Those of you who regularly read this blog might know that I spent 27 months living in Yerevan, Armenia, where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I was there from June 1995-August 1997, and the first half of my time there was during a severe energy crisis. Although I would be lying if I said I loved every minute of my time as an “A3” Peace Corps Volunteer (meaning I was in the third group to go there after the program started in December 1992), I am now left with lots of nostalgia. I still remember some of the language, and I have developed an appreciation for Armenian food, wine, and culture.
Last week, Facebook sent me a random ad for a restaurant in downtown Wiesbaden called La Bohème. This beautiful eatery, named for an opera by Giacomo Puccini, specializes in Armenian and Georgian food. I was excited to see that, as I had no idea that Wiesbaden had a proper Armenian restaurant. I have seen some Georgian places, but none that were really Armenian. I told Bill and about La Bohème, and today, we decided to visit.
This restaurant is located on Taunusstrasse, which runs along the perimeter of the old town. We parked our car in the Kurhaus Parkplatz, and then it was an easy and pleasant ten minute walk to the restaurant.
Wiesbaden’s hot spring!
When we walked into the restaurant, there were only two tables occupied. We took a spot by the wall, and the waiter, who spoke perfect English apologized that they only had German menus. As we’d say in Armenia, հարց չկա– (harts ch’ka, or no problem). We ordered our usual water with gas, and a lovely Georgian Mukuzani wine.
Then, we shared hummus with lavash, and xhorovatz (grilled meat). I had pork and Bill had lamb. I was very impressed by the food. It was beautifully prepared and presented. I was wondering where this place had been all my life!
This xhorovatz were outstanding! We both opted for the potatoes, and the dish came with drilled peppers and Armenian salad with pomegranate seeds.
The funny thing is, I never had hummus in Armenia. I didn’t eat in many restaurants because I couldn’t afford it, and there weren’t that many, anyway, during my time in Yerevan. By the time I left in 1997, more places were opening. Now, there are MANY good restaurants in Armenia.
After the main courses, we had dessert, but ended up taking most of it home. We were well satisfied by the Armenian dishes. Besides, the desserts were not as good as the starter and main courses were.
We finished up with a snifter of Ararat Vaspurakan 15 year old brandy for me, and an Armenian “Moka” for Bill, which just means coffee made in a moka pot. He read his future in the coffee grounds, which he said showed Western Europe. Personally, I thought they looked more like a dog.
Well, this looks more doglike from a different angle.
All told, we spent about 135 euros, and came home with leftover dessert. We both really enjoyed our visit and I think we’ll happily dine at La Bohème again. The food was excellent, and a nice change of pace. The prices were very fair. And the waiters were patient with me when I spoke Armenian. I’m better at speaking Armenian than German, although there was no need to speak either language, as they all spoke great English! Europe really does put us to shame when it comes to learning foreign languages!
Obviously, I highly recommend this restaurant. We’ll be back!
The featured photo is from this time last year, which was a more fruitful time for my travel blog…
We didn’t do much this weekend, mainly because Bill has to go to Stuttgart this week on business. Our big thing yesterday, after I mowed the lawn, was to watch a German movie on Apple TV called The Lives of Others. I had watched the movie when Bill was gone last month, and I thought he’d really enjoy it. So even though we had beautiful weather yesterday, I suggested that we watch it together.
This was interesting to us, since we’re both old enough to remember East Germany– aka The German Democratic Republic.
The timing of watching this movie is timely, given that German Reunification Day was this past Thursday. Of course, that’s not a holiday for us Americans, but Germans get the day off to celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany. The Lives of Others, which came out in 2006, is set in the mid 80s in East Germany. It’s a fictional story about a hardened Stasi agent who has an attack of conscience while spying on a playwright whose actress girlfriend has caught the eye of a government official.
What makes the film especially cool is that the guy who wrote and directed it, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, was born in Cologne, West Germany in 1973, and was only 16 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. I am a year older than Florian is. I remember when it fell, too. Bill was actually living here when it happened.
When Bill lived in Germany the first time, from 1987-1990, he spent a couple of months guarding the Czech-German border. When we visited the Czech Republic the first time, back in 2008, Bill was very nervous crossing the border, because it was his old territory. He half expected to be busted by the Czech border patrol. Of course, nowadays, you can just sail right through the border with no issues. But we’re old enough to remember when that was definitely not the case.
On Friday night, there was a wine stand in our village, but we opted not to attend. It was chilly and cloudy, and we didn’t feel like drinking cheap German wine in the cold. Instead, we drank German beer, listened to my enormous playlist, and ate Armenian/Greek food from the Ararat Olymp Grillhaus in Mainz, which was available for delivery. It was delicious! We had lavash, khinkali, gyros, fries, flatbread, and tzatziki, and there was plenty left over for lunch yesterday. It’s nice to have Armenian/Greek/Georgian food so close and available to us for delivery. I do kind of miss our evenings at restaurants, though.
As for today, our big outing was to the PX/commissary, to buy me some cosmetics and food for the coming week. The commissary was pretty busy and it looked like it needed to be stocked. I guess the supply chains were running low.
I think the rest of the day will be spent on some mundane chores that need to be done before Bill leaves. We are hoping to get away sometime this month after we go to Stuttgart for our dental cleanings. We just have to line everything up with the dentist and the dog kennel. 😉 I’ve been looking for potential long weekend spots. I think we’ll stay in Germany, but I am not averse to going to a country bordering Germany, as long as it doesn’t involve a super long drive. Maybe it’s time for another trip to France.
Other than that, I don’t have much to report. The Apple Wine fest went on Friday and Saturday in Wiesbaden. It might have been nice to attend that yesterday. I forgot about it, though, until it was too late. Oh well.
I’m glad fall is here, but I kind of dread the weather turning cold and shitty. But at least I’m not being eaten alive by mosquitos anymore.
I woke up feeling significantly better on Monday, June 10th. Bill and I decided to walk back down to the centrum and pick up some new art and souvenirs for his grandchildren. But first, we needed breakfast. So down we went to the big restaurant on the third floor of Grand Hotel Millennium, where we had our usual room temperature repast.
While we were having breakfast, I couldn’t help but overhear two American men talking. I mean, everybody in the vicinity who didn’t have hearing problems could hear these guys… One of them was talking about his diabetes and how he takes Ozempic to control his blood sugar. The other guy was talking about similarly personal stuff. It always amazes me how completely unaware some people are when they’re in public. I see it most often with my fellow Americans, who speak loudly enough for everyone to hear what they say. It’s kind of obnoxious behavior… and trust me, I know all about being obnoxious.
After breakfast, we went to the room to prepare for the day. We ran into our very nice housekeeper, who asked us if we were checking out the next morning. We said we were, and gave her the approximate time we thought we’d be leaving. She said if she didn’t see us, that we had safe and pleasant travels. I was very impressed by how kind she was during our stay.
I put on a pair of shorts so I wouldn’t get so hot and sweaty during the day’s walk. Then we got going, and made our way to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, where I knew we could find art for the house. We made one stop at a Coffee Brothers for some fresh orange juice and a potty break. While we were there, we saw two more Bulgarian women passing us who were having very loud conversations, seemingly on the phone as they charged down Vitosha Boulevard at top speed. The women weren’t with each other. They were going in different directions, several minutes apart. One of them carried a ladle as she screamed into her cellphone and walked very fast down the crowded shopping district. I’m not sure what was going on with them.
An old style barber.Borzois?What a keeper!This used to be Sofia’s best hotel.
We also saw the lovely violinist again. The same young woman who played so beautifully on Saturday came back on Monday to busk. I definitely liked her music better than the saxophonist who kept playing the same thing over and over again while we were at the Vitosha Street Bar & Dinner on Saturday afternoon. I love listening to talented musicians play music on the street. It adds so much character to European cities. I especially like buying their CDs. Unfortunately, the violinist didn’t seem to have any for sale.
Because we were going to buy some art, Bill decided to stop at an ATM. We went back the Ivan Vazov National Theater again, and I got a few more photos of the iconic building. This time, no one was playing basketball in front of it. There is a handy cash machine in the park like area around the theater.
Old Parliament HouseIvan Vazov National TheaterI thought this was kind of cool… A place for your bottles.Another shot of the St. Nicholas the Miraclemaker Church
We finally made it to the cathedral, where I noticed there weren’t as many people selling art as there had been on Saturday. We went to one stand when I noticed art that caught my eye. The colorful paintings were mostly of florals, but I noticed a couple of landscape paintings that reminded me of Sozopol, a Black Sea beach town Elaine and I visited in 1996. As soon as we approached the art, an elderly gentleman came around to speak to us. He spoke some English, although not as well as the much younger man who was with him.
It turned out the paintings that had caught my attention were of a different Black Sea town called Nesebar, which isn’t far from Sozopol. I’ve never been to Nesebar, but like Sozopol, it’s near Burgas and Varna, and is now a major resort town. The younger man told us that the paintings we were interested in were done by an artist named Violeta Stanoeva. She is an accomplished Bulgarian artist who has shown her work in France. Here is a link to her Instagram.
Bill had to go get some Bulgarian lev, so I stayed and talked to the younger guy, who kept singing the praises of the artist and the Black Sea coast. I was struck by how friendly he was, and I didn’t get the sense it was just because we were buying two paintings. I promised him that we would give a good home to Violeta’s paintings. Now that they’re hanging in my dining room, I kind of wish I’d bought another one. I really like her use of colors. I saw a few paintings on her Web site that I think are magical.
This one wasn’t done by Violeta. I spotted it in a gift shop and decided I needed it.
After we bought the paintings, we decided to have lunch. I noticed there was an Armenian restaurant called Egur Egur, very close to the cathedral. It’s not very often that I get to have Armenian food anymore, so we decided to go there for lunch. The restaurant is located in what used to be a music conservatory. There is even framed sheet music by the front door.
When we approached, a rather unfriendly waitress who didn’t seem to speak English pointed to a table. I would have tried Armenian with her, but she appeared to be a local, and I think she was the only one we encountered who didn’t speak English to us. I actually found it kind of refreshing… at least until she started yelling at one of the other servers, a very thin, Slavic looking young woman who managed to stay stoic. I’m not sure what the yelling was about, but it definitely changed the ambiance a bit.
I was excited to see that they offered khorovatz (Armenian kebab-shashlik-barbecue). Bill tried it for the first time in November, when we visited Armenia. It’s a very simple dish, but delicious if it’s prepared properly. So we ordered that, along with a couple of Czech beers and San Pellegrino. Bill had chicken and I had pork, and I actually asked for it by its Armenian name, which the waiter then translated for us. I don’t think he was an Armenian speaker, although he definitely looked like he could have been. Lunch was delicious, but more than we could eat! We probably should have just picked one and split it.
My only complaint about our experience at Egur Egur is that the chairs were uncomfortable for those of us wearing shorts. The hard wood dug into the backs of my thighs. A cushion would have been welcome. Otherwise, it was a very nice lunch. The waiter packed up our leftovers, although we ended up discarding them, because we couldn’t get them to refrigeration quickly enough. What you see in the last picture cost about $48.
We went into a gift shop on Vitosha Boulevard and found some magnets, a mug, and a few little trinkets for the kids. That’s also where I found the wood carving pictured with the art by Violeta Stanoeva. I was lucky to spot it, as it was kind of tucked in a corner in the upstairs of the shop.
After our shopping was done, I was kind of wanting to take a cab back to the hotel, but we ended up walking… All told, it was about five miles. That’s not bad for someone with a cold and a pretty slack fitness routine. Below are a few more photos. I wish we could have seen more during our brief trip, but we have reason to go back. It better be sooner than 28 years, though, because in 28 years, I’ll be 80 years old!
These fragrant trees were all over Sofia. They smelled heavenly!
One place I wish we had visited is the TSUM (Central Department Store), which was a government store that used to be THE place for Bulgarians to buy stuff. The outside of the store has an impressive facade that looks like it came straight from the fanciest communist architect, ever. I went there in 1996, when it was still operating more or less the way it did in communist times. Since then, it was renovated and turned into a mall, and right now, the mall is pretty empty. People just go there to use the clean and free bathroom facilities now. But I do remember going there and buying stuff in the 90s… and thinking it was the picture of a communist era shopping mecca.
Armenia had a similar place called GUM, where I bought some things when I lived there. Now, what was once GUM is a regular store where one can buy rugs. There is also a GUM shuka in Yerevan, Armenia that sells fresh food. It’s not the same thing as the GUM store, though. I’m writing of a Soviet era department store.
I read that the architect of the TSUM was Kosta Nikolov, and his son was murdered by the Gestapo in Germany in the 1940s. Nikolov managed to get ahold of his son’s remains and properly bury them. He kept locks of his son’s hair and a finger as keepsakes. Then, as the TSUM building was being constructed, the architect embedded a box with his son’s remains in it within the building. Nikolov was following a Bulgarian folklore tradition that embedding a living person or a shadow of a living person in a building makes it stronger. Many people thought this was an urban legend until 2001, when workers doing the renovation actually discovered the remains. They decided to leave them embedded there.
Anyway… it sounds like TSUM eventually became something that was no longer a store for the people, but rather for people with the most money. That’s too bad. Especially now that it’s basically an empty shell of what it was… and is now owned by investors. At least I got to see it, though… even if it was years ago.
Handy room service ordering system.
We decided to have room service on Monday night. The hotel makes it easy, by allowing people to order food through the TV. I had a salmon filet with asparagus and salad, while Bill had a club sandwich. We split a bottle of Bulgarian Chardonnay, sparkling water, and a piece of pretzel cheesecake. I think the cheesecake, like the other desserts we had, was the highlight.
Bulgarian wineThe last supper
One more post ought to do it for this series, then I will write my usual “ten things I learned” post. Stay tuned!
My, how the weekend flew by. Unfortunately, we didn’t do much yesterday, because I needed to sleep off this cold I picked up. We did venture out for a very late lunch at a little Italian place near our hotel. Other than that, I’m afraid I spent most of my day in bed. It seems like no matter what, I’m liable to be sick on vacation, or having my period (which, at almost 52 years old, is no longer much of a problem for me anymore).
I am feeling a lot better today, though, so we walked back to the center of Sofia for more photos and to pick up some souvenirs. We bought a few things for our house, as well as gifts for Bill’s grandchildren.
We also found a couple of paintings ear the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which is the same place where I bought a painting last time I was here. Of course, it was MUCH cheaper in 1996. But we did end up speaking to a couple of nice men who were selling art on behalf of a female Bulgarian artist. When we get back home tomorrow, I’ll try to find out more about her. I was attracted by a couple of paintings she did that reminded me of Sozopol, where I went last time I was here. But the paintings were actually of another seaside town starting with an N that I can’t remember the name of at the moment.
For lunch, we had Armenian food. I was excited, obviously, since I used to live in Armenia. I don’t think the waiter was an Armenian speaker, but we did manage to have barbecue (xhorovatz)… It was way too much for us to finish! I wish we’d had some wine, but we stuck with Czech beers.
I’m kind of sorry we have to go tomorrow. I’ve seen some interesting places I’d like to visit that are outside of Sofia. But now that we know how easy it is to fly here from Frankfurt, maybe we can come back and enjoy a longer visit… maybe rent a car and go somewhere out in the country, now that I’ve reacquainted myself with Sofia.
We’ll see…
Anyway, I’ll be writing my usual travel series blow by blow when we get home, so I’ll stop here for now. Here are a few photos:
A few days ago, The New York Times ran an article about Khachapuri, a popular dish made of fresh bread, cheese, and egg, in Transcaucasian countries, to include Georgia and Armenia. I lived in Armenia for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and while I can’t say I ate a lot of Khachapuri when I lived there, I’ve come to appreciate the milder versions offered outside of the country. When I lived in Armenia, the dish was made with stinky cheese, which I could not abide. When it’s made with milder cheese, it’s more delicious to me.
Anyway, when I saw the article in The New York Times, I was reminded of the times Bill and I have enjoyed Georgian food. We went to Georgian restaurants in Stuttgart and Frankfurt, as well as several in Wroclaw, Poland. The Frankfurt restaurant was a bit of a disappointment, but the ones in Stuttgart and Poland were awesome. I did a Google search and learned that much to my shock, Wiesbaden has an Armenian restaurant unsurprisingly called Ararat. I looked them up, and it appeared that they were open today. So Bill and I ventured out there to see if it was a good place to eat.
The restaurant is located in an area of Wiesbaden that is known for its Eastern European population. That’s where one can visit the Mix Markt for eastern goodies. It’s in a residential area, and probably gets lots of locals as visitors. It also looks like they host a lot of parties and such, with live music.
We approached, and the door was open. There was a young guy on the phone and a young woman. The proprietor came out and said they were closed on Sundays, even though Google and their sign said they were supposed to be open every day.
I couldn’t resist, and asked in Armenian if they were from Armenia (Hayastan), since the place also advertises Russian food. Their faces lit up as they answered yes, in Armenian, and asked if I was Armenian, too. I actually answered “no” in German, then explained in Armenian that I know some Armenian. Then I said in English “I used to live there.” What can I say? It’s been 25 years since I last had to speak Armenian on a daily basis. Anyway, I could hear them commenting and chuckling as we walked away. We’ll have to call and find out when they have regular hours. I’d love to try their horovats… or shashlik, if they prefer.
We went back to Wiesbaden and parked at the Kurhaus, then walked into town. It didn’t look like anything exciting was happening, so we headed to BrewDog, where we ate a couple of months ago. I knew they’d be open, because they don’t take a pause. It was almost 2:00pm.
We drank a couple of beers and each tried something different from the last time we visited. I had a “Cluck Norris” sandwich, which was fried chicken breast with avocado, red onion, cajun mayo, and coriander with a side of fries. Bill had a roasted chicken sourdough bowl, which was basically a big salad with pieces of chicken and a piece of toasted sourdough bread. His dish also included chilli, chia seeds, and avocado.
We enjoyed the music, and I took a few new selfies, because I was wearing makeup and the lighting was good. Plus, since it wasn’t super hot outside, I wore something besides a t-shirt and shorts. While we were sitting there, a waifish blonde girl came in and dropped off a keychain with a note. She was quick as a flash, and we watched her go in and out in a matter of a minute or so, before she went across the street and did the same at a cafe. This isn’t the first time this has happened to us. I’m not sure where she was from, but I would guess it’s an eastern nation, and this is their way of collecting money. They try to sell little trinkets to sympathetic people who are trying to eat. I don’t think she had any luck.
Below are a few photos. I didn’t manage to get any of Ararat, although I’m sure we’ll try to visit again when they’re open– after we’ve called to verify. The owner had a very kind face and seemed super friendly. But I don’t mind that we went to BrewDog, either. That’s a fun place!
Great chicken sandwich and fries!Roasted chicken & sourdough bowl…Beer!It’s not a hefe.Not so bad for 50.Trinkets for sale.BrewDog’s patio.
I really do hope we can try Ararat. I love finding new restaurants, especially when they offer different food than what is available everywhere! And I have missed Armenia… and Armenian people!
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