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Vegan Food during Travel (beehaw.org)

submitted 11 months ago by Sas@beehaw.org to c/vegan@slrpnk.net

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Hey y'all. Idk if this is the community for this because it seems mostly link posts, but here goes:

How do you go about finding food in a country you don't speak the language of? I've just came back from an Italy hiking "vacation" that caused me two meltdowns in just 4 days. It was a really rough hike and I've been the weakest of the group and didn't make it to the top. I don't want to go into details but i had a really rough time and food usually is my comfort zone helping me reset from the shitty stuff.

Now the problem was that i don't speak Italian and we went to a bunch of cool looking places only to see the menu was not translated and didn't have vegan or not labels on it so i caused everyone to not go there. So instead of comfort, food search was more anxiety inducing and I'd like to avoid that in the future. It's been the first time for me to visit a foreign country since going vegan and I was shocked by the lack of consideration for vegans in a lot of places.

So yeah how do you prep for tours where you don't know which part of which town you're on every day?

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[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't do much travel but I'm not above existing on cold canned beans for a few days /shrug. Have always been able to find that

[–] Sas@beehaw.org 0 points 11 months ago

I've had cold chilli sin carne one day actually but every food to be consumed at base camp would need to be carried up 150m height worth of stairs which was the first thing that completely destroyed me that vacation

[–] sanity_is_maddening@piefed.social 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Oh, there's an app called "HappyCow". It's an app that helps anyone find vegan restaurants or restaurants with vegan options with geolocation. It's a very famous app amongst Vegans. And it's not recent at all.

I install it when I travel for the reasons you just describe.

I'm sorry to hear about your hard time. Hope that app helps you the next time you travel.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 0 points 11 months ago

I'm used to seeing heaping plates of grilled veggies drizzled with olive oil in so many restaurants in Italy that I'd have thought it among the easiest countries to get vegan food, but here's a list of prep steps for future travel.

Never expect translations. Unless the government has invited you explicitly, consider yourself an uninvited guest who ought to be thankful for any courtesy.
Try to get a phone that can get service where you will be. This can be tricky. If you can't do that, but you CAN get an internet connection at least some of the time (in hotels, for example) consider bringing a laptop. If that is too bulky, then at the very least pre-translate some phrases you expect to need and take screenshots on your no-signal phone or transcribe onto 3x5 cards you can hand people with full text of both languages on each card (either all on one side or English on the back). Example: I would like vegetables and pasta, but no meat, no eggs, no cheese, and no dairy.
Make sure you have an adapter that plugs in to their electric outlets.
Learn at least a few key words/phrases: "I'm, ummm... Sono vegano... umm, uhh, ... no carne, no latte, no formaggio, no frutti di mare. They may ask something like, "Mangi le uova?" and hopefully you can figure out with hand gestures that they mean 'eggs'.
When you find portable food/snacks, buy some extra in advance so you have a backup.
Learn to cook so you know what ingredients go into different foods. Example: Tuscan bread is just flour, water, and yeast. The rest of Italy usually adds some salt. In contrast, biscotti has eggs.

In Italy, vegan options are most likely found in meals sections: Primi, Contorni, and Insalata -- you aren't likely to find vegan options in Antipasti, Secondi, nor (obviously) Formaggi e frutta.

[–] dracs@programming.dev 0 points 11 months ago

Another vote for Happy Cow. Makes it easy to bookmark a few places near where you're staying and planning to visit.

There was also another app I used to use which I think was called something like vegan passport? It had written in a bunch of languages that you were vegan and what that meant in good detail. Haven't been able to find it again last time I checked though.