Europe on a budget

For the longest time I have been thinking to write this post, how to travel to Europe on a budget and by budget, let me make it very clear that I do not mean shoe string budget I mean a little over shoe string and not staying in hostels but hotels in good and accessible locations with breakfast, where to eat (cheap), tips to save money, what to buy as souvenirs and how to stay safe and out of trouble . 

Since I have traveled to many European cities alone,with friends and also with my husband I plan to cover these aspect of travel as well. Like if you are traveling with your friends, you may not mind staying in a hostel, in fact few of the hostels I have stayed were really good but having said that hostels have their own issues like the shared toilet being one of them which will be a BIG NO if you are travelling with you family, moving on as part of the Europe on a budget series I plan to cover  cities I have traveled  and enjoyed every moment of it. I will also be writing about day trips that can be done if you happen to live in a neighboring country. The following popular cities will be covered 

a) Paris

b)Barcelona

c)Lisbon & Porto

d)Belgium- Brussels, Antwerp & Brugge

e)Prague

f) Rome

g) Florence & Pisa

h) Venice

i) Netherlands- Amsterdam, Delft, Texel,Rotterdam & Den Haag ( Hague) of course

j) Geneva- Mt. Titlis, Interlaken

k) Germany- Cologne

l) Krakow & Warsaw

m) Luxembourg 

Keeping my target of writing 3 blog post a month I guess for the next 4 months this blog will be lively and I hope to write some interesting and informative post. 

Creation of the day or rather perfect copy - The perfect Sunny side up :)

Sunny side up on a Saturday morning

'That feeling when you create a perfect sunny side up' well in my case I feel happy and extremely satisfied  whenever I make something I really like and turns out perfect.....just the way I like it. Yesterday my sister sent me this link from FB which showed how to make sunny side up inside a perfectly cut bell pepper, so I decided to make it for breakfast the next day. The first thing which came to my mind after seeing those pictures was Godrej Nature's Basket store and Le Marche, two of my favorite food stores in Delhi, so I left work a little early and rushed to Basant Lok, where both the stores are and bought 2 bell peppers (1 red and 1 yellow) some organic eggs and few other things. 

This morning as soon as I woke up I had only the sunny side up and a perfect cup of chai in mind, so I made three of these, the first attempt was not successful but the 2nd and 3rd ones were perfect. The trick is to cut the bell peppers a bit thick and the tomato's really thin and also make sure you don't break the egg york because that will be the end of the sunny side up. I suggest you break the egg carefully in a small bowl and then put it inside the bell pepper and remember to cook on slow flame. 

The facebook link from where I saw these perfect sunny side up is mentioned below.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=596287397062788&set=a.189645094393689.47536.188289297862602&type=1&theater

Wondering Why?

From Active to dormant is how I should describe my blog. I started this blog purely to document my love for travel, cooking and eating of course :) and I do find myself looking up the blog very often to recall the ingredients and recipe of certain  dish I had made/created/invented . But over the past 2 years, ever since I left Agartala I find myself blogging less and lesser with every passing month, I should not be giving any excuse because the past 2 years have been the most active and busy years for me in terms of discovering different cuisines from around the world and also in terms of travelling.

The past two years has been really wonderful for me; I got married to the person who makes me happy & laugh with his happy ways always, was on sabbatical from work (a much needed and deserved break), completed an advance degree on development (next degree will be a Phd hopefully) , visited 11 more countries and just for the record I have visited Paris thrice and Rome twice, made some wonderful friends, discovered Dutch, French, Italian (The REAL Italian kind) ,African  and Latin American  food, learned few words of Spanish & many, many words in Dutch, discovered my hidden talent of organizing holiday on a shoe string budget, finding cheap tickets. One thing I really want to mention is, I cooked food for about 100 people for one event at ISS with 3 other wonderful people who lovesss to cook, the team included a French, Japanese, Nepali and Indian....the butter chicken, fish curry and kheer was loved by all. And the most important I discovered that I am bad or should I say horrible in cooking chicken....lol. The only good chicken curry I ever made was the Butter Chicken for the ISS event, but that was all thanx to the pre-mix masala, that chicken was a big hit.

So much activities in life and I failed to document most of it....ahhhh what a shame. But since I am back in India and re-adjusting life post ISS and my European Extravaganza I should and MUST start blogging again. 3 blogs a month is what I am targeting at, so 1 post every 10 days.....hmmm the target is achievable. All the best to me and happy blogging.  

Hagueover

Hagueover or Hague-Over and not Hangover, a new term coined by one of my batchmate from Philippines, explaining in one word how much we miss the awfully windy yet lovely city, we called  home for 15 and half months.  The city I learned to love...now that ISS and Hague is over I have to admit that I do miss the city but  what I miss most about the city now when I look back is difficult to put in few words or in just one post.

I still remember the first day in Hague, it was bright, sunny and a perfect day, 'Perfect Day' was not what we thought back then, only now I can say, it was indeed a perfect day. When the Admin person, told us to go out and enjoy the sun, our reply was "Oh! we come from a HOTTTT country so we do not appreciate the sun so much" , only to realise that we would regret what we said the very next day. Hague is awfully windy and I am not joking, the wind can sometimes blow you away like literally, but despite all the wind and rains, Hague is a lovely city to live. It's weird when I think, why I never took pictures of Hague when I have over 1000 pictures in Paris, and another 1000 pictures in Rome alone. I never took any pictures standing in-front of the   Nordeinde Palace or even the famous Peace Palace, both located 5 mins walking from Dorus.

Missing Hague, friends, ISS and the community we build!

Travel Plans November

To begin with we are going to Amsterdam, followed by Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, maybe Barcelona, Brugge, Antwerp and if we get cheap tickets maybe Cologne also. Enough reasons for me to finish my RP before 9th. 

Visiting Auschwitz from Krakow

Auschwitz Camp 1

Having seen many films based on the WW II holocaust and the atrocities against certain section of the people in Europe, esp. the Jews who lived in several parts of Europe during WW II, visiting Auschwitz and knowing/learning  about the concentration camps was not only depressing but I was amazed at how humans can be so cruel to each other and to even think that almost 11 lakhs people perished in those camps in the gas chambers is beyond words to express.

Auschwitz is 1.15 hrs by bus from Krakow, we went on a guided tour and I think it saves you time and it's not so expensive, we paid 90 PLN  per person (22.50 Euro) which included  travel in a very comfortable bus and an English guide. The whole tour takes about 6 hours ( we went at 9 in the morning), be ready to walk and wear comfortable shoes, for people wanting to explore in their own, the guided tour can be a bit boring but they  ensure that you don't miss out anything in the camps which is now more like a museum, the guide we had was really good and she managed to show us the whole place without tiring us, explaining and providing all the details possible. The whole place was packed with tourist and I saw that most people were on a guided tour in different language English, French, Spanish, German and even Polish. 

After the tour I wonder how SS and Hitler got all the horrible and inhuman ideas to torture people, I personally feel it's not human to have thought every possible ways of torturing people but Hitler and his people at SS did the unimaginable. The Holocaust and the camps at Auschwitz is a reminder that no living creature on earth is as cruel as humans are.