September 2009 Archive

The following posts were made in September 2009. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.

Germany

By Andrew Zimmern on September 29, 2009 1:00 PM | Permalink | 7 Comments

We've done some crazy stuff on this program but in Germany we beat the band! Let's lose the easy ones shall we? First there was Chess Boxing. A sport growing in popularity every year in Allemagne. With alternating rounds of chess and boxing, it's the biathlon of new age sport. And it's counterintuitive for the human body. The adrenaline needed to compete in the ring is the wrong chemical needed for concentration in chess. Then we went to beer spas, salt caves, spent a day in Maremotos experimental kitchen, toured Tacheles, started the Glockenspiel, spent the day in Berchtesgaden parading around in lederhosen and eating sour lung soup and of course ate plenty of wurst. But all of it pales in comparison to two of our favorite all time Bizarre experiences.

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South Africa: Diving into Culture

By Andrew Zimmern on September 22, 2009 9:00 PM | Permalink | 11 Comments

Traveling to Africa is not about the animals, it's not about trinkets and it's not about getting double miles on your frequent flyer card. Its about meeting the people. Don't get me wrong, I adore all of the above, and I see them as benefits of spending time on the ground exchanging culture and diving in to a place face first and mouth wide open. I shot a beautiful impala on a game preserve, a thrill for me as an avid outdoorsman, and got to follow the culled animal all the way through the process of seeing every part of the creature being utilized for food, tools and clothing. Very impressive stuff, and at the same farm I saw a 5 day old giraffe eating with his mom and dad.

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Botswana: The Kalahari

By Andrew Zimmern on September 15, 2009 9:00 PM | Permalink | 26 Comments

I get asked the same questions all the time. You can probably guess them yourself pretty accurately ...

What's the weirdest thing you ever ate?

What's the worst thing you ever ate?

Does your family eat such an adventurous diet?

Do you ever get sick on the road?

Do you really do all that stuff yourself, jump off mountains, swim with sharks, eat rotted foods, or is it ever faked?

And so on ...

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Belize: On the Fringe

By Andrew Zimmern on September 8, 2009 9:00 PM | Permalink | 20 Comments

Belize sits on the fringe of modern life at the edges of a vast wilderness of ancient rituals and traditions, forests and villages where people today live comfortably with ghosts from a distant past ... a Mayan past, since Belize is one of the few South and Central American cultures to have never been colonized by the Spaniards.

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Visiting Cuba

By Andrew Zimmern on September 1, 2009 9:00 PM | Permalink | 111 Comments

In Cuba I did a lot of cool stuff, but none of it compared with what you didn't see on camera. Sure I took part in a Santeria purifying ceremony. I drove some of the 60,000 vintage American cars in Cuba, all pre-1959 when cars stopped being sent to the country. I dined in some amazing paladares, restaurants squeezed into family homes, part of the free enterprise legalized by Castro in the mid-1990s.

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