The day we arrived in Budapest, we were very disoriented. The East train station was a bunch of rails, a roof, and not much else. We couldn't find a map anywhere. We ended up navigating using google maps over Lauren's phone. After a false start in completely the wrong direction, we finally started heading towards our hotel.

It was a long walk, and a very hot day. The walk was really fascinating, walking through a city we've never seen before without anyone to show us the way. But the incident that sticks out most in my mind is something that happened pretty close to the beginning of the trek. We were walking alongside one of the many construction sites in Budapest, and a man in front of us walking towards us starts laughing. He came toward me, announced in very broken English that I am a good man, hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, then resumed walking past us. I was kind of shocked into speechlessness for a few moments, before Lauren suggested I check my pockets. I did, and nothing was missing, even though I did have some spare change in one of my open pockets. I guess he was just really friendly.

And that kind of set a tone for the whole excursion. Budapest was a place filled with the unexpected. Whether it was the gorgeous tiled roofs on so many of the buildings, or the giant cliffs right next to the river on the Buda side of town, or the insanely-gorgeous Parliament building.

Of course, not all was good. It was pretty plain that Hungary was hit really hard by Communism. Much more so in Prague, Budapest showed signs of just how bad things got. There were still buildings on the street that were damaged back during the revolt in 1956. We visited a Communist statue park outside of town, which was full of cool old statues, but also put into perspective just how controlled Hungary was by the Russians. There were fresh flowers on most of the memorials around town to those who stood against Communism, even the little monuments on the side of buildings in back streets. It was much more dramatic than anything I could have expected.

I really want to go back. I don't understand the language at all and the public transit system is much more confusing than Prague's, but still I was just so taken with the city and I want to spend more time exploring every corner and learning more about everything. So much of what's there is really really depressing, but the more I saw the more I was glad I went.

A few photos from Budapest

Since KC is writing about our travels to Budapest, I figured I would post some of our photos from the excursion.

Also, if you click on a picture it will become gigantic. Enjoy!

One of the really interesting things about Budapest is its lack of reconstruction post-WWII and -1956. I don't mean to imply that the whole city is in disrepair, it actually looks quite nice, but there are definitely places where you can still see the damage from these now-old conflicts. Our hotel was in the Jewish Quarter, which was once a ghetto but is now pretty bohemian-hip. This photo doesn't show it too clearly, but in that neighborhood especially there were many memorials and bits of evidence from WWII and the 1956 uprising. 

The exterior of St. Stephen's Basilica. This place is absolutely massive, and its chapel houses the mummified right hand of St. Stephen who died in the 11th Century. I found this a bit strange, but apparently it's a very important religious object.

See? We really did eat ice cream shaped like roses! And it was delicious!

KC took this photo at the top of an immense staircase leading up to the Buda Castle District. Great view, but SO many stairs! Later that day we found out that there is a funicular going straight up the hill, but walking up was actually rather neat (albeit tiring).

View of Budapest and the Danube River from Buda Castle. Buda is on the left side of the picture, and Pest is on the right. Beautiful city, right?

Fisherman's Bastion, in the Castle District. This structure is incredibly gorgeous and fascinating, but a large portion of it was fenced off due to construction. There is a ton of restoration and construction going on in Budapest, and we predict that the city will continue to become a more popular tourist destination as the years pass. I'm glad we got to see it before the rush!

Photo of KC and I, taken at Fisherman's Bastion. Budapest is really spectacular from all angles.

St. Matthew's Cathedral in the Buda Castle district. This building is also under construction for stone restoration and the like, but still looked quite nice on the outside (we didn't go in). I really love the patterned roof tiles - a lot of roofs in Budapest have bright, stunning mosaic patterns. It's too bad more cities haven't adopted this roofing style, as it's immensely pleasing. 

This is the Dohany Street Synagogue, built around 1850 only a few blocks from our hotel in Pest. According to the tour guide, who had a NY accent and was named Reuben, this is "the first and second largest synagogue in the world." It seats fewer people than Temple Emmanuel in New York City, but has more physical space. The building is really ornate for a synagogue, and actually looks kind of like a church (except for the stars of David, Holocaust Memorial, lack of angel/biblical frescoes, large number of Jews, etc.). It was quite interesting to see this place, as Hungary's Jewish community appears to be thriving today but was decimated during the Holocaust (Hungary was a German ally, and was also rather anti-Semitic to begin with). The cemetery outside of the synagogue is probably about one-fourth of an acre, but has over 8,000 people buried there in mass graves. During WWII, the small but populous Jewish district was walled off as a ghetto and no supplies were allowed in, meaning many people died from starvation and otherwise-curable illnesses. Visiting this place was yet another reminder of the realities of 20th-century conflicts in Central Europe. Although the cemetery and memorial were quite sobering, it was nice to see that the Jewish community in Budapest is thriving once again.

I guess this is a good place to add that Budapest is quite multicultural, which is cool. There is more ethnic variation than in Prague, which I think might be a product of Hungary's shifting rulers over the past millenia - Turkish, Magyar, Hapsburg, they've seen it all.

The Hungarian Parliament, as seen from the tower of St. Stephen's Basilica. The Parliament building is gorgeous, and looks like a cross between a gothic castle and a gothic church. It's spectacularly gothic and incredibly ornate.

KC and I on the tower of St. Stephen's Basilica.

On Saturday we went to Esceri, a flea market on the southern edge of town. They had a ton of interesting antiques for pretty reasonable prices, and we had a blast. However, we  forgot to eat lunch before leaving, so we had to buy this delicious fried potato dough topped with grated cheese. I don't remember what it was called, but holy cow was it greasy and delicious.

KC  has a million cameras. Ok, one of them is mine, but still - what a gangsta.

While we were in Budapest, KC and I visited a supremely strange place called Memento Park. After the fall of Communism, no one wanted Soviet statues or monuments anymore, so the founders of Memento Park collected a bunch of surviving one's from Central Europe and put them on a few acres outside of Budapest. Seeing these statues was bizarre and kind of depressing; I actually felt a bit guilty for paying money to see the imposed-idols that tyrannized this part of the world for so many years. Interesting, sure, but also quite sobering.

Silhouette of a Soviet statue.

Outside the park they had an old Soviet Trabant, which was apparently a notoriously unreliable automobile. This one was in particularly bad shape thanks to tourists breaking off pieces, but there was still enough of the car left for KC to squeeze inside and look ridiculous.

A Soviet-era radio.

I don't know what this building is, but the roof is absolutely gorgeous. This picture doesn't do it justice - the roof is a mosaic of green and yellow tiles that shine in the sun. KC was absolutely fascinated by it when we passed it on the tram, and we went back later so he could photograph it.

I really love Budapest, and I'm so glad we went. It's pretty different from  Prague, but comparing the two cannot convey the true nature of either city. I am so unbelievably fortunate to travel the way I am right now, and I plan to savor every moment of it. Everything we have done and seen so far has been amazing, and as cliche as it sounds, we'll remember this forever.

So Many Things, So Little Time

It's been a while, and a lot has happened so I'll talk about the little tidbits that stuck out in my mind. Picture uploading has been a slow process, so maybe more will get uploaded later? I dunno.

Hanging out with Veronika has been a rewarding experience. She's still a little shy but I think (hope) she's waring up to us, and can tell us things no guide book can. When we went to Troja chateau, she told us about how most bourgeois buildings survived the Communist era, but fell into severe disrepair as no one took care of them. When we were in the zoo, she translated signs and bits of random conversation around the zoo for us. We saw a group of ducklings walking across one of the paths between ponds, and a young Czech boy pointed at the ducks and loudly accused them of being spies. I wonder if all the dialogue we're missing is that awesome.

The day after that, we went to Kutna Hora. It's a small mining town outside of Prague, and it was full of interesting buildings. Our first stop was the Sedlec Ossuary, which was a building just outside of town decorated with the remains of 40,000 plague victims. It was kind of unsettling in there, but still a very cool experience. We walked through town a bit, and emerged by the Saint Barbara cathedral. This church has the same style roof as Denver International Airport, but it was designed and built in the early 17th century. It was amazing in there. But what was nicest about Kutna Hora, in my mind at least, was being in a smaller town and just soaking in the surrounding countryside. There were gorgeous views in every direction, the air was fresh, and we only ever ran into one large group of tourists.

Yesterday we woke up bright and early to head to Budapest by train. There is a lot to be said for train travel. It takes longer that flying, but it is really laid back, and wonderful to be able to stretch out and walk around the train cars. We passed through Slovakia, which was gorgeous, and we both agreed that visiting Bratislava might be a very worthy expenditure of time. Another nice feature of trains is you get to see wonderful things out the window. We saw this gigantic, incredible-looking basilica named Esztergom that we would have never discovered had we not looked out the window, and there's a pretty good chance we're going to spend Saturday there.

So here we are in Budapest, and I've finally alost caught up with the blog. This city is so awesome, and I feel like I've used that word a million times so far but I'm running out of words to describe this trip as the experience it is. The roofs on some of the older buildings here have multi-colored shingles on the to create patterns, and the effect is really nice. It makes otherwise grand buildings look just superb. We spent most of today in the castle district, looking at pretty buildings and walking up truly epic numbers of stairs. We walked around for close to seven hours, and we've still only scratched the surface of this city. We're going to do a whole lot more exploring tomorrow.

Oh man the food here is so good! We went to a Turkish place for lunch, and got gigantic volumes of high-quality food for really cheap. I got this spicy chicken that had what looked like half a cauliflower plant on top of it, covered in sauce and it came with a full plate of turkish rice, which is delicious enough on its own. Then, for dinner we went to a place down the street from our hotel and got arguably the best meal I've had in a long time. I got some homemade matzo ball soup, had an elderflower soda, with apple rhubarb pie topped with ginger and elderberry for dessert. Yesterday, we got ice cream, and the server shaped the scoops into the shape of roses (hard to explain - pictures to come). My expectations have been completely shattered.

So sorry for rambling, but there's been a lot to blog about and I've been too busy to write anything before now. There is still so much to talk about, but I didn't want to overwhelm you with a gigantic wall of text, or a more gigantic wall of text anyway. Suffice to say, this trip has been one of, if not the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Photos and Such

Sorry we haven't been blogging with any semblance of regularity - I've been too distracted by being in Prague to take the time to write about it! But do not fret, gentle reader, for I will do my best to inform you of what we have done since our last post.

(As I've said before, you can see some of our pictures here, however I've reached my monthly upload limit and can't post anything else until July 1. So instead, I'll post some photos here!)

We spent today at the Praha Zoo with Veronika, which was quite fun. I'll admit my expectations were not high, since I've never been a huge fan of zoos, but this place was quite nice. It is by far the most gigantic zoo I've ever seen, and even has a chairlift to transport patrons up a big hill. On the hillside, they have a neat mountain goat exhibit complete with craggy rockslopes, as well as an exhibit of North American elk and deer (they looked rather familiar). It was such a big place that we only saw a fraction of it, but we had a lovely time nevertheless. I really liked getting to spend more time with Veronika, too; although she's kind of quiet, I really like talking to her and learning more about Czech culture. Her hometown of Mělnik sounds really interesting, and hearing about it makes me want to see a few of the smaller towns outside of Prague.

The zoo had a free photo kiosk. We used it!

And more pictures!

Czech ice cream is unbelievably delicious, and generally not as expensive as American ice cream. Hooray!

This is a view of the Vltava River from the walls of Vysehrad, the ancient castle/fortress of Prague. Beautiful place. We happened to wander over there last week, and were astounded by it's beauty and massive fortress walls.

Dining with the Hare Krishna in Staré Město. So inexpensive, so delicious! We've had a lot of interesting foods here, and a number of them haven't been traditional Czech. Don't get me wrong -- Czech food is delicious, but we want to try everything while we're here! Actually, we even went to an Afgan restaurant in Nové Město the other day, and it was great.

We thought this sign was funny. I assume whoever designed it was unaware of the American euphemistic term "Sausage Fest."

This is the National Museum, located at the far end of Wenceslaw Square. We got to go there for free yesterday because it was Prague Museum Night, an annual event where all of the city's museums are open free of charge and there are special events going on until 01:00 am. It was really crowded and tiring, but absolutely fantastic! In addition to the National Museum, we also got to see the tower at Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) and the Museum of Music. The museums in Prague are amazing, and it was cool to see all of the different people who came out to Museum Night. It looked like the majority of people in the crowd were actually locals, which makes me thing Praguers are quite cultured indeed.

I surreptitiously took this photo while KC was photographing the National Museum. Note his adorably ridiculous facial expression, if you will.

We went hiking in Divoka Šarka yesterday, which is a great public park on the Northwestern edge of the city. 

Limestone cliffs overlooking a vast green valley.

And said green valley. So gorgeous.

I don't think blogger will let me put any more pictures in this post, so I will add more in a subsequent post. The past week has been fantastic, exciting, and exhausting. We've had a few difficulties with the language (yesterday KC and I somehow managed to get yelled at in Czech not once but twice, which was extremely awkward and embarrassing), but on the whole things are going quite well.

Also, if you are expecting a postcard from me, it might be significantly delayed or may not arrive at all. Turns out I was using incorrect postage for international mail - oh no! I'm trying to send out replacement postcards to everyone, but it may take a while so be patient.

Also also, a note on the blogs new tagline: in case you haven't already noticed, the tagline for this blog is now something like "live in hot fat and deleted the pelvis." This is Google's hilariously inaccurate translation of some all-Czech instructions on a package of palačinky mix KC and I attempted to cook. Palačinky is quite a difficult thing to make, and it's pretty safe to say we failed miserably.

The Czech word for ice cream is zmrzlina.

Today we started a bit later than usual (slept til 9:30), but still managed to see a ton of great sites around the city. We wandered around Mala Strana for a bit, which was nice but quite crowded. Turns out this city is a big tourist destination - who knew? After lunch we took the tram to Vysehrad, an old castle/fortress resting on some quite impressive cliffs along the Vlatava River. It's a very nice place, and the views from the top of the castle walls are absolutely incredible - we could see quite far down the river and into the lovely countryside. According to an exhibit there, the archaeological record for the region dates back to prehistoric times (around 3800 BC, I think), and there are a number of myths surrounding the area's history. Unfortunately, I do not remember the details of said myths, but suffice to say they were quite fascinating indeed.

While KC was in class yesterday I took a walk in Stromovka Park, which is only a few blocks from our apartment. I went just as the sun was peeking out after a big rainstorm, and it was absolutely gorgeous. This park might just be the most fairytale-like public place in existence. Stromovka used to be a royal hunting ground, and it is filled with tall leafy trees, lovely grass, and paths winding up and down the hillside. I had a great time just wandering around, and made sure to bring KC back later in the day.

The weather here can be pretty volatile, it seems. Yesterday especially. It rained until 8:30, was sunny from 8:30 to 10:00, stormed rather nastily from 10 to 11 (a storm which I was caught in), was sunny, stormed, was sunny, etc. etc. etc. I might even venture to say that the weather in Prague is crazier than the weather in Colorado!

After seeing some of the major tourist spots on the weekend I am very very glad to be living in Holesovice, which is much quieter and more residential. I feel like we're getting a bit more of the local flavour this way. We are slowly learning more Czech, and I recently purchased a phrasebook to help us along the way.

I've noticed a few interesting things about Prague fashion, the most striking of which is the women's propensity to wear stockings. While in America sheer nude-color stockings are not particularly fashionable, here they are worn with skirts, shorts, and even open-toed shoes. A lot of older women also have really brightly dyed hair. We've seen a number of ladies sporting red, purple, or pink tresses.

There are so many places here that I'm just dying to explore! Everything is absolutely gorgeous and fascinating, and the history is wonderful. I wish that we could post pictures and share these great places! Hopefully my computer will be fixed soon - I might have to take it to an Apple Store, but the closest one is in Munich. Weekend trip, perhaps?

Actually, we're thinking about visiting Budapest next weekend. I've heard great things about it, so I'm excited to see it.

Czech School

I got up extra early this morning for my first real day of classes, and still somehow managed to just barely get there during attendance. I ended up taking the subway, transferring, and getting off at a stop before realising that I was at the wrong station and would need to hop back on the metro, make yet another transfer, and then take a bus to the school. How confusing! I later discovered that there is a tram that goes a block away from our apartment that also passes right by the school, and man do I feel foolish. The metro network is nice, but nothing really beats the trams for getting around the city. Sure, they're slower and at the whims of traffic, but it's nice to be able to look out the window and see all the gorgeous buildings passing by.

Class was interesting, to say the least. The teacher took ten minute breaks every 50 minutes, and was far more enthusiastic about his plans for next week than the topic at hand (Globalisation and its Economic Aspects, if you were wondering). He actually wants to hold the second half of the class up at his cottage in the mountains north of here in Rokytnice nad Jizerou. And it sounds like that's what's going to happen. It definitely has the potential to be fun, although I haven't really made up my mind yet whether or not to go. We'll see tomorrow.

We're still exploring the city, and there is always something amazing around every corner. This afternoon after I finished class we wandered in Zizkov for a while and stumbled on this vintage stored owned by an English expat. She had a bunch of cool stuff, and it was interesting to talk to her about stuff. She gave us some suggestions on places to visit in town and a map of neat places, which we will have to Czech out at some later point. And blague about.

A Brief Post

Did I mention? The Czechs make the most delicious ice cream of all time! And it's usually less than $2/scoop, which means every time can be ice cream time.

Also, we wandered around Mala Strana and Hradcany for a while yesterday, and I've concluded that aimless wandering is the best way to see a new city. We stumbled upon most of the major sights, but also discovered some hidden places that would have otherwise remained invisible. The St. Vitus Cathedral was spectacular - it's a giant gothic building with soaring ceilings and incredible stained glass, as well as tombs dating back to the late AD 900s! I've never seen someone that old before (even though they were encased in stone).

That side of town is on a hillside, so we got some amazing views of the city. There are buildings representing every period here; the contrast between older buildings and the Soviet-era buildings is particularly interesting. It's amazing that through the World Wars and Communist cultural programs, the city's amazing architecture remained virtually untouched.

Ok, I'm off to another exciting day!