Wandering Where We’ll Be

Whew! We just hiked up to the middlepoint of a mountain today…in the rain, which turned into heavy snowfall.

Badgastein, Austria is in the Austrian Alps. We arrived yesterday and walked the town a bit. Today started with no snow but right now, there is snow cover and I am sure all the businesses that depend on skiing are rejoicing. Apparently, all of Europe has been snowless. Tourist skiing business has been down. I think Badgastein depends on it.

After our hike, we were somewhat soaking. We were wearing our rain jackets but mine especially, under pressure from lots of rain, eventually starts to let water in. We ate at a chinese restaurant in town (we have had a craving for chinese since Vienna because we couldn’t eat at a closed “happy chinese” restaurant when we were there).

We are now having a dry, comfortable, warm evening at the hotel.

Tomorrow, we head for Munich.

Write more later,

Dan

We just got back from the Vienna Opera. We were able to get cheap, cheap standing room tickets to see Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier — 3.50 Euros (or about $4.50) a piece, and it was excellent. The opera house is beautiful, the music was excellent (very Viennese) and the singing was superb!

Earlier today we did a tram tour of the Ringstrasse — around the perimeter of the old town — and we toured the Hofburg Palace Imperial Apartments — lots of silver, fine porcelain and glassware, and large, richly furnished rooms!

And, Vienna has its Christmas Market shops set up in front of their beautiful, Gothic Rathaus (City Hall).  So, we spent some time walking through the market and having some erdbeerpunsch and a pastry.

Time to sleep; it’s after 11.

Tim

The next day in Bucharest, we went to the Museum of the Romanian Peasant.  We must have run across a special market connected to the museum because there were many people there and lots of “peasant” art to buy.  The museum itself was really nice.  At one point, in the info brochure, it recommended us to just walk around and see it.  This gave us an overall impression of peasant life without interruption by gobs of info reading.  It was done well.

After the museum, we hung out at a coffee/lunch place to give our feet a rest from yesterdays walking.  Later, we hung out at the hostel.

The next day, we were planning on going to a local Jewish museum but we side-tracked by the post office.  It took us over 2 hours to mail stuff home.  This wasn´t abnormal because everyone there, waiting to mail stuff for the Christmas season, took just as long and their attitude seemed as if this was a normal occurrance at the place.  It was like stepping back in time…in triplicate…not kidding!

The night train experience was nice.  There were six beds to a “room” and we were on the top bunks.  We slept pretty comfortably.  We got off at the wrong stop.  We were one stop early.  When we realized it, the train was just pulling away.  Oh well…we took Budapest´s metro to the correct station and caught another train to Pecs.

We made it to Pecs (pronounced somewhat like “paych”).  There was a nice big church there and some ruins and a steep hill to look down on the city from.  Nice place.  We ate at a place called Tex-Mex.  It was a little like eating back in a Minneapolis mexican restaurant.  It was different but good.  The rest of the evening, we hung out in our room.  We think the water here was disagreeable to us (or at least something was).  That´s all I´ll say about it.

Next day is where we are now…Vienna.  We are about to go out and eat.

Write more later,

Dan

We had been planning this part of the trip really day-by-day in an attempt to do a bit of skiing in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains before heading back west to be in Germany in time for our booking at a Pension (I forget the name.) in Rothenburg on December 12. Well, there’s no snow in the mountains, yet, so it looks like I won’t be skiing in Romania. In addition, we had been hearing mixed reviews on Bucharest, so we weren’t sure how long we’d stay here.

Anyway, we had booked two nights in Brasov and the following two nights in Bucharest (to make sure we had a place to stay for the weekend), so we had one full day to explore the Brasov area. We woke up Thursday morning and decided that we should try to make it to Bran to see “Dracula’s” Castle. The links between Bram Stoker’s Dracula and this castle are questionable, but Dan will likely fill you in on all the details later. We took a bus, which took about an hour or so, and got back to Brasov in mid-afternoon — in time to tour the Black Church and hike up to the White Tower and the Black Tower.

On Friday we took the train to Bucharest. This was the most modern train we had been on since Austria. The train systems in Hungary and Romania are much less modern than the systems we encountered in the other parts of Europe we visited. The trains are old, run down and dirty; the stations are old, run down and dirty; and information is hard to come by or inaccurate. This is very frustrating!

Yesterday was Romania’s National Day. So, we walked “downtown” with a group from the hostel to join the other mobs of Romanians to celebrate National Day. And, today, after Dan and I picked up some contact solution for me — which was really hard to find and expensive — and some new English books to read, we did a self-guided walk around central Bucharest, seeing the gigantic Peoples Palace, touring the National Military Museum, which included information about the 1989 Revolution, and seeing the former Central Committee of the Communist Party building, the scene of Nicolae Ceausescu’s infamous last speech on its balcony. Amid cries of “Down with Ceausescu,” he escaped in a helicopter from the roof. Meanwhile, the crowds were riddled with bullets, and many died. It was very sobering to walk the streets where this happened so recently.

We picked up some groceries on our way back to the hostel and had supper there.

Tim

So, after the adventurous night, we got up the next day and went to see the sights. A tall clock tower with cool figurines, and one of the figurines plays a drum to “chime” the hour, the church and cemetery at the top of the hill (not so scary during the day), a town walk and we walked nearly everywhere in the town, and then after it all, a drink and dinner at a place called the Rustic. There was a couple there that we saw the previous day just before our night walk, and another time today. They knew English. They were at the Rustic too. They invited us to their table and we talked. They suggested we go to Sibiu while we were in Romania. It wasn’t out of the way. It’s real close. After they were done with their drink and desert, they had to leave for home in Bucharest by train. They were a nice couple. After that, we had a quiet evening reading and then went to bed.

The next day, we took a hike up to the top of a nearby small mountain. It was really fun to see Sighisoara from above. It was very scenic. After that, we had another quiet night.

Next day, we were on the way to Sibiu. We were halfway there when we missed the connecting train at Medias. We were stuck here for 4 hours. We made the best of it. We didn’t get to see any fortified churches near Sighisoara and thought we wouldn’t be able to. There was one in Medias. It was fun. We explored the town a little and hung out at a coffeeshop/desert place. Later, we made it to Sibiu. It was foggy and it was night-time. It wasn’t the same as Sighisoara. There were 3 big plazas and a shopping boulevard. It was a town almost ready for super amounts of tourists. Everything was being refurbished. Streets, buildings, all was being re-done. It was a fun walk through the town.

Now, we are in Brasov. We have done a night-time walk and have just eaten. It’s a nice place. Tomorrow, we will explore it.

Write more later,

Dan

Location: Sighisoara in Transylvania, Romania
Known for: Birth of Vlad Tepes (origins of Dracula legend).
Mental Associations: Vampires and Werewolves

Okay, keeping the above in mind. Tim and I were sitting in a Bar/cafe writing internet blogs and drinking beer. This bar is underground. The vaulted ceilings made of old stone could be either an old wine cellar OR part of old catacombs. The bar is located in the old citidel on the top of a rocky hill. Little did we know, the fog was rolling in as night fell. We decide to talk a walk before we call it a night and go to our room for a little reading and sleep.
We step outside and the dim, yellowish lighting from the few street lamps seen could be torch light from 700 years ago. This light is muted by thick fog. There are few people on the streets as we walk toward a covered stairway with many steps to the top of a hill. We haven’t been to this part of the town yet. We make it up to the top of the dark steps and step out to a single light illuminating a steep path toward a church barely seen. As we get closer to the church, two individuals are sitting in the dark on a bench near the path, cigarette ends glowing orange. They go silent when we come near and seem to watch us. We were close to the church then. Dense fog masked any light from other sources and we walked, barely speaking and eyes searching. As we walked beside the dark church, we saw, barely, the ancient citidel wall on the other side of us. A large, mausoleum looking building with pillars was near the back part of the church. When we reached the back of the church, we came upon an old, tall, metal rail fence with spikes on the top. Behind it, an ancient graveyard. Big gravestones, overgrown, tall gnarled trees…reaching….,all was silence. As Tim and myself stared in apprehension, two large dogs snarled and barked at us. One of them was unseen and continued to bark savagely. My first thought was werewolves. My next thought was transformed vampires. The other dog was barely seen, but it was large and pitch black in color. It ceased to bark and came at us. We remained still.

Then it stopped barking and wagged its tail. It wanted attention. We pet it and then it walked with us for a tiny bit as we rounded the back of the church into safer looking areas. It even perked its ears at the other dog as if it would guard us against it. We never did see the other dog beast.

A taste of horror in the land of vampiric legends.

Write more later,

Dan

To those of you who had been keeping up with us using the map function:

I’m not sure exactly what happened. It seems as though Google Maps updated their Europe maps to provide all kinds of nice detail that they didn’t have before. But, in the process, they wiped out all of the routing information that we had been adding. ;( I posted a question to bootsnall.com (the provider of our website), but have not received much of an answer, yet. I’ll keep trying to update the map and keep you all updated, as well.

Tim

We were expecting to be on the train at this time today on our way to Cluj Napoca, Romania. However, Lesson Number ??: Don’t trust the posted timetables in the train station. The timetable said 10:05, but we found out this morning that the next train to Cluj would leave at 16:22. So, we’ve been killing time today in Sighetu Marmatiei — reading, writing, drinking tea/pop, visiting the market, having lunch and walking around town a bit more.

We entered Romania on Sunday and stayed two nights in Baia Mare. Monday we took a bus to Surdesti, where we saw two towering, wooden churches. The church in Surdesti is 72 meters high and is considered the tallest wooden structure in Europe — if not the world. The wooden church in Plopis, just 2 km down the road, isn’t as tall but just as impressive. The bus schedule back to Baia Mare didn’t work with our schedule, so we ended up walking back into town. It was a nice day, so we didn’t mind the walk. We walked quite a while with an old man and his horse and wagon. He would catch up to us on the downhills when his horse would break into a trot, and we would catch up to him on the uphills when he would walk alongside his horse, letting him stop for occasional breaks. Despite greeting him with “Buna Ziua,” he recognized that we were not from the area, and said something about “..Europa.” Judging by the way he said it, we think he might have told us that we were a long ways from Europe. Indeed. We were a long ways from the “Europe” we had been visiting.

On Tuesday we took the train to Sighetu Marmatiei, in the northern Romaian, Maramures region. We were planning on staying two nights here, and taking a day trip to Sapanta (not being able to type the special characters on this keyboard, say SA PIN TSA) on Wednesday. We never made it Sapanta, but we spent two wonderful days in the more remote and less touristy village of Breb. At Breb we walked the muddy streets, were introduced by a very friendly and knowledgable woman named Lise — who speaks English, French and Romanian — to many smiling villagers, watched two of the women washing rugs and blankets in the stream running through town, tasted the strong, plum brandy called Horinca and saw how they made it, rode in a small, packed truck with 12 other villagers to the market in nearby Ocna Sugatag, walked back to Breb through hayfields dotted with “old-time” haystacks and stayed at a wonderful pension called Pensiunea Lucia.

We rode a minibus back to Sighet this morning, and — hopefully — we’ll be leaving shortly via train to Cluj Napoca.

More later,

Tim

I thought I’d share some cool places we discovered as we walked around various cities and places.  These also might be just a unique experiences we weren’t expecting.  These are going to be out of order as I think of them.

Although Tim already covered this one, the upstairs Pannakoechen Huis in Amsterdam was really fun.  Small amount of tables, singing to the radio chef/waiter of a tiny eaterie was very different and the stairs were really steep.

There was a bar in York (I can’t remember the name but I think it was something like Moreys) Tim and I went to.  The bartending woman with off-red hair was fun to talk to.  They had a bell that was rung when any of the staff received a tip.  This bell was given to them by a major regular of the place.  The staff thought, and still thinks, it would be fun to ring the bell so hard, they would damage it.  The bell used to have an ornamental rim around the base edge (the staff thought it was too fu-fu pretty for the bar) and it is a metal bell.  They have since, with all the hard, jump up and nail the bell with full-body force, knocked off the base rim altogether and are ripping it apart with every smack.  The regular customer that gave them the bell has since ceased to come to the bar.    The bartender did think it was because of the mistreatment of the bell. (The treatment of the bell gift may seem harsh to some and it is BUT the bell that once was fu-fu out-of-place is now totally cool looking in a haggard way) The bar is still a fun place where young locals come to hang out with the latest alternative music and ourdoor/indoor seating, surrounded by pictures of older great musical artists.

The Blackfriars in London was a treat.  First of all, Londoners seem to eat at regularly scheduled times.  If you want to go to a place that serves food at certain hours of the day, you may be out of luck as we were after 9pm.  Luckily we chanced across this place.  I had a pot-pie.  It is still, after eating in many different European restaurants in different cities, in my top 5 “best food I’ve eaten at a European restaurant” list.  The decor of Blackfriars is carved, dark wood with many frescos of monks doing various normal monk things.  I can’t describe this place accurately with words.  It must be seen.  The place is called Blackfriars because, way back when, a monastery existed in this spot and, for extra cash, the monks brewed beer.  Needless to say, it is good stuff.

Ever tried haggis, sheep stomach stuffed with meat and other stuff?  I did…in Edinburgh at a place called The Last Drop.  The Last Drop doesn’t mean a mug of brew that is really good and I drank it to “the last drop”…which I did by the way.  It means you better have your life in order because a hangmans noose is around your neck and they are kicking away the stool beneath your feet.  Anyway, the haggis served to me wasn’t literally in the stomach.  They took out the meat and such and put it on a plate.  Its taste and look is kind of like corned beef hash but it is still very different than that.  It’s the closest food like it I could come up with.  It was good!

Back to London.  We went to a farmers market south of the river.  We discovered it while riding the bus by it while on the way to the Tower of London (we didn’t go into the tower-too much money).  Not only was the market huge, there were many places to buy cooked over-the-counter food there.  Wine, veges, baked deserts, whatever was all available.  While all of that (and samples) were a feast for the eyes, the breads were a big thing for me.  Whatever kind of fresh baked bread you wanted, they had it..for cheap.

Okay, enough for now about food.  It’s time for fun.  While in Antwerp, Tim and I found a kids park with a fantastic, enclosed metal tube, slide.  It was very tall and we had to squeeze our way to the top of a funky wooden slide tower built for small kids to go down this slide.  Time went first after letting his backpack go down the slide first.  I did the same thing, pack first then me.  Tim said (and I saw the distance) that it was fun to watch my pack “jet” out of this wild slide to a distance of about 10 feet.  I came flying after it.  I’ve never been on a park slide that fun or fast before.

The coolest bar thus far was Szimpla in Budapest, Hungary.  Imagine an old, derelict warehouse/apartment complex almost ready for demolition.  Rotting bricks on the walls, graffiti in lots of places (and being added to by customers), a person could imagine the place being torn down next week.  Now, keep that “feel”, add total mood lighting lamps with cool lampshades, kitch and cool furniture, longtables, a whole bottom floor of a warehouse, some more rooms on the second floor, Wi-Fi and at least 2 long bars and cool nooks and crannies with seating.  It was fantastic.  No, I didn’t think the whole place would fall down around my ears and it wasn’t “dirty” at all, just run down.  It was extremely popular with the locals.  We were there on an “off” night and it had many people in there.  We had a great time.

Near our hostel in Berlin was a small Indian restaurant.  Pictures of plate combo’s were displayed outside so we didn’t have to translate the menu with the help of our little German translation book.  We think the place was open if not 24 hours a day, then close to it.  The cool thing about this basic food, basic decor place was 1-the food was tasty.  2-the food was very cheap.  Loved it.

Although we covered the hike up to the Shilthorn in Switzerland, I must stress the sheer sense of conquering accomplishment elation both Tim and I felt when we reached the top.  We did it!  It was tough but worth it!

Imagine Sunday morning, waking up at about 9am to the sound of bells.  Not just 1 bell or even 2 or even 10.  How about an orchestra of big, bonging bells ringing for about 20 minutes.  I’d bet you’d think “shut them awful bells up!”  But when you are in London for the 1st time and have NEVER heard bell song like this or even halfway like this, it’s worth every bit of no sleep you get. (we did get enough sleep.  We konked out the previous night fairly early because we still had jet lag).

Thusfar, of all the memorable moments Tim and I have had, I love the Nightime photo walks we take throught some of the cities.  The top 3 cities, I think, for night-time photos are…Edinburgh, Scotland.  The castle and many neat buildings are all lit spectacularly.  Brugge, Belgium.  The mood is a quiet, private, intimate feeling given by dramatic lighting in dark, almost secret, areas.  Budapest, Hungary.  I thought Prague, Czech Republic was good.  This was better (to me).  Amazingly beautiful and sheer huge, ornate buildings, reflections in the Danube and lots of history to back it up.  Awesome!

That’s it for memorable moments and cool discoveries thus far.  Don’t get me wrong,  I have lots of others, but I thought I’d fill you in on a few.

Write more later,

Dan

When we went to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, I was “struck” by a few things.

The first was: The house looks different in my mind than the real one. This isn’t a great surprise but the front of the place isn’t as “old” looking as I thought it would be. It was recently updated and fixed. They didn’t change anything. They just made it look like it did back then; no wear and tear.

The second was: The quiet. As we entered the building, there was a video telling us about the normal daily life of the Franks when they hid here. They had to be still and quiet and in their places by 8:30 am until evening. This was so no odd floor creeks “from upstairs where no one is supposed to be” gave them away to the workers below. This building was a pectin manufacturing building originally owned by Otto Frank, Annes father. The absolute importance of quiet was impressed upon all of us visitors and when we all toured the house, there was barely any talking. Everyone seemed to tiptoe about as we walked because one floor creek was all it would take for us to be caught and packed off to Auschwitz or similar.

The third thing was: the Franks were not alone in their hiding spot. There was another family too. They all lived in the upper floor and attic of the building..basically 2 floors! I didn’t know the space was that big. I expected 3 rooms or equivalent. Don’t get me wrong. About (I think) 8 people crammed in 3 rooms, 1 attic living space and a bath is still tiny.

By the way, they still don’t know who snitched on the Franks and got them caught.

Otto Frank was the only survivor of the family.

The last thing: Anne Frank wished/wanted to grow up to be a journalist and eventually a famous writer. Her diary was practice for her. She got her wish, just not in the way she expected.

Anne Frank died of Typhus at Bergen-Belsen about 1 month before it was liberated.

Write more later,

Dan