Pizza and Pop...

“Who’d a thunk” that the best cheese pizza I’ve had in a while would be in Novo Mesto nad Vahom, Slovakia? I sure didn’t, but was both hungry and intrigued as I walked by and saw this sign for a “Pizzeria” near another hotel. At first, I couldn’t find it. I walked all around the building, but couldn’t find an entrance anywhere and eventually had to ask. The local people looked at me like I was crazy, motioned with their hands how to get in, and then, I’m quite certain, chuckled behind my back at how the stupid American apparently doesn’t know what a door looks like. But it wasn’t that… it’s just that in most countries, zoning laws are ambiguous at best, and so apartment buildings bundle with convenience stores, and the entrances to restaurants are sometimes in the back of hardware stores. Anyway, once I actually GOT to the restaurant, it was quite nice inside. Had sort of a cross between a hunting lodge and a Tuscan pizza kitchen (translation: they had a wonderful brick fire oven for pizzas, stone floors, large hearths… and lots of stuffed dead animals around, including a moose. I thought it seemed like the kind of place that Mark Beeson would probably enjoy.). Not being able to easily read the menu (as it was all in Slovakian, of course), I just ordered one of the easiest and least threatening looking pizzas. You see, “easiest and least threatening”, not because I like to be a wuss or don’t like adventure, just because a lot of Eastern European countries equate “ketchup” and “tomato sauce” as the same thing. If you’re not careful, you might end up with a pizza that has ketchup for the sauce base, a prospect which I honestly don’t care for much. So…until I knew what was going to come out, I just decided to play it safe.

I was pleasantly refreshed, however, to have a crisp crusted, home-made tomato sauce, cheese pizza delivered straight from the oven, and WOW, was it good! Topped off with about a dozen cokes (I can’t figure it out… most of the rest of the world likes to drink carbonated beverages only one at a time, and in shot-glass size portions. You have to keep asking for more – unless it’s just a cruel joke for foreigners to see how many they’ll order before finally giving up), I felt thoroughly refreshed!