The consensus is that Hogsback is well worth a visit for the setting. If you require a peaceful weekend away, go to Hogsback. Just take your own food.
We left for the Addo Elephant National Park. A pleasant drive through the Eastern Cape countryside. As we passed through Alice, the Innkeeper’s groenmielie (corn on the cob) sensor went off and Anna was dispatched to make a purchase.
I have been informed that I exaggerated the state of the car’s back seat. That it is, in fact, only covered with a thin layer of stuff. I pride myself on the fact that this blog purveys the truth, only the truth and the whole truth. I lay before you hard evidence regarding said motor vehicle’s back seat.
We noticed that the road from Nottigham Road to our lodge was splotched with brown stains. Peculiar. Until we realised that the road must have been built on an ancient pathway. This was when we experienced the migration of the cattle. Swaying along in the road, chewing the cud and contemplating life’s small puzzles. As: When should I drop the next load of poo? Wait, wait – here’s a nice clean piece of road. Let her rip, baby! Splosh!
Very rural and charming. To get the animals out of the way was like parting the Red Sea. Surrounded by cows, squishing through the poo, one proceeds very slowly. The cows don’t care – the murmur of the engine probably just sounds like other cows farting. Read the rest of this entry »
We came to the Midlands mainly because it is there. A place that neither of us have seen. And because the place is jampacked with arty people. We would therefore, whilst admiring the scenery, be able to better our artistic appreciation. Philistines that we are, art-wise, this seemed to be a splendid idea. Hah! We clearly have no idea. I can, on an intellectual level, understand that practically anything can be regarded as art if an artist wishes to make it so. On a purely visceral level, though, I recoil at art that is ugly. Ugly as in ugly. A turd has been exibited as art. Art? Maybe. But ugly? For sure.
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Our second day at the Cathedral Peak Hotel was packed with activity. Such as eating breakfast. And reading in the pub.
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I got complaints from Anna that the pic of Drien and Christo in our previous post is a bad one. According to her, it makes them look like Bonnie and Clyde. So, in the interests of matrimonial harmony, I hereby publish a retraction. The pic in the previous post is actually not one of Drien and Christo. Any resemblance is accidental. Here is what they look like.
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We must have done something wrong. To be punished like this with bad food. It is not as if we are picky foodies. We appreciate all food that is prepared without pretense and with love. Despite this we seem to bring out the worst in the eateries we encounter. Lunch on our second day in Clarens was a case in point. (I’ll skip breakfast. It was the same old same old. Floppy bacon only suited for swatting flies, dry yellow stuff masquerading as eggs.) We wanted something small and thought Vito’s, an Italian place below our guest house might be just the thing.
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Between Cradock and Clarens lie vast swathes of countryside, with small towns dotted here and there. The road runs through Hofmeyr, Steynsburg, Burgersdorp, Aliwal North, Rouxville, Zastron, Wepener, Hobhouse, Clocolan and Ficksburg. Some 500 odd kilometers. We stopped in Hofmeyr for coffee. A goat meandered down the sidewalk.
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On to Cradock we went. Cradock was founded in the early 1800′s by Sir John Cradock. He was, amazingly enough, Governor of the Cape Province. Special favours for naming him? I bet there was a lot of politics at play.
The road from Graaff Reinet runs through typical Karoo landscapes.
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Graaff-Reinet was founded in 1786 by Governor van de Graeff. He either really loved his wife, Reynet, or added her name to the town to get out of a tough spot. In any event, this makes the place really, really old in South African terms. We generally regard anything that existed before tv as ancient. On that scale Graaff-Reinet is practically prehistoric.
Anna and the Innkeeper are off on holiday. There are places in South Africa that we have not yet seen, and this year we are going to make a determined attempt to whittle the list down. So we will wend our way slowly upcountry, through the Karoo, the Free State, the Natal Midlands, the Transkei and so back to Wilderness. Along the way we intend stopping where we are moved to stop and take our time to explore the countryside. We have no bookings – glorious freedom to do what we want, when we want and go where we want.
The trip has, of course, been carefully planned to avoid all handbag-producing areas. After the debacle last year, when she returned with 12 handbags, I am determined not to be humiliated so badly again. Anna has been strangely quiet on the subject, leaving me somewhat at a loss. Could she be hatching a dastardly plot? Am I going to be caught unawares? Hah! I am alert! I am on guard and shall not be distracted! I am pure at heart and my strength is as the strength of ten!
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Mampoer is to South Africans what Schnapps is to the Germans, Poteen to the Irish and Moonshine to the Americans. A strong white spirit distilled from fermented fruit. Traditionally peaches. Yellow cling peaches. As is to be expected, when the distiller gets bored, he would on a whimsy distill anything that can turn sugar into alcohol: wild fruit, mulberries, pears, plums and what not. The fermented fruit is distilled in a copper still like this one:
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Anna and the Innkeeper have been busy, well, innkeeping. That is why he has not blogged for a while. He is also, of course, an inherently lazy bugger. However, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, here he is, facing 2011 with a chortle of glee. Which is why he is blogging again.
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I felt like gazpacho yesterday. It was rather bleak and rainy outside, so a hearty hot soup would perhaps have been more appropriate.
There is a relationship between love of cooking and love for dogs. That, in any event, is my theory. Beethoven said that only the pure of heart can make a good soup. I think that you cannot cook with passion if you do not love a dog. Or dogs generally. Loving a cat is simply not the same. Nor a parrot. It somehow lacks passion. Besides, parrots cannot lick your nose. It is also difficult to tell when they are happy.
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Perhaps it is time that the story be told. Because it is sort of romantic. We’ll both tell it. Anna in italics.
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Retirement is something that, for most of your life, lies somewhere beyond the horizon. Then, one day, you suddenly notice it leering at you. Then it is too late to decide what to do, because it will rear up and engulf you before you can draw a breath. And here you are – retired. Read the rest of this entry »
Chocolate Fondant is simply the best, easiest and most decadent chocolate dessert in the world. Firm chocolate cake on the outside and warm, melted chocolate on the inside – truly a great dessert, and one that takes 10 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to cook.
However, I need to digress…
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I have to confess that I have been lazy. And, I guess, a leetle bit arrogant about my cooking skills. Anna has been making threatening noises at me for a while that I am cooking below par. We have an arrangement that we cook on alternate evenings. We have both fallen into the habit of slapping together an evening meal with little or no planning and forethought. So, we are determined to remedy this. I mean, it is not as if we have to hurry somewhere. We live at Mes Amis and the even tenor of our evenings are only infrequently interrupted by gusts. We will henceforth cook at the skill level that we know we have. (We are not great chefs, but competent home cooks). Anna is due to cook tonight. We’ll see…
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This has absolutely nothing to do with the rather dubious fare we endured on our travels. The fact is, the Innkeeper needs to get his mind focused on producing new breakfast dishes. A word of explanation. At Mes Amis, we serve an a la carte breakfast.
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We had our last dinner in Cesky Krumlov at the Restaurant Katakomby. Interesting how the Czechs import foreign words by adding a “y” at the end – “snowboardy”, “computery”, “tortury” etc. The restaurant is located in a deep cellar below the main square.
The drive from Prague to Cesky Krumlov was uneventful, if boring. The day was overcast. Our tedium vanished once we arrived, though. Cesky Krumlov is a breathtakingly beautiful town. Not quite medieval- it dates from the 13th century. The castle was renovated in the 17th century. It and the town belonged to the Schwartzenberg family from 1719 until 1945. We went up to the castle and took overview pics of the town from there.
Saturday we wanted to do some shopping, hang around the old square and enjoy the feel of Prague. Also, Anna wanted to find a hairdresser. She could not possibly go to the opera with her hair looking like it did, could she. So that is how the day went. Coffee on the square.
The blog is a day late because nothing much happened on Thursday. Except that the Innkeeper’s feet called a halt to proceedings around midday, forcing us to curtail further exploration.
We took the metro to Wenceslas square, named after St. Vaclav, long deceased. The metro station near us has one of the longest escalators we have ever seen.
Still sort of gray outside. No rain, but no sun either. Oh well, we’ll make do. How bad can it be, after all? Two people in love in Prague?
When in Prague, one of the must-do things is to walk across the Charles bridge. The bridge is pedestrian-only. We borrowed two pics of the bridge that seem to be in the public domain.
Another gray, drizzling day. Supposed to stop raining later. We went back to the letting agent two blocks away to try and get them to explain the tram system.
Me: “I understand that, if I’m standing at a tram stop and see tram 22 approaching, by looking at the map, I can see where it started and also the stop where it will turn around. How do I know what route it will follow in from where I am to the end stop?”
He : “You don’t”.
Me: “That does not help much.”
He: “I know. You will learn how it works in time.”
Me: “How much time?”
He: “A year or so.”
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I have been accused of concealing evidence of crap cooking. Not so, no, not at all. And to prove that I am, besides being pure of heart, also like driven snow, here’s what we cooked last night:
Hah! You knew it was coming, didn’t you?
We left Karlovy Vary with the rain falling steadily. Not pouring, but not drizzling either. A pouring drizzle? Bloody wet in any event. 8C outside. Inside, warmed by the purity of our hearts, we were fine. The drive took us wetly past wet landscapes
Got the breakfast buffet pics. Quality is not great – there were other people and I did not want to flash. Or rather, did not want the camera to flash. Anna may just be upset if I flashed.
Couldn’t take a breakfast pic this morning – too crowded. Probably Sunday morning, when we’ll leave early. The weather forecast for tomorrow is bleak (heavy rain), so we’ll lie in.
Taking advantage of the sunshine, we thought to see what the other major spa town, Marianske Lazne, also known as Marienbad, looks like. So off we went, after having the car brought to us. Parking is scarce in Karlovy, and the hotel parks the guest cars somewhere mysterious.
Marienbad is about 50 Km away. We drove through a forest. The autumn colours are really starting to show
The part of Karlovy Vary that we are in is known as the spa area. This is because they have spas here. As opposed to the rest of Karlovy Vary which is also quaint but with no spas. The Russian oligarchs don’t go there. They, so it seems, like spas. Together with the Germans, they make up 102% of the population of Karlovy at any given moment. You know that you are in the spa area when all the shops sell either jewellery, shoes, handbags or furs. and, of course, when your eyes start watering.
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She had the duck. Here it is. Or was. Because it ain’t no more. Because she’s eaten it.
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The guess-the-food-the-Innkeeper-and-Anna-ate award goes to …envelope please….It is shared by Christine and Marietjie.
Talking of awards, Christine was honoured over the weekend by being awarded one of the 11 German Radio prizes for 2010. She got the award in the category “best interview”. We are happy with you, Christine, and proud and have lifted a glass or two. Of slivovitz. And of red wine.
We left Olomouc this morning, cheered by our efforts to get the visit to Prague sorted. When we started sifting through Anna’s research and made a few phone calls, it quickly became apparent that it would be difficult to find a good apartment in Prague for the coming week. We pushed the visit back a week, and got what looks like a great apartment for a week at 106Euro a day. We had to break the “don’t rent without eyeballing” rule- good accommodation in the old city is not easy to come by. Read the rest of this entry »
Okay – you try and find something that rhymes with Czech. Chuntering, Chugging? Hah!
We expected the more prosperous western part of Slovakia to be reflected as we continues into the Czech Republic. It was so. Very pleasant drive to Olomouc. Rolling meadows and all in all a pleasing aspect.
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We had a hazy lazy day in Trencin (Trenchien). Nowhere to drive. Latish breakfast – how I hate a continental breakfast that does not include crisp rolls. This morning’s were hot dog buns. Ghastly. Bad coffee. We decided to take our books, hang around in one of the many coffee bars and read and just chill. Really a great day. Sun shining. Order more Kava. Your second Slovakian word – coffee. If you have been paying attention, you should also know the word for cheese.
We still like the town a lot. A whimsy in one of the squares.
We are nearing the end of our trip through Slovakia. There are things we do not understand. Probably the foremost of these is why some parts, especially the small rural villages are so run down and other, equally small ones quite spiffy. Enquiring minds want to know. A Google or two brought an interesting article to light. It was written by Laura Setana, who emigrated with her parents to the USA around the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the late 60′s. The nature and effect of the transition from communism to capitalism was the subject of a study she conducted in 2008.
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The blog is late. That is because we have been on the road a lot. To find out why, continue reading. Be warned, though, some of the details may offend sensitive readers.
We left Bratislava in high spirits. A good start to Slovakia. The next stop was Bankska Stiavnica. As we are wont to do, we turned off the motorway and wend our way along small secondary roads. Much more to see. We passed through little villages surrounded by farmland. Rather uninspiring landscape. The villages were uniformly dilapidated. No maintenance, no cleaning, no tidying up.
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Today we had a very good breakfast. The Skaritz apartments have a very sensible arrangement with the restaurant next door to do the breakfasts for them. As a result we had the best continental-style breakfast so far. A very satisfactory way to start the day.
Bratislava is a beguiling city, especially the old part with its pedestrian only streets. Narrow streets suddenly open up into a square with pubs and restaurants lining it.
We left Bled, heading for the Austrian border near Klagenfurt, thence to Graz, Vienna and Bratislava. About 450Km. We soon left Slovenia, passed the deserted Austrian border post, end descended the Austrian Alps. The photographs we took would have blown you away – award-winning stuff, each and every one.
We got the history bit sorted. Slovenia was, with Croatia and other odd bits like Bosnia, part of Yugoslavia run by Tito. Socialist, but never part of the USSR. Slovakia and the Czech Republic was Czechoslovakia, part the the communist block.
It was striking that alpine architecture is the same, irrespective of country. You find this in Slovenia in the highlands, in Austria in the mountains, and if memory serves, in Switzerland. With a small variation here and there.
Why? If anyone has an answer, enquiring minds want to know.
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We are a tad late updating the blog. This is due to the Innkeeper managing to allow the camera to be swiped out of the car in Bratislava. Here are, for those of you who wish to attain a similar level of stupidity, the steps:
1. Park in a major European city in a parking lot run by a person bearing an uncanny relationship to Bubba, he of Alcatraz fame. Complete with tank top.
2. Lock the car, leaving the driver side window open.
3. Go wandering around Bratislava.
4. Return an hour later and be thankful that the seats are still in the car.
5. Look in vain for Bubba, who has made off with your 5 Euro parking fee.
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Dinner at Restaurant Struman in Skofja. We wanted to go to a well rated Chinese restaurant 5km away. I know what you’re going to say. Fact is, however, that Slovenia does not have an indigenous cuisine. They borrow from the neighbouring countries, Hungary, Italy, Croatia and Austria, make a few changes and call it Slovenian cuisine. So Chinese is not eschewing local cuisine. Nothing came of it, though, because they were not prepared to accept our bottle of Pinotage. Even when offered exorbitant corkage. Struman was cool with the Pinotage. Hearty, forgettable peasant style food. For example my pork cutlet was covered with melted Emmenthaler-like cheese, which in turn was covered with prosciutto, which in turn was covered with two sunny side up eggs. The whole was doused in a pork gravy. Just the sort of thing to stick to your ribs during a long day in the forest.
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The Slovenian language is one that defies description. There is no common base to any other language we know, making it bloody difficult to pick up words and phrases. Just when you think you are getting somewhere, up pops, say, “Podljubelj” and you are back to square one. You have to have respect, though, for a language that is mainly pronounced as if you are drunk. No way to tell the sober from the inebriated. Unless you fall over, of course. Read the rest of this entry »
Note the disappearance of “Our big fat…….” title. Not really appropriate, given the low probability that we will gain any weight, don’t you think?
Allow us to rectify any impression that we may have given that our host Igor is anything but the friendly, outgoing and helpful host he is. Really a charming man.
Anna made dinner last night – salad with the stuff in yesterday’s pic. Including salami for me. Did I mention that both the Hungarians and the Slovenians are great salamists? Fortunately we thought to test the two Slovanian merlots we had bought. Can’t go wrong with a Merlot? Hah! The stuff was merely a slightly better class of horse piss than the crap we got with the pizzas. Sort of horse piss aged in oak. We recorked and gave it to Igor. He admitted that Slovenian merlots are “strong” and best drunk with very very salty ham. For us, that is it. No more experimenting. No more Slovenian wines. We may be doing the Slovenians a disservice, but so be it. We drove to the supermarket (Mercator) and bought these:
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Something nutritious for dinner and Slovenian wines, I think I said. A guy who blogs as Slow Travel said that the Slovenians are in love with pizza and in Ptuj (pronounced Puhtwohee) one should try the pizza. There are two pizza places within 2 minutes of our hotel, so we thought it easy – trundle to a pizza place, get a bottle of wine and a pizza each. Robert Burns said “The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley”, and so it proved. Read the rest of this entry »
This morning it struck us – we have yet to see cattle or sheep anywhere. Plenty of pastures, but no actual animals. Maybe they grow them in vats…
Forgot to mention the number of extremely rude people we encountered in Budapest – especially waiters. Unbelievable that people in a service industry can be so aggressively rude to customers. Not all the waiters, but the ones that were rude are unfortunately the ones that get remembered.
Leisurely breakfast (the usual continental stuff, but at least the rolls are generally crisp) and then we set off for Ptuj in Slovenia. Pecs was really nice, at least in the old part of town. We were not inclined to wander around some more:- it was raining. Made driving more challenging….
Monday morning we dropped Christine and Jochen off at the airport and said our goodbyes. The traffic back to Budapest was ghastly and during the slow crawl, as expected, the missing handbag was brought up. By the Innkeeper, not me. I was going to wait until later. Back to the Market, and ANNA BOUGHT A HANDBAG! DAMN!
This is not really a bag, just a simple sling bag. Not a serious handbag. That will come later.
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On Sunday we decided to take a drive to the north of Budapest. The road, so we are told, runs along the Danube and we will enjou some of the most beautiful view of the river in all of Europe. It seemd to take forever to get out of Budapest. Dreary rows of communist-era apartment blocks. Until we saw on roadside signs that we had actually segued into Szentendre, the first town we intended stopping. At this point we only had odd glimpses of a very sollen and murky Danube. At the Szentendre riverfront things looked up. Cobblestones and, serendipitously,
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We love markets and supermarkets. Off to the Central Market for breakfast. Big indoors market.
A real people’s market. The fruit and veg is sort of rustic and there is none of the delicatessen type stalls that we found in the Nachsmarkt in Vienna.Lots and lots of paprika. Read the rest of this entry »
Lest some of you think that we lack culture, there a good reasons why we did not go to the opera or a music concert in Vienna. The serious season only started yesterday. The only concerts available were those touristy things where they wear 18th centuiry costumes and play Eine Kleine Nachtmusic. And The Blue Danube. And the Radetsky March. Also I note that we did not write anything about the Danube. Well, it aint blue, to start with. More a murky brown. The Viennese split the river to alleviate flooding (cleverly renting the idle machines used to dig the Suez canal) and the river is thus, where it flows through Vienna, less than its splendid self.
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In response to some person who wants us to actually feature in some pics, here is the Innkeeper updating this blog just after getting up this morning
A slow day in Vienna. Anna is recovering from a tummy upset, hence we did not do much – she needed time to recover. Breakfast at the hotel. The Best Western Das Tigra located in the old town. Spacious, comfortable, rather spartan but at 105 Euro for the room a good buy. Walking distance from practically everything of note. We decided to do the hop-on hop-off bus thing to get oriented. Hopped on and hopped off. Saw lots of buildings. Vienna is in fact full of buildings.
There is absolutely nothing that anybody can possibly do to make flying a pleasure. Except maybe an anaesthologist. The best it can get is tolerable. Qatar Airways Johanneburg -> Doha -> Vienna was tolerable. Everybody involved did their best : we provided money, the airline pretty decent aircraft with relatively comfortable accommodation, the flight crew smiled when they should and pretended that they were serving us haute cuisine. In the end, though, it was still flying. Still, we got to Vienna in the best shape possible. Despite the close attentions of an Arabic toddler who, was on his way to Vienna to enter the world tantrum championships. Kid’s gonna be a shoe-in.
It is 11C in Vienna and it is raining. We’ll unpack and contemplate our navels. Unpacking is a breeze. We travel light – this is what we took:
Ok, so maybe we’ll get further than just Hungary.
Anna and the Innkeeper may well find themselves in Slovenia.
and the Czech Republic.
We leave on the 30th August. Read the rest of this entry »
