Acquiring a love for ...

There are so many little details in my latest trip that I want to share, but impossible to do them all. Some of the foodie highlights that I appreciated was discovering pearl barley.

I love innards, you can give me hearts, kidney, liver, intestines whatever any day. I blame it to my Cantonese upbringing where there is a "leave nothing behind" mentality, and "fear factor" tasting where my grandma would ask me to close my eyes and taste different exotic foods. So I order a beef tripe Hungarian style stew, when offered potatoes or pearl barley. I naturally went for the 'different' one.

Beef trip stew was so-so but the real wonder was the pearl barley in the picture. Eaten like rice or risotto-style, I never knew that you could cook barley like that. Was so inspired, I bought a pack of pearl barley from my local Tesco and it is one of my staples now. It is not soft or squishy or sweet. The pearl barley just sucks up and complements the taste of the stew. By itself, it is like rice, tasteless but with a good chewy texture.


Another different thing that I have learn to appreciate was Poppy-seed. Being a person who simply likes new experiences, I just randomly picked out pastries, since there was no labels nor do the staff speak any English. I suppose it is partially my good fortune that a)I have no allergies that I know of and b) I eat literally everything. One of the most pleasant surprises that I had was finding a strudel in Budapest that had a poppyseed & apple filling. Tasting somewhat like sesame, with that aromatic goodness, but yet slightly lighter on the palate, I seriously liked it alot and started to look for all sorts of pastries with it. Some items that I found throughout was grind-up Poppyseed with sugar on bread, poppyseed filling with nuts. When i do buy my first oven, this is on the list of things that I will try to bake.


Alphonse Mucha, I know that I left a piece of my heart with him over in Prague. Discovering his works all over Prague in souvenir shops, I was wondering who this artist was and then, I found his exhibition. It was love at many many sights. Now i swear that once I get my own apartment, I'm buying high-quality prints of his works, frame them and put them around my apartment. This collage from a bunch of images that I grabbed online just doesn't do him any justice at all.

Getting the biography of Alphonse Mucha from this website, Alphonse Mucha(1860-1939) was during his life-time the most famous artist of the Art Nouveau period; indeed, his imagery was so inextricably entwined with Art Nouveau that the entire movement was referred to by Goncourt as the'Mucha Style'. Famous throughout Europe and the Americas, he inspired other artists and designers who copied him and plagiarised him so that for years the image of the Muchaesque beauty surrounded by her characteristic symbols was enshrined in advertising, magazine covers and illustrations, book jackets, posters, paintings and numerous artifacts.

My General Impression of Budapest

Arrived in Budapest at night via Ryanair, both me and my friend just couldn't keep still and started to explore the city. Most of the sites can be easily covered on foot, so we spent a few hours walking in the dead of the night. The photos here are showing the famous Chain Bridge and Statue of Liberty.

We ended the night with a well-deserved drink at a local pub. Actually, Budapest is really quite affordable for the Singaporean traveller. For food, transport, or general items, I found that the prices are close to Singapore's or even cheaper in some cases. At the pub that I was having drinks in, it was S$1 for a beer, S$1.50 for a Bailey's, S$2 for 3 shots of tequila !


First impressions of Budapest were poor. When we first arrived, there were plenty of homeless people sleeping in the metro station, along the roads. As we walked, they were everywhere, just sleeping with a warm blanket out on the streets.

In one glance in any random direction, something would be under repair. Next was the fact that there was major graffiti all around the place. With all these factors in mind, you would think that i was running around in a war zone. But Budapest was a safe place to be in. Imagine 2 girls walking around on isolated streets at 2am in the night and nothing happened at all, I would call that quite safe. No?

The next day, we continued on our sight seeing to the Central Market and the Budapest castle. Another curious thing spotted in Budapest was the Nescafe car. In fact, not just one or two, I spotted three random cars parking in the same lot when we were making our way up to the castle.




Shall let the photos speak for themselves....

The last day in Budapest, we went for a Hungarian bath! I had a similar one before in Beijing during winter, this was the same. Natural hot springs with various pools, facilities & temperature, both indoors and outdoors. So i was hopping from room to room and pool to pool. Very fun !

Took the night train to Prague. In hindsight, I just realized why prices were so cheap when I got back. The same time we were there, the Hungarian government ordered a bailout for its banks. No wonder, the prices were so good. The currency was at an all time low against the Euro.