Wednesday, June 4, 2008

culture shock in namibia

so it's still a little culture shock here in windhoek. i can drink the water! i can eat salad again! i don't have to carry wads of toilet paper around in my pockets! (i just got my cargo shorts back from the laundry...what a mess). hey, it doesn't mean i don't like roughing it, people... it's just weird to think that only a few km away, over the border is such a completely different environment (e.g. angola, zimbabwe).
the only thing i'm not prepared for...it's f-ing cold! it is winter, afterall. at night it gets rrreal chilly. like 50s. i have a fleece and a sweater, but i'll need a hat and some thick socks or something. i can only imagine what it's like in the desert up north. so i'm going to have to do some shopping. robin, my canadian colleague here (and old friend from mcgill) found a store called "beaver canoe" that he wants to check out, we suspect it might originate from america's hat. canadians, always sticking together.
so last night we ate dinner at joe's beerhouse, which is just a short walk away. it's a crazy maze of picnic tables, trees, fireplaces, animals heads...and bottles of jagermeister. the sign at the door says "the house wine is....JAGERMEISTER. drink up!" the fireplaces were all glowing and warm, just like the atmosphere. i drank a tofel and a beer shandy, and for my meal, ordered some springbok. this is a springbok, fyi:

this may have been one of the tastiest meals ever. it was a brochette of the most tender, flavorful, perfectly grilled meat (sorry, dad!). better than duck! it came off the skewer with ease, and melted like butter in my mouth. in between these tender morsels, bacon wrapped figs, mmmm. all of this accompanied by these large balls of butter corn fritters delicately pan fried to keep their shape and asparagus and cauliflower with some sweet chutney on it. simple, deelish. robin had the oryx steak, which was also tasty and we are planning on working our way up to zebra, which, according to the menu is a "man's meal."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bon, grillé ou pas bien grillé tout cela ne m'a pas l'air bien cashère...

Anonymous said...

Is that like a special restaurant that serves game meat or do they all do that?

In Nairobi there's this one famous restaurant that serves game meat called Carnivore. As a pseudo-veggie, I never went, but all my Kenyan friends would say you should go to Cahnavo. Which would make me think they were saying Carnival and start wondering if Kenya had Catholic roots that I wasn't aware of and why they would start celebrating Carnival so early (like Oct.). And to clarify, I'd ask them if there was music and dancing at Carnival (thinking of something like Brazil's) and they'd say yes because the restaurant is also a bar/club. This would go on for a few minutes until someone would say you should really go to Carnival for dinner and then I'd get it. Oh, Carnivore. This happened, like three times.