High tech gadgets are cool things. I’m always anxious to have some. But sometimes it is not me who has the victorious  triumph. Fanouš has invented this high tech electronically controlled grill. It’s so sophisticated that it not only saves our time, but it also saves charcoal, so it can be actually considered as a piece of green technology saving our world! And what more, it’s so complicated that I can’t handle it…

I love French cheese. They make so many different types, so many tastes. It’s so good. Always when I go to France, I import them. A lot of them. I spend every time a lot of money to bring at least some of them back home. Luckily, my roommate told me that they have a good selection of French cheese in Makro, so I finally have a good place for cheese.

Caroline, Patrick’s sister eating cheese

When I was in Paris, and lived in Patrick’s family, his mum was feeding us with cheese, so I felt like in heaven! [-;

I really think that people should care more about quality of food they eat. Cheap food is tasteless. Some time ago I had the chance to taste Tesco branded cheap salami. And it was horrible. I wouldn’t write it further, but I didn’t like it at all. I think in general in the past years, the quality of food sold here is worse and worse. And it is specially caused by big supermarket chains like namely Tesco, Penny or even worse Lidl. You almost cannot find any good shop with vegetables, bakeries are also worse and worse just to keep prices down. Just luckily, there are still some good butchers around. But absolutely the quality is going down.

You can complain that we have that bio thing, but this is bullshit. These so called bio quality foods are just overpriced stuff. They can be good, but c’mon, paying three times more is also not good. I reckon that this mania is caused by lowering the quality of foods in the past years. Just make it nicer looking. Tasteless? It’s ok, it just has to look good. I think that the solution would be if people producing the vegies stop taking care only about how big things do they make, but start care about the taste instead.

Special case of bad supermarket is Tesco. They never have good vegies. I would never buy any meat there. They are always cheating when having something else written on price tags, and something else is charged to you at the counter. I really hate their Tesco branded everything. This food is the worst ever, and just labeled by Tesco to be sold easier. And the saddest thing is that Tesco bought local French Carrefour supermarkets. Carrefour was good! They cared about things at the time. Sadly the business was what they don’t know, so they not really failed here, but rather moved to Asia.

Ok, these were complains about English, but this is understandable. Can you imagine some good English food? I cannot. Fish and Chips. LOL. But sadly German discount supermarket chains like Lidl and Penny are even worse. They even don’t care about normal or let’s say local producers. They just bring the cheapest thing available, no matter other factors. I was in Lidl once. And I had to laugh. I saw some coke bottle. It looked exactly like Coca Cola, but the brand was different. Until you came closer, you couldn’t recognize the difference! Also everywhere labels like “We are cheaper!”. This is horrible propaganda. Specially when thinking that this company is evil. After some affairs like cutting down trees around their shops to be seen better (illegally), or flatting down one historical building in Přerov because of new supermarket on it’s place (again illegally). Or think about Tesco, and it’s policies and how they are to the producers. Horrible! The worst companies here.

As every year, the European K-State branch had another annual meeting. For the third time, and this time in Paris. There were about 15 people together hanging out, eating out, doing some sightseeing, and just enjoying themselves. So this post, and some others about this reunion.

Thomas and Ueli

I flew from Prague on thursday in the morning, and this was a big mistake. I had to get up at 4 in the morning, and as I am not really morning person, i suffered a lot. Next time, there is no way to fly before 7 am anywhere! Also funny enough as Czech got to the Schengen space, I really didn’t recognize that in Paris. France probably still plays it’s own game in some things like Schengen treaty, because we had to wait a lot there, and what more, we were checked. I wouldn’t mind it that much, but we had to wait more than half hour locked in some corridor till policemen in the airport finish their breakfasts!

On the Prague’s airport

I stayed at Patrick’s parents in Marny-Thoriny which is farther suburb of Paris. But the connection was very good, train station was just five minutes walk from their house, and Patrick’s parents were just great offering me alcohol, food, and cheese! I came on thursday, and Patrick, Thomas, Zoya, and Patrick’s sister Caroline came on friday.

Thomas, Patrick and Zoya

Something in the gardens of Louvre

Eifel tower

Ship models

Obelisk

Obelisk

So on friday night we headed straight to Paris to spend the night there. We met with Honza and Dominik drinking some beers on the street close to metro station Pignon. I drunk two really disgusting Hollandaise beers, which was by the way super strong – almost 12% of alcohol, so like wine. And you can imagine what does it mean drinking a liter of wine. Long time nothing, and then it pops up, all the drunkenness was sudden and approaching me very rapidely. After encouraging ourselves with a little of alcohol, we went to the club Duvan de Monde. And as I remember, the club was great. I remember that the music was very cool, some French chanson like music mixed with some electronic, so the stuff I like…

The meeting took place mostly on saturday. At first we went with Patrick, Thomas and Zoya to the town. We made a short sightseeing. We went from Louvre, then through gardens of Louvre. Then we crossed the Seine river and went to Eiffel tower where we met the others.

After it we went to some bar (I don’t know exactly where), and we were drinking some beers, eating some crepes, and some more people were gathering.

Honza and Julie eating crepes

In the creperie

In the bar

The street where the bar was

Ueli, Patrick’s friend, Patrick and Thomas

Later we went to the dinner. It was not bad, but a bit overpriced (for Czechs, not for Parisians, of course). I mean paying 40€ for a dinner is quite a lot for us, specially when you see how the personnel behaves to you, and how do they want to get the money just squeezing more and more people to the place. Well, but no one can ever know before…

My dinner

The dinner was style eat as much as you want, what some people really appreciate, but the rest must be really vert careful to not to eat way too much, or it will end up as horrible catastrophe! I think you know what do I mean. So the dinner consisted from entrée, main dish (grilled meat), cheese, and desert.

I sat in the table with Dominik, and eating with this guy is a real pleasure. Dominik is the person with whom you can enjoy eating. I mean eating, I don’t mean chatting, talking, and having fun. I mean enjoying meal. Picking up the right words for what do you eat is what makes the dinner great. You need think about the food much more, and then you will enjoy it much more. I like eating out more like tasting various flavors and tastes. Of course, meeting people is also as important, but this aspect is a right thing as well, and many people forgets about it!

Dominik eating…

For the entrée I liked the pates, and the salami, and kind of kus kus, but as French explained me, it was not real kus kus, but some French variant, but really good one. There were some other stuff in the bar, but nothing really that notable such as things above. I have to, of course mention lot of fresh vegies all around, and free table wine.

Klára

for a main dish, I had a lamb on the grill, and I didn’t like it much. I think it was a bit dry. Other’s meat were a bit dry as well, so -1 point here.

Cheese

Cheese, what to say? Maybe +1 point? I liked this part the most from the dinner. For the desert we had flan, and I have to say that I am not really fan of flan, so bad luck.

Jana and Klára

Julie and Lukáš

Thomas, Zoya and Ueli eating dinner

After restaurant we were deciding where to go further. So after lot of searching we went to some club, and stayed there till almost 6, so we were pretty tired at the end…

Honza and Dominik

Julie pissing behind the town hall

Julie is done

We got really lucky that Patrick has such a great parents, they served us a great lunch, again with a lot of cheese, so it was great. Later in the evening Patrick and Caroline left Paris to Lyon and Marseille, and we (M+T+Z) went to have a coffee with one French K-Stater from the generation zero. I didn’t even know her, but it’s always nice to meet some nice people. We went to have some coffee and crapes (again [-;).

On monday all of us left. Thomas and Zoya in the morning, and me in the evening, so I was doing just sightseeing, but about this later.

If you don’t know what tapas are, you are missing a lot! They are snacks served with drinks in Spanish bars. It’s really nice food, usually some small sandwiches, pieces of seafood, croquettes, potatoes with some sauce, olives, tortilla de patatas, and many more. Tapas are usually served between 9PM and midnight, and sometimes free, sometimes not. But they are usually quite cheap dinner (and sometimes free [-;). Sometimes you can also see the name reción which are tapas, but in bigger amount, and they are paid.

I also have to say, that I quite like food in Spain. There is lot of sea products which I can eat every day at every occasion. Also we have free food in school as encouragement for all Erasmus students to come to school, and I cannot complain in cafeteria in school since it’s free. The only complain is that Spanish food is swimming in the oil. I like that they use lot of olive oil; however not all the time. And I really don’t understand why do they pour so much oil to foods. Maybe they think that it’s such healthy thing, as my Portuguese friend was trying to explain me. I don’t trust it. It’s just oil…

Well, why am I talking about food now? Last week visited me my brother Pepa, and also Thorsten’s sister Bettina, so we went couple of times to eat in the city which is really nice experience. I post pictures from tapas restaurant close to Calle de Huertas, but I cannot recommend it since they tried to rip us off. I also include pictures from Galician restaurant which is excellent, and is located also in Calle de Huertas. Also one more thing not common for me as person from the central Europe is that in Madrid you have to wait sometimes before restaurant before you can come in, and get the food. Once we were waiting about one hour to get food. Well, we were drinking beer, so it didn’t matter so much, but you should be prepared anyway. But anyway as we say en Madrid se come de puta madre… [-;

Bettina, Pepa, and me in front of this Galician restaurant

Mussels I

Mussels II.

Me, Pepa, and Bettina

Tapas – fish at the bottom, and small sendwiches on the right side, and some salad.