Our trip to Budapest

“Wait! Where are y-you g------oing?! There is a beeeee-u-ti-ful view and sights of the river and the parrrrrliament building! Over heeeeeere!”

The wailing and slightly wheezing imploration issued from a gaunt gentleman of indeterminable age brandishing an hungarisn tourist guide’s ID as if it were a weapon. His voice had the rough quality of an old chalkboard with all its redeeming qualities, gaunt features and some mannerisms reminiscent of a marionette, and his occasionally jerky manner added extra emphasis to his accented but enthusiastic English, marred by the occasional physical and vocal tic:

“I will show you, I will, I will……. Excuse me! EXC--------USE ME!!!” (this is conducted in a penetrating whisper as he leans in to recapture our wandering attention: mummy always told us not to talk to strangers; we pretend to ignore him.) “I will show you a tour of Budapest with in-for-may-shuns you will not find an-eeeeeee-where else in an-----y tourist guid-E! For only….. excuse me! EXCUSE MEEEEEEE!!!!" (I didn’t know it was possible to wail and whisper at the same time time, but it apparently is.) “For only two thausAND----”

“No. We’re not interested.”

“No, no nononononono!” His voice bordered on a wail and he seemed to be getting quasi hysterical by this point, and I was kind of worried he would go all crazy Edward Scissorhands on us, acting like a demonic wind-up toy on adderol. “NO! I cannot-----I cannot------ I cannot (EXCUSE ME!! EXCUUUUUUSE ME!) communicate with these creatures. With human beings I can communicate, but with these, with these prrrrrrimitive species I cannot communicate.” And he flounced off, muttering angrily. No joke.




-- Tickets please. May I see your ticket? (says the stout Hungarian metro worker)
--- (we hand them over)
--- (she examines them) This ticket is not valid.
--- (uhhhhhhh) What do you mean?
--- This ticket is not valid for your journey. From what station do you come?
---
--- When you transfer you must validate another ticket.
--- But we asked someone from the train company and he said it was valid!
--- This ticket is not valid.
--- Well, we have a book of tickets, we can give you the tickets we were supposed to have used. (angry look, angry shake of the head)
--- This ticket is not valid. You will have to pay a fine of 6,400 Florins. Per person (angry look)
--- But we don’t HAVE 6,400 Florins per person! (shrug). What do we do? (shrug) (she finds a traveler to translate for her)
--- Do you have a credit card? (of course we do, but I’m not about to tell her this.
--- no, no credit cards. At the hotel. (a lie)
--- Do you have a bank card?
--- Yes.
--- You will have to pay the fine. Two of you stay here and one will go to get the money (I feel like we are being robbed: Your money or your life!)
--- We can’t withdraw any more money from our account. You can only withdraw a certain amount each day and we have already withdrawn the maximum for today. We can’t take out any more money!
--- (shrug, angry look) Your passports!
--- At the hotel. (not a lie, but the last thing I am going to do is hand over my passport, which honestly wasn’t on me at this point anyways) (she consults briefly with the other controller, who had been stifling a smile the whole time).
--- Give me the tickets! (we hand them over, she rips them and we go on).

Whew. Welcome to Budapest. In their defense, it said we had to validate a new ticket each transfer on the back IN ENGLISH. In our defense, these were tickets out of a booklet of 10, and I had read the back of the individual ticket purchased from the machine and it said no such thing, so I assumed these would be the same.


The good experiences: When we arrived in Budapest we stumbled upon a folk festival selling overpriced handicrafts and random junk no one ever needs. WE listened to some cool music and also to the fascinatingly irritating bird calls that everyone and their grandmother seemed to be selling and which I would only give to the child of someone I hate. We had a stunning view of the parliament from the chain bridge and set off on an epic trip to find Liszt Ferenc tér, which happened to be right near our hostel. We had an excellent dinner at a gorgeous restaurant before meeting up with some contacts from Couchsurfing---who took us to pretty much the coolest bar ever. We wandered the castle district (overpriced and touristy), got swindled at lunch, tried to look for and eventually found the baths, and we went back the next night for dinner at the same place the next night before hiking up to hero’s square.

We don’t speak Slovakian either

The first thought I had getting off the train in Zilina is that we had made a terrible mistake and shouldn’t have come here. We had practically traveled halfway across Slovakia to go to this tiny town which may or may not have a castle, where we would be picked up by unknown persons (our couchsurfing hosts) who would put us up in an unknown location. To top it all off, we had wittingly taken the slow train, unwittingly dooming ourselves to four and a half ours of Slovakian countryside instead of one and a half hours on the fast train. We should have stayed in Bratislava, we should have planned for Trencin, we should have done this or that or anything else. The train station in Zilina looked somewhat dismal, and we still didn’t speak Slovakian, and everything seems a bit gloomy and foreboding if you aren’t comfortable where you are and are unsure about the future.



But our couchsurfing hosts rode to our rescue, or biked rather, but before we knew it we had our bags stowed in the ticket office and were off, bicycle and dog proverbially in hand, to go visit ‘downtown’ Zilina. After a somewhat complicated maneuver, we managed to send our bags off with the father of our host, leaving us free and unencumbered and able to hike into the old part of the town (pop 100,000) for a short tour, the obligatory photo, and some beers at a local restaurant.



I must say, I am completely a fan of couchsurfing. As much as I love my travel companions, I see them all the time; as much as enjoy the interesting Brits and Americans you meet at your average hostel (and particularly in Prague), we didn’t come halfway across Europe to meet other Americans or just talk to each other. We had the opportunity to sit at this restaurant, actually have someone order for us in the native language, and talk about everything from language to culture to whether or not you say “cheese!” while taking pictures (you do. It’s called syr). We learned how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘3 beers please’ and ‘I don’t speak Slovak’ and the nearly unpronounceable word for ‘ice cream’ (zmrzlina). And they swept us off to our family home located deep within the Soviet-style ‘suburbs’ (by suburbs they mean rows upon rows upon rows of unimaginative Soviet flats, nicknamed the Great Wall of China for its improbable length). Our hosts, a young couple, introduced us to his father and mother, neither of whom spoke anything other than Slovak and Russian. But the father, an incorrigible troublemaker with an eternal twinkle in his eye and an easy manner (reminding me of a wonderful French gentleman whose acquaintance I had the pleasure to have made), made us feel right at home. We concocted some kind of pudding (Dr. Oetker) with fresh blueberries (also practically unpronounceable), grapes, and Nilla wafers (Slovak style) and we toasted with homemade cherry liqueur. After our sumptuous dinner of venison and rice for everyone and salad and rice for me, followed by some kind of goat cheese which made our teeth squeak (no joke—but it was yummy) and fresh tomato salsa stuff, we set in on the puddings and homemade cherry/blueberry/apple cake with Slovak-style Sprite.



Couchsurfing lets you really get to know people from other countries. We heard about life under the Soviet system, with Slovak-East German football cooperations, no dishes without meat, how the school system, and pretty much everything else we could think of to ask. And this morning, our host took us on the most amazing hike ever, up a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley of verdant fields, tiny villages and even tinier people. And after that... the castle!

More later.

We don’t speak Czech

It wasn’t until after we left Prague for Brno that I really had the feeling of being in the Czech Republic. Prague was beautiful, Prague was romantic and interesting and living, Prague was touristy and mostly in English. Which is convenient, seeing as how we don’t speak Czech. Still, there were more tourists than locals and reminded me strongly of Venice, though I like Prague considerably better than I liked Venice.



Brno, however, is not Prague. Its buildings are a mixture between old historic apartment blocks, Soviet-style apartment blocks, baroque and modern all mixed into one, centered around a beautiful, triangle-shaped central square in the old town beneath the castle. Brno was tourist-friendly without being touristy; a walking tour accompanied by informative signposts explained just what some of these cool buildings were as well as some of the stories and legends associated with them. And it was all in Czech. In Prague we would ask “English or Deutsch?” and usually find someone more than capable in one of the above languages. In Brno we ask “English or Deutsch?” and we receive a slight shake of the head accompanied by two fingers held up about a centimeter apart to indicate that the individual didn’t particularly speak English OR German. Merde. And due to our apparent incapacity to remember much more than ‘hello’ (Ahoj) and ‘thank you’ (dekuje, after several days of practice and several reminders) much less numbers 1 – 3, “may I have the bill please?”, “how much?” or anything else that would have been remotely useful, there was much pointing and smiling involved in ordering anything. We stared helplessly at the (presumed) cleaning lady who came to our rooms, at the blind boys asking for directions (perhaps? We foisted them off on a nice passing Czech lady), at the gentleman at the train station, and at the restaurant servers on most occasions…

There were, of course, some misunderstandings. One evening we were sitting outside on a patio drinking half-litres of Czech pilsner, having waved off the waitress who (we presume) asked if we wanted another round, intending to go for ice cream and then move on. I went to the restroom (apparently the wrong one, as my compatriots found out when my directions to the rest room led them to a old man empathetically pointing to the restrooms a floor above where I had sent them. Oops). At my return I was greeted with the somewhat chagrined or perplexed expressions of my companions—and another round of beer. Which we hadn’t wanted, hadn’t ordered, but had come anyways. Other times we spent several minutes painfully trying to get the beer menu explained to us in capable but halting English by the poor waiter only to discover he had left us with an English-language menu as well. Our last night in Brno, the girls set off for the bar with the goal of coming back with three *different* beers to try, resulting in two bottles, two glasses, and one which appeared to be 90% head.



Getting to Brno involved taking the slow train through rolling fields and little hamlets, hanging our heads out the windows like oversized dogs, sleeping nestled into a corner of the compartment, stopping at this and that tiny village, rolling through fields and hills, reading, taking pictures. The landscape looked a bit like the Shire from Lord of the Rings, and everything seemed to have a slight sepia tone to it. Brno itself is a typical college town, insofar as I could make the generalizations across two continents and several countries, but the size and the feel of the place, the many cafes and lively bars, the friendly atmosphere are all similarities shared among towns (or small cities, to be charitable) of significant student populations. We enjoyed cruising the shoe stores and the supermarkets, made a point of visiting pretty much every church in town (having completely neglected to enter any church at all in Prague). Continuing our beer tour, we tried varieties of pilsner of the varying local brew with anywhere between 5 and 8% alcohol (indicated by the proof, for example “Strastobrno 11” or “Strastobrno 12”), rich lagers (going on 16%), cut beers (half and half), and most anything bottom-fermented and filtered.



Our inability to speak Czech certainly hindered our interaction with the locals, though we managed to have our table besieged and successfully invaded by a young guy with about 8 words of English. And his twenty friends: “you are three?” (questioning look, nod in assent). “can you….?” (motion of hands compressing together, nod of assent, we scoot together). About three minutes pass, as his friends and compatriots and distant relations and everyone’s grandmother and second cousin and best friend and some guy they met on the corner and about seven or eight Asians slowly file in and try to fit at our table, eventually pulling all available chairs from the vicinity. Our ‘new friend’ turns to us: “over there…. Place for three people…” (points to table, nod in assent, we move over to a table where a slightly shady-looking man and a youngerish lady are engaged in the kind of activity for which a hotel room is usually suggested, but as all hands are above table-level and visible, we decide it’s okay).

But now it doesn’t matter, as we are in Slovakia on the train on the way to some small town with a castle. But we don’t speak Slovakian either…

From Prussia to Bohemia

It's pretty hard to find someplace in Prague not inundated with tourists, without English-language menus and extra assistance for the poor lost non-Czech-speaking masses. The Charles Bridge is one solid mass of camera-toting visitors filing along as if at an open-coffin funeral augmented by the carnival atmosphere of souvenir hawkers, street musicians, and the general hubub of humanity. The main squares seem to acquire flocks of tourists blindly following a pink umbrella or a large sunflower or a plastic toy on a stick, learning about a history which they will promptly forget and didn't really care about to start with. But this, my friend, is Europe in the summer. It seems like every capital and much of France is actually one giant tourist park. But we skipped all that, we avoided lines and tourist attractions and "doing" Prague like most tourists do, instead wandering the streets, searching for interesting hidden nooks and beautiful places--and we were largely successful.

This is not to disparage Prague. I absolutely love Prague, I love its flair and style, its cleaned-up bits and its run-down bits, art noveau, neo baroque, classical and baroque all mixed together, its stylish cafes, parks, quirky stores and comfy pubs. The people have all been friendly and helpful and accommodating of the fact we don't speak Czech, and while not at bargain basement prices, drinks and things are cheaper than Germany and everything else is comparable (without paying capitol-city prices).



In the castle district of Prague there is a greenbelt stretching the length of the shore hosting masses of travelers and students sleeping or picnicking, dogs and their walkers, and pretty much everyone else. A creek running parallel to the river makes the place actually a small island, driving water wheels and hiding the cute little cafe where our Czech couchsurfing contact brought us after a hike up to the metronome and the world fair building.

Last night we opted out of the pub crawl organized by the hostel and went out in search of a pub on our own, somehow managing to find a lively and homey pub frequented mostly by locals where we, understanding nothing on the menu, attempted to sample Czech beer and were in the end quite successful. In addition to pilsner they also have a rich dark lager and a 'cut' beer, half lager and half pils, and a Belgian wheat at half the price of Belgium served in what appeared to be a giant-sized water glass (it takes two hands to drink from). We also sampled orange spice cappuccinos, the best iced chocolate probably ever, some kind of sesame croquant ice cream and Lebanese food at a restaurant highly recommended by some (new) friends.

This is the first time I'd stayed in a hostel for a while, and it is one of the nicer ones I have been in. Everything is new and shiny and the internet is free (though breakfast is expensive and not included), and the hostel does a good job of organizing social activities. Traveling by oneself presents no problem as you can easily meet other travelers, but to be honest, I don't come to Prague just to meet Brits and Americans, so I would probably prefer the Couchsurfing method in the future.

Today we are off to Brno!

You Beach!

Everyone hates tourists. I love traveling more than most anything and even--or particularly--I hate them. It's not just a selfish desire to keep the prettiest views, the best restaurants or the special discoveries clear of the guidebook-toting masses--though that is a viable concern--nor just of accidently being identified with a group known for being (alternatively) culturally insensitive, poorly dressed, clueless, ripe for exploitation, full of money to burn, loud and obnoxious, or simply too much traffic. Being a tourist is just not belonging; you visit some town or city or country and look through the window at other peoples' lives, take pictures of things you don't really understand or particularly care about but Lonely Planet says you should, and buy terrible souveniers which no one wants which are cute in their ugliness and otherwise remind you of your vacation, for better or for worse. There are lots of pictures taken of buildings, attempts to capture the moment into something that may be printed up and foisted on unsuspecting relations or visitors in the form of a two-hour monologue ("and then we went to Notre Dame, and then we went to the Louvre, and then we went to..."). From the side of the tourist, I dislike feeling unanchored and somewhat slighted by the locals, I dislike needing maps and being expected to go to museums (don't get me wrong, I love museums. I just don't always want to go to them just because they are there). From the side of the locals, tourists are just in the way, clog up everything useful (try grocery shopping in northern Germany-- you have to wait behind the Swedes and Danes with their three shopping carts of booze in order to buy a kilo of tomatoes and some cheese), are sometimes obnoxious and the rest of the time just tacky, and (in Europe) require use of your English-language faculties which you are universally expected to possess.



Beach tourists are another breed. These tend to arrive in campers and motor homes, or live in any of a number of hotels and vacation apartments notable for their hideous architechture and their proximity to the beach. They build forts out of lawn chairs and their family structure seems to consist of several small half-naked sticky children burnt a nice sienna brown, running about and terrorizing the other tourists, one or more tired-looking women desperately trying to tan sagging breasts and cellulite away, the man of the house suncreaming his baldspot and surriptiously searching for any female (preferably topless, though we have more sense than that) above 15 and under 45, and occasionally a granny with burgundy-died or permed hair and a bathing suit at least fifteen years out of style. In Heiligenhafen they built a kind of tourist-town just for the beachgoers, with ice cream parlors, restaurants, a shopping centre and an activity place for the kiddies, bowling and bumper cars, and anything else the tourist's heart might desire.



Our beach vacation involved watching the lifeguards fish the jellyfish out of the water. The place is innundated with them, most of them harmless and some of them not. The lifeguard would wander off and return bearing a net and a blob of quivering red jelly which he or she would proceed to bury among a crowd of excited children, until enough of the stingers were found to close the beach.

Ask the oracle:
- tides in the Baltic
- why some jellyfish are red

So where DO you live? - Part II

I'm not really a tourist any more in Germany. Sure, there are lots of places I haven't been (M-V, much of eastern Germany, most of Bavaria and NRW, Bremen, Saarland), and lots of places I have (everywhere else). There are lots of aspects of German culture left to be discovered, I am sure, but I am generally familiar with life in Germany. Now I have a visitor from the US here, with whom I am touring most of my old haunts, and I am remembering what it was like when I first arrived here, what things fascinated or confounded me. I remember loving red tile roofs, being constantly perplexed by the toilet flush mechanism and the window openings, overwhelmed by the cheese selection and floored by the multitude of instructions on everything. Now I get to see all of this out of the eyes of a 'tourist' long after having forgotten them myself. Sometimes I feel I am overbearing in my commentary, over-explaining aspects of culture that are obvious or self-explanatory, and other times I forget to impart crucial information such as basic traffic laws while bike riding. Oops.



We've been doing the tourist thing, which in Germany seems to mean German retirees. We took a cruise on the Rhine river to see the castles and the scenery, we went to Lake Constance (where I had never been) and to France (to Colmar, where I had also never been) and the Baltic (where I definately have been).

Sometimes I forget that German people have a sense of humor. Perhaps it's different in southern germany, but most of the time when someone yells out something to me, I expect it to be some kind of complaint or criticism. Yesterday we were jogging and I was surprised when someone yelled out that it was high time to buy a bicycle. Bicycling itself has been fun, particularly the look of sheer terror on my friend's face when riding in traffic....



There is apparently a kind of tequila ("gold") which is served with orange slices and lemon. And it is possible for seven people to eat two cakes in one day. Yesterday we went riding and rode down to the beach in order to ride the horses in the water. My friend's horse wasn't particularly interested in touching the water, stubborn as she was, so I traded my pony for hers because mine had been happily splashing his way up and down the coast and scaring off the swedish tourists. And indeed, as soon as we switched he continued splashing happily up and down the coast and out of the water, where he executed a sharp turn to the right and left my friend looking like the sandman on the ground. Oops. We tried to go sailing later in the day but there was a tear in the mainsail, so we could only sail with the jib (the sail n the front) and still made 6 and a half knots.

Things to wikipedia:
- physics of sailing
- the Hanseatic League
- Alsace Lorraine
- where cobblestones come from
- how the bells fell down in Lübeck
- jellyfish - do they run in flocks?
- terms in English for english tack and sailing :) oops...

So where DO you live? - Part I

Ein kleiner HINWEIS: Since I last posted, I have been quite a few places. I spent time in Ghent, Belgium, went on a crazy 3-day trip to Paris with my new friends from Bruges, went back to Ghent for a festival and on to Amsterdam before returning to Germany. My Ami-friend in tow we cruised the Rhine, chilled in Freiburg, sightsaw in Konstanz, did a wine-tasting in France, sailed the Baltic and will be off soon to Berlin via Hamburg and Prague via Dresden. Whew.

Therefore, ladies and gentlespoons, I present to you for your entertainment: all that I remember from my trip. More or less.

Alsjeblief means PLEASE in Dutch and is not a sneeze. Interestingly, Dutch is not German and Flemish may or may not actually be Dutch. Watching the movie 'in Bruges' WHILE in Bruges is pretty cool, but some of the jokes don't translate. But just because Colin Farrell is Irish I could marry him...



The Gentse Feesten is a music festival in Ghent. I was only able to go for one night but it was absolutely amazing, and we listend to a salsa band while sipping Mojitos. Interestingly, we managed to make the alcohol tent shake by jumping up and down on the concrete block anchoring it to the pier. People kept looking around, confused, but no one figured it out that it was us, mwa hahahaha. I didn't get to bed until 4 AM, and somehow thought I would be on a train to Amsterdam at 6.30 the next morning. Think again. Interestingly, the day after I was there a building blew up when a truck hit a gas can, but thankfully only two people were injured. Still, Ghent was gorgeous and the music was fantastic. I know what I'm doing next summer....



Paris, and likely France as a whole is one giant tourist destination. What, pray tell, is the point of building Disneyland Paris if the entire fricking country is a theme park? Visiting Notre Dame is like touring Epcott itself---tourists of the world, unite! Still, there are lots of lovely corners not innundated by sneaker-toting, overweight Americans (watch ,,In Bruges'' for lovely commentary on tourists, heh). After a few days of Belgium, though, it was nice actually speaking and understanding the language de jour--my Flemish leaves lots to be desired, though my French was okay. I even played tour guide for a bit, though I was apparently unable to find the Notre Dame. We spent our evenings on the banks of the Seine and at Montmartre with some bottles of wine, some Belgian beer, baguettes, cheese, and snacks. There was a firebreather at Montmartre, and on the Seine there was the (somewhat random) combination of tango, folk dancing (looked like organized hopping around), and a bachelor party. There was also some young dude distributing hand wipes, who ended up (later in the night and severly inebriated) telling me his life story. ,,je suis chanteur, je suis skateboarder..." and even had (half) of a skateboard to prove it.



The hostel we stayed in in Paris was quite good by hostel standards and phenomenal by Paris standards (woe unto ye who does not read hostel reviews.....eeek). Only downside: a bit far out on the end of the metro in the 20th district, which wasn't shady, just--- far out. But the metro runs until 2 AM, so you can always get home--- except on the days it doesn't run until 2 AM, namely Sunday, which is when we were on Montmartre. We found ourselves considering several closed metro stations and a bus stop at Pigalle, where we considered the merits of taking a taxi halfway across Paris for seven people versus taking the night bus. I argued for the night bus and figured out which ones to take, but the whole project took about 2 hours and involved stuffing the ladies of the group (interestingly, there were two named Kelly and two named Agnieszka) into a phone booth and letting the guys drive off the homeless dude at Gare de l'est at 3 AM. Yay. He was harmless, homeless, and annoying.

Amsterdam is gorgeous. It's called the venice of the north, but I prefer it to Venice because people actually LIVE in Amsterdam. Lots of bikes, canals, bikes, canals, bikes, water, weed, bikes, and canals. I had an amazing host (all of my hosts were amazing) who took me to a singer-songwriter evening at her favorite place in A'damm. We also went to some fantastic cafes (NOT coffeeshops) with ecclectic furniture, fantastic food and great atmosphere. Must go back, must go back.



More coming.