around the world in 180 days

Sharks drown if they stop moving because they can’t force water over their gills like regular fish can. I’m not sure what happens to us if we stop moving, but we’re not going to find out for a while. We spent 3 days in Munich, 3 days in Austria, now we’ll spend 3 days in Budapest before going to a lake in Southern Hungary for (you guessed it) 3 days.

Budapest had a very different history over the last 50 years than Vienna did, and it shows in the streets of the city. While the Soviets and communism have been gone for the better part of 20 years, there are still some scars visible. Vienna is clean, sparkling, a spotless museum of a town that celebrates it’s history of Habsburg rule. Budapest is covered in graffiti, many buildings are concrete rectangles, and many of the archetectural remnants of the Habsburgs aren’t in the meticulously restored state they are in Vienna.

Still, Budapest seems to have a lot of character. It sits on an economic divide between the eastern world and the western world: it’s one of the few places in the world where we could see a real, Italian opera performed in a beautiful theatre for 4 bucks. We saw “Don Pasquale” and our seats were worth 4 bucks (they were on the side and 4 floors up, so we had to lean forward during the whole performance) but elsewhere in the world, they’d cost maybe 8 or 10 times that price. I’ve never seen an opera before, but it was actually entertaining. We were dressed in our normal traveling clothes and many of the other people were dressed in formal wear, suits and ties and fancy dresses, but we were in the corner so it didn’t matter.

On our last day in Vienna, we went to 2 of the city’s many famous museums: the Haus der Musik, which is a music museum and the MAK, which is an abbreviation that translates to Museum of Applied Arts. The music museum was cool; there were lots of interactive exhibits, but it was 17 Euros, which is kind of a lot for what the place was. I had fun going, but I’m not sure I could recommend it.

The MAK, though, was fantastic. The only reason we even went there is because it was free on Saturdays. It’s a museum of design: a lot of industrial design, like chairs and desks and things, a lot of porcelain, some textiles and a whole wing of modern photography, film and sculpture art. We were there for 3 hours before it closed and it was the sort of place where you could visit every week and always get something new out of  it. A lot of the short films and photography they showed were thought-provoking to the extent that I spent much of our time in that wing trying to wrap my head around some big ideas.

The other thing we did in Vienna that was a little out of character was go to a mass service at St. Stephen’s cathedral, in the middle of Vienna. We’d visited the church the day before and toured the catacombs beneath it and had read that there would be an organ and orchestral performance the next day at 9:30 am. When we got to the church, though, we found out that the performance was was part of mass. We decided to stay anyway and are glad we did. The music was fantastic. The musicians were professionals and it was far and away the best music I’ve ever heard in a church. The strangest thing about the service was that they never collected offering. I’ve never been to a church where they didn’t do that.
Anyway, we’re off to see more of Budapest. There’s castles and cathedrals and who knows what else. Ciao!

In an uncharacteristically organized move, Anna and I have figured out exactly where we’re going and when for the remainder of our trip. We were prompted to do this by an unusually helpful tourist info office in the Munich train station, Euraide, sponsored by Deutsche Bahn, the German rail company. We went in initially to find out if it made sense to buy a rail pass or if point to point tickets were the way to go. There are no Eurail passes for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, so that made our decision simple.

The impressive thing, though, was when we decided to book our ticket from Munich to Vienna. The lady helping us told us our options, got us the cheapest fare possible and suggested a stopover in Salzburg, which we enjoyed immensely. We were pretty excited after our experiences in India and Nepal with tourist bureaus. No comission, no nonsense, just straight answers and efficient work. God bless the Germans.

While we were in there, we asked if these Euraide stations were all over the place. They aren’t. They’re only in Berlin and Munich. The process was so easy, and the people so pleasant to work with, that we decided to book the remainder of our train tickets. We spent a day figuring out dates and went back yesterday morning to book the rest.

So here’s our plan: we’re in Vienna for 3 days, and then leaving on the 17th for Budapest in Hungary. We stay there for 5 days and then take a night train to Krakow on the 22nd. We’re in Krakow for 4 days, then move to Warsaw for 3 days, and end up in Prague for 4 days. After Prague, we take a night train to Frankfurt, arriving in the morning on the 4th of July, and then fly to Marrakech in Morocco the next morning, July 5. We’ve a week in Morocco, then fly back to Frankfurt on the 12th. We’ll take a train to Amsterdam on the 13th and fly home from there sometime on the 15th, with a little luck.

Steve has offered to come over to AMS and meet us, as it would be easier for us to get on a flight with his higher preference number, but there are 8 flights a day that NWA operates between AMS and either MSP or Detriot. I think our odds are pretty good even if he doesn’t want to come over. Of course, with 8 flights and Steve’s higher number, that gives us a shot at first class, depending on how full the flights are. It’d also be fun to see Steve again, and wander around Amsterdam with him for an evening.

Today we’re going to check out some of Vienna’s world famous museums. The whole center of the city is packed with museums, old churches and palaces from the days of the Habsburg empire. It is a very cool city, with tons of culture and history and I’m excited to spend a few days here poking around.

This is a fun way to travel: a few days here, a few days there, and on the train to the next town. You never have a chance to get bored, because by the time you do, you’re in another town.