Walking in a VEGAN Wonderland

Last week my sister and I visited Budapest’s first all vegan Christmas fair, called the Vegan Wonderland. I wrote a quick review about my experiences and why is this event important for the vegan community.

Let’s start at the beginning, in the spring of 2016. The fist Vegan Foodfest in Budapest was organized in 2016, and since then, they set up the event at least twice a year. This is always a really cool 4 day long gathering with a lot of excellent vegan foods, with educational presentations, community cooking and a lot of cool vegan dudes. This was a landmark, because before that there were no events like that, and it can show that veganism is so much more then eating kale all day. It shows a huge variety of vegan foods from raw to junk. Even though in the past 1-2 years a few vegan restaurants were opened in Budapest (the capital of Hungary) sometimes I still find it difficult to find something to eat when I don’t have time to cook, especially when I’m visiting my parents in my hometown. The first Hungarian scientific review about plant-based diet was wrote in 2016 so we are a little bit dropped behind. That is why this event was very much needed.

Only few months late, in the fall of 2016, after the success of Vegan Foodfest they started to organize Vegan Sunday Markets (usually one in a month), which is a really cool vegan market, where one can find a huge variety of fresh organic fruits and veggies, and basically everything: jams, bread, cakes, lunch… EVERYTHING. I love this event, because every restaurant tries to make something special for that day, for example vegan mac ‘n cheese, so I can always try something new.

The next event was the Vegan Wonderland, the first all vegan Christmas fair in Budapest, and of course in Hungary in general. So, I couldn’t wait this special occasion more. We wanted to eat lunch (vegan burgers, what else) but unfortunately, I couldn’t because there was only one place, where they sold burgers and they didn’t have a gluten free option. Too bad. We had to eat somewhere else, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m happy things turned out that way, because it was just amazing! I chose the carrot plate with carrot balls, veggies and roasted potatoes and my sister ate a vegan cheese burger. You can see the pictures down below, but believe me, this was the best.

But let’s get back to the Christmas fair. For me it was a little disappointment, and not just because of the lunch, but also because I couldn’t buy what I originally wanted (It would have been the key element of my Christmas meal), but I know, there’s bigger disasters in life, so maybe next time. But there were a lot of vegan Christmas gift ideas, which are great for non-vegans as well, such as skin care products, bags, t-shirts, jams, truffles and they even sold vegan dog food!

All in all, I had a really great day with my lovely sister, and I can’t emphasize more the value of this evet.

Thanks for reading, a stayed tuned for my easy vegan Christmas meal ideas!