Donde Esta La Biblioteca? Otra Vez

Now we are here in Budapest trying to come to terms with the fact that our trip is almost over. We arrived dazed and confused from a sleepless night freezing in one train car only to escape to the sauna car. We must have crossed 20 borders because every time we started to doze there was a new scary man with a gun checking passports.

Prior to visiting Budapest we heard a lot of negative reviews from friends, family, Servas, and other travelers. Maybe it was just because our expectations were so low, but we’ve really enjoyed it here. The people seem nice enough and the city can be a lot of fun.

We’re pretty exhausted from traveling so we’ve slowed down a lot here in Hungary. Yesterday we checked out the Great Market Hall and the Christmas market, saw the Danube and the Chain Bridge, and then soaked the rest of the day away in the thermal waters of Széchenyi Medicinal Bath. Today was a little more intense: Christmas market, Buda Castle, Buda Labyrinth (caves under the Castle – possibly the most interesting place in Budapest,) Matthias Church, and last but not least, the Hungarian National Opera. We went out in style with the tantalizing tale of Elektra.

Budapest has been the perfect city to end with. It’s a handsome city, but not exactly beautiful enough to make us cry over leaving it. After the opera we grabbed a last cup of glühwein and made our way back to the hotel to start packing. I want to eventually offer a final thoughts retrospective on the whole trip and finish the blog with some closure. Right now, however, the hour is late and our flight is early so this will have to do…

USA HERE WE COME!

Slovenians pronounce ‘j’s like ‘y’s so Ljubljana is pronounced ‘Lyew-blee-yana.’

Our host in ‘Lyew-blee-yana’ was veteran Servas member, Boris. Boris is a middle aged Slovenian with a wide array of interests. He’s a pianist whose passion for Baroque is demonstrated by the mountain of Bach music atop his piano. He also enjoys cross-country skiing, traveling around the world following solar eclipses, making harpsichords, and listening to classical tunes out of the 12″ subwoofer in his car. Most importantly, he is the only Servas host who has been to Austin! Austin was Boris’s second favorite American city behind San Francisco.

The first night in Ljubljana Boris scored us tickets to a concert by Ivo Pogorelić. Despite being horrifically underdressed, Lauren and I sat up close and personal with the social elite and Slovenian heads of state. Slovenia is such a small country that apparently its not uncommon to bump into the president at the local market every once and a while. After hearing this we were hoping to pull a ‘Stew,’ but Janez Drnovšek was nowhere to be found.

Ljubljana is another pretty Eastern European town with a hilltop castle and lots of churches. The whole cityscape has been sculpted by early 20th century architect Jože Plečnik (pronounced Plech-neek.) His classical forms marry well with the simple beauty of Slovenia’s capital. For a peak at one of Plečnik’s interiors we had to plech-sneak into the University Library because it’s closed to the public.

One morning after breakfast Boris told us “I am deep throat.” Lauren and I were a little confused. He explained that he was secretly meeting up with a journalist later that day to give her information concerning a dubious Slovenian corporation that shall remain nameless out of respect for Boris’s safety. The whole thing was a pretty cool story.

We left Slovenia on a miserable overnight train towards the last stop on our 4 month adventure through Europe.

Our accommodation turned out to be somewhat inconveniently outside the town itself and up the mountain from Innsbruck. Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and the Innsbruck bobsledding/lugeing/skeleton track was only a stone’s throw from our room so ... [Continue reading this entry]

The tour de European Christmas markets continued in Vienna. We got into town around dinner time and immediately hit the streets to see what kind of meal we could put together to accompany the obligatory hot wine (or Glühwein ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bratislava is home to 23-year old Eugen Ružický. He was our Servas host and ambassador to Slovakia. Based on the multiple 1,000 word emails and lengthy G-chat sessions leading up to our visit we hypothesized that Eugen was an ... [Continue reading this entry]

Lauren and I took an overnight train from Krakow and got to Prague bright and early before the stampede of tour groups. Since the Czech Republic entered the EU in 2004 Prague has undergone a massive transformation and became ... [Continue reading this entry]

Or in German: Auschwitz. The effect that visiting Auschwitz has on one’s psyche is hard to put into words. Just reflecting on the experience now is enough to make my eyes well up and my stomach cave in. It’s ... [Continue reading this entry]

We celebrated Thanksgiving in beautiful Krakow. Supposedly Krakow is the “next Prague.” At the time that claim was hard to judge because Prague would be our next stop, but now looking back on both cities it makes sense ... [Continue reading this entry]

Warsaw was cold. The warmest thing about Poland is its people. Between the airport and our Servas host’s apartment we got to know several Poles. The jolly giant working the luggage room at the train station talked ... [Continue reading this entry]

Amsterdam is a strange place. As any 7th grade delinquent can proudly tell you, lots of interesting things are legal here. The city sits on a half circle of canals radiating out from the central train station. ... [Continue reading this entry]