the best slow fast-food

When I am in Vienna, I always go to my favourite place: the Naschmarkt, which is Vienna's biggest and most touristic market. I love to go there an buy cheese (my favourite is a matured Goat Gouda), herbs (the cheapest place in Austria to buy cilantro), curry pastes and my beloved falafel (after years of testing I found tthe tastiest at Dr Falafel). I also love the things they grill at the market different restaurants: Kofte at okzident, calamari at Do-An. At Kurkonditorei Oberlaaan one can find an mouth-watering chocolate cake.

Last weekend, Andi F took me to another market, the Brunnenmarkt. And the experience was incredible: One third of the stands were selling fruits and vegetables at very cheap prices (I assume it was because the products were ripe and needed to be sold soon, but the fruits were at their best stage). Another third of the stands was selling nuts, seeds and cheese (from Denmark, Holland, Italy and Austria) and the resting third, were stands selling the most useless Chinese products in history: battery-operated plush pets in horrendous colours, awful baseball caps and the cheapest clothes you can ever imagine.

For us, the best in the market were the few places you can get prepared food: We saw real kepab (were you can see that the meat was manually placed into that rotating pole), fresh fish they clean for you to cook home or if you prefer, they grill and serve the fish for you. But the best of this stands was a real slow food stand:

It looked like a normal fast-food stand and inside there were three Turks: One thin guy in his early 50's and two obese women, whose age we were unable to guess. They seemed old, but with some married Turkish women you can never know if they are 30 or 60.

This Turkish version of an Italian mamma, were preparing in a very calm way, somethin that looked like a home-style borek. The ladies were slowly rolling dough, forming pizza-like shapes, then they carefully topp this „tortillas“ with plenty olive-size portions of cooked and seasoned spinach, grounded meat, potatoes or sheep cheese, depending on the client's taste. After finishing the topping, these mammas folded the dough to form a square the size of a DVD case and cooked them on a huge pan which seemed to be upside down.

We ordered one of this Turkisch crepes filed with spinach and got 10 minutes later. The process was easy and the cooking took only 3 to 4 minutes, but the acurate and love-full preparation of this dish took over 10 minutes.

Seeing this entire process was beautufil, but to taste it, it was a culinary-trip to a small village in Anatolia and back to Vienna for only €1.5

I am not exagerating, it was the best „slow“ fast-food experience I've had in Europe.

the cosmopolitan city which smells like fermented cows's shit

Innsbruck is a small city with politicians with a big complex: Innsbruck is very small and rural. Some days the city even smells of compost when the farmers fertilise their fields.

Since I came to Innsbruck, 14 years ago, politicians have tried to win back the Olympic games twice, but, any normal person knows that they could never be successful! Who the hell could give them the winter Olympic games for a third time?

Some years ago, those politicians tried to make the inner city a UNESCO heritage site because of its ancient buildings, and when their proposal was rejected, they tried to make a city known for its modern architecture. Now, Innsbruck is the only city in the world with two buildings designed by Zaha Hadid. This is almost embarrassing...it's like if a guy in his midlife crisis buys two red Ferraris.

In 2004, the city hall was turned into a shopping centre. And since that day, the government presents Innsbruck as a "Weltstadt" which means cosmopolitan city. A Barcelonese friend of mine used to work for the marketing firm behind this concept and she told me that since this shoppings centre had a Mango store and a Müller (a German drugstore chain), the city was now cosmopolitan!

Independently of all this stupid campaigns (Sports, architecture and shopping), I experienced a truly cosmopolitan moment last Friday:

There is a farmer's market each Friday in the city centre. I was hungry and went there to get a Kiachl with Sauerkraut. A kiachl is nothing but fried dough, which reminds of a doughnut without sugar or frosting on it. The owners of the kiachl stand was a couple in their fifties. The man was preparing them and the woman collecting the money. It was a little bit weird to hear that the couple spoke English among them, I then realised that she was British and he Tyrolean. While preparing my Kiachl, the cook was talking to the city's Vice-Major (probably one of those politicians investing money to present Innsbruck as the only cosmopolitan city in the world which smells like fermented cows's shit). Right after me, two Turkish girls asked in perfect German if the Sauerkraut had bacon bit in it. The British Kiachl seller replied that they only sell vegetarian sauerkraut, because they themselves are strict vegetarians.

While eating my kiachl I had two thoughts "First: the sauerkraut is great, and second, Innsbruck is indeed a cosmopolitan city".

Go to any place on earth and if you find a vegetarian couple older than 50 selling regional products (and they being foreigners themselves), and if their clients are politicians, locals and locals with migration background, you surely are in a cosmopolitan place.