Day 3&4: Mountain food

Warning: I’ve became a carnivore. Gunther is the one to blame thank, he introduced me to the amazing bavarian cuisine that I am in love! 😉 I even bought a cook book yesterday!

Love #1: Dumplings! I can’t get enough of these bread noodles! They’re dense and full of flavors. This one is made with spinach and cheese. Delicious!!

On the mountain hut with Mara.

Gunther ordered beef in a heavy sauce with dumplings. I happily tried them and love the tenderness and taste of the meat. 😯 I can’t believe I’m saying that I love red meat, but that’s the truth! like me or hate me 😉

My red meat “mentor” Gunther!

Dinner at the hotel which was a 5 course meal! Woooo!!!

#1: Salad bar

#2: pancake soup

#3: cheese dumpling (according to Gunther and Mara, it was the best dumpling they’ve ever had).

#4: beef (Love #2) with sprouts and mashed potato. My favorite. I finished mine and half of Mara’s plate 😉

#5: Dessert. Mara had coffee panna cotta.

Gunther had vanilla ice cream with red fruit sauce

I had apple strudel, a classic!

Perfect reward for a ski day! 😀

Typical bavarian breakfast (Gunter’s): juice, eggs, bread, ham, cheese and butter!

Mine and Mara’s

On our way back to Erding (Germany) we stopped here for dinner

A popular place indeed.

The waitress wears a typical dress

I had this menu

I like their Christmas decoration

salad: greens, pears and walnuts in a balsamic dressing. Scrumptious!! 😀

my entree: rabbit cooked in a heavy sauce with clementine served with pretzel dumpling and sprouts.

Mara had vegetable strudel

Gunther had milanesa (breaded beef) with fries. Very guy type of meal 😉

Dessert: expresso with Lebkuchen

Other new love (#3) that I’ve been having for breakfast everyday is fresh baked bread with butter! Yeah~ you heard me! I’m in LOVE with bread with BUTTER!!! 😀

It has been just a week but I’m so in tune with the local food. A lot of red meat, bread dumplings, bread with butter and coffee!!! I’m AMAZED, guilty free and 120% enjoy everything! 😀

Q: Does your taste buds change when you travel too?

Germany day 3: (Innsbruck) Austria and (Vipiteno) Italia

Hello people!!! I’m back to Germany after spending the weekend at Vipiteno skiing and falling down. 😉 But let’s talk about that in the next post. First let me do the recap of day 3 which was full of fun, countries (from Germany to Italy crossing by Austria) and local meals!

The day we went to Munich, Mara bought me a typical Bavarian snack: Lebkuchen

its texture is between a cookie and a cake, flavored with essence of almond. Really tasty and dense like a bomb (a small bite of it goes a long way)

Every friday Mara and Gunther go to a local market where fresh produce and meat are sold as well as local meals. At this stand, we had our mini lunch.

Potato soup with sausage

I had the soup with some pita like bread

Mara had Apple almond cake

and Gunther in addition to the soup had Kirchweinudel (a fried cake pudding)

Then we head to Vipiteno Italy and we stopped at Innsbruck (Austria), a very cute place.

Another Christmas market

We shared a Kiacha with sauerkraut, a fried dough (slightly sweet) with fermented cabbage

It was my first time having sauerkraut, love it.

A ham & bacon shop

where we had a sandwich

I loved the narrow streets and the unique style of the buildings.

There were a lot of people despite the cold weather. Everyone had some food or drink at hand while chatting with friends.

A typical drink in this area is Gluewein, warm wine. It has a intense flavor. I felt my throat and chest warm right after the first sip.

After 3 hours of drive we finally arrived Vipiteno, an Italian comune in the province of Bolzano-Bozen in the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. It is the main village of the southern Wipptal, and the Eisack River flows through the medieval town.

source

We went to Mara and Gunther’s favorite pizza place called Sportbar for dinner

Mara had Schupfnudeln (ravioli kind of pasta filled with spinach)

Gunther had pizza with arugula, parmesan and ham

I had pizza primavera

It was DELICIOUS!!! I really like Italian pizza’s crust, not greasy at all, chewy and thin. Anyone can easily manage to eat the whole thing! 😉

For dessert I had Tiramisu

Mara had vanilla ice cream with warm raspberries sauce

After dinner, we went to another bar for a drink. It’s located at an old basement.  Look how cool is its interior

A typical local drink called Veneziano: mixture of aperol (licor) and proseco

It’s slightly sweet, citrus and very sexy 😉

It was a long day but a lot of fun!!!

Stay tune for the ski recap! 😉

Side note: I was not expecting much about this trip because I was never a big fan of German culture, people and food. But half way through this short trip, I’m surprisingly like everything I’ve seen, met and tried. I like the order and cleanness of the place, politeness of the people, its food culture which focus on eating local and spending great amount of time preparing food, even for a non-meat eater like me, I’ve been enjoying a lot its food 😀

Germany day 2: NAKED

Yesterday we went to Munich but the weather was really bad… raining and cold! 😦 So we just did an overview of the old center which is pretty nice even under the bad weather. Because it’s Christmas season, there are markets everywhere. They all look similar and sell traditional snacks and ornaments.

There is an important culture of expresso coffee. Everywhere you go there’s expresso coffee and many people have also expresso machine at home. I probably have 2-3 expresso per day. Cappuccino is my favorite! love the foam! 😀

Then we went to the biggest Sauna Thermal in Europe: Therme Erding. Mara told me that it’s a great place, it makes wonder to the skin and hair, it’s big, it’s luxurious, it’s fun, but she didn’t tell me the most important part: EVERYONE GOES NAKED so I HAD TO BE NAKED TOO!!! No underwear, no biki, nothing at all!!!! 😯 WOOOOO!!!!! I didn’t have much time to react and mentally prepare myself (which helped a lot). We just got in and I saw naked man and woman everywhere! 😯 shock again but finally accepted the fact that I had no scape!

As you can imagine I was not allowed to take pictures, so here are some from their website.

There are 18 saunas with different themes and temperatures, from the cool 95°F to 212°F. A rose sauna and a citrus sauna provide aroma therapy, the meditation sauna offers a place to retreat. The Finnish log cabin sauna has impressive kelo wood walls and a fireplace. Many themed showers and cold tubs help to cool down after all the heat and steam.

We spent four hours there and went to like 6-7 different thematic saunas, the big thermal pool, the water park that has 12 thrilling high-speed rides, including Europe’s longest water lide (320 m). At first I tried to hide myself and avoided eye contact with others, but after an hour or so, all inhibitions were gone and I was totally enjoying myself. 😉

Being naked is a NO-NO for many people, but actually it’s nothing wrong with it, everything is in our mind and what others tell us is normal. If everyone gets naked, that’s the normal then! 😀 It was really a fun experience, transitioning from being ashamed to feeling liberated! 😀

Q: Have you ever been naked in public place? If not, would you?