How to survive Eastern European food

Okay, so here is Nomad's Guide on how to survive Eastern Europe culinarily, gastronomically. What do you do? I love Eastern Europe. What is there not to love? Look at these castles, spires, beautiful parks, trees, wonderful buildings from all kinds of eras, colorful, well-preserved, nice people, nice friendly faces, services, lack of kind of Western European cynicism about everything. In the spring, blooming lilacs, trees, lovely, everything's lovely, except three times a day you have to eat. And eating in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and as you get further into Russia is not for everyone. I know there are people that love meat and potatoes and kind of tubers and beets and all of those things, and I know there are people that think that cabbage is a green vegetable, but I'm not one of them, and I don't like these things so much, and I can't handle them digestively. They just don't feel great, neither the same day nor the next day. So what do you do? There are plenty of solutions. One of them is... In fact, there are not plenty of solutions. There are few solutions, very few solutions. One of them is to go on a liquid diet, very much like the locals do, which means that they have great beer in some of these countries. Especially in the Czech Republic, that beer is sensational, so you can do like the locals and kind of have, I mean, look at this place, look how pretty everything is. Old streets, churches, buildings, everything beautiful. Cobblestones. I mean, visit these countries, but do something about the food if you can't handle it. So one of the things to do is you have beers. Beer is a food so you can drink instead of eat, and kind of have liquid meals. This can also, of course, lead to significant troubles, including alcoholism, so that's not a very good long-term solution. It's a partial solution. Beer will also, of course, make what you're about to eat afterwards seem more tasty, at least if not more tasty, but the problems will propagate themselves the next day. Next thing to do. In big cities, such as this beautiful city, you can find some ethnic food. I'm always on the hunt for a good Thai restaurant, because I love Thai food and noodles, and you can usually find a good Thai place and sometimes a good Chinese place, so that's solution number two, and that works in the big cities. In the small cities, you're out of luck. There's not going to be a good Thai place, and there's not going to be a good Chinese place, so what are you going to do? You have to be like the locals, but you can be selective. The more saucy and elaborate the meal is, the more dreadful it's going to be, so go for simple stuff. Do not trust the Italian restaurant, which usually means pizza and pasta, and believe me, neither the pizza nor the pasta will remind you of anything you've ever eaten in Italy, so forget it. The best way is to eat the local stuff. If you can find grilled stuff, grilled meat, that's a great choice, and the last choice, the biggest advice that I have to give you, especially also for if you go hiking and you want to pack something good, they have ham hocks and basically portions of pork that they cook or smoke like ham, like Thanksgiving ham, and that's kind of delicious. It exists everywhere. It's super cheap, and it's tasty and relatively healthy, and there's no sauce and no horrible attempts to make it gastronomic. It's not. It's just basic ham, but it's good and cheap, so these are my three solutions. If you have any better ones than that, let me know. This, of course, is for all of those of you that are like me, not meat and potatoes people, and you have a thirst for vegetables, for some kind of spice, for some kind of noodles and fine dining. If you like meat and potatoes, you're in paradise here, and as I said before, the beer is great. Nama Dimitri from Prague, Czech Republic.