Slovenia’s Meat Obession (and other tasty things)

Slovenia is awfully proud of its cold cuts. Any normal functioning restaurant there will have locally made salami, sausage, cured ribbon, and cubed lard for an appetizer - hypertension and congestive heart failure be damned! The more generous ones will include a variety of local cheese, fruit, and nuts, though any Slovenian will tell you that their meat plates are so good, they should stand on their own. Paired with beer, of course. TasteSlovenia.si, a tourist centric site, has a scroll-heavy page dedicated solely to the ways of the sausage; how the sausage is made, where its made, and why your life has no meaning until you’ve sausaged the Slovenian way.

Meat is clearly, a big and meaningful identifier to culture in many countries. I enjoy cured meaty medallions as much as the next person, but after a while cold cuts, no matter where it is, seem to taste the same. Like any post-Soviet country I've been to, Kazakhstan is a sausage loving nation. Our grocery app has SO MANY options like halal, boiled halal, smoked halal, regular boiled, regular smoked, regular half-smoked, whole, cut, hot-dogged, chicken, beef, pork, horse... all available on demand.

I’m low-key annoyed that Slovenia is missing a huge bragging point on its hamburger making. An old blog post mentioned the restaurant Foksner in Bohinj, famous for its burgers, and this time we planned our road trip around eating there again, they are that good. The country nails beef quality. Even better, during the vacation we found two other joints that were on par, if not better than Foksner: Bar Under the Bridge (Bar Pod Mostom) a popup bar and grill on the Soci River and Come Back Burger in Trzic have burgers worthy of going out of your way for. Slovene mince is divine, without filler. Steak around the country is good too, but their burgers have ruined all others for me.

We ate and drank our way through this trip, showing my parents the summery side of Slovenia since they had only visited in winter. Though having been retired in Colorado for about a decade, they still talk about moving overseas for their official official retirement, so this trip was our hard sell, seeing as it’s where Mark and I would like to end up too. Winter half convinced them already, summer could actually seal the deal! Our days were filled with cave exploration, gorge hiking, waterfall viewing, swimming, and winery visits to tasting varietals like Barbera (venous red), Zelen (spicy fresh), or Malvasia (tart but tame) grapes. We tasted orange wine. It's not for everyone and no thank you.

We crossed into Cormons, Italy for a few days for Friulano and Ribolla whites where, throw a rock in any direction and you’ll hit a winery. They too, have their world class cold cut prosciutto, supposedly due to the region's mix of Adriatic breeze and Carnic mountain winds. I would have loved to experience either of those because the sweltering, unmoving heat just layered itself on top of us to the point where our bodies left crime scene sweat outlines on the tiled floors. On the plus side, we did eat magical 8-cheese pizza, enjoyed a 6-course cheese tasting, and got heartburn from eating so much frico (a hot cheese potato dish). I'd be seriously worried about my cholesterol if it weren't for an upcoming 300km bike ride across Slovenian and Austrian mountains.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Burger with a view (Most Na Soci) 

Lepa Vida - with labels containing homages to the female form

orange = nope

Pregaming with seafood in Piran, Slovenia

Burabay Adjacent, KZ

For those who want to do a mountainy, tree stuffed getaway, but don’t want to deal with oblivious boaters or hikers elbowing their way up the rapidly balding overlook to Burabay Lake, choose a camp located away from the lake. The same friend who invited us the first time, organized a schools-out-hurrah-celebration at the Aspen Eco Hotel. Technically, the hotel is located in an unpronounceable city called Shchuchinsk (Shoot-chins-k) but we’ll just say Burabay. More a glamp site than hotel, the deciduous forest surrounds the property and there’s a natural spring pond, good for swimming and paddle boarding. Any sane lodging developer in the post-soviet region would include a sauna paired with a giant galvanized, wood burning hot tub, which it did. Their individual dome rooms come with loft beds, ac, bathrooms and showers, and a hot tub. I like glamping and I am very good at it.

My friend and her family trained up, while Margo and I chose to drive this time. (Note to train riders: passports are required for all passengers and they DO check.) The dog, Mark, and Deets were invited but bailed last minute, so instead, our entire back seat and trunk was filled with multiple kilos of lamb chops, chicken, and beef, sagging bags of vegetables, crates of strawberries and apricots, watermelons, several different types of junk food accouterment, and champagne. I one hundred percent did not think we would eat all it the short time we had, but determined minds and stomachs prevailed. Between relaxing, practicing handstands, playing tag, swimming, and splashing all of the water from the hot tubs from said handstands, tags, and attempts to swim, the kids ate nearly everything.

After the sun went down the site manager set up a movie screen and showed the guests Russian dubbed “Runaway Bride”. Not having thought about Richard Gere in a very long time, my friends, fellow glampers and I discussed Gere movies. As a weird child, I watched “Pretty Woman” countless times. I liked that Vivian knew car stats and had big feet and how she Arsenio Hall fit pumped during the polo match. I know that movie didn’t age well, but I loved how Edward got over his stupid pride, figured out what a bad-AMF Viv was, and went to get her. In the meantime, the others unanimously said Gere’s best movie was “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” and were equally shocked that I never heard of this movie. They immediately set to educating me on the depth of the movie’s far superior love story between a man and his dog. Fair enough. 

Stars were out, the air chilled to hoodie perfection, and the kids fell asleep before we did, so the adults went for a sauna - a wild 10pm activity for someone who loves a 9pm bedtime. The next morning we ate an English breakfast at the outrageously early 9am hour (they said breakfast was normally between 10-12) and had enough time to swim and paddle board before driving back home on the shockingly smooth spacious highway with a 130kph speed limit. My only regret for the weekend was stopping at a gas station outhouse with so many flies they could have eaten my carcass cartoon style if I passed out from the quantity and smell and fell through the broken, rusted floor. Margo would have had to drive the car home instead, and I’m sure she would not have liked that.

Making friends

SUP

Airat, Grillmaster

Snacking between meat courses.

Burabay National Park, KZ

The steppe in this country is so vast, one needs to travel at least 3.5 hours to see anything resembling hills and mountains. So, for a $1.50, I took a first class train to do just that, and visit Burabay National Park for the day. Sure, the train car doors don't stay closed and the windows only open fifteen degrees, but the squat toilets have a sturdy grab-handle for stabilizing from the non-regulation track gauges. The seats are surprisingly not uncomfortable and there is a food service car that the ticket taker promised to offer tea, coffee, chips, and cakes - except not on this particular day when the vendor never showed. No worries, because I packed GORP and water, surely a highlight for every child and adult.

 

Suddenly, the flat turned into Burabay hills and the second our feet hit the ground, my friend immediately began negotiations with a cab driver to transport us the rest of the way for a 30 minute drive in a van with 1/2 functioning seatbelts and music videos queued up on YouTube. The national park felt like a mix of Dirty Dancing nostalgia and a tin of sardines, with tightly packed resorts and tightly packed trees lining the road that circles the park. Paddle boats, row boats, cheddar wheel shaped boats, pontoons crowded on the most picturesque side of the lake. Bike and scooter rentals lined the pedestrian path, as were opportunities go dress like a regal Kazakh to enhance core memory making. I just about lost my mind when I found out I could hold a real hawk while posing as a powerful nomad.

Some of the mountain hikes surrounding the lake take 4-5 hours to climb, but they require guides and advanced equipment with peaks having noticeably sharp inclines and treacherous drop offs. Most visitors stick to the less demanding 30 minute incline to the Bolektau observation point. At the top, we were met with gusty winds, sunshine, and Kazakh teens dancing to love ballads blasting from a portable speaker. One person gave us beef jerky and another person gave us hard boiled eggs. I handed out fistfuls of GORP, because everyone loves it. Talk about winning! 

Toward the end of the day, we grabbed proper food at Coffee Boom, a popular Kazakh restaurant chain that does some things well like soup, coffee, and cakes, and a few things terribly, like bruschetta. My friend insisted we experience at least the short tour of the park’s museum before our 5pm pick up, so we did. Normally, I champion the idea of trying everything at least once - but the price of the tour was stupidly expensive for what was on offer: fiber optic stranded “leaves” hanging over tree peep holes of Kazakh cultural sites, an immersive video of a swimming whale, and a mural of nomads on horses, the end. 

The driver who brought us to Burabay was the same one who took us back to the train station. He challenged all notions of safe driving the winding roads by texting and voice messaging his wife who was zero percent pleased he had not come home yet to deal with his domestic responsibilities. Insisting he’d be home in 20 minutes, he sped up and drove with ferocity insisting too that we’d surely hit traffic, and miss our train if he didn’t hussle… and drop us a safe 45 minutes head of schedule. The train ride home was mostly uneventful,  though the fear that open windows cause health problems is still very prevalent around here, so our fellow train mates demanded all windows be shut, so we were trapped in everyone’s body odor, farts, and fish snacks. But hey - the price to travel was right. Right?

Ruling fairly and wisely.

View from the lake on a row boat while listening to Kazakh techno at full volume.
This is the way.

Janky cheese wheel boat.

Mid-paddle pit stop.

Birder photobomb.

Bolektau Obs Point. A good spot for snacking and selfie-ing.

Psychedelic and random.

She’s a total natural.

A literal peep show

Progression of springtime in Astana

Over the course of a 7-day spring break trip, all of the snow in Astana disappeared. No more snow bar, no more gravy colored snow piles, and no more rutty ice streets. No more shoveling! Outdoor activity has now evolved to pot-hole repairing, bike commuting, and enjoying longer periods of daylight. It's only April and we have over 14 hours worth of it! Hello 5am sunshine!

Green color is exploding everywhere. Except, for our yard. Our grass looks like it’s going through detox from waterlogged soil, embedded stuffed animal fluff, unsupervised dog mischief, and her spring-is-here zoomies. Mark has faith our yard will recover and wants to plant a sea of mint, green beans, and pumpkins. Considering my skills in gardening and keeping-the-dog-out-of-the-theoretical-garden are subpar, I don't share his positivity.

Ticks are also exploding everywhere. This week alone we've picked 7 off the dog, even with routine application of Frontline, so you can imagine how much fun I'm not having. Our previous dog got sick a couple of times from probable tick infections, once in Brazil and once in Namibia. Watching him malinger and fight off infection was hard on everyone. Then there's the human side of the family, all of whom enjoy wrestling our current dog, Ginsburg, and exploring the great outdoors, preferably in shorts and going barefoot. Tick checks just might end up being an awkward family affair because I'm not cool with anyone getting sick. 

I don’t have time for anyone getting things like tick borne encephalitis (TBE), Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (ominous right?!), tularemia (rabbit fever, cute but no thx), or Lyme - all of which have similar initial symptoms such as fever, headache, body aches. Later symptoms make each individual illness shine… 

Entomologists think three of the 30 known tick species in KZ carry these diseases, and about 50 cases per year are reported according to Parasites & Vectors. On paper, prevalence isn't super high but with TBE, infection is immediate so we recommend KZ long-timers to get vaccinated for it. Plus the full vaccine course is like 90% effective. It’s kind of a no-brainer. (For clarification, CCHF infected ticks give you about a1-7 day window after the tick bite, tularemia is about 3-5, Lyme disease is 48-72 hours.)

At any rate, I’m super glad spring is here. I look forward to see what the city does for its vast amounts of garden beds and pedestrian walkways. I look forward to trees and plants blooming, even though I might end up quadrupling my citirizine to get through it, and seeing pale, wan faces turn into the warming sun. In conclusion, ticks are gross.

My favoirite is the team of 3 standing in the back of the truck
Which is full of hot asphalt.

First commute of the season!
Ishim River

Puppy taking in the sun along a 6-lane street.

No idea what these are in our yard, but they are GREEN.

The a-hole that was in Ginsburg’s fur but I panicked  And flung my arms in despair, resulting in whipping my pants off looking for it, but I couldn’t find it, until it crawled down my shoulder 15 minutes later in the kitchen and I freaked, taking a meat hammer to it. but not before taking this picture of course.

Freshly shaved giant schnauzer and hubby on the weird colored lawn.

Thailand

Recently, I attended an emergency medical conference on the island of Ko Samui. Most of the attendees were Australian nurses, paramedics, and doctors craving a hot beachy getaway, but there were also 25 State Department colleagues from all over the world there too! Meeting new embassy colleagues made the whole sweating, eating, and learning sessions feel extra special. The Australians were as interested in our collective health unit specialty of working within an embassy, as we were of them, but some did think we were spies, trying to collect intel on Australian medicine. Or maybe they were joking? It was hard to tell.

Most of the speakers were engaging, sharing their stories and medical expertise, but what ended up being my favorite session, took me by surprise: “Hand and Finger Injury Management in the ED” led by two nurse practitioners who reminded me of Frankie and Grace. They were funny and grody, but still delivered meaningful information on assessing and managing things like ruptured hand tendons, finger amputations, or hand fractures. These two women were so inspiring, that by the end of their session, I was looking into grad school options to find my special purpose. 

It was a fun week, but it was also lonely without the family. I took myself on one excursion to snorkel, see pigs, and hike around several beaches collecting shells, but mostly I spent time walking around the island on the main road, trying to avoid scooters, cars, and trucks, and people-watching at the night markets. I also spent a lot of time washing my underwear in the sink, I was sweating so much. Normally I like hot, and maybe it’s my age, but wow, Thai hot is something else.

Spring break was the following week, so the kids, Mark, and I rendezvoused on Ko Tao for scuba diving and snorkeling, and a whole lot of steep hiking, because our Airbnb was situated on a mountain top. Parts of the road had a 20-25% incline, getting my heart rate to 180 beats per minute trudging up the hills. We did hire a taxi (the back of a pickup truck) for some of the commuting, but for the most part, we hit the pavement/beaches/trails on foot. We fueled ourselves on mango smoothies, coconuts, and as much Thai food as we could eat. Every day we’d get home, salty and sandy (and terribly uncomfortable), and immediately jump into the pool to cool off before we could even think about doing anything else. Usually that “anything else” was drink gobs of water and Netflix, then bed. 

On the way back from Ko Tao, after a ferry ride, bus ride, and plane ride, we took an extra night to visit Bangkok which I immediately fell in love with. That city has a vibe. The four of us were on a bicycle tour when the earthquake happened so we were none the wiser. Only after wading through horn blasting traffic and throngs people in the streets of Chinatown did we figure out what had happened. (I stupidly thought someone famous was visiting that area, because nearly everyone had their phones out filming.) The guides pushed us along on a strict timeline, so we didn’t get a chance to think about the earthquake’s impact until after we got back to the hotel. Luckily, our Bangkok friends were okay, though a few got stranded outside of the city had to wait hours and hours before finding a taxi to get home. Some had structural damage to their apartments and others were evacuated from their buildings but overall, everyone was safe. 

Our flight home was the next day which took off without incident and got back to a totally transformed, now winterless Astana. Getting used the city’s snowless look felt a lot like seeing Mark without his beard: a little startling at first, but also… nice. 

Turtle

A less gross slide from the Hand Injury presentation. 
This hit close to home because I once had a patient who had this.

Pig Island. Gimmicky. But pretty. Also hot. 
Sand is SO hot.

Margo en route to Ko Tao

Water Taxi 

Self study portion of the conference. Subject: OB Emergencies

Honestly, it was too hot for beer.
I drank mostly soda water.

I want this logo on a t-shirt

Embassy crew, representing
London, Thailand, India, Greece, Tel Aviv, 
Qatar, Iraq, Vietnam, China… <3

Should have been a 10 minute hike.
Ended up being 45 min due to the line for the view.

Black tip reef shark

Best part of my trip: Thai food every single night with these guys.

Hiking to get a good view.

The view.

Jim View Bar with a cover charge
And mandatory food order (which we did with pleasure)

A good view.

Hiking back down from the good view.

Bangkok. I love this city.

Paying our respects.