No sleep till Venice

Now on to Budapest! Which is beautiful, and a bargain, and a great place to enjoy summer solstice. As always, our first stop was a city tour....well really it was lunch at 2 Spaghi for handmade pasta, but then on to the culture! We took a history of communism tour which actually covered the majority of Hungarian history pre-communism too. Sally and I both noticed that this guide repeatedly talked about all the instances Hungarians tried to fight oppressive regimes and lost. You just don't hear that often, the constant refrain of, "we fought this war and lost. We started this revolution but it was quashed. We tried to free ourselves from communism but couldn't accomplish it." A very unique perspective. 

Also a delight to hear that Budapest has always been flush with excesses of money and invested way too much in building projects, such as their parliament. In 1873 the city held a competition for architects to propose the design of the new parliamentary building and received so many good options they couldn't just pick one. So they picked three. The first place winner built a bigger version of London's Westminster parliament building, which is positioned on an enormous square right in the river, and opposite to the second and third place designs, which are perhaps half as large as the winner, in different architectural styles, and currently home to other governmental ministries and a museum. A marvel to see, but one also wonders if this economic surplus could have been better spent on social programs. Ah, another highlight of the tour was seeing the larger than life Ronald Reagan statue that our guide, a native Budapest-an, had no explanation for. He'd not ever been to that spot, nor had he particularly focused on Hungarian liberation from the communist regimes. The statues reception has been thus: if you like him, you can shake his bronze hand, but if you don't you can step on his toes. 

 

Budapest has a surfeit of wine bars, and plenty of Hungarian wine to enjoy, so we sat for after dinner drinks in Doblo wine bar, then made our way for a late night beer to Szimpla Kert, where two American soldiers chatted with us about traveling, but couldn't confirm or deny where they may have been stationed. Perhaps that is something women are dying to pry out of them, but we were pretty unconcerned. In fact, it was way more interesting to take in the atmosphere of our first "ruin bar," which is I guess a bombed out building that was never rebuilt, allowing plant life to grow in through the cracks and then taken back by the community as an open air bar. Even more appealing, the next morning the same venue houses a farmer's market full of juicy cherries and plums, hefty wheels of cheese, a ten-person deep queue for flax covered loaves of bread, long paprika-infused links of sausages and dry rubbed cuts of ham, fresh yogurts, juices, and the odd handmade bath products. 

   

Aside from our walking tour, we loved Budapest for the truly casual tourism it cultivated. There weren't endless lists of the best 2,481 museums you just have to visit or an obligation to dine at a Michelin rated restaurant. Budapest's loveliness isn't in its exclusivity but its delight of simply being. We booked sensational massages, floated about in the Veli Bej baths, enjoyed free concerts in the park on Margrit Island, let the breeze ruffle our hair on a river cruise, and of course, walked and walked and walked. The weather was ideal, the city is pretty and expansive for a smaller capital, and the wine and food were a delight. Add to that the hour or so we spent in Budapest's cat cafe, and I think I can safely say that Budapest was a budget friendly favorite for both Sally and me.

   

  

 

Ahh, what a crest of perfect days in Budapest. I pitched a fit about leaving and was summarily underwhelmed (and foggy with a raging head cold) by the time we reached Vienna. Vienna was cold and anonymous and generally unwelcoming to budget travelers. Had I endless wealth and a burning passion for opera and symphonic orchestras, I probably would have enjoyed it.

This is how Vienna feels

It was with great joy that our ten hour layover in Vienna ended and we boarded an overnight train to Venice. That is, until I realized I'd only bought seats in a cabin...not beds. Once five people are crammed into a train cabin with all their luggage, you realize you aren't going to have the most restful of nights. And then when the Spanish couple next to you starts their roaring snores, and Sally starts weeping from exhaustion somewhere in western Austria, you realize you've made a huge mistake. (The upside is I started smacking the Spaniard guy every time he launched into an aggressive snorting, thus ruining his night as well.)

This was how we arrived to Venice; Sally on the edge of mutiny, bags under my eyes large enough to require luggage tags. Then we walked out of the Santa Lucia train station. "Wow," said Sally, "that is Venice." It sure was. The sun was high in the sky already, street vendors  scuttling energetically around prospective buyers, and the grand canal sloshing wildly against the water ferries, gondolas, and private boats that heave past fairly sinking under the sheer volume of tourists crowding for a ride. So we stepped out into the city, wide eyed.

It was like living in Disneyland

Our stay in Venice heralded our very first AirBnB stay, sharing a bedroom in a Florentine woman's home steps away from the Rialto bridge. Francesca is an Etruscan pottery archaeologist turned private tour guide, competitive international folk dancer and a consummate host. She met us in an easy-to-locate piazza, then wound us through the narrow stone streets to her flat, and was always available to offer up sights and experiences off the beaten path. (If you are planning your trip to Venice you must email me for her listing information. Truly!) We had heard a fair bit of negative press about the smelly, cliched tourist-traps that made up Venice, but we experienced a very different Venice. On the morning we arrived, we set off on a standard walkabout, getting thoroughly lost in very peaceful and empty alleys. We were happy, but exhausted, so when Sally asked if we could go home for a mid-afternoon rest, I had to sadly point out it was only noon. We did keep moving the whole day, bumbling our way back to the Piazza San Marco, squeezing through tourists packed eight deep to look at a wall or a bridge or a seagull, and rationalizing that with 13 miles already logged by 5pm, we could absolutely crash early.

 

One evening Francesca offered to take us out to a local gathering spot with some friends of hers, and at sunset we found ourselves sitting on the edge of the canal listening to a rockabilly cover band, drinking aperol spritzes and recounting tales of traveling with friendly Italians. After dark we made our way to a series of cicchetti hot spots. Cicchetti are the Italian equivalent of tapas, and in Venice are very seafood driven. We enjoyed a deep fried hard boiled egg with anchovy, salt cod pate on toast, calamari, meatballs, tuna carpaccio, and a few glasses of white wine to wash it all down.  We finished off the night sprawled on the deck of a boat bobbing outside a bar as extra seating talking about wine and our unknown futures; it was wonderful!

While in Venice we took a day trip to Padua, my paternal grandfather's birthplace, and enjoyed a sunny day of street markets, parks, and cobblestone streets. That side of the family was historically very musically inclined, a branch of ancestors full of symphonic composers, cellists and the like. It is very sad indeed how that fell to the wayside in my generation, as my musical ability reaches its zenith in humming. Nevermind. We also rode the water ferry out to a few island towns, the famous glass blowing community of Murano, the colorful photographer's haven Burano, and a very un-Venetian-like beach town called Lido, and spent a few hours soaking up the sun and luxuriating in the Adriatic ocean.

 

 

For a trip segment packed with travel annoyances and frustrations, Venice had a tall order in improving our moods. We left Francesca and her city nearly floating with contentment and looking forward to what is truly the end of our journey. 

Living the dream in Lido

We do not speak your language, and other roadblocks

I have to say, I had virtually no expectations for Germany. Seriously, what do you think of when you hear the word "Germany"? Beer, sausages, and the Holocaust. I vaguely remember seeing an Anthony Bourdain show on Berlin, and he seemed to like it...

We stayed at the Wombats City Hostel, which had a great kitchen, a rooftop bar, cheap breakfast, and en suite dorm rooms. We arrived in the early afternoon and made it to the 4pm Sandeman Free City Tour. The thing about a Berlin city tour is that the focus is pretty exclusively World War II, and at one point we stood in the parking lot of an apartment complex and learned that we were about 12 meters above what was once Hitler's bunker, which was dug in front of his massive chancellory. "And over there, about where that willow tree is, is where his body was burned after he committed suicide." Grim. 

Equally as grim was hearing about the events that nearly spurred World War III between the USSR and the USA, namely the October 1961 standoff that was caused by US diplomat Allan Lightner who refused to show paperwork to Soviet officers when crossing Checkpoint Charlie to take his wife to the Opera in East Berlin. This minor debate of border crossing procedure escalated over the course of a few hours, ending with Army generals on either side lining up tanks on either side of the wall and waiting to hear if they should start firing. 

To lighten the tone of our visit, the next day we did an Alternative Tour, which focused on street art throughout Berlin's neighborhoods. It was unique and interesting, and ended in a really cool abandoned warehouse-complex-turned-artist-community that housed restaurants, beer gardens, clubs, a skate park, an antique shop, a rock climbing wall, and lots of space for local artists to come graffiti to their hearts content. We spent the afternoon with fellow American traveler Mandy hanging out in the beer garden watching a possession arrest and generally enjoying the good weather.

 

On our last day in Berlin, we visited the museum underneath the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which offers an exploration of who the persecuted Jewish families were, and whether or not they made it home from their imprisonment. There were letters and poems written by prisoners as well as lots of photos and backgrounds about people from all over Europe. I had read a New Yorker article that skewered the above-ground memorial for being too abstract in concept, and complained that it wasn't explained who the murdered Jews were, which would lead to us all forgetting. You can read the article yourself if you are interested, but the spoiler is that the author didn't bother visiting the attached museum, which is poor journalism and renders the argument entirely invalid. You don’t stand outside a library shaking your fist because no books are printed on the building. 

Berlin has owned up to its sordid history, it doesn't ignore it like the US has done with Japanese internment camps, or Disney-fy it like the US has done with Williamsburg. This was a very well constructed experience, I absolutely recommend it. We also visited the Topography of Terror exhibit in an excavated Gestapo prison, and that was also fascinating because it highlighted the experience of the common man living in Berlin throughout Hitler's reign. Even walking around Berlin and knowing that the history you've learned about happened right here isn't as jarring as learning that the street your hostel is on was subject to attacks during Kristallnacht, and that the park you are walking through was effectively a refugee camp for Berliners who were homeless and starving through the last few years of the war. I guess you think only of two groups: the persecuted Jews and minorities or the wealthy blonde "Aryan" families.  Of course the truth is so much more complicated.

 *Ed. Note: I've just looked at my smugmug photos again, and I don't want to trivialize what we saw at the two museums I mentioned, so I'm not posting them here, but you should really look at them in full size because they are heartbreaking. We can never forget that humans did this to each other, and still do.

Whew. Well to lighten up our moods, Sally and I walked from downtown Berlin all the way to Kreuzberg, referred to as the Brooklyn of Berlin. It wasn't nearly as full of hipsters as I imagined, we found quiet leafy streets with cafes at which to take a break, plus shops and restaurants.  About 12 miles into our day, we got an email from a traveler friend, Andrew, about a bar with a great view of the city. It was sort of hard to find, he said, but a local had told him it was worth it. We weren't far and it was 7pm, so we followed the directions...which led us to a rather uninspiring indoor mall. We went in and got in an elevator to the fifth floor...which turned out to be an empty parking garage. 

Just as Sally and I thought we were going to be murdered, I remembered that Mandy had mentioned this place, so we walked around the bend and there it was: a gorgeous rooftop garden bar with live music and, as promised, a great view of downtown Berlin! Andrew and Joe showed up about an hour later and we had a great time watching the sun set, talking about our travels and real lives. And when Andrew said he would take us to the best curry wurst spot in the city at 2am, of course we went. Sally even ate one bite of curry wurst and didn't die, so all in all it was a spectacular visit.

Until the next morning. The lesson we have learned, which we probably should have known all along, is that you don't go raging until 3am when you have to be at a train or bus station early the next morning. On the upside, you'll be able to sleep on the train, right? Nope. Because even though you bought two tickets from Berlin to Prague, you didn't buy reserved seats, so if none are available, you get to stand crammed into a two-foot wide hallway on the train for the first two and a half hours of your trip. Thanks for that Germany.

When we finally reached Prague we were 100% sober and 100% cranky. We checked into the Hostel Downtown and thanked our lucky stars that our hostel experiences are only getting better and better. Our sixth floor 8 bed dorm was enormous and had a huge window overlooking the beautiful Prague Castle. It also had computers and a great kitchen, helpful staff, delicious breakfast, and loads of activities for guests, so our moods improved significantly upon arrival. We of course did another Sandeman tour, which was a great introduction to the city because truly, I know less about Prague than Berlin!

Prague was initially settled in 500 BC by a Celtic tribe called the Boii. They moved to the area and called it Home of the Boii, aka Bohemia. Fast forward 1900 years and Prague was the site of a Protestant revolution before Luther even had one thesis written down. In the early 1400s, followers of Jan Hus believed in increased access to religion for the common man, translations and full communions, etc, and regularly threw opponents out of windows to highlight their feelings (I love that it's called defenestration). And 400 years after that, Prague was home to the largest Ashkenazi Jewish population, and built a Jewish quarter so iconic that when Hitler took over Prague, he planned to leave the neighborhood intact to serve as "a memorial to an extinct race." Yikes. By the end of World War I, Czechoslovakia divorced itself from the Austro-Hungarian empire by writing a Dear John letter of independence, which was only the first of many citizen-driven revolts. The next came on May 5, 1945, when Czechs took to the streets armed with whatever they had and absolutely destroyed the local Nazi regime, killing thousands and sending the rest into retreat. Three days later, the Soviet army came to town to "liberate Prague" and found the job already accomplished...so they took over themselves. Poor Czechs. In 1989, they initiated another revolution, against the Soviets, and freed themselves of communism since no one else was going to help. And finally, when the Czechs and Slovaks decided they were better off as friends, they amicably divorced into separate countries in 1993.

So to boil it down, for a region originally settled in 500BC, it is crazy to think that the Czech Republic is technically the same age as Sally.  

This tour set off a fun few days in Prague. We walked and walked, seeing weird statues on the Stare Mesto side of the river (two robotic men statues that actively urinated streams of water that wrote out Kafka quotes, giant faceless babies on their knees that people were riding), watching a tv show being filmed, and dining at an Asian vegan buffet where Sally, traumatized from lack of pizza options, was proud of herself for eating white rice, corn and peas, and battered cauliflower. I was too. We also conducted extensive and thoroughly researched beer comparison experiments. One night, for example, we shared a tasting of 15 different local Czech beers! Then, to be fair and balanced, we sought out the local cocktail scene, heading to Bar and Books, a swanky lounge that was empty at 9pm, and consumed what trip advisors called "London-level expensive" cocktails but was in reality no more than $7.00. 

The night of our educational imbibing tour, we also went to one of the famous club complexes everyone raved about. Partying till six in the morning is pretty standard for all the hostel-goers we met in Prague (and everywhere else to be honest) and though we enjoy a good night bar/pub hopping until the wee hours, this sort of dance club was just beyond us. It had five floors with different music on each level, an ice bar on the ground floor, a eastern european lady in a bikini writhing on a stage on the R&B floor, and then a chill-out floor for, I don't know, taking a nap or having an orgy during your visit. We didn't recognize any of the music on either the R&B floor or the Radio Hits floor, and the electronika floor was packed with 15 year olds, which I mean literally, not figuratively. A guy tried to hit on Sally by telling her she was too old. Cool guy. We were pretty much done there by 1am, right when the hordes of supremely drunk British and German bachelor parties started arriving. 

We weren't just pickling our livers though; we visited Prague Castle, the Lennon wall, the Bone Church of Kutna Hora, learned about Czech generals who defeated dozens of invading armies over the centuries, saw the world's oldest Astronomical clock which performed an exciting spectacle on the hour, I tried wild boar goulash with gingerbread dumplings and a traditional kidney bean dish, we drank coffee in an endless stream, and Sally ate more pizza.

Before we knew it we were waiting for our train to Munich. Which became a train to a random town, then a bus from that town to another town, then back on the train for half an hour because Germany is literally trying to kill us.

We were relieved to arrive in Regensburg to see the smiling faces of Holtgrieve family friend Alex and his mate Nick, who prepared a sign for us with obligatory beer stein. We knew immediately that we'd be good friends. Sally and Alex had met in Virginia ten or more years ago, when she was a scampering forest child and he was a quiet German who didn't speak much English, so they had a lot to catch up on as we drove through the city to the family homestead. We were warmly received and shown around, and after a quick shower we headed back out with the guys for a welcome drink at a few local pubs, then over to a friends house for cards, beer, and conversation. I clearly remember going to bed at 1:30am, after saying goodnight to Sally before she went scampering through the Bavarian forest until dawn. 

The next morning Alex and Nick were kind enough to show us around Regensburg, a beautiful medieval city spanning the Danube river with sandy-colored cobblestones, a sunny town park, and a crazy architecture story. I know you're dying to hear it! Apparently in the 13th century two architects challenged each other to a construction competition. One would build the town cathedral, the other a very important bridge, but whoever finished first would be the winner. First of all, a bridge is a lot easier to build, especially if it's not detailed with carvings, so I'm not sure why anyone was surprised when the bridge guy won, but they say he bargained with the devil to finish faster, and the first four souls that crossed would be sent directly to hell. So the architect sent four goats across when the bridge was completed. Cheeky! Also, since the cathedral architect was so distraught he'd lost that he threw himself to his death in the river. Germans are serious about their bets. 

 

 While in Regensburg, Alex and family brought us to a local German restaurant/biergarten for a traditional Bavarian meal of Schnitzel. The portions of pork schnitzel and french fries were so large Sally and I could share, and she actually ate some and liked it! This is when we developed our hypothesis that she would eat anything if it were fried. Good policy. Then home again for a quiet night in; we broke the news to Alex that we were going to sightsee in Munich the next day...at 8am. He immediately regretted offering to go with us.  Off we went, and spent a full day in Munich doing the 3 hour Sandeman city tour, watching the glockenspiel performance in Mary's Square, eating Kass Spaetzle at Durnbrau (Sally tried it when I told her it was German mac n cheese), checking out the electricity demonstration at the German Museum, and of course, just walking around for miles. 

On our last day with the family, we went on a five mile daylight hike through the Bavarian forest, and I was rather disappointed that it wasn't filled with trolls and gingerbread houses. In Munich we walked through the Englischer Garten and marveled at the brave souls surfing on the city's man-made wave in an otherwise placid creek. Lined in concrete, and the wave itself formed between concrete berms, surfing here seems dangerous, but people were queued up to give it their all. We drank beers on the bridge and watched them admiringly.

 

Germany decided to send us on our way with a final twist of the screw in regards to train travel: though I purchased my tickets over a month ago, and had them mailed to Regensburg for simplicity's sake (printing was not an option, unlike every other ticket I've bought for this trip), the postal service has been on strike and our tickets never arrived. So though I had paid for two tickets, reserved two beds, and even had the car and bed assignments, I was told the only way I would be able to leave Germany was to pay 300 additional Euros for two brand new tickets. My rage and impotence in this matter cannot even be spoken of coherently. At least we got to leave.