International Workers’ Day, also known as Labor Day in some countries and often called May Day, is a holiday of workers and working classes promoted by the international labor movement and occurs every year on May 1 or the first Monday in May. May 1 was chosen for International Workers’ Day to commemorate the 1886…
Crossing Ukraine
Odessa, Ukraine, August 1992.In the late afternoon, I should take the train to Lviv. But it turned out that there are no free seats on the night express.So me and five girls spent the night in a hotel built during socialist era. There was a bar on the tenth floor. A few locals and the…
Meat Grinder
Let’s talk about mincing meat today.I have an old meat grinder in my small collection. Standardwerk #10, Americ. System. Made in Austria, sometime in the twenties of the twentieth century. It has always been in our family. My mother got it from her mother, and now I own it. Immediately after WWII, when there was…
When Your Passport is Stolen in India
While studying architecture, we also learned a lot about the history of architecture. Also about the Taj Mahal.And so, on a fine Sunday afternoon on February 26, 1989, I studied whether everything we were taught was true. Taj Mahal in all its beauty. I was so carried away by all this beauty that I forgot…
Hotel San Diego and its Residents
Late in the evening of Wednesday, February 10, 1982, I arrived in San Diego. After a long drive from Phoenix, AZ to Yuma, to the town of El Centro, where things got complicated. Nadine, a young Swiss girl, and I went to eat, and when we returned, our bus had already left. With our luggage….
Sneak Peak into the French Cuisine
So that it won’t just be my grandmother’s Austro-Hungarian cuisine, let’s try French cuisine this time.Do you know why the French eat snails? – Because they don’t like fast food.The French, and some others, swear that French cuisine is the best in the world. Maybe yes or maybe not. To the average non-French person, for…
Kaiserschmarren or Emperor’s Mess
OK, promises, promises.A little more about the Kaiserschmarren.The name Kaiserschmarren is a compound of the words Kaiser (emperor) and Schmarren (a scrambled or shredded dish). Schmarren is also a colloquialism used in Austrian and Bavarian to mean trifle, mishmash, mess, rubbish, or nonsense. The word “Schmarren” is related to scharren (to scrape) and schmieren (to…
Buying Pistachios at the Market in Yazd
The pistachio (Pistacia vera), a member of the cashew family, is a small tree originating from an area that includes Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Iran. The tree produces seeds that are widely consumed as food.The name pistachio is from late Middle English pistace, from Old French, superseded in the 16th century by forms from Italian…
Kebab in Iran
Kebab, kebob, kabob…According to tradition, the dish was invented by medieval soldiers who used their swords to grill meat over open-field fires. Kebab, also spelled kebob or kabob, dish of Middle Eastern or Central Asian origin that typically combines small pieces of meat such as lamb or beef with vegetables on a skewer and is…
Rainy San Francisco
Once upon a time there was a girl we called Yesyes. And I had a crush on her.In February 1982 I was in SF for the first time. I’ve always wanted to be there, I’m just a child of the hippie generation.I took the overnight Greyhound from Los Angeles. It was five in the morning…