Zeee End

Lovely Serbian food. Paprika chicken, cornmeal muffins, smoothered cabbage, roasted peppers and eggplant, fresh bread, delicious smooth drinkable plain yogurt. Heavenly! Below is the town hall in Subotica, where I became famous. The art is done in late 19th century and in style of Romanian Hungarian...
Burek & yogurt *ready to drink!* Burek is the phyllo dough and fresh cheese pastry. I ate this at least once a day.
Below are kids dancing in traditional outfits for Hungary, Croatia and Serbia.
Below is lovely Subotica city hall again.

While all the traveling has got me feeling a little discombobulated, I’ve been feeling pretty good. I went to DC the day after I arrived from Ukraine, having almost no time to process the end of the trip. But that’s ok, I had had a lot of time IN Ukraine to process it and was more than a little happy to be going home. While the work part of Ukraine was fabulous (our partners there humble me), the personal life part wasn’t so great. Stories like the one I detailed below were the norm. Things don’t work. It just ain’t like the USA, something you could all guess, but Ukraine is particularly hard.

Regardless, I was able to eat my fair share of veriniky -- purses of dough filled with potatoes, cabbage, cheese, or even (my personal fave!) sweet cherries! I indulged in the blini, either with wild mushrooms or sweet cheese and fresh apricot jam. I overate my fill of borscht—always served with the warm, garlic doused bread.

I can’t say enough good things about most Ukrainian food (let’s not talk about salo, slices of pig fat). I sure ate a lot of it. And I explored the country a lot. Eastern Ukraine is much harder than central, southern or western Ukraine. It’s next to Russia, and there’s a strong anti-Western mentality. Few people speak English. Nato Nyet signs pervaded my stay, a nagging reminder of the presence of my president to the country only a few days prior. Ukraine is mostly flat. I’ve been to the South (aka Odessa), but never saw the black sea. I’ve never been West, the only part of Ukraine with mountains (the Carpathians to be exact) and the more European side of the country. Sounds nice.

I was happy to get home to Atlanta.

DC was such a treat. I spent two nights with 1722 KIL, and my favorite DC couple (Meredith & Adam), and was even joined by Jorge & Vargo (you know them as regular members of Beer Club). Together, we made cheese and a BBQ.

And now? Off to New Orleans…