Seat of Our Pants » Travel Advice

Travel Dining: A Tale of Wanting What I Can’t Have

Jaime — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:52:21 +0000

I love food. It’s as simple as that. Catch me a few hours after a good meal and I’ll most likely be thinking about my next meal. It’s a habit that becomes heightened when traveling. Sure, it’s great to see pretty things, explore soaring mountains or wile away on an island beach. If I were honest, though, I feel most in touch with local traditions when I’m eating the local cuisine.

A bit of Dosa in Kolkata strengthened my sense of India. A mouthful of Momos in Nepal broadened my understanding of mountain life. A spicy Vietnamese Pho helped me understand what street food was all about. The list goes on and on.

There is irony in this situation, though. It doesn’t happen right away, but I often find myself longing for food I can’t have. When I’m in Thailand, I want some Nepali food. When in Sweden I’m longing for Mexican food. Perhaps I’m just used to variety. I’m American after all. We don’t have a national cuisine, but we do have food from almost everywhere else. It’s that variety, those options that I start to miss after eating my 20^th plate of the same local cuisine.

Turkish cheese store

Take the delicious cheese that we’ve been eating in Turkey and Georgia as an example. Two months ago we couldn’t stop talking about cheese. We had long, detailed discussions about whether or not cheese is the best food ever made. We were in India at the time, where you can’t find the type of cheese that we were craving. We flew from there to Sweden, where we could finally get our fill of cheese. We left happily satisfied, flew to Turkey to find that it has some epic cheese options too. Yay for more cheese!

Two weeks have passed and the enthusiasm is gone. Because we’re traveling on the cheap here, we eat out only once a day. The other two meals are made up of things we can find locally – mostly bread, cheese and the odd piece of fruit. This makes for a lot of cheese eating.

We came across this gorgeous cheese shop in the northeastern town of Kars. Out of respect for big beautiful rounds of cheese we bought some. It was divine cheese for sure but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t get Indian food out of my mind.

Kolkata fast food - mmm mmm good!

Such is eating on the road. A long story of amazing food, followed by selfish bouts of wanting what I can’t have.

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Couples Who Brave the World Together

Jaime — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:40:14 +0000

Traveling as a couple has its ups and downs. For the most part it’s worked out incredibly well for Martin and I but only because we found a system that works for us. I call it Divide and Conquer.

I ventured out into guest writing last week for Pam at Spunky Girl Monologues. My post explains the differences I’ve noticed between traveling alone and traveling with a partner (my husband in my case) Both ways are great, but also have their challenges.

Take a few minutes and check it out here.

Happily, Martin and I aren’t the only couple who are braving the world together. Check out these great sites from other couples on the road*:

Trans-Americas Journey

*If you’re a traveling couple and want to be added to this list (since I know there are more of you out there), please include your website in a comment.

I’m curious. If you had to choose one thing about traveling as a couple that you couldn’t do without, what would it be? For me it’s Martin’s eerie memory for place names. If we’re driving away from a town, chances are I’ve already forgotten its name. He’ll remember it 30 years from now. It’s an invaluable trait and really comes in handy when people have asked me where we’ve been. I stutter around a while before he come to my rescue – every time.

Happy trails fellow couples-who-make-traveling-work!

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Buying a Carpet in Turkey: A Competitive Girl’s Adventure

Jaime — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:54:42 +0000

Martin’s advice on buying a Kurdish carpet was simple: You can’t win. That’s it. Just one rule; one that drove the proverbial nail in the coffin for a competitive girl like myself. I can’t win, huh? He explained further: men have been selling carpets here for thousands of years. They are Carpet Selling Supermen and I was just one in a long line of carpet-seeking suckers.

Alright then, what could I do if I still really wanted a carpet, because clearly I wasn’t going to bamboozle the Carpet Supermen. That was simple as well. In order to leave Turkey with a carpet in my hands and feel good about it, I would have to take myself out of the game. The trick would be to set a figure in my head, an amount I would be unwilling to exceed. When the negotiations get heated, I would have to remember that amount and insist on paying less than it. When the shop keeper threatens to throw us out, I would have to remember that number. When we’re both stomping our feet on the ground in anger, I would have to remember that number. He would inevitably make me pay that amount (and maybe more) but that’s the way it works. They’re just that good.

This theory was put to the test on our second day in Turkey, in the southeastern town of Diyarbakir. As Martin explained in this post, we were led on an impromptu walking tour by a nice local man. The tour ended, surprise-surprise, at his uncle’s carpet shop. An offer of tea got us through the door but the beautiful carpets kept us there for the second, third and fourth cups.

Seeing the interest we tried to hide with sidelong glances, the shop keeper began to leisurely fold out various shapes and sizes. Before we knew it we were oohing and ahhing our way through his inventory. We settled on a beautiful semi-antique kilim, a traditional Middle Eastern woven carpet (a detail is shown in the photo below). We had absolutely no need for the piece, but fell in love with it instantly. The “very, very cheap” price quoted was $375. Well, that would obviously not do. We’re poor backpackers, after all.

A detail of our beautiful new Kilim

My next move was to panic. I hadn’t settled on a price ceiling, as instructed, so I was swimming with the carpet sharks. We hurriedly thanked the guide and his uncle and left, promising that we would return the following day. To ensure our return our guide insisted on an appointment time the next morning for breakfast. We weren’t getting off the hook that easy.

Armed with some internet research up my sleeve (take that, Carpet Superman!) we made our way to the shop the next morning. The negotiations began much the same way. Tea was served. Pleasantries were exchanged, then the slow unfolding of carpets began. I feigned indifference, though clearly we had returned because we wanted that beautiful kilim. I complained that we had no space in our backpacks. I pointed out every tear, hole and slight imperfection. I explained that the kilims on the internet were in far better condition than the junk he was trying to sell me. I tried all the tricks, which were countered with a smile and an offer of more tea. This guy was good.

After twenty minutes of this, the negotiations got heated. I was hopped up on caffeine, was feeling jittery and sweating profusely. He kept folding up the kilim and throwing it into the back of his store, making me insist that I wanted it before retrieving it again. I was being played, yet couldn’t do a thing about it. At this point the kilim had become the thing I wanted most in the world.

His next move took me completely off guard. He told me the price he paid for the kilim. I didn’t believe him, of course, but to call him out would have thrown him into a tantrum. He was already red-faced and throwing his arms around furiously. He had me backed into a corner and we both knew it.

I eyed him through my veil of face sweat. He glared back at me with a knowing smile. He told us that we were doing very bad things, coming here and trying – shame of all shames – to negotiate. I told him that his inventory was crap and that he was lucky that we had any interest at all. Our negotiations reached a fevered pitch just before we settled on a price that was just below our ceiling. Five minutes later we were sipping tea (more tea!) while exchanging love stories like old friends.

Oh, so we're friends now?

We were one kilim richer, for the (overpriced) amount of $230, which was $30 under our ceiling. So in effect – I won! But don’t tell the Carpet Superman that – he’s a little moody.

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