A big “woo-who!” for Hungarian wine

I know I probably shouldn’t be surprised at this, but I find it rather shocking that I’m already halfway through my trip. In some ways I feel like I’ve been gone forever, but in others it feels like I just left home. Such is the travelling life, I suppose. So I didn’t end up loving my stay in Slovakia, mostly due to the weather. Because of the weather, everyone from my hostel was cooped up together in a relatively small common area for the time we were all there. While I have come to enjoy socializing with total strangers, I don’t enjoy watching said random strangers play video games and try to come up with new wild and crazy ways to get wasted at 11am. But I did get to hike one morning when it wasn’t raining and it was, of course, spectacular. From the Tatras I went down to Budapest and ended up travelling there with a few people from the hostel – two completely crazy Kiwi girls and a very laid back Aussie guy. The Kiwis were priceless in their sheer entertainment value, and the fact that they succeeded in scaring off any other potential carriage-mates by screaming gibberish into their banana telephones while rocking back and forth. I don’t think the ticket-checker lady appreciated their antics much, but it was all I could do to keep from peeing on the floor I was laughing so hard.

Budapest is lovely, and probably the most beautiful city I’ve been to thus far (yes, even above the vastly overrated Prague).

My hostel was tiny and, ironically enough, considering my temperature complaints about Slovakia, ridiculously overheated but the owner was one of those super helpful types, and on his recommendations I stuffed my face with delicious Hungarian pastries for about four days straight. It was breathtaking. I befriended a couple of Aussie guys at the hostel who took me out to some Hungarian night club they had found, which was packed full of young punk kids, all of whom loved singing American pop songs (because, oh yes, one of the rooms was in fact a karaoke bar) with an especial leaning towards Abba (though I realize they don’t really classify as American). And though I never made it to the microphone to belt out any Avril Lavigne or Madonna (the other two most heavily represented artists) I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Aussies try to sing along to the Hungarian pop songs (though their Hungarian karaoke antics were more to the purpose of getting attention from the local hotties, but they only succeeded in attracting the fawning attention of one 19-year-old boy who was so drunk he couldn’t understand or speak English, though I’m not entirely sure that he could do so while sober though he adamantly proclaimed otherwise). I had my first absinthe experience that night, the details of which I will not go into – suffice it to say I will not be drinking absinthe again. Ever. I definitely got my fill of museums while I was in Budapest and am now an expert on Austro-Hungarian/Ottoman/Communist history relative to the Magyars, that is, until I hit up the next batch of museums and my short-term memory is filled to capacity by the conquests and repressions of somebody else.

So after six days in Budapest I moved on to a (much) smaller college town called Pecs (pronounced Paich, though I never really got it right) and stayed there for only two nights. I had the delightful experience of running into some know-it-all American-born European dude on the train who thought he had the right to lecture me on American politics and foreign policy and the status of our railway system and how unprofessional it is that we have so many female surgeons, not to mention the usual election crap, all because he lived in the US till he was 5. I’ve never had my self-restraint challenged so much as during that two and a half hour train ride, but at least I got a free cab ride to my hostel out of it. Anyway. It was really nice to get away from the intensity of Budapest, and chill out in a town with a slower pace, but after viewing the town square

and the old church that used to be a mosque there really wasn’t a whole lot to do in town. So instead of putz around there, I took a day trip with a couple of Canadians I met at the hostel and went to another (even smaller) town outside of Pecs called Villany to enjoy some of the fine Hungarian wine they make there.

I can’t say much for the town itself, but their wine is fabulous and most of the wine merchant/seller/taster people were really friendly, though my perception of their friendliness could be directly correlated to the amount of wine I imbibed – I’m not entirely sure. The main street of the town is lined with wine sellers and tasting places, so we just went right down the strip and tried different wines at several of them. No one there speaks any English so we had to resort to creative pantomime, which of course got more creative as the afternoon went on (yep, this was an afternoon drinking adventure – got to town around 1pm and left by 6pm – it was definitely an early to bed kind of day, especially after buying – and drinking – a two-liter bottle of wine on the train-ride back to Pecs). We got to go into the cellars of one place, which was a little harrowing because the ceiling was really low and covered in white furry mold, the steps very steep and long and narrow, and overall I was a little afraid that she would shut the cellar doors on us and bake us for dinner, but thankfully that didn’t happen and I got a nice dose of natural penicillin as well as a view of her wine cellars.

And now I’m sitting at my hostel in Zagreb, Croatia, after a very long day on several trains, including several mix-ups and near misses, one very grumpy ticket-checker man who did not like being asked if he spoke English, and a slew of border patrol dudes in SWAT gear who apparently think I could be a threat to Croatian national security. Gotta love the language barriers.

Baby, it’s cold outside!

I officially love Poland. Krakow is an amazing city. There’s tons to do and see, museums (yes, I finally caved and started going to museums – but small ones, where I don’t feel like I’m spending an entire beautiful day inside) and the usual litany of things a tourist does. But it’s also a very livable city, or so it seemed in my 6 days there. It doesn’t hurt that I met up with a fabulous group of people at my hostel, and that is probably the reason I loved the city so much: I actually had good good people to hang out with. The hostel (the best feature of which was the Polish disco music pumped into the water closets and shower rooms) was super small and rife with Brits, and offered evening activities every night like going to the local shisha bar,

going to the Jewish quarter for potato pancakes (which were ridiculous and delicious and I thought my stomach was going to crawl out of my body and slap me across the face for putting such horrendously greasy food into it), and to the local beer gardens (which never ended up happening because we took a detour to some dance club where things got a little out of hand, probably due to the excess of re-mixed Abba music on hand). One weird thing, that I kind of noticed in Olomouc but not to nearly the same degree, is how much people stared while I was out running. There’s a beautiful bike path that follows the river in Krakow and lots of people use it for roller blading and walking and biking, but apparently not a lot of people run there. The reactions I got were totally weird, though, to the point where I had to ask the woman working at the hostel reception desk whether I was doing something culturally inappropriate, which, she assured me, I was not, though I’m inclined to think otherwise because I’ve never been yelled at by old people while running before. Or followed by police on bikes. Or yelled at in English by a random teenager, “hey, I’m talking to you!” Or just been straight up stared at so much. Totally bizarre, and I never figured it out, so that part of Poland will probably forever be a mystery. But the guy wandering around the main square in a beer costume redeemed any semi-creepy experiences.

I left Krakow last Saturday and headed to Zakopane for a few days, traveling with a Scottish guy I met at the Krakow hostel. Zakopane is in the very south of Poland and is kind of equivalent to Aspen or Vail – not a whole lot to do in town aside from shop, eat, and drink, but there’s some fabulous hiking when there’s no snow to play in. Unfortunately, since it’s in the mountains, it’s also really really cold and I definitely didn’t come prepared for that kind of weather. The hike we took was up some mountain, with what would be, I imagine, breathtaking views, but we couldn’t see them for all the fog and clouds, but when we broke through above the cloud cover it was gorgeous.

And really cold. Later that night it started raining, and really hasn’t stopped yet. So the last day and a half in Poland were spent indoors, the bus to Slovakia (which stopped at the border and I had to walk across) and the wait for the next bus were a bit soggy, and my hike in the Slovakian Tatras this morning were all stupendously soggy and muddy. And, of course, cold. My intro to Slovakia, then, has been pretty desultory, and I wish my hostel would crank up the heat a bit more, but hopefully tomorrow will be at least a bit drier, even if the trails are still mud and my nose still feels a bit icecube-ish. But then, at least the cold provides a good excuse to update the blog and catch up on my reading.

No metaphorical bananas

Just to clear up the unintended double entendre from the last post – the Czech guy quite literally offered me a banana and nothing more, but it’s good to know there are so many analytical readers out there.

I left the Czech Republic yesterday and am now in Krakow, which is a city I think I could really grow to like. I spent all day today at Auschwitz-Berkenau and all I really want is a hug and a big glass of wine. I hadn’t even really intended on going to another concentration camp after Dachau but the girl I’ve been travelling with really wanted to go so I tagged along. Again, I’m glad I went, but it was so emotionally draining that it’s just hard. It was disconcerting to be walking around in perfect September weather with the sun shining, the sky a pure blue with that delicious fall smell in the air, but to know you’re basically standing in a mass cemetery where 1.5 million people were murdered not so very long ago. So that was today.

I loved my remaining time in the Czech Republic. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Olomouc, but it’s a very easy city to be in. I honestly can’t tell you how I spent my 5 days there (and not because I was wasted) but I know I liked it. I went to a hockey game one of the first nights, and though the Olomouc team got spanked it was fun to be at a local event, surrounded by (hard core) hockey fans who are (desperately) loyal to their team, cheering them on to the very bitter end.

There are a couple of local breweries there, so of course we had to sample the local fare to get the genuine feel for semi-rural Czech life. I FINALLY found decent coffee at a little cafe,

that also served amazing chocolate pie, and though the people behind the counter were undoubtedly annoyed with me because I didn’t know how to order (do you sit and wait for them to come to your table or do you order at the counter? Do you pay initially or do you wait for them to bring you a bill? Do you tip? Are you allowed to read and linger after you’ve finished your coffee or is it the kind of place where you have to vacate the table as soon as you’re done? I never thought visiting a coffee shop would be stressful, especially considering I’ve spent the better part of 5 years getting intimately acquainted with a couple of them.) it was definitely a highlight of my time there. That and finding a running trail. There was a path that started, oddly enough, in the supermarket parking lot and then wound its way next to the river that borders the town and dumps you out into what looks like private property (and probably is) but the path kept going through orchards and fields to finally end up at a lake where there is, of course, nude sunbathing. I was not expecting that and so was a bit surprised to (almost literally) bump into a heavyset, very tan, very naked older gentleman who was also using the same trail, though thank God he wasn’t running.

Olomouc has the usual set of medieval churches with the picturesque cobble-stoned town square with a monument celebrating the end of the plague, or the miraculous occurence of such-and-such, or honoring the patron saint of blah-de-blah. Obviously, I did not do much research on the history of the city. I spent a lot of time just wandering and reading in the city parks (which were gorgeous and so unbelievably green – that’s one thing this region definitely has going for it: the scenery is breathtaking with loads of trees, rolling green hills, distant mountains, quaint little towns popping up here and there…it’s beautiful, even if the people who inhabit the country are more than a little cranky and really don’t like foreigners – though they all seem to wear t-shirts with goofily phrased incomplete English sentences on them – and give you horrified looks if you ask whether they speak English, even if you try to do it in Czech. Though I suppose you can probably blame some of their crankiness/suspicion of foriegners on the whole Communism thing. And the fact that their country is now overrun and occupied by tourists instead of Nazis or Communists.) and hanging out at the hostel, which was perfect. I met great people there, one of which is a Canadian girl – she and I navigated the (semi-harrowing) train ride to Krakow together, and we’ll probably see the city together before she heads to Berlin and I go to Zakopane. Though it’s getting a bit old being the American – she doesn’t get any flack for being Canadian, if anything people sympathize and pity her for being automatically associated with the evil chunk of North America that is the U.S. But then…she has to deal with the fact that she is, afterall, still Canadian.

Think I’ll go for the smaller cities for a bit

Ive left Munich and am now in the city of Olomouc – pronounced olla-moats, and still in the Czech Republic – after spending about 36 hours in Prague. The last day in Munich was ok, I went out to Oylmpia Park where the 1972 Olympics were and that was pretty impressive, the only catch being that there was also a bike race and a 10K run going on the same day so the park was packed and partially blocked off. The pay-off, however, was that I got to oggle the European biker boys.

I saw a bunch of team names I recognized but that doesnt really mean much since I dont actually know anything about bikes or bike racing. Please pardon the lack of correct punctuation, by the way, the keyboard is set up differently and some of the keys have 4 symbols assigned to them and I cant figure out how to get an apostrophe or parentheses…

I left Munich by train and was pretty proud of myself for figuring all that out on my own, though the woman at the train ticket-counter thought I was a moron for asking so many questions. I was befriended/adopted by a nice Czech guy on the train. He gave me a banana, we chatted about American politics, he told me he hates all Middle Eastern people…it was a bit awkward. But its a good thing he was around because we had to switch compartments a couple times en route, and of course this was all said in German and/or Czech, and then when we got to Prague he showed me where to get a tram and how to get the ticket and navigate my way out of the Prague train station, which undoubtedly wouldve taken me a lot longer than it should have had I been doing it on my own. So hooray! for him because he was the only nice Praguer I met.

I know Prague is supposed to be this magical, beautiful, romantic city on the river with the St. Charles Bridge and the castle and the quaint everything but Oh My God. So completely overrun with tourists that I couldnt even walk down the Charles Bridge

or see the castle cathedral – because the line wound around the perimeter – and the quaint streets were so packed with people taking pictures of the quaintness that I couldnt stand it. Sorry, rant over. Im sure if Id given it more time I couldve found many redeeming qualities for my experience there. Alas, I did not have the patience or where-with-all to attempt that redemption. I did, however, have a pretty awesome hostel that was covered in funky graffiti and full of – super cute – Australians and Brits. One girl, Becky, was in town for some kind of metal music festival and totally looked the part with flourescent red hair, piercings everywhere, fish nets, and a bottle of rum in her bag. The weird thing is that she absolutely loves Journey. She took some of us out to this restaurant she’d found – found the apostrophe! – which had amazing goulash. And though the restaurant was called The Back Door it was actually underground in what looked – and felt/smelled – like an old cellar. There was a metal bar next door called Hell’s Bells – why these were both in English I’m not sure – that had paintings of Kiss on the walls as well as some really trippy murals on the ceiling of what I assume were homages to metal bands. Another interesting tidbit about Czech culture is that they’re B52 shots include flaming absinthe as the top layer, and then you’re supposed to drink it with a straw while the absinthe is still on fire. Fire and plastic…perhaps that should be rethought, but I think the Czechs have enough going on where that’s probably pretty low on the priority list. So that concluded my Prague experience. I left this morning by bus to come to Olomouc, which has been great so far – my hostel is totally quirky and homey and small, which is really nice after the last two, which were quirky but pretty huge and loud.

Something I’ve been running into a lot is political discussions. Never about the politics in anyone else’s country, just the States. Though metal-rocker-girl went on a rant about the British PM and it was nice to have someone else’s national leader on the hotseat for a minute. While, overall, people have been pretty understanding that not all Americans like Bush or voted for him, etc., it’s totally surprised me that everyone – everyone – knows about the upcoming election, about the details of their campaigns, about Hillary getting booted, about McCain’s running mate and on and on and on. There was a French guy in Munich who gave me a hard time about being American and the state of our political system/health care/obesity, and then he tried to tell me about myself as an American after knowing me for about 3 minutes. I didn’t care for that so much. I wanted to punch him, actually – smug bastard – but I just yelled at him instead. Anyway, everyone’s really curious/nervous for the election, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “you guys have got to get Obama elected.” If he doesn’t – please God don’t let that happen – this will probably be my last trip to Europe because I don’t think they’ll let us back in.