Reflections on virtual travel

It is hard to believe that as recently as ten weeks ago I was still hoping to be able to travel to Spain and walk Camino del Norte in the second week of May.

The idea to do the walk virtually was spontaneous, so I hadn't prepared as thoroughly as I should have. To be fair, I don't always do my homework before travel which means I probably miss interesting things to see and do. This time, the focus was on walking the distance I would have walked on the Camino, even though I could not achieve the same climbs. But I also wanted some experience of the place, even though second-hand, so I re-watched The Way and watched some Youtube videos to get into the mood. The Way was what made me want to do the walk in the first place, and the reason I watched it some years ago was that I learned that a cousin of mine, who was the last person I would expect to go on search for spirituality, walked the whole of it at one go and has been doing it again and again ever since. I have no faith, so this aspect of the Camino does not mean anything to me, and until recently I wasn't a walker at all. I started walking with the Ramblers in Cambridge after I heard a friend of mine share her adventures with an international Rambler group somewhere in France, not the Camino. I discovered that walking was something that, next to gardening, was the best healing for body and mind, and since then I cannot imagine my life without regular walking. These days I am amused thinking back at how proud I was having walked 3 km in Milton Country Park. I have so far walked 540 km this year.

Back to Camino, the virtual Camino. I explored the route, planned my own daily walks, read some travel sites, watched videos. Of course, it is not the same as doing the real thing. But in the current situation, doing it virtually is still better than not doing it at all. And we may be doing more virtual travel in the future. I believe VR will be invaluable. I am surprised that it hasn't become more popular these days, although I have read some explanations why. But technology is developing at incredible pace, and I am sure more and more destinations will be available in satisfactory ways. I have cut down on travel substantially in the past few years, and I will be happy to keep it to a minimum if I can get a somewhat adequate experience of places I want to visit. I may even visit places I have never intended to visit, such a climbing Kilimanjaro or crossing Antarctica.

In other words, first lesson learned: even though it was not the real experience, it was interesting, valuable and exciting in itself, not just as poor compensation.

On my last day, I finally had company. A friend back in Cambridge suggested we walk-along, and here is how we did it. I knew where she would be walking, and I sent her a map of my nature reserve with my route marked. We connected on WhatsApp and started walking, exchanging photos and observations on the go. What we could have done, if we were emulating Camino, would be checking where we would have been up there and looking up facts and pictures, but it would probably be too much. In the evening, we cooked the same local meal. Once again, not the real thing, but better than nothing. I will certainly do it again, with or without a virtual route.

Cooking local food was a huge boost. I always like to try local food when I travel, even if it is jellied cockroach (in South Korea) so I would definitely be eating the exciting Basque and Cantabrian dishes. Learning the difference between tapas and pintxos was illuminating, and I think I will include pintxos in my habitual cooking. I like cooking, but I am rather conservative so it was liberating to try something completely different and find it palatable. It wasn't so much the ingredients as the methods, and I now want to learn more. So this was a side effect. Attending a cookery school was a part of my retirement visions, and now I see that I don't have to travel or even leave my home. I know this option has been available all along, but like with so many other things, you need a push.

Did I find what I was looking for? Since I have no idea what I would have found on the real trip, it's hard to say. If I was looking for a way to make up for the canceled trip, I believe I was highly successful.

What can I recommend to a potential virtual traveler, based on my experience? Firstly, perhaps, consider what you want to get out of it. My objective was to emulate demanding and intensive walking, therefore everything else was a bonus. If your objective is to see a new city or museum you may do it without leaving your room. Secondly, don't be too ambitious. I could have enhanced my trip in many different ways, by reading some fiction and non-fiction, watching more videos, learning some basic Basque, making a virtual album of local plants, marking my progress on a map, keeping a journal and writing poetry. But it would probably have proved too stressful. Also, I cut the last day's walk because I had got tired. If you feel you've had enough, stop while you are still enjoying it. Thirdly, I missed sharing my experience. Next time, I will try to find a companion for the whole journey. There is an advantage with virtual travel: you can get offline if you don't want any more company that day. Like going up to your hotel room while the rest of the group is having drinks.

Anyway, I have enjoyed it, and maybe some of you will get inspired and go on a virtual trip of your own.

Mock Camino, Day 1

This week I am doing a virtual walk of Camino del Norte, a dream shattered by the current situation, but now scheduled for April 2021 so this will be a good preparation.

On the first day, we are strolling leisurely around in San Sebastian, place name that rings many bells, but I haven't been here before. The closest I have been is Pamplona, which is inland and already a different kind of place.

I have done some homework, learning to begin with that the correct name in Basque is Donostia, which is etymologically the same as San Sebastian. The city has a remarkable history, including being burnt to ashes by the British during Napoleonic war. It was the European capital of culture in 2016. Those of you who wonder why I am doing this virtual trip: why would I otherwise bother to learn facts about Donostia? The only incentive to learn something is when it's relevant.

Other interesting facts include that Donostia was the first city struck by influenza pandemic in 1918, and that it is the second in the world, after Kyoto, in the number of Michelin-starred restaurants per capita.

I have watched some videos about Donostia, including one on local food. As a part of my immersive experience, I have made pintxos. The proper way of having an evening meal in Donostia is to go on a pintxos bar crawl. I am going to four bars tonight: Sukaldea, Balkoi, Egongela and Logela. Now you have something to figure out.

Coping with shortages

After a couple of my comments on Facebook, I got a request to share my experience of coping with shortages during hard times, and since hard times were constant during my childhood and youth, I have no problems coming with examples.

My parents and grandparents had of course lived through war, famine and rations, but by the time I was born our family was relatively affluent and even privileged. As a child I never wondered where food came from and how much it cost, and it was in my upper teens I realised how much things had deteriorated, or as the saying went: Communism has won a total victory over [cheese, sausage, caviar, salmon, bananas – substitute as required].

Vignette:
     An old lady enters the famous deli department store in Moscow.

    - I remember this shelf used to have fifteen kinds of cheese. That shelf had twenty kinds of sausage. The shelf over there had ten kinds of tea…

     One salesperson to another:

    - Hell of a good memory this granny has!

I remember those fifteen kinds of cheese on occasions when someone took me shopping, which didn't happen often. I remember hams and sausage and pate. I remember the smell of newly ground coffee. My grandfather, a great coffee lover, would blend one third of Arabica, one third of Colombia, and one Costa Rica. I remember that tea connoisseurs prefer Ceylon over Indian, and totally despised Grusian.

Variant of the above:

     - I remember this shelf used to have salmon, sturgeon, red and black caviar, shrimp, oysters… What was the harm of it all?

 By early 1970s, there was one kind of cheese, one kind of sausage, one kind of tea, and ham was a sweet memory.

Vignette:

     - Is there really no cheese in your shop?

     - No, it's the shop next door that has no cheese, we have no sausage.

Another:

     - Can you slice 200 gram sausage for me?

     - Of course we can, just bring your sausage.

These are jokes, but they were a close reflection of reality. So how did we cope with shortages, when there was shortage of everything? One day I will tell you how we coped with shortages of clothes, shoes, tights, shampoo, cosmetics, baby pacifiers, book shelves (not to mention books), rugs, female hygiene, pencils, notebooks, towels, bed linen, detergent, paper napkins, sewing thread, electric bulbs, Christmas candles, and many more items people in the first world take for granted. I may tell you how we coped without washing machines, or dishwashers, or freezers, or record players. But this will be another story that will be told another time. This story is a response to the current situation and will therefore focus on the current issues, such as toilet paper and food staples.

When my daughter Julia was three or four, we went to visit family in Moscow, and at the airport she needed a pee. I took her to ladies room, and after she was done she asked me helplessly: “Mummy, where is toilet paper?” She could not in her wildest dreams imagine that what she saw was toilet paper, more like sandpaper. For me, it was by far not the worst. I was used to wipe my bum with newspapers, as everybody else. As a child, when we ran around in nature, we would use leaves and grass.

During the worst shortages of toilet paper in the late 1970s and '80s, people would steal toilet paper from work – if it was available there. In nicer public toilets, for instance, in theatres and museums, there would be an attendant providing strictly one square of paper per person.

In mid-'80s, a Swedish writer was staying with a colleague in Moscow, a highly intellectual, refined lady. The Swedish guest was an idealist and had decided that during her visit she would live like ordinary Russians. The first culture shock came one early morning, when the hostess woke her saying: "Get up quickly. I have been told that in a suburb shop fifteen metro stops and ten bus stops from here there will possibly be toilet paper later today. They will allow twenty rolls per person. The shop opens in two hours, we must go as soon as possible and queue". The Swedish writer never believed in victorious socialism after that.

At that time you could see famous writers and artists walk Moscow streets carrying packages of toilet paper. A roll would be the best birthday present. This wasn't an emergency or a crisis, it was our everyday life.

When it comes to staples, I remember well when at the age of ten we were all promptly dispatched to queue for flour, equipped with pillowcases, since there were no bags available: flour would be poured from huge sacks into whatever you brought. It was rationed to maybe two or maybe five kilos per person, and after we children had queued for two or three hours, the rest of the family would join, each with a pillowcase.

Yes, that was the country of victorious socialism.

The manifesto of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted in 1960 and aiming at completed communism by 1980s, promised in accordance with Karl Marx's slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". 

A sign in a shop window during completed communism: "There is no need for milk today". 

The most important item every person always carried on them was a net bag, the infamous just-in-case bag, a Soviet citizen's best friend. It was fifty-odd years before environmental concerns so we didn't use our environmentally-friendly bags for ideological reasons, but exclusively because there were no shopping bags available in shops, and you needed to have your just-in-case bag just in case you saw something worth buying. Maybe potato, maybe apples, maybe cottage cheese, tea, salt, oats, pickles, mustard. And when you did see something, you were a good friend and bought as much as you could carry, to share with others. It wasn't shopping, it was hunting. For some things, such as cream, you had to bring your own jar.

The problem with just-in-case was that everyone could see what you were carrying. A friend once heard two guys behind her:

     - Look what a smart babe! Look at her fir-coat! She must be a foreigner.

     - No way! She is carrying five frozen chickens in her net bag.

I remember one day a friend and I were going along a central street in Moscow, on our way to visit some other friends. We saw a line and joined it without even asking first what was on sale. It turned out to be bananas, something we hadn't seen for many years. The line was long and moved slowly. People were buying as much as their just-in-cases could carry, and more. We were initially going to buy a kilo, but as we progressed forward in line, our appetites grew. We would buy a kilo each. No, we would buy more and give to our friends. No, we would buy more still and share with folk at work. By that time, the line got anxious that the kiosk would run out of bananas and demanded that they were restricted to five kilos per person.

On another occasion, a co-worker went hunting – during working hours of course, as was the accepted practice – and came back with ten boxes of a very special nostalgic candy from our childhood. We all happily paid for a box each, then looked at each other and said: “Let's eat it now. Our children don't even know what it is, so they won't miss it”.

This is, very briefly, how we coped with shortages. Firstly, you learned to manage with what was available. In winter, apples was the only fruit you could get if you were lucky. Once again, my little daughter caused indignant sensation during a visit in Moscow when she was offered an apple and asked for a pear instead, the spoilt Western brat! Secondly, you were nice to each other and shared. People who had allotments would share whatever they managed to grow. We made preserves, dried apples when they were abundant. We picked and dried mushrooms. I give you dried mushrooms, you give me a jar of jam. I give you a bar of chocolate, you give me a bar of soap. Thirdly, when you have no reference frames, you don't know what you are missing. Yes, we did remember the hams and cheeses of our childhood, but our children didn't, so they were happy with whatever we could put on the table. Buckwheat porridge, cabbage soup, potato cakes, bread and butter and cheese of the only kind available, “cheese”.

With this background, I am watching the current stockpiling with some amusement. That said, I have stockpiled toilet paper, chicken peas, beans, lentils, rice, buckwheat, coffee and cat food. I think I will survive. 

Advent in Gatehouse

It seems that expats become more passionate about their traditions. In San Diego we were invited to a Swedish friend (married to an American) for her annual Swedish Lucia party, and she even had some young girls, maybe nieces or neighbours, who wore Lucia dresses and candle crowns in their hair.

Here in Cambridge, American students celebrate Thanksgiving and share secrets of getting the right sort of pumpkin.

When we moved to Cambridge, I decided to maintain my Swedishness by inviting my new colleagues to glögg on the first Sunday in December – too early for Lucia (which is December 13), but since the term ends in the beginning of December, everyone would have been away. The first glögg was still in Water Street, rather crowded, but I believe everybody enjoyed it because it is so exotic. After that we had the benefit of our spacious living room and dining room in Milton, and at times we would entertain up to forty people. I have a sense that my glögg parties became sort of a legend because first-year doctoral students would hear about it from others, eager to attend, and once and only once when I couldn't do it at all I got cautious emails from people who wondered whether they had slipped off the books.

Glögg is different from mulled wine, even if the general idea of hot, spicy wine is similar, and I use my family recipe that is also slightly different from the Swedish glögg. The two musts to go with glögg are gingerbread and saffron buns, or Lucia buns. I would bake both, although recently I would sometimes cheat and order gingerbread from a Swedish shop in London. They also sell glögg spices.

I usually encourage my guests to bring something they associate with the season, which mostly works well. Occasionally people bring something that needs cooking or oven-heating, which isn't convenient when you simultaniously pour out glögg for a couple dozen guests, making sure that those who prefer non-alcoholic version take the right cups.

This year I had no intention of having a glögg party. It just felt impossible in this tiny space. Then I remembered both Water Street and my glögg party in Finland, where my flat was even smaller, but around thirty people squeezed into it.

I also thought that it was now more or less clear that it was my last year in Cambridge, my very last chance to give a glögg party for my Cambridge friends. To h-ll with it; as the Swedish saying goes: Where there is room for hearts, there is room for bums.

I explained to friends that it would be crowded, and nobody seemed to mind. I explained that I had no oven to bake saffron buns, and a student invited me to do it at her place. I found Swedish gingerbread in an Italian delicatessen. I learned from experience that some people don't drink alcohol, so I make a non-alcoholic alternative with black-currant juice. I brought frozen black currants with me for this purpose.

I was a bit anxious, but you know what? Twenty-five people seemed quite happy to share the limited space. 

Reference frames

For no reason at all I remembered two children's books today, or rather, I remembered a book and then another book. The Giant Jam Sandwich is a lovely picturebook written in verse about a little town invaded by wasps. The local baker comes up with a solution: make a giant jam sandwich and lure the wasps inside. The pictures show the whole process of baking and jam-making, tons of flour, thousands of eggs, buckets of strawberries, barrels of sugar. The plan is successful, the wasps are killed, and the crows take care of the remnants.

Already when I first read the book, many many years ago, I was in two minds. I am sure it is an ingenious and ecological method of insecticide, and it's a funny, nonsensical story, but what about all this food wasted – they only use two slices of the loaf – that could have fed the poor and hungry? Yes, yes, I know it's just a funny story, but what do young readers get of it, will their respect for food be shattered a tiny bit, or maybe they never had it to begin with?

A verse by the great Italian children's writer and educator Gianni Rodari also features a giant loaf. The speaker says that if he were a wizard baker, he would bake a loaf so big that all people in the world would have a share, and the birds would get the crumbs. And after that, the day will for even be remembered as “The Day When Nobody Was Hungry”.

I could now go on with an extensive moral, but I think I have made my point.

Easter

Easter time is when my identity gets most confused. Russian and Western Easter do not always coincide and can be as far apart as five weeks. We always celebrated Russian Easter in Moscow, even though my family was Lutheran. When I moved to Sweden I of course started celebrating Swedish/Western Easter, but I brought my Russian customs with me. Russian customs include Russian food: the Easter saffron cake, kulich, and Easter spicy cheese, paskha. At the same time, as a child I was supposed to believe in Easter Bunny, in the good German tradition. I had to prepare a plate with some moss or pretty leaves and put it under my bed on Easter eve. In the morning the Bunny would have hidden the plate, and when I found it, it had a little kulich, a pretty egg and perhaps a little toy. No chocolate eggs. Easter was officially forbidden, so there was no commerce around it. Yet you could buy kulich in a bakery, only they called it "Spring cake". People with self respect baked their own. There were no special paints for eggs, we would use onion skins and other natural dyes. We shared family secrets.

We played the egg game at breakfast, knocking egg against egg to break it. But one year when we were visiting some German relatives in Northern Caucasus, they took us to the churchyard to roll eggs on graves, which was utterly perplexing. Many years later, I saw remains of hardboiled eggs in Russian churchyards in Moscow. Visiting graves on Easter Day was not part of my family customs. Later, the authorities in Moscow organised shuttle buses from undeground stations to nearest churchyards on Easter Day, to avoid chaos. Still they didn't admit it was Easter.

In Sweden, when the kids were small - and actually when they were grown-up - we filled cardboard eggs with sweets and hid for them to hunt for. A big cultural clash happened during my first Easter in Sweden, when I had carefully prepared the food, painted eggs, set the table on the eve, and in the morning Staffan started boiling eggs for breakfast. On the other hand, he expected me to make a leg of lamb for Easter dinner, and I thought it was barbarian. Eventually, we reconciled it all, taking the best of everything.

In my youth, we would go to Easter vigil, which was forbidden. To discourage young people from attending Easter services, attractive American films and shows were broadcast on television well beyond the normal broadcast time. Around the few remaining churches in Moscow, police and volunteers from Young Communists made human chains, but were instructed to let the believers in. Which implied old women in headscarves, but if you went past with determined steps they'd let you in. The church was overcrowded (in Russian Orthodox churches there are no pews, you stand), it was unbearably hot from hundreds of candles. Once you've squeezed in, you couldn't get out, and the service went on for hours. Sometimes we stayed outside and watched the priests come out to call: "Christ is risen". I knew very little of the implications, but it was a celebration we shared and valued. The Russian custom was to carry a burning candle all the way home. Luckily, I lived just next to a church, so I managed. Sometimes we would go to a different church, and the game was to bring it home in a taxi (it didn't work). Once I attended a service as a guest of honour, allowed to stand with the choir. I received a blessed egg from the priest. People said that blessed eggs didn't rot, you could save them for years.

In Stockholm I used to go to the Russian church for Easter vigil, even when I didn't otherwise go regularly, and in San Diego I managed to find a tiny Russian church. When the Russian and Western Easter did not coincide, I would celebrate first with the family, at home, and then with Russian friends, in church. I would make Easter food twice. Occasionally I would go to a Swedish Easter service. In Sweden, Good Friday (strange name for a day when God is murdered) is a holiday. In the US and here, in the UK, it isn't. You get out of phase. Add all your Jewish friends and friends of other confessions and atheist friends... Yet much like Christmas, Easter for me is mostly about the family. We could never get the whole family together for Christmas Eve, but they all came for Easter brunch.

This year, Julia made Russian Easter food and invited her little brother. I don't think she realises how happy she made me. Somehow this multicultural, confused tradition is carried on.

'Tis the voice of a lobster

I don't even remember when I did it first time, but it must be well before San Diego (our lives are divided into before and after San Diego). I tasted my first lobster thermidor in Spain in January 1988, just after I had submitted my PhD and needed a break. So somewhere between then and 1999 I took the challenge and tried to cook a thermidor in my own kitchen. I have since then tried to do it after a recipe from the net - a waste of time. You must find a recipe from a good French cookbook and let it take the time it takes. Once you've tried it you will never accept any shortcuts.

It does take a long time because you have to make all the steps in right order and exactly the way it is described. You cannot just put everything in a sausepan and mix. Well, you can, and that's what a recipe from the net will tell you to do. But the result will be accordingly. In San Diego, for Anton's birthday we took him for thermidor to a fish restaurant someone had recommended. Anton said my lobster was better, and he was right. I know you are not supposed to say so, but I have never had a lobster anywhere that was better than the one I make for every New Year Eve. Admittedly, it is different each New Year Eve, because I can never do it exactly the same.

When Anton stayed on in San Diego and I went to see him over Christmas, he asked me to cook my famous lobster for him and his foster family. He also invited some friends, so it was tons of lobster, and although cooking the sauce takes the same time whether you have one lobster or twelve, it's more time-consuming to take out the meat and press the red and the green through a sieve if you have twelve. Anton helped me, but it was in somebody else's kitchen, and I didn't know where things were and whether there was a pinch of this and that available that I would have had in my own kitchen. In the end it turned out that Anton's family wasn't at all fond of lobster, but one of his friends was. I will remember her forever. She made it worth while.

Anyway, I have prepared my at least fifteenth lobster thermidor, and it takes me less time each year not because I cheat but because I learn. But, as I say, no shortcuts. If the French cookbook says boil for five minutes and stir, this is what you do.

Christmas cooking Russian style

I am preparing food for Christmas hoping that there will be guests to eat it. Right now the perspectives are unclear. Among other things indispensable on my Christmas table is Russian pickled cabbage which is unlike any other pickled cabbage. It is made without vinegar for the simple reason that historically there was no wine production in Russia and thus no sour wine to make vinegar. True, there was no wine production in Finland or Sweden either, and they still don't make the Russian style cabbage – presumably influenced by Germany. Nowadays I only make a little jar of cabbage, as much as we can reasonably eat within a reasonable time. I used to make a huge 20-litre earthenware jar and keep it cool in the cellar. This is how it was done in Russia when I was a child. Fresh cabbage was available in the autumn, and the only way to save it for the winter was to pickle it. You had to be a team to slice all this cabbage, grate the carrots and then rub it with salt until it became juicy. Then you put something heavy on top, a big stone wrapped in a piece of cloth, and left it for some days to ferment. Yum.

I have shared this repeatedly on food pages of Swedish newspapers, and I have a special chapter in Masha's Russian Cookbook (which incidentally is my best-selling publication).

If I were to make a 20-litre jar of pickled cabbage today I wouldn't know where to keep it. I don't have a cellar. And why would I do it when I can make a small jar any time I want it? Just one of those many things from your childhood you took for granted but only make sense in their own context. Pickled cabbage was essential for survival in Russia when I was a child. Today, it's just a nice addition to my Christmas table.

Blog challenge Day 21 – Another moment

When Piglet asks Pooh what his favourite moment is, Pooh thinks that although it is really wonderful to eat honey there is always this little tiny second just before you start eating honey that is better still.

Blog challenge Day 4: What you ate today

A few years ago my GP decided I needed to lose weight and sent me to a group (not Weightwatchers). The first assignment was to write down – honestly – what you ate during a day. Looking at my list, the nurse said: “But this is a perfect diet, what's your problem?” I wasn't on a diet, we just eat healthily. (My problem was hypothyroidism).

I have had the same breakfast for years. A glass of freshly pressed orange juice, two slices of ham or sausage (preferably of two different kinds, for the sake of taste), a boiled egg, fresh cucumber, tomato and paprika. Occasionally some cottage cheese. And a cup of coffee with frothed milk. When I want variation I make scrambled eggs, and on Sundays we always have eggs Benedict, without toast. But today it was plain hard-boiled egg. 

At half past ten I had another cup of coffee with a slice of cheese. 

I normally have proper hot lunch in the Great Hall in college on weekdays. There is no such thing as a free lunch, so my lunches come with strings attached. The idea is that you take you time, talk to your colleagues and hatch great ideas. This is how all the Nobel Prizes at Cambridge were born.

But today I stayed at home in the morning because we were collecting out cat from the vet. Then I was in a hurry and gobbled up two slices of cold roast beef and a tomato, and off I went. No wonder I was famished when I came home. Staffan made oven-baked hamburgers (much tastier than grilled) and I made courgette sauce with onion and tomato. Staffan had wine with his meal, but I didn't. I had a peach. Now we are sitting in front of the fire with a cup of tea each and watch the cat stretch her paws. 

Yes, you've guessed right: we are LCHF.