Willamette Abroad

Valparaíso, Chile is well known for its rich night life, which includes a wide variety of dance clubs, everything from salsa to tango to my personal favorite, wool-sweater-wearing, warm-wine-drinking, unshaven, flute-playing Chilean folk dancing.

My favorite place to enjoy such an atmosphere is a place called El Gato en la Ventana, located in the Cerro Alegre area. Here you can sip on delicious vino navegado (a version of mulled wine) from quaint clay mugs while listening to some great live folk music and dancing it up with a friendly group of easy going Chileans.

By the way, this picture... a cat...in a window...was appropriately taken across the street from the famed Gato.

Posted by Kindra D Clark-Snustad at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alcohol is very expensive in Sweden; to help offset the cost of the excellent national health care, alcohol--a potential health risk--is sold at very high set margins by the government monopoly, Systembolaget, popularly referred to as Systemet--The System. A bottle of cheap gin is 200 SEK -- that's 30 USD. Because of this, many Swedes make their own alcohol using an orchestration of widely available and makeshift equipment. Note that acquiring, or god forbid, distilling this alcohol yourself is Highly Illegal and does not come with my recommendation At All.

Now comes the question of what to do with a large amount of Totally Legal Vodka you have acquired by Great Fortune. The first step is to diversify. If you live in Linköping, Hemköp in Ryd has rum and whisky essences you can add to your vodka to provide an approximation of said liquors. You will find a lot more variety of essences at Vinland--a store which you will Not have already gone to to acquire Other Equipment, in Gottfriedsberg just across Rydskögens bike trail.

Then you may want to use this product to create a tasty beverage. WILLY:s in Skaggetorp has Eldorado brand kolsyrat vatten (carbonated water) for enormously cheap, which you may want to flavor using a wide variety of flavor syrups available everywhere with the greatest variety again at Vinland. Skål!

Posted by Jacob F Kobylecky at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It does not hurt to repeat that as you arrive in your host country, many of your ideas as to how the world works will be challenged and seen as assumptions tied to a particular location. Beliefs around food as one of the first survival needs will be the first one to go.

It does not hold universally true that Mexican food and burgers are cheap, different countries have different cheap fast foods. Many countries in the Russian sphere of influence, for example, have cheap food originating from former Union Republics. Take as example the cheboureki, fried flat meat pies from Georgia that may be had for equivalent of less than a dollar-- in Estonia at least.

Read more about this food at Gastrologica.

Posted by Heiki Eesmaa at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)