Travel & Bread

My name is Endre, a little dust particle floating in the universe, willing to absorb as much as I can throughout my journey. I was born in Romania, grew up in a Hungarian village in the countryside, close to nature and still at a time when traditions, community and traditional wisdom mattered more  than processed food, capitalist hyperconsumption and social media.

After several educational and career stages in Romania and Germany, I set up camp  in Berlin taking advantage of the  opportunity to go on discovery and adventure trips, not just physically travelling countries and cultures but also exploring different ideas, inspirations, languages, and lifestyles.

I am passionate about lot of topics:

• languages – I speak Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, Turkish and Portuguese fluently
• yoga and meditation – practicing mainly hatha, yin and acro yoga, mindfulness based stress reduction, Buddhist meditation and relaxation techniques
• spirituality – learning about integrative yoga and teachings of Buddha
• hiking and biking – did some great hikes and tours in Portugal, Turkey, Germany, Romania, some of them you can read up on in the blog section of the website
• cultural activities – I really enjoy theater, opera, operetta, exhibitions, art house movies since art has a purifying and inspiring effect on me
• festivals – music, (sub)culture or yoga – any place and event where people are having fun and a community feeling is being created and practiced

Beyond these interests, the following two have a special place in my heart and am feeling attached for a while to them: Travel and Bread. I am truly grateful for the input and influence throughout the past years related to these two subjects! Given that I am feeling ready now to share some of my own experiences I opened a channel to exchange on them through this site.

You can read more about these two passions of mine in the blog section! I hope you enjoy the content and would love to hear from you if you want to know more or you would like to share something!

For me, travel is about (self)discovery, getting out of my comfort zone, breathing in the local culture, habits and tastes. In that way I develop a better understanding and empathy for my fellow world citizens.

When travelling, I always love discovering places beyond the touristic hot spots. I like to connect with locals or fellow travelers, sharing our stories, asking questions, and applying my language skills. Practice makes perfect!

Food in general, and bread in particular, is an essential part of people’s lives in the world and in all the places we visit as guests for maybe only a short while. Getting to know the local cuisine and bread culture connects us to these places.

During my trips I always do my best to immerse myself into local, traditional and home-made food. And if I have the chance and time, I learn as much as possible about local bread traditions. So when I get home I can cook and bake some of the recipes.

On this  blog I will share with you my travel highlights, with a special focus on food or bread. I hope you will find some inspiration or would like to share your experience of the same place with me, if you’ve visited there, too.

Enjoy the ride!

Bread is one of the oldest baked foodstuffs of mankind, present from Antiquity through all human cultures and civilizations. It is deeply codified in our common consciousness.

My earliest memories related to bread are those of all our neighbors getting together in my home village to bake bread. As a kid, I was fascinated by the process of preparing the dough, shaping huge loaves, heating the furnace (in Hungarian “kemence”), putting the nicely proofed loaves inside and taking out deep brown baked bread outside with an irresistible scent, giving it a wash (in Hungarian “mosdatás”).

I just couldn’t wait to break off a little corner and put it in my mouth just like that or with sour cream or half a teaspoon full of pig or goose fat. I made a point of always joining our elder neighbor Julis neni (auntie Julis) when she was baking. And when Eszti neni (auntie Eszti) was baking, I knew only too well where her bread basket was, and would either beg or if that didn’t help steal the corner of the freshly baked bread which was my idea of bliss.

With the deepening of the economic crisis of the last years of Communism in Romania, it was more and more difficult to get good bread and sometimes bread at all. In the countyside the effects of the situation were not that strong, however, the big community bread baking events kept getting fewer and fewer.

After the Revolution of 1989, we suddenly woke up on the Capitalist side of the world.  As a sign of “progress” the country was invaded by puffy white “breads”. This new food product had precious little to do with the real bread as we had known it for centuries, and over the decades to come its quality would decrease even further. This development was, however, not limited to Romania: sadly, you can observe it everywhere.

As time went by, I managed to maintain my special with bread. We kept baking in our family, and I kept up the tradition but we used industrial yeast and bread baking machines, embracing “technical progress”.

During the pandemic and everything slowed down, my dear friend Johanna gave me some sourdough suggesting I could bake bread with it. I felt a kind of obligation to not let “little sourdough die”, so I decided to give it a try.

The first bread was not perfect but as I took the first bite and enjoyed that special taste, I realized, that this is the taste of bread as it should be, as it had tasted for millennia, even tough I never tasted this pure artisanal sourdough bread before. That memory was still there in some deep layers of our universal consciousness and revealed itself to me.

Since then, I have become a sourdough nerd. I tested a lot of recipes, was learning from the internet and passionate bakers. It has come to a point where I can’t enjoy any other bread but sourdough or long fermented ones; not just for the taste, but also for its health benefits.

So bread has kind of become my passion and my mission. So I would like to share what I have found and learned and experienced in the blog with “my personal bread stories”, my favorite recipes, and other interesting facts or information on healthy bread!

Welcome to the space of my site where you can browse posts about the main subjects – everything about my travel highlights and bread stories.

If you like them or have a comment or experience to share, feel free to contact me! Enjoy the ride!