How do the Dutch manage to stay so trim? I bet it’s got more to do with the 15,000km of cycle tracks rather than the dietary staples of potatoes and margarine.

Or perhaps it’s because of a ban on foie gras, the controversial French delicacy, which is still “fatty liver” no matter how you spin it (‘a liver that has accumulated a large quantity of lipids through lipogenesis or the transformation of maize carbohydrate and fatty acids’ with ‘unique nutritional and organoleptic properties’… hmm… very unique…)

It may be part of French cultural and gastronomic patrimony, but it doesn’t make it any healthier! I was actually surprised the first time I came to Europe and was confronted by the amount of fatty and deep-fried food on offer. Isn’t this supposed to be from the recent realms of the New World?

But Old World junk food can be as fast as it comes, something I try to push from my mind whilst wolfing down pub fare like smažený sýr (a thick, bread-crumb-coated slab of fried cheese) in a bread roll on the streets of Prague or some hot and oily rösti (potato pancakes) in Germany. I’m still yet to try the deep-fried steak from Serbia, Karađorđeva šnicla (Karadjordje’s steak), or the Bavarian schweinshaxn (deep-fried pork knuckle)!

What really takes the cake – or in this case, the chocolate-smeared animal fat – is salo from the Ukraine. Stereotyped as indispensable for the Ukrainian as vodka for the Russia, salo is a chunk of pig fat. Plain and simple. I think this description best dispels any salo myths: ‘unlike lard, salo is non-rendered pork fat. Unlike bacon, salo has little or no meat.’ Ouch! Talk about a direct hit. Not this, not that, just fat.

“Salo v shokoladi” (salo in chocolate) is a humorous expression akin to the English “chalk and cheese” – but it became reality in a Kiev restaurant a few years ago. This sweet salo, dubbed the “Ukrainian snickers”, is even more gut-churning than a deep-fried Mars Bar.

But as for my favourite of all strange snack foods (with a milder accompanying health warning) is the Russian sirok, which I’ve nicknamed “chocolate cheese.” It’s a little chocolate-coated bar, filled with a light and flavoured tvorog, and best served cold. Sirok is almost like a small chocolate coated ice-cream, but filled with a curd cheese like the French fromage blanc or Italian ricotta. It comes in all sorts of chocolate, fruit or even jam-filled flavours, and I am certain that this was the real scientific breakthrough of the Cold War (forget that space race, the Soviets just mastered cheesy confectionary!)

I haven’t met anyone else who shares my passion for this “chocolate cheese”… although I have a sneaking suspicion that the perpetual popularity of singer Tom Waits in Russia might have something to do with a misinterpretation of his “immaculate confection” song Chocolate Jesus…

‘It’s got to be those chocolate cheeses… makes me feel so good inside…’

So I hear that the Dutch have the tallest population in Europe. This I was surprised to hear… at first…

Admittedly the Dutch have a very tall population, but it reminds me of the time I was absolutely dwarfed (and I’m by no means diminutive) in Split, Croatia. It was shortly after Goran Ivanisevic famously mooned the waiting revellers following his 2001 Wimbledon win. 

Maybe my visit just happened to coincide with a national or international basketball competition? Or perhaps I was just stuck amongst several groups of Dutch tourists… who knows…?

Walking along the Amstel on a crisp Sunday morning, surrounded by latticed metal balconies, turrets and two-toned brick / ceramic facades as far as the eye could see, I was both struck and touched by the number of cyclists. Luckily, I avoided being literally struck or touched. Amsterdam has over one million resident bikes, but only 700,000 resident Amsterdammers.

Amsterdam is also a city of young families, and the big boxes of children tacked onto the front of bicycles provide evidence of this. In fact, most bikes seem to have some sort of a custom-built child carrier the handle bars or rear-end. Throughout the city, despite square shapes and sharp lines dominating architecturally, individual creativity prevails nonetheless.

Now in France, where I live, the French do sophistication and class in a refined style (they also work wonders with dairy-based and rich meat cuisine), but I feel that something is amiss for creative expression. I can’t generalise entirely, of course, France has creativity… but… how can I describe this? I think that in pursuing an aesthetic of uniform beauty (which France has in abundance for both metropolitan and rural beauty) something has got to give in terms of oddball creativity. Whilst France has towns decked out in flowers, Amsterdam has empty flower gardens enclosed by a fence made from discarded umbrella handles. Perhaps that would be a way to describe it.

… And I love it. I’d forgotten about eccentric collections, and miss them like a back-of-the-cupboard childhood teddy bear (“Oh hello you! We should spend more time together, for old time’s sake”). I could definitely live on a Dutch houseboat, hoarding all my old electrical garbage, stored in interesting artistic arrays. I would look at my junk everyday, and renew annually the promise to one day make it functional again.

Despite the fact I was only in Amsterdam for as many waking hours as it took to drive here (for the record: the rideshare took ten hours, double the anticipated journey time), this visit has made a lasting and favourable impression.

I must explain why Eurolines was my key to surviving my first year in Europe, although really it’s very simple.  Accomodation.  I thanked my lucky stars the day I found that Eurolines had a two month unlimited travel pass, night buses, and a low-season discount.  What seemed perfectly appealing did have its drawbacks though.  The accommodation was a bus seat (although being able to sleep quite compactly, I could crawl up in foetal position and get a good night’s sleep if I had both seats to myself), and “low-season” meant “middle of winter”, so it was quite chilly for the numerous 4 and 5am arrivals.  But what I would do is spend 5 nights in the bus, waking and wandering the cities to which I had been spirited overnight, and then a few nights in a hostel for a shower and a proper bed.  I loved it.  If I couldn’t get a ticket to somewhere, I’d just go elsewhere.  I think my itinerary read something like: Budapest – Amsterdam – Dublin (as there weren’t any tickets to Stockholm when I first wanted to go, I spent the weekend in Ireland instead) – Amsterdam – Stockholm – Copenhagen – Paris – Madrid (rest, relax… shower…) – Andorra (a day of skiing in the

Pyrenees, why not?) – Barcelona (more time…) – Frankfurt – Warsaw – Krakow (even more time…) –

Prague.

  I’ve overcome my initial attention-span deficit and I am now able to stay in a place for longer than three weeks without getting itchy feet.  Maybe I can stretch it to four weeks now… 

But no, I was recently able to stay in the one place for a year and a half – however, as it was Russia, the biggest country in the world, I could quite contently “trot” at my own pace for vast distances and through diverse cultural and geographic regions without having to deal with the bureaucratic visa rigmarole of leaving Russia’s borders.  But more about that later…