Wrap Up

Even for our peculiar style of travel, Eastern Europe seemed like  an unlikely destination. In fact, in spite of our desire to go there, both of us had some doubts and negative expectations. My major  concern was the languages and how that would affect road signs and directions. That turned out not to be an issue at all.

Brian did pull out the Google Translate (never leave the U.S. without it) a few times, but English truly has become a universal language. Most everywhere the road signs are in the countries’ native language as  well as English. Everywhere except Poland, the majority of all signs are bilingual with many just in English, and everywhere we went, there were lots of bilingual people. In  Poland, however, we saw very few bilingual signs, and we ran into more folks that didn’t speak English. We found Romanian a little easier to pronounce, since it’s based on a Latin language and many words came from French and Italian. Hungarian is based on Magyar, which came from Mongolia and we couldn’t wrap or tongues around it. Czech and Polish are Slavic languages and they both use too many consonants and way too few vowels. And they use “Z” and other 2-letter consonants that sound nothing like we are used to. We would end this with “goodbye” but we never learned how to say it anywhere. Or “please”. Or “thank you.”

Another pleasant surprise was the ease in driving and arriving by air from one E.U. country to another. No passport check, no immigration control.  Driving was also a pleasant surprise. The roads were excellent, even the back country roads, and the service stations had convenience stores that were clean and well stocked.  What did not work so well was the navigation systems. It took the car’s system and my IPad together and yet even then we found ourselves going in a circle in Czechia, as we explored every back road looking for a motorway.

The European equivalent of Uber is Bolt, which is awesome … until it isn’t. We used it almost everyday and everywhere with great results until we found ourselves in Prague’s old town, late at night, and Bolt rejected every single one of our credit cards. By good old fashioned luck we had enough cash to get back to our hotel. It failed us one other time, in Krakow, when their system couldn’t find us. But on the whole, it’s an easy and user friendly way to get around.

We discovered that we don’t much like Polish Food, that Hungary’s use of paprika is great, that Romanian food wasn’t appealing at all, and that the Prague’s pig knuckle sounds horrible but is actually delicious.  It is also very obvious that American fast food is no longer the dominant universal cuisine. Pizza, pasta, and sushi have stolen that title. 

This echoes our observation that, both in Europe and Asia, being American no longer has the same cache as it used to have. Nobody is impressed or particularly interested anymore, but it’s still great fun and really interesting to talk to people from other countries. That brings us full circle to our gratitude that English has become an almost universal language, and is a required subject in schools starting in early elementary and continuing through high school. Except in Poland. 

We never dreamed that anyone would be interested in following along as we bumble through our journeys, but we are amazed and grateful for your continued friendship, concern, and interest. It means the world to us! I used to think that with practice, we could become  smooth, sophisticated world travelers that never embarrassed ourselves, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that time will run out before that happens. During the Asia trip last May, I was repeatedly offered services and assistance due to looking my age. This time it was Brian’s turn and both times we were shocked because we still see ourselves as young and as capable as we were on our first trip 43 years ago.  So time marches on and we will too, warts and all, and hope that y’all will still want to hear all about it next time. 

Over and out, from your drive by tourists. 

Huh?

 Here we are, in Frankfurt for the night, and once again we completely changed our  plan for the day.  We had intended to drop our bags off at the hotel, hop a Bolt taxi to downtown, ride the Hop On Hop Off  and finish with our favorite German food for dinner.

As usual though, we overestimated our energy, and getting into the hotel was strange to say the least. It was a really long walk from our arrival gate to the airport hotel, but we got lucky and our room was available early. And that’s when the fun began.  The instructions from the desk clerk went something like , “ go that way, and then turn this way and go around the next corner and get on next elevator and go down to level E-1  and then get off, look for the fitness center, go around it and down some corridor that you’ll see and find another elevator and take it to the 7th floor and turn left and go down another corridor then turn right and at the end of that you’ll be at your room. And to get downtown you need to go back down the walkway toward the terminal, but not that far - just to where the trains are,  but don’t take the train, keep going down till you get to the underground and take train numbered something toward someplace but get off at the Central station and when you come back you take this other train going to someplace but get off at the airport stop.” 

Huh?

We needed a little guidance from an employee we met along the way, but we did find that second elevator. The sight that greeted us, however, looked like we were on some service elevator in some sub basement for employees. By the time we drug ourselves into the room we were so tired we failed to close the door!  We just couldn’t face trying to go through anything else and simultaneously decided to stay in the room and watch movies all afternoon. Besides, I have the recipes so I’ll just cook my own German dinner.

 

Guns can be fun

 Everything comes to an end and we are both ready to  come home. We spent our last day in Poland doing one thing that was quick but super fun, and the other that was much longer and very thought provoking. The thought provoking activity was a tour of Schindler’s factory. It’s actually not the factory - which is still there, but empty. The tour is of the admin. building which has become a museum about the Nazi occupation, how the Poles handled it, the establishment of the Ghetto, the emptying of that Ghetto to the death camps, and how Schindler saved 1200 Jewish lives. The exhibits are interesting and very well  done.

The quick activity was one of the best things we did on this trip. We went to a gun range and with 100 rounds each shot: a Glock, a Walther PPK, a revolver and a shotgun. Those weren’t too much fun, but the automatic weapons are what made this excursion so great.  I found the M4 heavy and hard to hold, but the Kalashnikov AK47was a lot easier and the kick wasn’t terrible like shotguns are. The best by far were the Evo Scorpion pistol (very, very scary looking but easy to use. Wouldn’t fit  in a purse , though) and the Israeli Uzi, which is light and has no kick. It’s the only gun I ever wished to own.  These pics are our targets and I think you can easily guess which one is mine and which one is the sharpshooter Brian.

Tomorrow we head to Frankfurt for an overnight layover, then Thursday will be a long, long flight back to JAX.  One more post with my final musings, then the drive by tourists will unpack and stay home until next May.

Auschwitz-Birkenau and the salt mine

Today is very cold, gray, dreary, and rainy.  Seems very appropriate for a tour of  Auschwitz.  One picture is all I’m posting from there, but if you really want to see the rest, just let me know. 

The second part of today’s activity involved a descent way down deep into a salt mine.  Well at least for Brian.  When I learned that the descent involved 800 stair steps, followed by a 2 hour walking tour of different levels in the mine, I wasn’t thrilled. But when our guide told me that the lift back to the surface wasn’t always working,  there was no way that I could face 800 steps back up, particularly after a 4 hour walk at Auschwitz. 

So Brian went and took these pictures. Everything you see is rock salt. All the floors, ceilings, walls, and all the carvings. The most amazing thing to me are the chandeliers which are made of salt.

 

 Reporting in from Krakow Poland.  This is a lovely, and lively city, with centuries of  interesting history. The Main Market Square in the old town is Kraków’s city  center and our hotel is on the square. The square is surrounded by sidewalk restaurants, shops, and kiosk vendors. In the center is the Cloth Hall, dating from the 1300’s, and is probably the oldest shopping center in the world. There seems to be crowds of people and things going on all the time. 

Yesterday we took a golf cart tour of the city, the Jewish Quarter, and the Ghetto, then went to a Polish Dinner Show. Today we took a tour to Zakopane, a resort town in the mountains. In that area, there are a whole lot of houses made from huge, squared logs, and with intricate decorative details using wood on wood. Very beautiful.  Here are some pics.

The last remaining section of the Ghetto Wall; Cloth Hall; the dinner show; wooden houses and a wooden church; on the mountain looking down at Zakopane; in Zakopane.

A new way to Drive By

This morning we did the Soviet BMP. It was on a former Soviet Army base and the owner is Czech Special Forces. We had to wait a bit to start cause they had just found an unexploded Soviet bomb where the BMP was parked and the bomb squad was out removing it. I ended up not driving- just riding on top . Great fun! The thing was so big I couldn’t get up on it. No ladder, but it was parked in a concrete recycling place and one of those guys saw us trying to figure out how I was going to get up. He came over and volunteered a front end loader. They brought it over, he and I stepped in and it lifted us up like an elevator. Brian did the driving and I hung on the little turret. We drove about an hour over very large ruts, but I only got scared a couple of times; once when Brian sped up and once when the rut was very, very deep.

Prague

 How glorious! A whole day without us embarrassing or disgracing ourselves! Just hanging out In Prague, seeing the sights in style, and dining in a dark cellar- medieval style.

Odds and Ends

Never in all my life could I have possibly guessed that this little port-a-potty, on a house construction site in some little unnamed Slovakian suburb, would be the best sight I’ve had all day.  And that begs the question of how and why. 

So, as they do on TV and in the movies, let’s go back and look at what happened during the past 30 hours. Everything started pleasantly enough. We had a private tour, with a terrific guide, to a charming, if touristy, little town full of shops and cafes. There was even an optical shop which was handy when my glasses fell apart in one of the stores. My favorite shop was full of locally made Hungarian folkloric items. The owner showed me how to tell genuine Hungarian objects from cheap stuff from China. Of course I had to buy some things. We continued the tour with a visit to the remains of a castle high on a hill, just to see the view of the Danube. We finished up our Budapest activities last night with a great Segway tour up Castle Hill. We all got a laugh when our tour guide from Kazakhstan, introduced himself, “ Hi, I’m Beka” and I said, “so am l”.

It was a really good day, and we happily left Budapest early this morning so we could do our laundry somewhere on the way to Prague. It wasn’t long before we realized that today was not going to be as easy as yesterday.  The first rude awakening came when we stopped at a service area on the motorway and had to pay to pee. We also had a very difficult time finding the parking lot for the laundromat, but after nearly half an hour, we stumbled upon it. It then took us another half an hour to figure out how to use the machines, but eventually we left, resupplied with clean clothes. 

The big problem arose with an email from our credit card fraud unit. We called them and learned that there were 4 suspicious charges that we needed to confirm that we did indeed make. The agent helping us had a very thick accent and we were having trouble understanding him. Neither one of us recognized the first charge (that’s when the panic starts), and told him that we had not made that one. We felt better when we recognized the other three charges, and that’s when I realized that the one we just denied was to the lovely lady in the folkloric shop. I immediately told the agent that I remembered the first charge and it was valid.  Unfortunately, once he marked an item as denied he couldn’t change it. We begged, we asked for a supervisor, but he insisted that the only way the merchant could get paid would be for us to go back to her store and pay her again. Impossible; but also unthinkable that we would stiff her. We ended up calling our wonderful guide on that excursion and he agreed to tell her to resubmit and if she still had any problems, he was to give her our phone number. Maybe that will work. I think he will do it because he was surprised and impressed that we were trying to make it right.

We finally got back on the road , but just after we crossed into Slovakia, I got hit really hard with a bout of, hmm how to delicately say this? The tourista? Montezuma’s revenge? Get it?

We were on the motorway with no visible solution. I saw what looked like a town on the map and Brian took the exit. No town. By this time I’m desperate. We end up in a residential area with no salvation around. Now I’m praying and that’s when Brian slams on the brakes and says, there’s a port-a-potty. And what a port-a-potty! The cleanest I’ve ever seen, no odor at all, and lots of tp. A true answer to a prayer. 

It took a little while to make our way back to the motorway but shortly  thereafter we entered the Czech Republic and found something else that amused us. We stopped for gas and when Brian went in the convenience store to pay, I asked him to also get a bottle of cold water. He came back with orange juice because no where in the store was there any cold water. There was however, loads of 20 oz. bottles of ice cold vodka!

Szentendre:

Decorating with umbrellas and lampshades

View from Visegrád Castle 

Parliament and the Castle from Castle Hill.

Budapest at last

 Getting from Bucharest to Budapest isn’t particularly easy. Driving the 10 hours wasn’t an option because we needed a one way rental, and the train took 16 hours. Best choice? Fly, and Eurowings, a low cost German airline, was the cheapest.

Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t pay to go the cheap way, the tickets they sold us would have us arriving at 3:30pm. We finally got here 6 hrs later.  By then I was exhausted, frustrated, and angry. Even Brian, who doesn’t get emotional, described the day as a total beating. 

But, as tired as we were, discovering what a mistake I had made in our choice of hotel just made us laugh. We are in a riverboat on the Danube with the best possible view of the river and city. Sounds like a cool place- a novelty and perfectly located, right?

All true, but our cabin is so tiny that the bed is in an alcove, just inches away from the walls, so I have to climb in and out. There is no place for luggage, and the whole room lists heavily to starboard. It’s uphill to the bathroom, but that whole room is slanted to the port side. It feels like one of those touristy, antigravity, mystery houses.  And, although the description said they had a restaurant, turns out that it’s just where they serve breakfast and the minibar was cold but empty.  

Sooooo, that’s why I didn’t post a blog entry.

The world looks a whole lot brighter after sleep and food!  Our Budapest visit began with a strudel cooking lesson. We made three kinds of strudel- apple, cheese, and zucchini, and added cheeses, salami and wine for lunch. It was delicious but no, we won’t be making strudel at home. Everything was easy until it came to stretching the dough. It had to be stretched so thin that you could read a newspaper through it.  Needless to say, we kept tearing holes snd you can’t fix those. 

After the class we rode the Hop On Hop Off bus  and ended the day with a Hungarian dinner. Goulash! And yes, I’ll definitely be making that in the future.  Tomorrow we have an excursion to a medieval village and a fortress away from the city.  We will finish our visit tomorrow night with a nighttime Segway tour. Budapest is a very lovely city especially at night. 

Our hotel 

The Parliament 

Goulash Stew