Reflecting Back

Monday, July 5th, 2010

As we leave our 5th country and head into our 6th I wanted to take a minute to reflect back on where we have been. I have been making a list for each country of the #1 thing I will miss, the #1 thing I won’t miss, and the one thing I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to do. So here we go!

Turkey:
What I’ll miss: apple tea served in funny Turkish tea cups (definitely going to see if I can buy these online back home!)
What I won’t miss: Turkish a.k.a. “squat” toilets (although I did run across another one or two in Greece)
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: Cappadocia

Greece:
What I’ll miss: moussaka (specifically the moussaka at the restaurant in Samos)
What I won’t miss: how hard it was to catch at taxi in Athens (damn Metro strikes!)
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: Crete

Budapest (Hungary):
What I’ll miss: Goulash (sorry Mom, the stuff you made growing up isn't close to the real thing!)
What I won’t miss: the pushy restaurateurs
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: a river cruise on the Danube

Austria:
What I’ll miss: the choirs/ensembles singing in the streets of Salzburg
What I won’t miss: dodging horse piss/crap in the streets of Salzburg
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: see an opera or classical music concert in Vienna

Switzerland:
What I’ll miss: the Alps
What I won’t miss: how expensive everything was
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: go to the top of Jungfrau

Only two more countries to go, and almost exactly three weeks left.

Good Food, Good Drinks, Good Company

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

After a couple 3 Euro 1 liter beers and a long day yesterday in general, we slept in a bit before heading out of the hotel a little after 10 o’clock this morning. Our first stop today was the House of Terror. In 1944, during the domination of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, the building at Andrassy Utca 60, now the museum was once known as the “House of Loyalty” and was the party headquarters of the Hungarian Nazis. Then between 1945 and 1956, the infamous communist terror organizations, the AVO and its successor, the AVH, took up residence in the building. The museum commemorates the victims of terror and serves as a memento, reminding its patrons of the dreadful acts of terrorist dictatorships.

After an educational but depressing morning, we sought the comfort of familiarity and had lunch at Burger King. After lunch we headed on to the St. Stephen’s Basilica. Plans for the Basilica started in 1845 but the building was not complete until 1889. The Basilica is home to “the holy right hand”, which is the 1000 year old remains of the right hand of Saint Stephen, the Basilica’s namesake. Not to undermine the importance of this relic to this Church and its followers, but I found it a bit creepy, and then ridiculous when in the middle of taking a picture of the little shrine in which the hand is laid, the light illuminating it turned off and there was a sign saying that you had to pay 200 Hungarian Forints in order to illuminate the hand, no thank-you. From the Basilica we made our way to the riverfront and made our way down to the Parliament House, which was even more impressive up close than it was from the top of Castle Hill in Buda. After walking around the Parliament building we made our way back down the Danube to our hotel and had a bit of a rest.

After a short rest and a cup of coffee we were on our way to Gellert Hill to go to the Gellert Baths and the Citadel. Unfortunately we did not make it to the Citadel or to the top of Gellert Hill as we spent a little too long in the Baths. The Baths were interesting. The building is architecturally the most pleasant of the Baths in Budapest, so I’ve been told, but only has one cold and one thermal pool indoors and one cold and one thermal pool outdoors. We visited both the indoor and outdoor thermal pools which were very relaxing before heading back again to the hotel to clean up before meeting Jören and Živka for dinner.

We met Jören and Živka outside their hotel around 7:00 p.m. and Živka recommended that we try to find a pub/bar that she had been taken to once before near Blaha Luza Ter on a previous visit to Budapest. The pub was a “dive-bar” type pub with a great atmosphere and cheap drinks. I raved about the less than 2 US dollar wine I had last night, but tonight I had wine that cost 200 Hungarian Forints or approximately 90 cents US, pretty outrageous deal, and it was good as well! The food was also extremely inexpensive. Last night we paid 8500 Hungarian Forints for 2 entrees, a beer, and 2 glasses of wine, which is approximately 38 US dollars, but tonight we had 2 entrees for 3200 Hungarian Forints or about $14 dollars. Tim had what he said may have been the best chicken sandwich he has ever had, and I had a Serbian dish called Lescovich (SP?). After a couple rounds of drinks and our meals we walked around the corner to a “supposed” bar, but I was a bit worried that Jören and Živka had just been buttering us up and were taking us to their own version of the House of Terror because the bar had no sign and you just walked into this building that look closed and had graffiti all over the walls and then the elevator opened and there was a guy in tails in the elevator with a dirty looking cooler full of little liquor bottles he would sell to you on your way up. Even once the elevator opened up it appeared that we were entering an abandoned building, but then we turned the corner and saw the first forms of life and a stairwell leading to an amazing rooftop terrace bar. It was amazing, a night we will never forget and an opportunity we would have never had if we hadn’t met this amazing couple. At this unnamed bar we enjoyed another couple rounds of drinks, and quite possibly the biggest glasses of wine I have ever seen, the first glass came in a juice glass, which we thought was big, but then the second round of wine came in beer mugs, yep, beer mugs (don’t worry I took a picture!). Good food, good drinks, good company, all in all we had an amazing time in Budapest, if this is any indication, I think we have some great times ahead of us

On the River Danube

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

I don’t recall ever waking up at 2:15 in the morning, but we had to leave the hotel this morning at 2:45 a.m. to head to the Athens Airport for our 4:25 a.m. flight to Budapest. We stayed at the Holiday Inn by the airport in Athens last night, to save some time, unfortunately for us they do not operate their shuttle at that time of day, so instead of free transportation to the airport we had to take a taxi, which because of the hour cost us nearly 30 Euro. It did save some time and money over traveling from the center of Athens however, and even more so for Sue and Granddad who both were headed home later today. We had a short connection in Warsaw, Poland on our way to Budapest. We arrived in Budapest around 8:40 a.m. From there we took the airport mini bus (about which I read in our Lonely Planet book) directly to our hotel, the Intercontinental (got to love those employee rates!). It was more expensive than taking the buses/metro, but still only cost about $20 American, and was definitely worth saving ourselves the hassle of having to figure out the busses/metro and locate our hotel on our own.

Luckily when we arrived at the hotel at about half past nine they had a room ready for us already, and let’s just say that I couldn’t have been happier with the accommodations. We had a third floor room with a king size bed (a luxury we haven’t had often thus far on the trip), a proper shower (I am not going to miss the showers in Greece), and a million dollar view overlooking the Danube and over to central Buda. But we didn’t want to waste any time, so we were out the door shortly after 10:00.

There seemed to be a lot of sites clustered on Castle Hill on the Buda side of the Danube, so we decided to make this our first stop. It was a beautiful walk over the Danube to the Buda side of town. We weaved up through beautiful European streets to the top of Castle Hill. Once atop Castle Hill we found the Fisherman’s Bastion and Matthias Church. The Fisherman’s Bastion was built in the early 20th century and is host to in my humble opinion some of the best views of Pest, especially its sprawling Parliament building, which is gothic in style, and is the largest building in Hungary. Adjacent to the Fisherman’s Bastion is Matthias Church, which is under constant restoration both inside and out, but features a spectacular colored tile roof.

After touring the inside of the Church we walked towards the other end of Castle Hill, stopping to grab a quick lunch. For lunch Tim had a hot dog and soda and I had a sandwich and soda which cost us 1300 Hungarian Forints, which converted is less than 6 US Dollars. It’s impossible not to love the prices in Eastern Europe.
After lunch we went to the House of Royal Wines. Our main intentions for going here was to taste some wines, but we decided to tour the “museum” which I will go ahead and say right now, I would definitely recommend giving a pass should you ever visit Budapest. It was definitely not worth the money, but we did learn that at least in the past, wine was one of Hungary’s biggest exports (we didn’t even know Hungary produced wine!). We also got to see some restored royal wine cellars from the 15th and 16th centuries, and got thoroughly freaked out by the creepy medieval wax statues that were lurking around every corner. After completing our tour of the museum, we decided that the tastings were too expensive, which was later affirmed when the wine at dinner was less than two dollars American per glass. From the House of Royal Wines we walked over to the Royal Palace, which is home to a couple of museums, we did not enter the museums, we only admired the Palace from the exterior. After a bit of a walk we headed back towards Pest and our hotel.

We stopped just briefly at the hotel before heading to the Central Market. At the Central Market we ate a strudel and purchased some fruit to eat for breakfast the next couple of days at the hotel. Leaving the Market we walked down Vaci Utca, a pedestrian street lined with restaurants and touristy shops to try and locate a place to have dinner and watch the soccer games later. We identified a couple of options before we headed back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel we turned on the soccer and I promptly fell asleep, as did Tim. We were completely exhausted having been up since 2 o’clock this morning and having walked the equivalent of several miles throughout the day site-seeing. After the afternoon soccer games were over we headed back out and down Vaci Utca to find some dinner. Along this touristy strip the restaurateurs essentially attack you offering you all sorts of incentives to dine with them, I found it a bit overwhelming, and honestly if a restaurant has to mug and bribe people on the streets in order to get patrons, I’m not really interested. We finally sat down at a restaurant that we had passed where no one came and attacked us as we passed by and where there were plenty of people eating and where the food on the table looked and smelled amazing. I ordered the traditional beef gulyas (goulash), which was delicious, and had a couple of glasses of the house red, which cost as I mentioned before less than 2 US dollars per glass.

After we finished dinner we walked down to a sidewalk café that we had spotted earlier that had multiple TVs out, that we were certain would play both of the soccer matches that were on tonight (Germany vs. Ghana and Australia vs. Serbia). We joined a couple at a table and conversation ensued. Jören is from Germany, and his girlfriend, Živka, is from Macedonia, but they are currently living in Bratislava and she was visiting Budapest for a conference. We watched the soccer games together, they were glad Germany won, and we were glad Australia won even though the still will not advance and talked about all sorts of things, we just thoroughly enjoyed each others' company. After the game we went for a stroll together before heading back to our respective hotels, but made plans to meet tomorrow at 7:00 for dinner.