Month: October 2019

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest is great at night. It’s a very safe city, but the street lights are so dim that you feel like you’re in the deep dark bowels of a dangerous metropolis. Very atmospheric.

It’s also great during the day. You may recall that I disliked Prague for being too busy. Budapest is also quite busy, but it feels like a real city for people to live in, and not like a massive tourist theme park. It may help that the big sights are a bit more spread out, so its tourists aren’t all jammed quite so close together.

There’s lots to see in Budapest. You could spend an entire day just wandering around the castle district atop its hill on the Buda side of the river (Budapest used to be two cities named Buda and Pest, on either side of the Danube). There are ruined castle walls, a palace, churches, and a beautiful view of the Pest side of the river. Near the castle is an even larger hill, a forested park, with the massive freedom monument commanding the city from its summit, a woman holding a feather gazing across the city. It’s a good walk to get up there.

I found a pinball museum, and took a break from the busy city to refresh my senses with a series of rooms filled with over one hundred pinball machines, all of which were playable. Of course they weren’t all being played at once, but it was a noisy place, and a fun place. I’m not much good at pinball, I don’t have much practice, but it sure is entertaining. It was nice to do something outside of the ordinary travelling experience.

I haven’t talked about food in a few posts. Czechia and Slovakia didn’t have bad food, but it wasn’t anything to write about. Hungary on the other hand, has very good food, and very good prices. You may have heard of goulash, it’s very tasty. Chicken paprikas is chicken in a creamy paprika sauce, served with funny little noodles. Or you can have it with palacsinta, which are basically crepes, which of course you can also have for dessert with chocolate or jam. All delicious, all affordable. You can get a meal with a beer for $8 Canadian or under, including a tip.

Speaking of tipping, up until Czechia tipping wasn’t a thing in the countries I visited. These last few countries however, a 10% tip is the polite thing to do. It’s tricky though. If you’re paying by card you have to tell your server how much to charge you. Debit machines don’t have a function like in Canada where it asks you how much you want to tip and you punch in an amount or a percentage. So you look at the bill, figure out 10%, add it to your total, and ask the server to charge that much. Except that for some reason the servers always enter your total into the machine the moment they give you the bill, as if they don’t want a tip, and I feel rude saying, “no no, cancel that and charge me this much please”, so mostly I’ve been tipping with spare change.

Well there you have it, an all too brief stop in Hungary and I’m off again. Szia!

Photos be here.

High Tatras, Slovakia

I took a short break from the cities and took myself to the mountains for some relaxation. I found a place to stay in the village of Nová Lesná, nestled at the foot of the High Tatra mountains. The Tatras are jagged, rocky mountains without much in the way of foothills, so they rise without warning from the gently rolling hills below. Having spent time in the Canadian Rockies, the High Tatras are familiar, but small in comparison. They are no less beautiful however.

I did some light hiking of course. I never made it to any spectacular locations because I didn’t know where I was going or how long it would take to get there. I simply found a trail, which was well marked, and set off along it until I figured I should head back. Maybe there was something incredible just around the next corner, but I’ll never know. I was still hiking in beautiful landscapes, I just never reached a destination.

There are definitely huts further into the mountains, so you could go for several days walking from hut to hut. I also suspect that the huts are well stocked, as I saw several porters carrying massive loads of supplies along the trails. Presumably there was food in their styrofoam coolers, but they were also carrying kegs of beer and boxes of wine.

After so long being primarily in large cities, especially after the busyness of Prague, it was a delight to spend time in nature and in a small village. I think I’ve recuperated myself fairly well. In fact I need to have done so, since my next stop is Budapest, and I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that it will be a little bit busy itself.

Time is flying by. I’ve been in Europe for a month and a half now. I’ve seen so much. Nine different countries, seventeen ‘places’, and many a train and bus. And yet there is so much still to see. I’ve barely scratched the surface in the places I’ve been too, and I’ve yet to step foot in the Balkans. So, if all goes well I’ll be in Europe for some time yet. Thanks for reading.

And thanks for looking at the photos, which you’ll find here.

Bratislava, Slovakia

I zipped quite quickly through Bratislava on my way to more remote areas of Slovakia, but I managed to enjoy my time there nonetheless. It’s a fairly small, quiet city, which was just what I needed after the hell of Prague. Maybe Bratislava could use some sprucing up, but then it might become boring.

I was wandering the city centre with no real plan for myself, when I heard the sound of English being spoken. I had stumbled upon a free walking tour that was just about to begin, with a guide who sounded entertaining. It was a 20th century tour of the city, WWII and communism in other words. Perfect.

So I found myself walking round the city learning about the fun times of communism and seeing the beautiful Communist buildings.

The Communist government was sneaky, rather than anger people by destroying churches, they planted nice trees that would obscure the church from view. They built a beautiful central square, but made it inconvenient for gathering in, with an incredibly noisy fountain and metal benches that were either scorching hot or freezing cold. But they also had free university, if you could prove you were a good communist, and there were many clean, safe, public toilets, which fell into disrepute after the fall of communism and today have been transformed into bars and coffee shops.

The Slovakian Radio and Television building has been listed as one of the ugliest in the world. Some people are just afraid of anything that is different. This inverted pyramid with a metal exoskeleton is a very handsome building. Not only that, but those crazy commies actually built excellent recording studios inside of it. So good in fact that acclaimed film composer Hans Zimmer records many of his soundtracks there, and every country’s national anthems for the Olympic Games are also recorded within.

The Slavin War Memorial is the largest war cemetery in Central Europe (I’m not in Eastern Europe yet folks!). Six mass graves contain about 7000 soldiers of the Red Army who died liberating Slovakia from the Nazis. Liberating may be a strong word for ‘exchanging Facism for Communism’ but it’s a nice war memorial.

The city also has an old town (as usual), and a castle, but I didn’t get a chance to see much of that. You have to pay for the castle, so it’s no great loss. I’ll talk to you next time from the High Tatras. Good day.

Photos.

Brno, Czechia

I went to Brno for two reasons. The Capuchin Crypt, and the Ossuary. Nothing but death in this post.

The crypt is beneath the Capuchin monastery. Throughout the years the brothers as well as some benefactors of the order were buried in said crypt. The benefactors in coffins, the brothers simply laying on the ground with a brick under their heads as dictated by the order. Rather conveniently the crypt turned out to be a nice dry environment in which the bodies slowly dried and were mummified rather than decomposing, and there they remain. The mummification wasn’t perfect of course, so the bodies look pretty wretched today, somewhere between mummies and skeletons.

The Ossuary in Brno is apparently the second largest after the Paris Catacombs. Naturally this piqued my interest. Unfortunately, while it’s true that they did find the most bones stored in tunnels under the city, they removed most of the bones and what you can visit today is quite a small area that really lacks authenticity. Nevertheless, there were piles of bones and skulls, so I enjoyed it.

Photos be here. I’ll put the photos of the Ossuary first, with a warning before you get to the photos of mummies in case you’re squeamish.

Prague, Czechia

Prague is just as beautiful as everyone says. It’s impossible not to look like a tourist there because your gaze is constantly pulled upwards to the incredible architecture looming overhead. Prague is also my least favourite city so far. You’ll want your gaze pulled upwards because at eye level all you’ll see are hordes of tourists and tourist traps. Admittedly, as a tourist, I am part of the problem, but I wish I hadn’t been.

I’ve been getting a little bit off the beaten path on my trip so far, but I’ve still been going to tourist sites. Prague has sadly taken touristy to the next level, and it was far from peak season while I was there. You’ll see in some of my photos just how packed the city was. It’s been years since I’ve been in Paris, but I don’t remember it being this crazy.

There was still some good however. St. Vitus Cathedral is a beautiful, looming, Gothic cathedral with one of the best interiors I’ve seen in a church. A towering vaulted ceiling is illuminated by sunlight sparkling from resplendent stained glass. It was pretty nice. I even managed to find an excellent attraction that was free of charge(!), which felt miraculous in Prague. I stumbled upon the St. Cyril and Methodist Cathedral, so I took a look inside. It was there that I discovered the church had a crypt, with free entry! Not only was it a crypt, but it was a crypt of historical significance. During the Second World War seven resistance fighters hid out and then fought their last stand in the crypt after assassinating the Nazi in command of Czechoslovakia. They had detailed information about Czechoslovakia during WWII, the plan and execution of the assassination, the horrific retribution of the Nazis upon the populous, and the eventual betrayal of the assassins’ location.

While in Prague I also made a day trip to the town of Kutna Hora, renowned for its ossuary. This was a chapel which has been decorated with bones and skulls. Basically, graveyards run out of space so they dig up the bones to make room and they store them inside. Soon, there are so many bones inside that they need to stack them neatly for efficient storage. Whoever’s tasked with stacking the bones gets bored and creates art out of them, such as a chandelier and a coat of arms. The church doesn’t mind this macabre display because it serves as a memento mori, a reminder that we will die, so we should lead a good life (although why bother given that Jesus has died for all our sins). Anyhow, I enjoy the macabre, so I enjoyed Sedlec Ossuary. If you don’t like the macabre, too bad. There’s even more dead bodies in the future of this blog.

In conclusion, don’t go to Prague.