Arhiiv kuude lõikes: juuni 2019

USA

America is something completely different to Europe!
At first, when we arrived at the J.K. Kennedy  airport, it was full of black people, uncommon, as usually we see only few here or there. At first we also got a black driver. He constantly laughed about things which were said or weren`t said…a true warm southern temperament!
My first attempt to cross a road in New York was little bit awkward (and I needed a second try for it), because: lights are only red and white (which is illogical, because white is so much harder to notice then green) and you had only like 10-15 sec, before turning red, but when it turned red, it was blinking like extra 20(?) secs, wich meant you could still cross.
Same happened with my attempt at paying with coins. They don’t have a big and understandable number written on coins. Instead they have a penny (1 cent), a nickel(5 cents) a dime (10 cents) and a quarter(25 cents).
The budget fast food restaurants were all over the streets in New York. I wanted to try the grilled cheese toast, as it is so popular there, but…got sick afterwards. Also, you were able to get a coffee for only one dollar.
The coffee in America…I had already heard it is bad, but…didn`t expect anything so terrible.  That is definitely not something you can call coffee! That one dollar coffee was completely undrinkable, but rest of the places weren`t enjoyable either. Starbucks – oh so famous and oh so totally overrated!These are rather coffee like milk drinks, even when I ordered a double shot, it wasn`t recognisable. But that was one sure place to get coffee with  almond milk, though quite expensive for a coffee as well. Also Starbucks in New York was a bit better quality than the one in Miami! When going to Miami, I think American airline was with much more comfortable seats, a little bit
wider and covered with leather. I wish it would be like this in long flights, because that long flight was really hard to bear. In Miami, the airport was so huge that we had to take the train, what transwered us to another part of airport – something I experienced for the first time.

It was very strange that there weren`t any regular outdoor cinemas. As it is constantly warm there, it would be perfect. There were only frequent outdoor movie nights.

Going to a food store was an experience on its own. There are so-so many choices! As everything in America, everything came in such large quantities. All the milk bottles were at least 2l. etc .Also from vegan food, when we have a separate rack for that, there was only a rack full of hummuses! Man was I in heaven, when I got brownie or pumpkin pie hummus. Also to say, when ordering at a cafe etc and the dish comes with salad, the salad comes in an extra bowl, which is big enough to be an extra dish! And when I got a filter coffee, they brought the whole pot of coffee to the table!

In Miami there are latin quarters like Little Haiti and Little Havana, created in the 50-s.Little Havana is the place to get good coffee! There are shops, which look like shops from the front but in the back there is a barber or some coffee tasting. Apartments were jam-packed. No lawns or yards were included. There were also many laundry places as apparently the living spaces are too tight to fit a washing machine.

In our apartment, we got to meet cockroaches, fortunately I didn’t have to kill them myself. There are many drunk drivers in Florida and also, when riding to St Petersburg, we sat in traffic, basically in one spot about 2 hours.

In west florida I had also chance to experience some true american waitress service. That was interesting, as I answered to her so modestly and timly – it made her suprise, im I okey?! To mention service isn`t like that in everywhere as there are much multi-culti people, so very variable temperament.

It was interesting to observe black people communicating, I especially got to see that on a cruise. They have such vivid and warm expression!

When going to Finland and one Finnish guy pulled faces at me at the security check, I understood,this is the bye-bye for South and first greetings from grumpy North.

Spain

I have been in Croatia, which was already different to Northern Europe, but in Spain I could feel the exotic vibe! Nights in September were oh-so warm!   At Malaga, we ate at some raw-organic vegan place and were wondering, why we are supposed to eat from single use plastic dishes…turned out that they were re-usable.

 We didn`t stay in Malaga, fortunally, because as being a famous tourist spot, I can confirm it wasn`t that nice a place. The huge amount of traffic decreased the nice atmosphere even more. As I understood, it is actually more like some station with an airport and a big train station.

Instead we headed further along the coast (some 30km), where the places like Torreblanca, Fuengirola are…and that area was cozier, but still connected by train stops, shops, restuarants, hotels etc.

 One night I wanted to look around and take a little detour on the way back to our villa.  The streets meander circularly uphill, so it isn’t possible to take any shortcuts, so my little walk turned into quite exhausting strolling.

 In restaurants, dishes were very big and despite the fact that spanish tourists?? – hispaania turistid? can`t speak much english, we were able to get by with english as well. I guess these kind of places are used to different languages. I still tried to order in Spanish though. But.. didn’t really work unfortunately. The moment you go to a restaurant, you are so hungry and tired, you just make sure you get something to eat and rather fast, not start a Spanish class. Also as a meat land, there were still some vegetarian options in most of the places (like the place we were at in Malaga). Many places were ethnic (like Greek) but  were adjusted a lot (otherwise business wouldn`t go so well).

 I took a train from Malaga to Seville. The view from the window was pretty much like a desert, and the mountain! Only when getting closer to Seville, were there many plantations.

 The train stations in Spain were as big as the airport in Tallinn! They even scanned our bags.
To my surprise, there were no water bottles sold in train stations, with this heat!

 So I completely dried out, I had to find the nearest food market. Ridiculous, if I had had to  directly onto a 2 hour train ride, without having a chance to get rid of my thirst with some  spare for the long ride  - see lause on nags poolik

 Didn`t hope to get black bread, but pumpernikkel (thin compressed black bread from Germany) was sold in shops near by (of which were so many out there!). You don`t get that from normal stores in Estonia, unfortunally, because I totally fell for it! My breakfast there was this with hummus, avocado (or guacamole), tomato and maybe egg. It`s so filling, two slices is enough!

 When shopping, I saw just a regular clothes store selling some kinky stuff as well(in here you might get this stuff from a laundry or sex shop). There it was possible to get butt pads! As the point should have a Jennifer Lopez looking butt . I had never seen such a thing in my life! But it reminded me contemporary dance classes, where we did a lot of falling and floorwork, which might have been a bit painful, so we were  definitely longing for something like that.

I was so lucky not to get burned by an octopus or jellyfish!