Hostels Versus Private Room

I've stayed in hostels and private rooms, and even the odd whole apartment while travelling. I think there can be advantages and disadvantages to all of these options. I find renting the whole place like an apartment or similar is freer in the sense that you can have the use of pretty much everything unless otherwise stated. So I was able to cook better as well as spread out a bit if I felt like it. Because they're whole places though, they do tend to be understandably more expensive. Having said that, the little studio apartment I stayed at in Rymattyla in the southwest off Finland was super cheap. Most of the places I've stayed in (especially since booking through air bnb rather than hotels.com or other sites) is that most places tend to be private rooms in shared houses. I like both of these options, because even if you only get your own room, you can normally still cook in the kitchen of the shared house. I also find most of the hosts are really nice too, which is a bonus. Some hosts do keep themselves to themselves, but others will take the time to get to talk to and know their guests a bit. The private rooms in shared houses tend to be a fair bit cheaper than whole places, but more expensive than hostels. They're also normally good quality. I've stayed in a couple of hostels. I would say 3, but the room that could sleep 5 I rented in Germany I actually had to myself, so don't know whether to include that one or not. I'll therefore go by the 2 hostels I've stayedd at in Brighton and Hove, England. I find that they're super cheap, but the owners or people working there seem in no hurry to fix things if you report them as broken or not fixed properly. I also find they seem to want to cram as massas many people into each room as possible, so the place I stayed at before this one had sleeping pods, which felt rather like boxes as you had a little curtain to pull across. This one has bunk-beds, so you still can't sit straight without bumping your head on the bed above. Apparently some places also have sets of 3 rather than just 2 bunk beds. I'm told this place also has rooms of 12 people and other hostels have rooms advertized for up to 20 people! Here there is only 1 kitchen for guests to use and the staff helping with breakfast and cleaning speak little to no meaningful English. I thought they had to do some kind of test when moving to the UK for work in order to test their English or Welsh etc, but apparently not. The kitchen here has a 4ring hob (only 2 rings of which work), a microwave, a washing machine and tumble dryer, a kettle and it did have a toaster, but when I reported it as broken they took it away and we're still waiting for a new one. We also have no oven or freezer as far as I know, although we do have a fridge. I have to keep checking the fridge, because there's no guarentee things will stay there. In my last hostel place, no one told me there was a section for free food and that you could take a box and put your name on it. If I had known that in the first place it sounds kind of cool, because if you have food you can't finish before you check out or food that's going to expire, you can leave it in the free food area for everyone else, or if someone has left something there you can use it. The issue I had with that place though, was that half the dials on both cookers were broken, so you couldn't use them properly. The toaster was interesting, because you would turn the dial round to dial to what you wanted and move the leaver to put the toast down, then when it was done cooking you could put the leaver back to make the toast go up so you could take it out. The thing I don't know if I like or not is the fact that they don't always tell you if rooms are mixed gender or separate in hostels. If I know the room is mixed I don't mind so much. The thing that I surprised myself the most about, is the fact that I don't find sharing all that awkward. I thought I would because you don't know the people, but most of the people are either nice enough and/or keep to themselves anyway. The thing I don't like about hostels is the fact that there's so many people in the building trying to use the same facilities. Also you never know if anything is really clean or not in the kitchen.

0-waste Shopping In Brighton

I write this from my shared hostel room in Hove. Brighton and Hove used to be and still in a way are 2 separate places, but because they're so close together Bighton and Hove are now apparently merged into 1 city. I was in Brighton itself for a week and loved the fact that Purezza and Infitiny Foods were practically on the door-step or only a few minutes' walk away. I got to Hove a couple of days ago and am here until 25th June, so during this time I've been doing as much 0-waste shopping as I can. I wrote a review of Infinity Foods on https://www.happycow.net/ and might have mentioned it on here, likewise with Purezza (the vegan and plant-based pizza restaurant. My username on the happy cow website is harmonyln7 if anyone wants to look me up on there. I'm pleased to see that Infinity foods are starting to do more 0-waste products like oats and other suchcereals. The staff tell me they're in the process of expanding the shop so will have more soon. I did get some lovely apple and cinnamon jam during the week though. I think it's fantastic on tost! The slices of pizza they do are also pretty big, so for once I don't mind so much paying 2.85 GBP per slice. They also have things like vegan scones and sausage rolls. I was pleased but not surprised to see they also sell reuseable containers like flasks and food containers etc. In hove there are a couple of places I want to mention and one I find sort of annoying. The one I find annoying is Kernel of Hove. I like the fact they have organic fruit and vegetables as far as they can, but at the same time don't appreciate the fact they have absolutely no loose dried ingredients. The people who work in and run the store are nice enough, but all the Infinity Foods range they stock is packaged. As a result I refused to buy anything other tthan some fruid from them. They did recommend Harriot of Hove though which is a 0-waste shop a couple of streets away. On the way me and a guy who's staying at the hostel and came with me met a guy selling more fruit and I think vegetables. The interesting thing I found about that tall was that although the strawberries are sold in plastic containers, he's perfectly happy if I was to bring my own container to put the said strawberries in my own container and reuse the plastic one later. So onto Harriot of Hove. I could totally spend all day at that store! They hae everything from loose pasta, rice, teas to loose driedd fruit and i think nuts. They even have loose vegan chocolate buttons that are also fair-trade! Yay for fair-trade vegan things! You have to take your own containers, which I would be perfectly happy to do. I got some mint tea, some dried appricots and even a lttle reuseable teabag. I've been using the little bag a lot today and yesterday, because the cups here are kind of smaller than my tea-strainer. I think it'll also be useful for making tea in my flask. I managed to get a nice loafof bread too. Today I sadly had to spend more money getting a set of knifes because utensils in the kitchen here are a bit thin on the ground. I wanted to get a bigger loaf of bread, but then realized we don't have a freezer here, so had to get the smaller loaf. My original thinking was great I'll get a big loaf and freeze half of it. Another thing I appreciate about Harriot of Hove is the fact that with the jams and nut butters, you can buy a jar of it and take it back the next time. So when you buy a new jar of jam, they take the old one and send it back to the company that makes it and you get 20p off your new jar of jam or nut butter. I could be mistaken about the nut butter, but I know it applies to the jam. I'm also told it applies to the apple cider vinegar. The bread I got was a sour dough loaf and I thought it was pretty good when it's not toasted. Not sure if I like it toastedd or not - maybe I should put the toaster on a slightly lower temperature tomorrow. I managed to get all the fruit with no packaging yesterday (although I payed more than I would have liked as apples aren't in season and bananas and avocados don't grow in England) and was able to use my own bag. I also was able to use my own containers for the tea and apricots. I got the bread in a paper bag, but paper composts really easily anyway so that's all right. I'll probably pay Harriot of Hove another visit and get some jam. Tonight though I think I'll see what raw vegan recipes I can find or one-pot type things, because apparently there are only 2 working rings on the hob in the kitchen or 2 rings altogether (something along that line) and I don't like using the microwave if I can help it. There are enough microwaves around already.

The Corruption Of The Currency System

For several hundred years, people have been using currency in some form as something to trade with. At least that's how it started off. Then at some point people decided that those who have more money should somehow automatically be able to do more than those who don't have so much. So for quite some years now, rather than things like health care and food and places to live coming from the heart and from a place of genuinely wanting to do what needs to be done, these things and most other things even clothing etc come from a place of greed and seeing how much people can make more than the person before them. I sometimes ask people what would happen if everyone went back to some sort of bartering system. Sadly most of the time people either laugh it off and consider it idealistic, or else assume that it will result in greed. I don't think it would, because those who have everything they need are not the ones doing things like breaking into to buildings or stealing. Apparently those who do those kinds of crimes only do them to sell what they take or to keep it for themselves. I think if the currency system was taken away, all the crime would pretty much disappear. Everyone would be able to get along probably better, because if they don't have something someone is looking for, they'll probably know someone who does. Yes this could potentially take longer to trade, but why do people need to rush unnecessarily anyway? After all, most of the rushing around is quite unnecissary. Of course that's quite a different thing from if someone is quick at doing whatever it is by default. I do charge for the things I make and the knitting patterns I write etc, but only because I have to pay for the materials I need to make the things in the first place. Then most of the time people charge for food etc, so then comes the saying of needing a form of currency (in this case money) to live.

Vegan Shopping And Eating Out

Brighton seems to be a pretty friendly city for vegan and vegetarian things, both eating out and in terms of shopping. I've been here a few days now and not really had any trouble getting recommendations for places. I wend to a pizza place (Purezza) a couple of nights in a row. I wouldn't recommend the vegan macaroni cheese side or starter dish or whatever they refer to it as, because they brought it out when I was still eating something else so by the time I was ready to eat it, it was already getting cold and kind of hard and horrible. Having said that, I do like the courgetti spaghetti, which is a raw dish made with courgette shaped like spaghetti and they add things like sundried tomatoes among other things. I personally think they should make more of it and have it as a main course. I also found the vegan cheese board expensive but interesting. They have 3 or 4 different kinds of vegan cheese (than thankfully doesn't taste like cheese at all I think), a couple of dips and some crackers made with corn flour. Big fat disclaimer: a lot of that does contain nuts like cashues. I thought the cheese board was so filling I ended up bringing the rest of it back to eat for lunch or snack or something the next day. Another place I went to is a Thai restaurant. I had a green curry with rice, which I found verry tasty, especially since I was kind of tired of pizza and pasta by that time. In terms of shopping, I was doing a little bit of searching online for health stores and things. I don't know if they exactly call them bulk stores in the UK and came across a vegetarian and vegan supermarket. I don't know if they have a bulk section, but hope they do. I totally forgot to ask. I went to the bakery section though and had the shop assistant tell me what was on offer, so I got myself a massive slice of pizza that wouldn't even fit in any of my containers! Well the pizza was tasty just the same, because it had all sorts of vegetables and things on it and a pretty decent dough. Turns out they make their own pizzas. I also got a vegan sausage roll, although they couldn't tell me what was in the sausage mix to make it vegan because it's just a pre-made vegan sausage mix. I also got myself a couple of scones with currants. I thought they could have done with some jam or something, but otherwise were quite tasty along with the cup of tea I had when I got back to the house/hostel. I finally managed to get my hands on some soap nut shells (not sure what they do with the nuts themselves) for laundry. I had been looking for them in Bristol but never managed to get hold of any, because they were either no longer sold or just didn't have any or know what they were, so thought I would try when I came to Brighton. I figured if a vegetarian/vegan supermarket doesn't sell them, I don't know where will. It looks like they'll last for absolutely ever as well, because my assistant was saying there is 500 g of the shells in the bag and you only need 5 per wash, but you can leave them to dry and use them up to 4 times. Wow! They come with a little bag to put them in, so you put the said bag in the machine with the clothes and wash away, then hang the bag with the soap nut shells to dry, then do the same with the next laundry. I really need to find out if that store has a bulk section where one can get loose ingredients, because if it does it'll be fantastic.

My First Evening In Brighton

I'm currently in Brighton on the south coast of England for a week or so. It was raining this morning, so thought I would write this before I go back out. I booked he room on air bnb because it was cheaper than most of the others around here. It's a shared room which they said on the description, but what they don't say is that some of the rooms including this one are mixed, rather than male or female. I'm not sure if I like this place or not. I like meeting the people, but it seems like they want to cram as many people into the room as possible. The beds have their own little curtains, so when the curtain is closed or I'm laying down, it feels something like a box. You can't see out the window from the beds at all really. There is a single chair i the room, which I'm sitting on to write this from. To my left is the bathroom door and to the left of that is the window. The window is pretty big, but the tiles on the window sill are cracked. The inner front door of this house is also really stiff. On the more possitive side, if it wasn't so horrible and rainy outside, I would go to the beach which is very close by. There is also a great number of vegetarian and vegan restaurants around here. I went to a plant-based pizza place yesterday evening and had a thing of courgette that was shaped like spaghetti, with sundried tomatoes among other things. Also I had a drink of fermented ginger leaves which was fizzy and kind of reminded me of ginger beer. I had a vegan macaroni cheese, but was not a fan of that because it had gone nearly cold by the time I was ready to eat it and was hard and not very tasty. Thankfully they took that off my bill. That particular pizza place though is cashless because supposedly they were spending too long counting up the cash at the end of the day, then they say only 5% of people were using cash, then they said something I've heard before in that the notes in the UK contain animal fat or some other kind of animal product. I don't see why they would put animal products in money. While I don't support the use of animal products in money, I also think people should be free to use cash if that's what they would like to do.

Yarn Store I would Not Necessarily Recommend

I've been wondering whether to keep my craft blog and this blog still separate or to write everything on here. After all, everything is interconnected in some way for the most part. Since I couldn't be bothered to sign out of this account and sign into my other account, I thought I woul post a little bit on here anyway and if people don't want to read it they can just skip it. The yarn store I wouldn't necessarily recommend is above a sweet-shop on Gloucester Road in Bristol England. I say wouldn't necessarily, because I did manage to get some nice yarn from there a couple of weeks ago, but ask them to read a yarn label or what the name of a yarn is and they have no clue what I'm talking about. I went up there yesterday to get some yarn needles (I left mine at the grandparents' and need to close the toe of a Hermione's Every-day Sock I've been knitting on for an age), and first they tried to sell me some knitting needles. I was utterly confused when I asked for yarn needles and they asked what size I'm looking for. What the heck? When they brought me a set of whatever size knitting needles I realized they were clearly not listening to a word I was saying, or at least not properly. I was going to use my needles in the little sewing kit I've got, but those are too small for yarn sadly. That's the typical thing about trying to travel lighter, you're bound to forget something. All that being said, I would totally recommend the sweets in the sweet-shop. They have some vegan jelly sweets (I particularly like the American hard gums and some other pretty big ones that I can't remember the name of) and they even have some vegan chocolate. :) Speaking of food, maybe I should write a post about low-waste things when staying in air bnb places ... or would that bore everyone stupid?