culture shock

Today, food situations got the best of all of us.

We all woke underslept: Axel has been sleeping poorly, either wakeful for hours in the middle of the night, or resisting sleep altogether until 11pm, midnight. But, faithful to the sun, he wakes up every morning at 6:30 (no daylight savings here), regardless of how much he slept.

So we were all variously cranky yesterday morning, as we left the house and headed to the Museum of Ethnography and Crafts. Housed in what used to be an old bank, the entry is in a cavernous hall, the ceiling forty feet above us, a ring of stained glass windows encircling the staircase. The exhibits were housed in a warren of small rooms, interconnected by multiple doors and corridors, which kept opening and closing to reveal various, apron-clad (aprons over their winter coats, as it was not heated) docents. A docent sat in the doorway of each room, turning on the light as we entered, querying whether we were not freezing (marveling at my short sleeves that I've been wearing out of self-defense under my puffy jacket), flirting with a very shy Axel. As word got out that we were American, they kept materializing out of these secret passage-ways to check us out.

But this post is about food curios, not museum.

After the museum, we headed to a cafe suggested by our landlords. It was set slightly off the street, we walked through a tunnel alley-way, under water dripping from balconies, and into a tiny, dark cafe. The menu was several pages long, towards the back I found canapés, coffee, hot chocolate for Axel.

Axel has had hot chocolate three times in his life. The first time, we were wandering around the Ferry Building in San Francisco, looking for a gift for Mychal. Some chocolatier handed Axel a tiny cup of freshly made hot chocolate. He didn't share with me. The second time was a couple of days ago, after our failed attempt to visit the train museum. Today was the third, and it was by far the strangest. Instead of hot chocolate (for example, Nesquick, which he was given at the other Lviv cafe), a coffee cup of hot chocolate sauce was put in front of Axel. When I protested that he couldn't eat (an entire cup!) of chocolate sauce and queried whether they could give us some milk to go with it, I was told: we don't sell milk. Which I'd heard before, incidentally, at a different restaurant when I tried to get Axel a cup of milk. Luckily for us, the cook relented and warmed up a glass of milk for Axel and we watered down his chocolate sauce.

Later that day, as I sat in my tutor's kitchen, Axel asleep at home with Mychal and her grandson asleep in the next room, she put a plate of honey in front of me. And a plate of cookies. And a huge mug of sweet coffee. Eat, eat your honey, she encouraged me. Dutifully, I took a teaspoon of honey and sucked it with my already sweet coffee. It was superb. Eat more! she insisted. Ha.

In the evening, as agreed upon, we ate at the Seven Pigs restaurant. Other than the music--a violin, accordion and harpsichord, the place just kept missing all the marks. I noticed that the prices were given in grams; thus, the price for my pork chop was per 100 grams. I should have put together that drinks were sold in the same fashion--juice, sodas, beer, vodka, cognac, wine: all offered by price per 100 grams. But I didn't notice. So I was very surprised when the bill came and our two glasses of wine cost the equivalent of 10 servings (500 grams per glass, I was told by the manager, who did use the term "gram," not liter, to explain the pricing system for liquids). It's how it's done throughout Europe, he assured me with ever-so-slight condescension.