KRAKOW – “World’s Fastest Walkers”
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
found the areas just outside the old city kind of a mess. Our room (with fridge and hot water) was about a mile north of the entrance to the old city; however, it was just a little too far from the trams to be convenient, and the walking was awful to and from the place, since the sidewalks and intersections are blocked with cars. Everyone weaves around the cars and the little space left is too little to walk side by side, so Cheryl and I would literally walk full speed single file for a mile. An odd consequence of these miserable walking conditions (oh and there are lots of people walking), seems to be that people clearly just want to get thru the area as fast as possible. We had old ladies pass us walking at 4 mph, and the younger folks hit nearly 6 mph. Yup, wolds fastest walkers. Don’t stop to tie your shoes.
It also contains the excellent (and undersold) ethnographic museum containing 3 floors of Polish folk culture, including reconstructed rooms from houses of the more common people. 
SLOVAKIAN PARADISE
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006Kosice is a surprisingly relaxed city with a vibrant pedestrian corridor and old town that is at least a mile long and bounded on both sides by beautiful buildings, centered with fountains, churches, and even some medieval ruins buried partially under the main square.
We only spent a night, but were located perfectly to enjoy some of the energy and good food. The food included a vegetarian Indian lunch served on stainless steel cafeteria trays by the Hare Krishnas. Bizarre, but at $3.25 it was some of the best and good value food we had had to date….and did I mention there were vegetables and spicy flavors! Cured meats and cheese alone, along with bread, cucumber, and tomato had accounted for at least 50% of our daily intake for the past few weeks and boy were our bay Area taste buds ready for a change.
We visited the Technical Museum which had some vary cool old mechanical devices and displays, including what must be the worlds largest collection of Typewriters (mostly Eastern European). The Roman ruins under the old square have been restored into a mini-mueum with skylights to the square. They even use some of the space for public events, as they were setting up for a reception that evening.
I will not get into the details of the dancing musical fountains until we have photos available, as they were probably one of the boldest permanent public art installations that I have ever seen. (although on a decideingly modest scale) Cheryl may have more on these fountains as she is still talking about them. 
They were pleasant and bizarre. And they’d never have made it out of the art commissions halls in San Francisco. One of the stranger sights that we have run into in the former eastern Bloc.
So we gladly got back on a train (versus a bus) late the next morning and headed up though some beautiful fall foliage and hills towards Spisske Podrahie, which is the home of the Spis Castle, one of the more famous UNESCO landmarks of Slovakia. You take a mini electric connector train to the edge of town from the main line and then head a mile straight up a steep hillside to the site. It’s a cool approach as your perspective changes with every step and you can really appreciate how difficult it would have been to try to storm this castle. It was started in the 12th century and added to as time went on (it’s a long story http://www.spisskyhrad.sk/en.html), but the structure is impressive and one of the coolest castles I have ever seen, in a most dramatic location.
We had our full packs on for the castle (except for the final trip up the big tower) which really made us appreciate our light packing, since the lack of clothing choices is getting to be a bit tedious, especially in the colder weather. We actually both have ended up buying a few fall/winter clothes more appropriate for the weather (and to make us blend a bit more). We planned on picking up appropriate clothes as we travelled, so this is not a surprise, and as with everything else on our trip; it’s cheaper than San Francisco.
The town below the castle is a gritty and somewhat bleak spot in the otherwise Tuscan like countryside of the Spis region. We caught a local bus to Levoca, Slovakia from here and once again found people to be very nice and helpful at the bus stops, except for some truly bewildered teenagers who gave me a compete and almost uncomfortable bodyscan. I’ve rarely been stared at with such fervor as these kids were obviously living in tough times in an area of Slovakia going through a slower and more painful transition to capitalism. They checked us out from head to toe, as we had all our gear and belongings and were waiting besides 100 kids after school for 1/2 hour or so. Although sometimes awkward, these small places and interactions with people off the beaten track are what you remember most. UNESCO sights are nice, but people are always more interesting.
As we have experienced a lot of local buses in Slovakia and Poland recently, I want to diverge a little bit to discuss some of the positive and negative things I’ve seen in local transit systems. (The bigger intercity buses are generally fine and quite efficient) There is a network of buses in rural and small city Slovakia (and Hungary and Poland are similar, but the buses nicer and more efficient) that connects just about EVERYWHERE, but they are often slow and inefficient, despite serving as a lifeline for the locals where auto-ownership rates are still relatively low. The loading process is painfully slow as everyone pays cash, the driver issues a little ticket (not a transfer), and gives any amount of change. (which is nice as a tourist without change, but a bummer for daily riders) They have also seemed to all be crowded with often only one or at best two doors. Although we have grown fond of the “Muppet” buses as we call them, the so-called mini-buses can be quite a ride, as you bounce along from town to town. (It helps to sing the song from the Muppet movie as you ride to get in the proper mood) The good things about these buses is that they seem to pick-up and drop off people just about anywhere, as long as you can wedge on the bus, or jump off in time as the driver only slows to about 5 mph as you jump out. (Not many lawyers here) They serve a great need for the people, but I won’t even mention the leg room, as my knees are still cringing, but it sure is fun.
Our next stop in the Spis region was Levoca, which was a somewhat attractive old town in a beautiful area that clearly could have tourism play a big role in the future. Again, clearly this town was changing and we were one of two foreign tourists in town, and it was evident that jobs were a bit scarce and that change was slow. 
The upside of this slow change is that there is still some remnants of traditionally Slovakian way and dress. We saw an older man bring in two horses and a wooden cart right into the bus depot, and leave them to go get his morning snack and coffee.
I also sat right next to a traditionally dressed Slovakian woman on the bus (and I mean close on the mini-buses) complete with puffy dress, black boots, and head scarf. Clearly though, these traditional ways are just about dying out, as we saw no one under 60 in anything but plane street clothes. In another 10 years or less, I imagine only the Skansens and other recreations for the tourists will be remaining of life before cellphones and car dependence.
We again headed out in the morning with no transit info and another goal of getting to Cingov( pronounced Ching-go), one of the gateways to the Slovakian Paradise National Park http://www.slovenskyraj.sk/en.html which required two short bus rides; however, this time when we got to the connecting town, we had missed the one bus to Cingov by a half an hour. We contemplated trekking the 7 km, but with no good map and sense if the roads were safe (or miserable), we reluctantly decided that a taxi was the only way to go. We decided we would spend up to $20 on a taxi, but again, it only cost $5 as our Bay Area price base was way off.
We made it the Hotel Cingov and had a wonderful two days hiking in the magnificent fall foliage, up the Hornad River Canyon, and just hanging out out the Chatras (chalets that serve beer, Goulash, and Pihorys!) The hiking was extremely pleasant and reminded me of New Hampshire and Vermont in the fall.
“JUST LIKE NEW ENGLAND, BUT WITHOUT THE NEW ENGLANDERS -Rich C”
The smells, crisp air, low sun, and hues of yellow and orange all brought my senses back 20 years. We even got to experience a Slovakian wedding at our hotel Saturday night that went from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Although singing and dancing kept us half the night, it really didn’t bother us so much as they all seemed to be having such a good time, and the music was good, not the usual “Wedding Singer” medleys of many American weddings. We just wished we could have crashed it!
Luckily the second night had no weddings and we caught up on our sleep and headed out for yet another day of uncertain transportation. We got to the train station and figured out that we could make it to Krakow that evening so we did it, although it turned into a very long day and my lack of Internet for a week forced us to book a lonely planet room over the phone that turned out o.k., but a difficult distance from the center of Krakow (long walk or inconvenient transit). We learned a lesson in trying to do a little too much without good info, and will try to slow down a bit in the future…..
But so far, Krakow and Warsaw have been very interesting and the people of Poland are extremely nice, across the board, so we’ll let you know how things go as its time to head up out of the Internet cafe cellar back to the big, wide boulevards of Warsaw.
SERVAS AND THE CELLAR
Friday, October 13th, 2006So we left Budapest with anticipation for our first stay with a family through the Servas program. We arrived in Eger, Hungary, heart of a famous wine growing region and a city of beautiful baroque architecture. We took the #11 bus from the Train Station to the very North end of the city, to a neighborhood called Felnemet and got off at the stop that we had written down for the bus driver. We have found that our pronunciation of Hungarian can cause a completely wrong interpretation of our intents, despite nods of acknowledgement from both parties. To our surprise, the families two daughters, Flora and Bogy (short for Bogylarka) met us on their bikes at the bus stop and led us to their house at the end of the road, right next to the hills.
Their parents, Attila and Alice are about our ages, so it was really interesting to talk to them and see how one somewhat typical family in Hungary lives from day to day. Bogy showed us around the city and Attila took us to his family wine cellar up the street.
It’s a wine cave built by HAND deep into the hillside about 70 years ago. The cave has no electricity so we carried a basket with candles and wine glasses deep into the darkness. For a moment, I thought I was back at my job inspecting tunnels again and couldn’t help but notice the good condition of most of the caves walls. As we walked down the cave, there are different little family cellars off to the left and right, probably totalling about 12 in all.
Attila’s cave had about 7 barrels of white wine, some from last year, and some fresh from this year that were in the process of fermenting. We lit candles all around the cellar and door (another good test to see if their is enough oxygen in the cave as the candles won’t stay lit if there is not; an old miner’s trick) There was plenty of oxygen and plenty of delicious semi-dry white wine that Attila siphoned out of a barrel with a 3-foot long glass pipette (with his mouth no less).
We talked about the history of the cave, and Attila’s family over two or three glasses of wine and until the candles started to dim a bit. Cheryl and I looked at each other in disbelief, as we couldn’t believe how amazing this experience was, and completely kind and generous the family was to us, and we had only been with them for about 5 hours!
So they invited us to stay an extra day, which we gladly accepted, as we really enjoyed talking with them all, and this gave us another day to go hiking in the beautiful Bukk (pronounced Beeu-ook) hills just to the North of Eger.
The crisp fall air and trees turning shades of yellow, red, and orange made our 20 km hike from Belapatfalva to Szilvasvarad in Bukk National Park a refreshing break from the many days on the dry coast of Croatia and the somewhat gritty streets of Budapest. It brought me back to my childhood days in New England, as I always loved October and the fall weather. And I still do.
The girls are both talented dancers and even gave us a performance on the first night, as well as sharing many of the family photos of vacations. Attila and Alice both speak English well, although they are hopeful that both girls will become fluent in it as it is by far the default second language for all in Eastern Europe. German (and Russian often) is still spoken by those over 40, but that seems to be the clear dividing line. We talked about our families and even a little politics on the last day, which was fascinating, since Hungary is still going through some transitional pains as a relatively new democracy. And so is the US.
We also spent a day sightseeing in Eger and enjoyed the somewhat balmy fall weather with highs of about 70 degrees, but crisp mornings and evenings; however, we noticed the weather is expected to really get cold next week with highs only around 50 and lows below freezing. I think we will be investing in some sweaters and gloves from the street vendors before the weekend is over as we have only brought a minimal amount of layers, since most of our travels will be in rather temperate climates. It apparently can be quite cold in Northern India as well in November, so any clothes may come in handy for the next leg of our journey, which is only a month away!
All in all, our first Servas experience was truly unforgettable and we really now hope to find a family in Poland to stay with in a week or so. We also hope to return the favor and be hosts in San Francisco when we return and settle down again someday. Someday.
LIVING IN THE PEST
Sunday, October 8th, 2006It’s our last morning in Budapest and we really feel like we got a sense for the city in the past 9 days, especially since we were able to bike and transit all over the place, in addition to really settling into our local neighborhood. Yesterday we finally braved the main market Nagycsarnok, which is a three level palace of food, crafts, and pickled goods just south of our apartment. Pretty cool, as the 100 food stalls are still primarily the domain of the locals, while the tourists stick to buying nicknacks upstairs.
Excuse Me, I’d like to buy some hearty bread please!
Today we leave for our first Servas www.usservas.org stay in Eger, about two hours East of Budapest. We are staying with a family of four who live just outside of town and will be eating and experiencing their lives a bit for the next two days. We are very excited, but still need to learn a few more words in Hungarian, although based on our phone calls with them, they speak English quite well. We’ll be sure to pass on good wishes to the Hungarians from America, and try to shore up our reputation a little bit.
BUDAPEST BIKE COALITION?
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
It’s like an urban slalom, except that the cars and trucks are much less forgiving than snow, or even traffic in most US cities that I’ve biked in, including NYC. We now understand why the bike rental shop people kind of gave us a ‘hope you don’t die’ look as we confidently pedaled away from their shop into the craziness that is Pest at rush hour. We always enjoy biking and I love the thrill of cities, but even I had enough after three days. We returned the bikes safely on Wednesday, much to the relief of all, especially Cheryl, as she witnessed two completely idiotic drivers nearly clipping me on the streets. There is no such thing as “taking a lane” here; they will scare the shit out of you. The scary and aggressive driving appears to be a combination of a true lack of basic driving skills, coupled with arrogance and frustration (the traffic is brutal).
But I harp on the negatives, when really everything is positive. We are alive and free to travel. The Hungarians are free of the Nazis, Arrowcross, and Soviets. A visit to the fantastic “Museum of Terror” today put a lot in perspective, And luckily, nearly ewveryone here has the thermal baths to chill out.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cherylandrich/sets/72157594313660991/
Enjoy and please check back as we add photos to our blog and update the descriptions. And I’d love to hear your comments. -R
HUNGARY FOR MORE
Sunday, October 1st, 2006Well, we split from the coast of Croatia and made a beeline for Hungary. We have been in Budapest for a day now and plan on staying here about a week or so, as it’s a fascinating city with grand architecture, amazing baths, and the energy of a city that is changing and growing by the minute as a crossroads of Central Europe. But first, lets catch up on the past 5 days.
We arrived in Split, Croatia on a catamaran ferry filled with holiday goers and backpackers looking to eek out the last bit of the summer and taking advantage of the cheap, sunny holiday place du jour. We were tired of these people, even though we some of them, too. I guess we were tired of oursleves then. We were just feeling a bit weary of eating in decent, but definately ‘tourist’ restaurants and feeling like were marching around the same places with the same people for a week. Maybe if we had bikes, or (gasp) a car we could have gotten off the tourist path easier. But frankly, we love Croatia, and it makes a perfect holiday destination, but is quite homogeneous as a whole, so with the options of many other places in Central and Eastern Europe, we have decided to make Split our last stop on the magnificent Adriatic coast.
But we have learned a thing or two in our recent travels. So after two weeks of getting rooms from touts, we felt like we had a better handle on how to find someone who might have a good place. Yes, we decided that a bit of economic, age, and gender profiling was just the order of the day as we found that we both felt less comfortable with the younger men, or little old ladies, as the first seemed more likely to lead you to a scam and the latter to lead you to a lace filled room with one old lamp in the corner. Now neither of these stereotypes are probably more than 10% accurate, but the apartment pictures that the older ladies were touting did look much less inviting. As a note though, we did not encounter one person trying to mislead or scam us in all of Croatia and our impression was that it is probably one of the safest places to travel in the world, short of Japan. We’ll let you know next June if we stick to our plans.
So we did find the most intriguing apartment yet of our adventure from a dockside tout who looked trustworthy and prosperous enough to lead us to a good place. She also turned out to quite a character. She was kind of matronly dressed and in her mid 50’s and was missing quite a few front teeth on one side. (a sign that she was born of the old-school Croatia) But she now clearly had it going on, as she walked us quickly to a place we were guaranteed to like ‘in the palace’ for 50 euro a night (which is on the high end of our budget so far but still a great deal considering)
She walked right through the 1500 year old entrances and caverns and we wound our was next to some old mosaics, decaying wall, and the main cathedral. Amazingly, we were suddenly at the apartment and she walked up the 2 NARROW flights. The first room was a cozy kitchen with little reading couch and built in seats at which she immediately pointed and asked me “so which one will you sleep in?” Having known this women for only 5 minutes, I assumed she was serious and said, “Sorry, but no way, I can’t fit in those 5 foot spaces!” and quickly thought to myself that we had our first room tout rejection of the trip. (and that our dockside system of profiling was a bunch of hooey) Bur of course she was joking and went on to show us the totally adequate bedroom and said that her son was also very tall at close to 2 meters! She was a comedian. We then walked to a cash machine to pay her and listened to her constantly spout information about things to do, speaking a mile a minute. It was English, but neither of us got more than 20% of what she was saying as she was stopping every 20-feet to tout other travellers with luggage or backpacks, as she had two other rooms to fill that night. She was a entrepreneur. Her last statement to us as we exchanged “Hvalas” was “You are both welcome, but remember, I work on the streets, but I won’t do sex!” I’m still not entirely sure if she was joking about the sex. But she clearly had it going on.
The little three room apartment was great with windows that opened to quirky, but unique views in every direction of the old palace. It even had a nice terrace to sit on where you could look up at the sunset on the clouds while listening to the choir practicing next door at the cathedral. So we had free entertainment every night, with singing and chanting mixed with some of the rock eminating from the very popular cafe below our place. It was one of the more captivating places we’ve found ourselves yet and was definitely unforgettable.
Diocletian’s Palace is an AD 3rd to 6th Century UNESCO world heritage site that consists of stone walls, caverns, mosaics, and other remnants of the Romans all interspersed with a medieval old city and now embedded with modern shops and cafes. Strange combination, but somehow it kind of works. Split also had a lot more going on in terms of people and culture, so we felt more at home and could wander without feeling like we were only looking at other tourists. Interesting little neighborhoods, and a big park that extends out on a peninsula. We rented bikes on the second day and had an extremely pleasant ride around the city and ended up at a beach park called ‘Bene’ which was like a little azure paradise swimming cove, but with the addition of a beer garden and cafe. Proabaly a bit of a nightmare in peak season, but just perfect in late September. The water had a bit more of a nip and you could just feel that unique end of season feeling in the air. We suspected the cafe would be closed up for winter in a week or two. It was a very nice way to spend our last full day on the Adriatic, as we knew we were heading to Varazdin the next day and that we wouldn’t be swimming in an ocean agin until Thailand in December. Poor us.
The new ICN train from Split to Zagreb was a modern banking train that they had just started last year and made the journey in about 5 and half hours. We even got a free coffee and sandwhich at our seat (even in 2nd class) as they seem to really trying to promote this new service. However, the little two car train was only about 10% full, so the new motorway to Split might be getting more than its fair share of use, as the Croatians have certainly jumped on the car culture bandwagon that has almost always accompanied. ‘development’ in the past 50 years. However, the Croatian train system, as is everything in Croatia, is becoming modern, efficient, and comfortable and was a joy compared to Amtrak. Croatia is cleary not the “Italy of the 1960’s” anymore and certainly seems to be worthy of joining the EU.
Varazdin was a shock after coast, as we were just about the only foreign tourists in town, although there were lots of people in town for the 2-week Baroqoue evening festival that was at its peak. It’s a lovely little town with loads of well-kept Baraqoue buildings arranged around an on old town grid of car free streets and small plazas. We took in the town at a nice slow pace and felt ready to head on over the border and on to Budapest.
For the first time on our trip, we actually arrived in Budapest with a reservation for an apartment that we had made from the internet at thr public librabry in Varazdin. We still had to negotiate the ususal trio of getting cash, a phone card, and then figure out how to use the phone. and then find our way on the Metro. But we lucked out, as we found another nice apartment in Pest which is our home for 4 days, and is about two blocks from the Danube river and close to everything in the historic portions of the city. We hope to find another place for another 4 days in ‘Buda’ and make Budapest our base for some nice day trips, in addition to exploring the cities many, many interesting sights. Of couse last night, we took the first opportunity in 4 weeks to get some more exotic food on our taste buds and took a chance on he only Thai restaurants in town. Well, it was some of the worst Thai food I’ve had, but it was still passable enough to satisfy our craving for some of the familiar diversity of tastes that we have become SPOILED by in San Francisco. I beleive my direct quote was “Well, good for them, the worst cooks in Thailand found thier way to Budapest and opened a reataurant!” It is likley the case that they just can’t get the right or good ingredients here. Tonight I think we’ll stick to some fine Hungarian cuisine and wine.
Today was stellar, as we rented bikes and took advantage of the lighter Sunday traffic to explore the river, Margeret Island, and some of the Pest sights, such as the parliament building and great synagogue. In the afternoon we took in our first Turkish bath called Rudas, which is just a short walk across the river from our neighborhood. Today was ‘mixed’ day at the baths, as this one is mostly men only during the week. The baths were just renovated and reopend last December, so the insides of the various pools, saunas, and steam rooms were all immaculate, while maintaining the stunning old building and mosque like-domed structure in the center that houses the primary octagoganal bath. Many of the original 16th century fittings are still in use, which gives it timeless feel. The dozens of baths here are an integral part of the residents lives, and it provides both healthful relaxation, and a great social scene across generations, although there didn’t appear to be any kids and I’m not sure if they are even allowed? (Apparently the men only late nights at these baths are quite the scene).
The scale of Budapest is huge, and the river, bridges, buildings, and roads mimic this scale, which has given me the first impression that it is somewhat difficult to get around by foot, and is certainly not very bike friendly yet. Cars blast through the city at high speed and there of tons of bad examples of auto-centric planning in areas that should be for people and transit. But the bones of the city are fine, and they just need to rethink things about access and land use. There are wonderful pedestrian only zones, but as soon as you get out of them, the sidewalks turn into somewhat unpleasant to marginal spaces. I haven’t explored the greener Buda yet in detail, so I imagine my impressions will change. But it is a magnificent city that clearly has the right combination of attributes to thrive, change, and prosper in the near future. Ah, it’s nice to be back in a real city! I definately feel more at home.
rich.coffin