Veggie Voyage

“No carne. No carne.”

The setting: a small restaurant, tucked off of a tiny side street. Away from the tourist haunts, the click-happy cameras and the loud English-only voices. In the city of Granada, Spain.

The menu was all in Spanish … as was to be expected in Spain. The waiters spoke no English … also a fact not too out of the ordinary. It was lunchtime and my brothers, who I was traveling with, quickly determined the Spanish word for sandwich. Throwing caution to the wind, and knowing they’d be likely to enjoy whatever came their way, they did the equivalent of closing their eyes and choosing whatever sandwich their finger happened to land on.

Not me, though. I didn’t have it that easy.

I gave up meat about six years ago. The reasons were varied, and I won’t list them here. At the time – concerned mostly with getting a balanced diet – I thought nothing of the social repercussions to my new life choice. Little did I know that going to dinner parties would now come with a whole new set of problems. And that traveling would have challenges of its own.

How do I know what to order – what I’ll be able to eat – if I can’t even read the menu?

Some vegetarians will eat meat when they’re away, finding it easier by doing so to navigate a foreign land. It’s just not something I can bring myself to do, though. I eat fish, but too much of that even and I feel sick. So instead I have to labour through, do my best with the options available and sometimes only a limited ability to communicate.

“Just order a salad,” my brother told me at that tiny restaurant in Spain. But vegetarians cannot live on salads alone, and it was hardly what I was hankering for. So I did my best with the waiter, pointing at the sandwich selection. “No carne,” I said, repeating the Spanish word for meat. “No carne.”

It worked, too. The waiter pointed out the meatless options. And, you know what? It was one of the best meals I had that entire trip.

Photo: Granada, Spain – December 2003 – LV.

Posted by Lisa.

~ by Lisa on May 13, 2008.