Welcome to TigerSalad

On February 12, 2025 0 Comments - Uncategorized
a photo of website creator and chef writer of articles on travel, music, cooking

I built this website for sharing pictures, sounds and writing about travel, cooking, music or anything else I think is worth documenting. I wanted to have somewhere to do this without the distraction and noise of popular social media. Please take your time here: read, look at the pictures and listen to the sounds.

I have been a professional chef for most of my life and for the last decade I have been studying Korean food, language and culture. I have traveled to Korea many times to eat, explore and practice language. Cooking posts will mostly focus here.

There are a lot of pictures in these articles. Good photos are important to me so I have sacrificed some loading speed in order to post the highest quality photos my host site will allow. Please be patient while things load up. This site will work on your phone but, I recommend looking at it on a bigger screen. This is especially true for travel and photography posts. The site will look better and operate faster on a laptop or desktop.

I am always happy to hear from you so please leave comments, ask questions or start discussions if you like. It is the only way that I know you have been here. If you like what you see, please subscribe. I promise to never share your email with anyone and only send updates occasionally about new posts.

p.s. to leave comments, click on the title of specific posts and scroll to the bottom

Frankfurt and Wroclaw

On August 25, 2026 0 Comments - Photography, Travel

Afternoon stopover in Frankfurt

During a long stopover in Frankfurt, Germany we rode the bus to the small medieval town of Hörscht.

Survivors of the war: medieval houses of Hörscht.
Typical street in Horscht.

Later on we headed back to Frankfurt for dinner…

Main square in Frankfurt.
Traditional restaurant outdoors in a courtyard under a big tree.
This was a premium A+ Euro-feast. Pork knuckle, liver sausage, blood sausage, potatoes of all kinds, sauerkraut, Frankfurt green sauce, pork belly, pickled herring, veggie salads, Handkäse (a local cheese dish) and home made apple wine (a regional specialty).

Onwards to Wroclaw…

Wroclaw is the historical capital of Silesia, located in southwestern Poland. It is a beautiful old city with rivers, bridges and historic buildings in all shades of pastel colours. In little corners, the unmistakable grimy grey stucco buildings of communist era Eastern Europe still remain.

Tour guide in his monastery office.
This old concrete apartment complex has been decorated with paintings and sculptures all along the ground floor. The colour here really stands out against the stark grey of the old concrete walls.
Same place…handmade sculptures create a miniature village in the centre courtyard.
Historic buildings of Ostrów Tumski (cathedral island) Wroclaw.
Architectural details.
Technical Crisis manager…
Details Details
Nature creeps in.
Symmetry.
Street art owl on a block wall near the Oder River.
Medusa in stone.
Historic churches of Wroclaw on Ostrów Tumski.

Around the Centre…

This is the colour of communist era Eastern Europe. It is a very particular and very gloomy shade of grey.
Communist era classic…just subtract the air conditioners and new vinyl windows.
Wroclaw Market Square (Rynek). Reminds me of Krakow but maybe a little less busy. Large ornate buildings in all different colours line the square.

More to come…

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.

, ,

Amsterdam at Night / Delft

On August 23, 2026 0 Comments - Photography, Travel

Prinsengracht Concert in Amsterdam

Once a summer, the largest free classical music concert in the Netherlands happens on a canal on the Prinsengracht. A big orchestra is set up on a floating barge in the canal where the public can gather around for a night time serenade. There were so many people that we couldn’t get close enough to see anything at all but at least we could hear it. Here are just a few pictures:

Crowds of people fill the narrow streets and bridges surrounding the orchestra barge.
People come out in boats to listen too. I messed up my camera settings so many of my pictures were blurry but I thought this one looked like a painting so I included it here.
Night along the canals.
Amsterdam cat way up in a window watching all the people below.
Almost all of the boaters had a table of wine, cheese and other snacks on board to enjoy with the music. I like the way the people on the bench are all watching this floating picnic pass by.
Outdoor restaurant patio.
Patio glow.
Canals at night.

Anne Frank House

The slightly taller, lit up building with the all black windows is the Anne Frank house. She and her family hid in a secret annex behind the top 2 floors for two years without ever going outside. Their hiding place is still there, just as it was when they were discovered by the Gestapo and eventually deported to Auschwitz. The furniture was removed by the Nazis after their arrest but the rooms, kitchen fixtures, the hinged bookcase hiding the annex entrance, the staircases, the attic, the toilet and Anne’s pictures which she pasted to her bedroom walls are still there. The house is now a museum open to the public where you can see all of this plus Anne’s original hand written diaries and notebooks as well as any personal effects that were left behind. I visited the museum early one morning to see all of this. It was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had. It is not really possible to describe it here so I won’t say any more. Read the book and visit in person and you will know.
A glow of blue light above the orchestra in the distance. The tall tower belongs to Westerkerk church. This is the church Anne Frank writes about in her famous diary. She could see the clock face from the attic of their hiding place and hear the church bell ring every 15 minutes which she wrote was a source of great comfort. The church sounds gave her some small connection to the outside world during her two years in hiding.

Delft

Delft is the traditional centre of production for the famous Dutch blue on white Royal Delft Pottery. It is beautiful small town. Canals, bridges and bicycles…just like Amsterdam but on a much smaller scale. It has a slower feel to it too. Only 1 hour from Amsterdam by train, it is a nice place to spend a relaxing afternoon.

Delft City Hall. It is a massive building. See all the little bikes at the bottom for scale.
A little detail on the street.
Delft has it’s own system of bridges and canals similar to Amsterdam but smaller and less busy.
Handsome buildings.

Goodbye Netherlands… I will be back!

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.

,

Amsterdam

On August 21, 2026 2 Comments - Photography, Travel

Bicycle Kingdom

The first thing you learn as a tourist in Amsterdam is to watch out for bicycles. Bicycles have unconditional right of way in this city, followed by public transportation then pedestrians and lastly, cars. There is a well established bike culture here with separate bike roads running along every street, bridge and park. There are bikes everywhere. Everyone rides. And FAST! So, if you walk across a bike road without having a good look both ways, you will probably cause an accident. In 2 days here I have seen near accidents a few times already. Usually an unsuspecting tourist wanders into a bike lane and gets yelled at if they are lucky or run over if not. With locals, it is understood that bikes go first.

Cycles parked along a canal. Small boats tied up on the other side.

Canals and Bridges

Amsterdam has around 165 canals with a total length of around 75km. And, there are over 1500 bridges crossing the canal systems.

Typical tall, narrow house. Canals, bikes and bridges everywhere.
Houseboats along the banks of a canal.
Bikes, boats, bridges…
Most bridges have individual names. This is”Staalmeesterbrug”.
Storm clouds building over one of the large canals.

Central Amsterdam Buildings

Although all of the buildings have unique details and architecture they all share a few similarities. Most are narrow and tall with big windows and steep staircases. There are no tall buildings here. The tallest of these houses is probably four stories plus a small attic.

Shutters are used to keep the weather out and, in the past, to keep goods safe from thieves. Many of these old buildings were once warehouses for goods (like spices). Because of flooding, the expensive product was kept on the top floors while the bottom floors were for offices and storefronts. Anyone who has read The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank will be familiar with this arrangement.
Central Amsterdam is now a Unesco Heritage Site. The buildings cannot be altered in any way unless approved and absolutely necessary. Also, it is law that they must be kept in good condition. Most of the houses are beautifully maintained with pretty details and tiny gardens wherever there is space.
Some of the houses across this canal are crooked. You can see this in a few spots where they were originally built on swampy land and are now starting to lean over.
More crooked houses in the distance. There are tour boats running all day long along the canal system. We took one and it was a lot of fun. I learned so much about the city.
People also have private boats docked all along the edges of every canal.
Big windows and beautiful details.
Typical street view. All the houses are different but also very much the same.

Old and New

With it’s narrow streets and bridges, tight corners and swarms of bicycles, there is no room for large cars. Instead there are lots of interesting tiny vehicles (many electric) that you do not typically see in SUV obsessed North America.

This is a tiny electric Fiat. It is so small that you can park it sideways instead of parallel to the curb. It is so symmetrical that it is hard to tell the front from the back from a distance.
VW Bug….a tiny car from last century.

Travelling Partners:

I am lucky to be travelling around the city with my good friend and his parents (who have no issues with walking non-stop 20km/day) …as long as there is a coffee and snack break here and there : )

Tour Guide
Family meeting.
Snack break. This is the best thing I have eaten here: Netherlands style cured herring. It is not pickled like the more common herring you see around. Raw but…not exactly: it has the texture of a nice fatty sashimi fish. I asked one of the fish merchants how it is made. The herring season lasts for only a month in late spring/early summer. The fish are gutted and put whole into buckets of salt water and then frozen to -40 Celsius. Before serving, they are thawed extremely slowly and then hand filleted one at a time. Here they are served with raw onion and pickle. It is a unique and delicious fish preparation. I would recommend it to anyone visiting here.

Rain, Sun, Rain

The weather here changes fast. It can be roasting and sunny for 10 minutes and then it clouds over and pours rain for 10 minutes and then back to blue skies just as fast. It has been a challenge to get any good pictures.

This might be my favourite picture of this set. Milosz’s mom is looking up at a building from across the street while Milosz is inside buying stroopwafels with his dad. We ate them fresh and hot while standing under an awning in the pouring rain.
Rainy Amsterdam.

Our Apartment

Some nice Polish tourists walking alongside the building where we are staying.
The house we are staying in has big bright windows on all sides that open wide to let in light and fresh air. The house has so many nice details but, for some reason, I like this stairway the best. Like all other Amsterdam houses, this one is tall and narrow. You have to climb a total of 57 steps to get from the entrance to the bedrooms on the top floor!
Egyptian Geese beside the canal near our apartment.

Public Transportation

Subways, trains, trams and busses run between every point you can imagine. Amsterdam is a very easy city to explore on foot or by train.

Subway headed to Centraal Station. Trains are quiet and clean.
There are a few trains that get tagged and they look pretty cool with some extra splashes of colour. I may try to capture some sounds later although we are travelling mostly by foot here.

First Impressions of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a high functioning city. There are people EVERYWHERE : pedestrians, cyclists and drivers but it all seems to work. There are almost no traffic lights but everything seems to run smoothly. The Dutch like to hustle along and they are good at it. Cyclists, pedestrians, cars, and trams all weave in and around each other through intersections at top speed and everyone seems to understand and respect the system. As a visitor, it is all a little dizzying but also awesome to watch during the rush hour.

Even though it is so busy, it is relatively quiet compared to other big cities I have visited. There are very few private cars in the city centre with bicycles outnumbering cars by a huge margin. The air is noticeably fresh and clean. Many cars are electric and the government has even mandated that all boats using the canal system must have electric engines within the next 2 years. Blasting music out of your store or boat is against the law. Police boats on the canal make sure that everyone complies with the rules and noise levels stay in check.

The overall effect is that central Amsterdam is a city where people can enjoy being outdoors together with almost zero noise or air pollution. I can spend hours walking through crowds on busy streets in the centre of the city and still come home feeling relaxed and refreshed.

Cyclists riding along the canal wall in the afternoon sun

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.