety name of an apple, like Gala?

Or this one:

Check out the greenish things...

Papaz erik = “pastor plum”

Obviously, the fact that these were rendered in marzipan makes it especially difficult. In retrospect, Peter and I should’ve gone to the adjacent market and looked for the real-fruit equivalents, instead of getting distracted by an antiques store.

So gardeners, travelers, botanists, Lebanese fruit-lovers: tell me what you know. Have you eaten any of these things? Are they all the same? Are they different?

Bottom line, really, is: Did I miss the Best Fruit Ever by not getting those mishmish ajami in Lebanon in the first place?

(If you like stories about cross-cultural plant identification, also check out my old story about purslane[PDF]. That one took years to solve. Now that the internet is more full of information, I expect to solve this question in minutes. Right? Hello? Anyone?)

Summer Break #0.5: Lebanon Mountain Trail

I’m back from an internet vacation, and filing the next rash of posts under “Summer Break.” First, I was in Lebanon. I know it doesn’t look like work, but trust me, I’m writing a book! Later, we went to Greece and Turkey, where I wrote for a bit, and traipsed for a bit. More on that later.

Near the end of my six-week stint in Lebanon, Peter and I planned to hike a few legs of the Lebanon Mountain Trail, a 260-mile north-south route through about two-thirds of the country.

The LMT organization publishes a trail guide, with descriptions of the route (I picked this up in a Beirut bookshop) as well as a series of topo maps for every leg (these I had to buy direct from the LMT). They provide a list of guesthouses and campsites and guides along the route. It’s really very suavely packaged, and inspires confidence.

...the confidence you need to tackle very steep inclines. (All photos courtesy of Peter.)

But then there’s a line in the trail guide, last on a list of bullet points, after the one telling you it’s a good idea to hire a guide: “We walk this trail every year, and there are no land mines. But off the trail…well…”

Actually, that’s  paraphrasing, because I left my trail guide in Beirut. But you get the idea. I sure got the idea: If I were to wander off the trail, who knows what could happen? But I chose to squash down the fear of getting lost and losing my limbs and carry on. Squash, squash, squash.

Because Lebanon is crawling with hikers, all able-bodied, I figured the law of averages was on our side. But I figured it would be better to stick to better-traveled sections of trail, where the chance of getting lost was smaller. (Why didn’t we just hire a guide? you might ask. Well, Peter and I are skilled outdoorspeople who can read topo maps and a compass. But really: We’re introverts and really didn’t feel like chitchatting with a guide all day long.)

I also wanted the start and end points to be places that could be reached by public transport. But I wasn’t so self-sufficient that I wanted to carry camping gear.

The only section that satisfies all these needs–well-marked trail; guesthouses every night; accessible by bus–is legs 19, 20 and 21, between Barouk and Jezzine. A lot of it runs through the Chouf Cedar Reserve, for which there are additional, more current maps available (I picked these up at Antoine in Beirut). This gave me greater confidence in our decision not to hire a guide.

In fact, I got so cocky, I decided we should hike south to north, against the flow of the LMT guide, which describes the route north to south. This turned out to be the least of our worries.

Goats saying, "None shall pass!" on the other hand...that was a serious worry.

If you’re considering this hike, here are some details to know:

  • Hiking south to north is fine. The trail guide is not so detailed that it’s hard to follow the other way. And there were several points on the route (especially hiking down from the Prophet Ayoub shrine to Niha) where we were glad we were going the opposite direction.
  • On leg 21, hiking northbound, once you pass the mountain fort, be sure to stock up on water at the spring. Springs marked on the map farther along the trail were not actually springs–or we couldn’t find them. While you’re filling up your water bottles, consult your two maps–the LMT’s and the Chouf Reserve’s. See where they differ, and follow the Chouf Reserve’s. The LMT directs you through a canyon that is overgrown, and we couldn’t find the trail, and had to backtrack, cursing all the way.
  • The guesthouse in Niha is great. The owner lost his hands to land mines. It’s unsettling, especially if you get lost on the way there, as we did (but you won’t, because you will have followed my advice above). He also works in the reserve cabin by the mountain fort, which you’ll pass on the way from Jezzine. This is convenient, if you’ve neglected to make reservations.
    • Breakfast at the guesthouse in Niha
  • From the Prophet Ayoub shrine down to Niha, there is indeed a trail, as the map suggests, though it’s not well marked at the top, and if you ask anyone, they’ll probably tell you it’s not there. It’s not super well maintained. But it is passable. Just head down through the picnic grounds and keep an eye out for trail blazes.
  • Leaving Niha and heading north, the maps are contradictory, and the trail description isn’t clear. If you head back to where the shrine trail dumped you the day before, don’t cross the river, and at the first opportunity, scramble uphill a short distance to get to a trail running along the irrigation ditch you can see just up the hillside. Leave early in the day–once the trail heads uphill again, away from the irrigation ditch, it’s pretty grueling.
  • We got lost in the last stretch before Maasser ech-Chouf, after Mristi. But we didn’t even realize it because we had convinced ourselves we were following trail blazes, but later realized they were no-trespassing or private-property symbols. The route we went wasn’t terrible, as it’s mostly through fields, and nothing overgrown. There’s another agricultural road a man in Mristi told us about, that goes from near the gas station on the far, far edge of town. Who knows where the real trail is. (Oh, yeah–a professional guide does.)
    • Terraced fields outside of Jezzine
  • The guesthouse in Maasser ech-Chouf is really lovely. The man who runs the shop and restaurant on the plaza is a smooth operator, and he’ll bring you more food than you order, and charge you for it all. But it’s good food, and it’s not expensive, and he’ll probably throw in invigorating herbal concoctions and coffee and sweets and funny hats to wear. Just think of it more as an all-you-can-eat-for-$15 place, rather than an a la carte restaurant.
  • The trail north out of Maasser ech-Chouf (ie, south end of leg 19) is…I don’t know. Let’s just say not well marked. This is the one point where we definitely would’ve been happier with a guide. But we were so bent on leaving before the sun got hot that we didn’t want to wait for the guide to get into the office. We wound up scrabbling up a really steep mountainside and flopping out on the road, and having to hitch a ride to the Cedar Reserve entrance. It wasn’t pretty.
    • Peter's battle wounds from clambering up the hill. Also: holes in both our pants.
  • There are no springs between Maasser ech-Chouf and Barouk. But the trail, after the uphill out of Maasser, isn’t strenous, and partially shaded. Plan accordingly.
  • There are 800 vicious varieties of thistles in Lebanon. Plan accordingly, with thick socks or long pants.
  • The guesthouse in Barouk needs to be booked at least two days in advance, said the owner on the phone, and it was so empty we were suspicious it’s ever open. Humph. But then we hopped a bus to Beiteddine, and walked to Deir al-Qamar, and finally found a hotel that wasn’t exorbitant. (But, it should be said, the owner was a bit appalled at our sweaty appearance–out of context of the hiking trail, we did look like filthy vagrants, by Lebanese uber-grooming standards. Keep this in mind if you plan extensive backpacking.)

Did I mention land mines too much and scare you? I’m sorry–that shouldn’t have happened. The trail is land-mine-free!

Just focus on the idyllic parts...which were pretty idyllic.

I loved hiking in Lebanon–we met nice people and saw millennia-old trees. I’d go back and do it again–I’d love to do some of the more northern legs especially. The Chouf is interesting terrain, and a nice mix of wild territory and farms.

And the efforts of the Lebanon Mountain Trail crew are admirable–it’s an excellent project, and I hope to take part in it again soon.

America in an Arab Mirror

When I was in Dubai in the spring, I ran into my first-year Arabic professor, Kamal Abdel-Malek. He’s the man who had us marching around the room doing “Arabic aerobics” to learn our numbers–fun and effective and, according to his wife, still part of his teaching repertoire!

It doesn’t surprise me that he’s also put together a fun but instructive anthology of Arab travel writing, America in an Arab Mirror. It should be required reading for American travel writers, and anyone who intends to write about another culture.

Honestly, you really could read any book about America written by a foreigner and learn a lot about the pitfalls of travel writing: the broad generalizations, the hasty conclusions, the not-quite-right facts (one writer in this book mentions how famous Colorado is for its oranges!).

In a decade of work as a travel writer, I’m embarrassed to say this is the first time I’ve intentionally read a book like this. I wish I’d done it years ago–I would’ve been far more conscious of how easy it is to go off the rails. I mean, I know you’re not supposed to extrapolate a whole culture from a single conversation with your taxi driver, but it’s not clear how bad it sounds until you read a half-baked theory about your own culture based on a similar one-off chat.

This makes it sound like the writing in this book is terrible. That isn’t true. Most of the writers take great pains to say that, for instance, a rewarding talk with a Catholic priest on an airplane of course can’t represent a country as diverse or huge as America.

Some of the older excerpts, from texts from the early 1900s, however, have a broader, happy-to-generalize tone, and one of the wackiest is Sayyid Qutb’s. He’s notorious for having come to study in the U.S. and been so alienated that he went back to Egypt and rallied the Muslim Brotherhood. In the excerpts of his writing in America in an Arab Mirror, he’s shocked at how casually Americans seem to treat death–laughing at a wake, for instance, or discussing life-insurance details just days after a death. But where Qutb sees only the harshness of life here, other visitors come to entirely different, kinder conclusions.

But this book is remarkable even if you’re not a travel writer. Much of it is a sweet reminder of the image America holds in the rest of the world. Arabs are awed by America’s wilderness, diversity and kind-hearted people.

They’re also intrigued–and a pit put off–by details we barely even notice. Shafiq Jabri, a Syrian author, says Americans live a “boiled” life, similar to the boiled food we eat–cooked fast, with not much concern for flavor. Egyptian Karima Kamal, who presumably has dealt with crowds in Cairo, describes a day out at Taste of Chicago, and wonders why people would subject themselves to such a horrible mob scene. Saudi politician Ghazi Abd al-Rahman al-Qusaybi deconstructs American TV ads, pointing out how one will promote cheese-covered food and the next will tout Slim Fast.

Some of this can seem like quite heated criticism of America–but it’s also a way to see what Arabs value in their own culture by contrast. Journalist Jadhibiyya Sidqi is shocked at how Americans let their parents waste away alone in retirement homes. Reading the statement “Arabs value family” is abstract; reading Sidqi’s chagrin and sincere sadness makes it more concrete.

Not every excerpt is gripping, and occasionally the translations are stilted–shout-out to Dima Reda, a fellow CASA student, whose translations are some of the best. (In one dopier move, a writer goes to the striptease bars in a town south of Chicago called Kaloomeet. I’d laugh harder at this misspelling, if this weren’t the story of my Arabic-reading life, sounding out words that I think are Arabic, only to find out they’re some English proper noun.)

But ultimately all the pieces in the book–even the cranky and misinformed ones–work together to show an image of Arabs as well. And when we see how easy it is for a visitor to get the wrong impression when visiting the U.S., it’s wise to consider just what might be wrong with our image of the Middle East. The mirror of the title works both ways.

(Here’s a good review of the book and interview with Kamal, with a hilarious end anecdote, in the New York Times.)

Have you read travel writing about your own country? Do you have other books to recommend? I’d love to hear about them.

Dissenting Opinion: Beirut Is Not Cool

Beirut is cool! If you’ve picked up a travel magazine once in the last decade, you’ve probably read this at least once. Beirut has been the international equivalent of Portland, Ore., a subject of travel editors’ endless fascination.

After six weeks there, I appear to be the only person who thinks the opposite, and I’ve had a hard time writing this post to say so. (And I like Portland!) I don’t blame Beirut, I don’t think–I blame the hype.

I went to Beirut in 1999, and it was a haphazard mess of terrible infrastructure and jerks in armored Mercedes. According to the papers, though, Beirut’s come a long way, baby!

Cool kids in the Place d'Etoile in the rebuilt downtown

Guess what? Beirut is still a mess. Ostentatious wealth still rules, and people have to haul water–not like in rural Africa, but anyway, in 5-gallon jugs up stairs because the power is out so the elevator isn’t running.

Added misfortunes since ’99: the internet is some of the slowest (and most expensive) in the world, and crude plastic surgery has become wildly popular among a certain set. (Women look startled, strained, flotational–if you don’t want to feel like you’re having an acid flashback, don’t go anywhere near a mall!)

Sure, it would be a buzzkill to mention these details in a “Beirut nightlife is sizzling hot!” story. But it’s slightly disingenuous to ignore them altogether. All of these things (except the plastic surgery–not sure what that’s about) are indicators of a much more troubling reality, and the simple fact that Beirut is still scarred by war–and so are Beirutis.

This is not a “cool” city mainly because Beirutis do not keep their cool. They are, to generalize wildly, jumpy and aggressive and filled with road rage, and the instant there’s bad news, they retreat to their apartments with a week’s worth of food.

Beirut cool...in shades of pink

I completely understand why this is, and I would probably be pessimistic and anxious if I lived there too. But as a visitor, you have to be willfully blind to ignore the harsh truth behind the art-book stores, the Gemmayzeh pubs with their reggae-Gypsy-funk-Oriental DJs, and the massive, glittering malls.

That truth is: it takes a long time to get over the trauma of war, and it won’t be happening anytime soon in Lebanon.

Most travel stories nod to the various wars, to heighten the drama of the phoenix-like rise of the capital: “Beirutis, scarred by decades of war…”; “Beirut, once marred by civil war…” etc etc. But the implication is that’s all done–Beirutis are back to boozing and beach-lounging, and it’s all good. The checkered past just gives a little frisson to the decadent present–all the bullet holes add cachet.

But Lebanon’s 1991 Amnesty Law let the perpetrators of civil-war horrors slide back into society, even politics. Lebanon has not signed on to the international Mine Ban Treaty. And any peace in Lebanon is precarious with Syria next door, not to mention Israel–and Hizbullah’s unending “resistance” to it.

I’m not complaining about the poor infrastructure and the bad drivers per se–that I can handle. I have a harder time with partying in the face of obvious psychological trauma. I had a similar reaction to New Orleans after Katrina–a wonderful and interesting place to visit, but it’s wrong to pretend the city is “back” and hopping when a stranger on a streetcorner will, unprompted, in a shaking voice, tell you how he lost his home.

Beirut balconies, each a little theater

Beirut does actually have all the charms touted in the travel stories. It’s small, so you can crash the “scene” in a week. You’re on the Mediterranean, which is lovely. Women dress in every possible way. (Though cleavage is often deployed in the same aggressive way as the plastic surgery–ow, my eyes!) Its place on the International Hipster Circuit is established thanks to cool bars, good coffee, contemporary art and a visible gay scene.

Beirut is cosmopolitan in a way that most of the rest of the region is not. First-time visitors to the Middle East are usually happy to find the place and people so relatable, which is no small thing.

What do you think? Is it dishonest to push one aspect of tourism to a troubled place, and ignore the trouble? Is it helpful to normalize a place by touting it as a hot destination? Have you had a similar experience in another destination? Do you love Beirut because or in spite of it all? Am I cynical grump who should just shut up and go surfing in Liberia?