Poland: The Home Stretch (With Pics)

So I had two options for getting back to Ukraine:

1) The overnight train from Krakow to Kyiv. Easy, simple, they come to your coupe and stamp your passport at the border and you don't even have to get out of bed. Fall asleep in one country, wake up in the other. Cost: $60.

2) Take a train from Krakow to a border town. Take a marshrutka from the border town to the border. Wait in line at the border, go through customs then walk across. Catch a marshrutka from the border to Lviv. Catch an overnight train from Lviv to Kyiv. Cost: $20.

Which did I go for? Dude, I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer.



The train from Krakow to the border town. Polish trains don't sell seats, they sell tickets. When all the seats are sold out, people stand in the hallway, like I did.



At the Ukrainian border. What's cool was that at the Polish border town (I forget its name), everything was in both Latin and Cyrillic letters. Because so many Latin letters in Polish have different sounds ("S" is "Sh" and "W" is "V" for example), it is easier for me to read Polish words in cyrillic than it is in Latin. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the signs.


At customs. This is the slavic definition of an orderly line.



The line to get into Poland. Like at the Mexico/USA border, the line into the poorer country is far faster. Seth and Sean came this route and stood for four hours in the rain waiting to cross into Poland. The crush near the door because so bad that Seth spent half an hour with one hand over his head and his ribs shoved into a metal pole. Luckily, I was across in twenty minutes.

The marshrutka to Lviv was another story. As if welcoming me back to Ukraine and its quaint customs, the marshrutka to Lviv was packed solid when we left and only became more so because the driver never stopped picking up customers on the whole two hour drive. I spent most of it standing in the aisle with all my weight on my left foot because an overly large woman was shoving into my on my right side and someone's box of fruit was between my feet. Soon my leg started to hurt from the weight, then burn, then finally, thankfully, went numb.

Still, I felt my luck was holding: I managed to catch the last train to the border town with seconds to spare (it started moving as soon as I set foot on board) and caught the last marshrutka to Lviv. From there, whether my luck held is debateable: after spending thirty minutes in a mob at the Lviv train ticket window, I was told that on all five of the trains leaving to Kyiv that night, the only seat available was in SV, which is the second highest class on the train. A platzcart ticket--the lowest class and which I usually take--would have been about $7. The only way I could get to Kyiv by the next day, and I had to, because Steve and Carrie's birthday party was the next day, was to buy a $40 train ticket.

So I did.


My SV coupe

For those keeping up, my extremely complex journey across half of Poland and half of Ukraine ended up costing the same as if I had just gotten on the overnight in Krakow. Well, almost. I did the math and found that I saved myself $6. Six dollars ia a lot of Pepsi in Ukraine, so I will say it was worth it.

SV, though, was not worth it.

But, finally, I was home.

Poland: Beatles Party (With Pics)

Last night in Krakow, and what better place to spend it than at a Beatles themed party at a local bar named Ouba-Douba? Seth, Sean and I arrived too late to see the Beatles cover band, but a DJ was on hand to spin the best of the 50s and 60s (yes, the 50s and 60s) for us. It was a new experience for me because I had never tried to figure out how to dance to "Break on Through to the Other Side" on a floor packed with tourists and Poles before.


Beatles night painting at the bar


Me with one of the cover band members. No matter how much we begged, they wouldn't play another set.


Me with Anya

Let me explain about Anya, this cute little Polish heartbreaker. She came out of nowhere and started dancing with me, extremely inebreated on alcohol and no doubt a few other substances. Polish is close to Ukranian (actually, it can be argued that most non-Russian vocabulary in Ukrainian is probably from Polish, but don't say that in front of Ukrainian nationalists) and so we were able to talk a bit, but not much as she was more interested in dancing.

And dance she did, with all of us. She generally cycled between seemingly-passed out, dancing against me with so much dead-weight that it was hard to keep my balance, to perking back up and bouncing around. She had a lot of infectious happiness, though. I say heartbreaker because even thoughwe danced together for more than an hour, I got the feeling she was dancing with me because I could dance, not out of any attraction. I wanted to kiss her but didn't get the vibe and so never tried. Call me punk if you will; I was just having fun dancing.


Seth dancing with Anya and Sean mugging for the camera


Alexandra, a Polish girl who is a throwback to the raver generation. We danced a lot, but in the raver style where you dance at the other person, rather than with them.


Sean dancing with a girl

So it was a great way to end a trip. Sean and Seth headed west to Budapest, and for me there was only the long slog east back to Ukraine...

Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau (With Pics)

One goes to Auschwitz to learn. I also went to teach: I taught the Diary of Anne Frank every year and while I had photos and stories from where Anne Frank lived, I had never been to where she had died. Like a previous visit to Dachau, I dealt with a lot of the horror by blocking it out and instead figuring out in my head how I would explain what I was seeing to my students.


The entrance to Auschwitz I. Above the gate it says "Arbrecht Mach Frei". Work will make you free.

The first thing that got me was how preserved it was: in Dachau, all the barracks were stripped down for wood and little more than the foundations and outer wall remain. Most of Auschwitz is still how it was when the allies arrived.


Barracks

It was a lot to take in. The connections keep getting more and more, too. A map showed the transportation paths to Aushwitz and one came straight from Lviv. I visited an abandoned synagogue in shovka, just outside of Lviv in Febuary. The Jews that once worshipped there were sent here. Now, the entire Jewish population of shovka is gone and the only people who enter the synagogue are random travelers that happen to introduced to the person with the key.

A picture of the synagogue can be seen

here

That's just the scale side of it. Going to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau (it's actually two camps) is to learn the more personal side of it, have stories you don't want to hear, attrocity after attrocity pummeled into you by the tour guide. I thought I had heard of every torture possible, every evil a human could commit upon another, but there was more to learn and the stories just kept coming. I felt like someone was taking a chisel to my soul. That's not hyperbole: it was a steady growing pain somewhere beneath my heart until I finally just shut down. And then I had to remind myself that hearing about it is nothing compared to experiencing it and how pathetic was it for me to think "I don't want to deal with this" when so many had to deal with so much more?

It's the details that stab: the fact that the Nazis actually built a rotating table on rails so that they could move and turn the bodies efficiently before they could be slid into the ovens by a device that looked like the pump on a shotgun, turned upside down. Slide it forward, body is pushed into the oven. Slide it back, it's ready for a new body. I accept the emotions that lead to genocide within us, but my understanding is that they are divorced from intellect. The very presence of the devices is proof that someone rationally thought about how to effieciently dispose of a lot of bodies and that is what sickens me the most.


Body turning device


Body loading device

I showed almost no emotion for the whole tour. No one did. Our entire group of Anglophone men and women didn't shed a tear around one another. My breakdown finally came when, at the end, I climbed the guard tower, the one stradling the train tracks and seen in every Holocaust film.


The watchtower

I looked out over the enormity of it and it wasn't even a rational thought. It was once glance and I had to leave quickly. I found a small field of wild wheat near the doors, went into it and cried for less than a minute.


Walking into a gas chamber


Tracks leading from the watchtower into the camp


Sleeping palets

The Nazis decided not to waste anything and kept warehouses full of what was taken from the prisoners:


Prothesis


Human hair


Cloth made from human hair


Shoes

Poland: Krakow Bike Tour (With Lots of Pics)

Sometimes, you can get fooled. A place has Pizza Hut and you assume: hey, it's not Ukraine. They're modern here. This is a major city in an EU country. Surely I can drink the water. Or place ice cubes into my Pepsi.

Which is the only thing I consumed that Sean and Seth had not, but they were not up all night puking their guts out every few minutes (which sucks all the more when the bathroom in your hostel is downstairs).

I waited about two hours to make sure that I was puking because of some kind of food poisoning rather than some other stomach problem, but when that two hours was up and I was still vomiting, in went the ciprofloxacin. Cipro is a serious antibiotic that the U.S. stockpiles in case of anthrax attack. It's also good to take if you consume any bad water or food, which is why it's in our Peace Corp medical kits and why it was in my backpack. A few hours later I settled out and managed to get a couple hours of sleep.

***
RANT: Feel free to skip

This is why I think antibiotics should not require a perscription. It's not like you can abuse them like painkillers and it's nice to have a supply when you really need them. I remember a roadtrip to Vegas getting completely sidetracked because I developed an ear infection that was painfully draining into my throat, preventing me from eating anything but soup. I knew exactly what I needed: amoxocillin. We finally found a walk-in clinic in Arizona. The doctor saw me for about ten seconds, then prescribed me: amoxocillin. Besides the $20 copay and the cost of the antibiotics, I later got a bill for $110 in the mail because I had not out-of-state medical coverage. It would have been nice for the FDA to let me make the informed call myself and save me the money. And while I realize antibiotics could be abused, taken for every sniffle, at least let there be some sort of certification program like CPR so that afterwards I got get them on my own. A doctor in the states may give you cipro a head of time if you tell him or her you're going to a non-first world country, but you'd still have to pay just to get the prescription.

***

Needless to say, I was pretty weakened in the morning, which is not a good state when the plan for the day is to take a bike tour of Krakow. I soldiered through because I knew that if I stayed at the hostel, I'd be perkier in a couple hours and annoyed that I had missed it.


Seth, Sean and I on the bike tour. If I look a little worse for wear, it's because I was just getting over food poisoning

As is, it was a fantastic tour. I've learned that one of the first things to do in any major city where they are available is to take the bike tour. They tend to help you get your bearings, show you a lot of sites and tend to be hipper than any walking tour.


Krakow, seen from Wawel Castle

Our guide, Dave, was an American who had been living in Krakow for seven years. He was knowledgeably, funny and just really good at his job. For instance, according to Dave (but confirmed by a guide book), Krakow is named after a knight called Krak. Yes, Krak. According to legend he cleverly slew a dragon, took the offered prize of the town leader's daughter and thusly became it's leader. Out of humilty, he decided to name the town after himself.


A bit of Krakow archetecture


Krakow's river


Pigeons in Main Market Square

Krakow's Old Town is one of the most beautiful that I've seen. Ringed by a park, it's a huge collection of buildings from different periods in history. Most of it, unlike a lot of Eastern Europe, unscathed by World War II. In the center of Old Town is the Main Market Square, a huge expanse of cobblestones surrounded by cathedrals and buildings, carpeted by pigeons, tourists, performers, and vendors.


Pigeon on my shoulder. I thought Seth had tapped my shoulder, but when I looked back, I saw this guy sitting there.


I like the clash between contemporary and traditional with two women cooking up food in Main Market Square.


A church in Main Market Square

As beautiful as Krakow's is, though, the city has a much darker side. When the Nazis left in retreat near the end of World War II, they would leave behind a decimated Jewish population and two of the largest concentration camps: Auchwitz and Auchwitz-Birkanau, where 1.5 million people died. The surviving Jews fled. There are so few Jews in Krakow today that Krakow's rabbi actually lives in New York.

When the Nazi's arrived, one of the first things they did was isolate the Jews in a walled ghetto. This is where they crossed into the ghetto:


The bridge leading into the Jewish ghetto. The original was blown up by Nazis to slow the invading Soviets. This is one is modeled on the first.


The only part of the ghetto wall still standing

In the ghetto the Jews lived and worked, traffic in and out being controlled by guards, food ration tossed over walls to whomever was lucky enough to be there. Non-Jewish people having to move through the ghetto to reach factories on the outskirts of town did so in guarded trolley-cars with shaded windows. This was to both prevent them from seeing the deterioration in the ghetto and/or to prevent them from providing the Jews with news or supplies. When the concentration camps were completed, the ghettos were emptied out.


Where the Jews were rounded up to send to concentration camps

If you'll notice in the above photograph, people still live and work where the ghetto once was. In fact, people are living in the same buildings, the same rooms that once had an average of 9 Jews per apartment compressed into them. According to that stigma, said Dave, property values were extremely low and the ghetto is now what we would think of as a ghetto: an extremely economically depressed area. Few tourists ever made it out there, and it was dangerous to do so. The only marks of the history of the ghetto is the section of wall in the picture above and a single small plaque on the pharmacy next to this square. The plaque was to commemorate a Catholic pharmacist who did his best to help the Jews.

There are some stories of hope to come out of this, and one of the more famous was the story of Oskar Shindler, the protaganist in Steven Spielberg's Shindler's List. I never saw the movie, but would like to now. On the bike tour we went to the actual factory, which now houses commercial offices. One of them was for a snowboarding magazine company.


Outside Shindler's factory

Shindler's story, in brief: Shindler was a buisnessman who came to Krakow during the war to make money. Buying a seized Jewish factory, he began making mess kits for the Nazis using Jewish slave labor. In an effort to keep up efficiency, he bought his workers extra rations and bribed Nazis to let them off of work details like street cleaning so that they could get to work on time. According to Dave, most of his early helping was entirely self-serving, and that the movie portrays him with too much empathy.

Still, Shindler became attached to his workers and began helping them more and more. When the Nazis began loosing, stopped buying mess kits and decided to move his factory equipment west in order to begin using it to make ammunition, Shindler paid a bribe to have his work force move with him and the equipment, sparing the lives of the workers, who would have gone to the concentration camps instead. He was given one night to draw up the names of all the workers and their family members who would be saved by the move. Hence, Shindler's List.


More of the factory


In the movie and in real life, one woman, who knew Shindler was a ladies man, dolled up to get his attention before begging him to save her family. These are the actual stairs where he appraised her before telling his secretary to let her come up to his office. He did save her family.


The old Jewish cemetary. Because there is no Jewish community in Krakow to take care of it, it is overgrown. According to Dave, the similarity between the way these Jewish Orthodox headstones are carved and the top of the ghetto wall was done on purpose by the Nazis to demoralize the Jews

Luckily, not all the tour was that emotionally heavy. On to some other sites.


Catholic church in Krakow


Sean on the bike tour


A monument to communism in front of a modern monument to capitalism: a mall

The bike tour got us way outside the historical center, where you knew few, if any tourists went, including past the above mall. We stopped at a gas station for snacks. After unsuccessfully experimenting with different--mostly healthy--things to see if they would stay in my stomach, it was only after puking up a lot more in the gas station bathroom and then munching, ironically, a bag of chips and drinking a gatorade that I felt better. The water, the salt and the carbs are what did it, and the chips actually absorbed a lot of whatever acids were raging. I finished out the bike tour in a much better mood.

The rest of the photos are from around Krakow. Enjoy.


Seth and I inside Wawel castle


Fire twirlers in Main Market Square


Seth and I in people-packed Old Town. I'm still under the weather in this pic.


Break dancers in Main Market Square

Poland: Priceless Salt (With Pics of Priceless Salt!)

There's this thing called UNESCO. It's a big acronym. What it stands sounds kind of pompus so you can have fun making up words that it stands for instead. United Nymphomaniacs Emasculating Sychophantic Christian Oppressors is a possibility to get you started.

HINT: Google it if you really want to know what it means.

Unflaggingly Naming Everthing So Cool Organization is another possibility. It is not as funny as the raunchier options, but not far off the mark of what UNESCO actually does. Everything UNESCO names as a World Heritage Site is always pretty damn cool. Three entire sections of Budapest are WHSs, Spisky Hrad (the big ass castle in Slovakia) is one, as are the painted monastaries in Romania. All were worth visiting.

There may be a bit of bias in what's picked, though: if you look at a map of World Heritage Sites, they are mostly concentrated in Europe. Also, in a possible cultural middle finger to the USA, most of America's World Heritage Sites are national parks: the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, etc. In fact, the only USA WHS (more acronyms) actually produced by America society is Monticello. Hint: Monticello was Thomas Jefferson's home (don't feel bad if you didn't know that; I had to google it to make sure). But basically UNESCO seems to be saying that while Europe has made many things of cultural import, the only things worth preserving in America are those things that were there before we arrived.

In any case, bias aside, I have come to respect UNESCO's choices and try to check out World Heritage Sites whenever possible. So when I learned that one of UNESCO twelve most priceless treasures was in Poland, I decided that I had to see it.

It was a salt mine.

Yes, a salt mine. We'll get to it in a second.

I met up with two of my good friends in Peace Corps, Sean and Seth, in Krakow, Poland. They were heading west, coming from Lviv and going to Budapest. I was going in the exact opposite direction.

Let me say that Krakow is absolutely beautiful.

Never heard of Krakow? You will one day. More than once I've heard that Krakow is the next Prague and that Lviv is the next Krakow. That sounds really In-The-Know, but it just sums up the travelers philosophy: "if I didn't have to go through hell to get there, it wasn't worth going."

Prague, Krakow and Lviv are all amazing cities, but to a traveler they rank thusly: Prague was once the darling of the backpacker circuit but is now full of tourists and therefore must be disdained. Krakow is not as touristy but easy to get to due to EU subsidies, letting visiting backpackers feel special but not having suffered overmuch to do so (other than, *ahem*, getting chloroformed on a train). Lviv--plagued by visa, language, lodging, transportation and service problems--is only visited by the most hardy travellers, i.e. Australians and Peace Corps Volunteers. Actually, when I was in Lviv in Feburary, I didn't see a single non-Ukranian there. In fact, the last time a large group of tourists actually visited Lviv, they killed all the Jews and shipped back thousands of tons of topsoil to Germany. This probably explains the lack of hostels.

Yes, to a rough and rugged Ukrainian Peace Corps Volunteer, Krakow is not off the beaten path, but is instead a substitute for heaven, ripe with soft toilet paper, West Slavic language and cute Polish girls.

But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes, salt mines. We're getting to that.

So I met Seth and Sean in Krakow. This is me with Sean and Seth:



I'm wearing the Prague tee-shirt that Anna bought me to make up for loosing my other one. And Carrie has already pointed out that I look scrawny compared to Seth and Sean, so you don't have to comment on it. Sigh. I hate having my self delusions shattered the harsh facts of reality.

That's part of the Krakow castle in the background (we're inside the walls). Krakow castle was listed as THE thing to see in Poland by the Let's Go travel guide, which either doesn't speak well of the rest of Poland, or speaks a lot about Let's Go's leanings towards hyperbole--and its inability to correctly report which of Budapest's baths are the gay ones.

But again I digress.

What a fun phrase. Who, I wonder, came up with this magic set of words that lets you ramble on unchecked and yet still be forgiven by a reader for your self-indulgent meanding simply by stating three little...

But I digress.

All this should be giving you the clue that there wasn't a lot to the salt mines.

Also, Let's Go was the one that said the salt mines were one of UNESCO's 12 most priceless treasures. The problem is, while the salt mines are on the world heritage list with several hundred other places, I have found no mention to a priceless treasures list outside of Let's Go. I'd like to know what the other 11 are, but I don't think I'll ever find out because I suspect that such a list doesn't really exist and am starting to really suspect that Let's Go is full of [expletive deleted].

Anyway, the castle was fun, it simply wasn't as remarkable or photogenic (the really important quality in a castle, defensibility be damned) as other castles I've been to. After seeing the castle, we hopped on a marshrutka (or, as the Polish call it, a "marshrutka") to the town of Wieliczka.

We were left at a grassy patch by the road and, after walking past some abandoned factories, found three boys in a cement culvert who managed to point us in the direction of the mines.

There, we found many brand new tour buses, forcing us to wonder just how Off-The-Beaten-Path this was. Answer: not very. I paid for our tickets with my Visa check card and then we were led by our English speaking guide down a set of 850 stairs (I kid you not) into the 350 km worth of tunnels that make up the salt mines. Also down there were a couple of underground lakes, so saturated that they simply could not absorb any more salt and are now impossible to drown in (well, almost; several Soviet soldiers were on one of the lakes in a rowboat. It overturned, trapping them underneath and pushing them under the water, where they then drowned. This is why communism failed).

These salt mines were once the source of great Polish wealth, back when you could receive your salary in salt because rotten food just didn't taste the same without it. Yes, yes, I know that's wrong. I know that salt was important because it was used for preserving meat, but I once had a seventh grade Language Arts teacher tell me the former answer when I asked her why salt used to be so valuable the Roman army was paid in it. It was only many years later that I realized she was as full of [explitive deleted] as the Let's Go guide.

Okay, now to the real reason these particular salt mines warranted UNESCO's attention: miners got bored and miners were religious. This led them to carve salt. Lots of salt. Into--mostly--religious statues. Down in these mines are dozens and dozens of statues carved out of salt, as well as several chapels, also carved out of salt.

I will have to admit the salt carvings were pretty cool. Ditto the chapels, which had chandeliers not made out of glass, but pure salt crystals. The coolest part, though,--the hippest, the most heater, the most sick, the most gnar--was the fact that you could lick the walls. They tasted salty.

Also, for a scare: the timbers supporting the roof of the tunnels (which was also salt) were 400 years old. Most people replace wood by then, but because the salt had petrified the wood, it was deemed safe to let the really, really, really old wood be the only thing that kept tons of salt from collapsing onto the heads of hundreds of tourists. Who's with me in trusting the assesment of mine saftey by a newly emerging, formerly-Soviet country? Anyone? Anyone?

And one last thing before we just get to the pictures, which you've no doubt skipped over all these words to see anyway. Some of the oldest sculptures (at 600 years old) had weathered away to almost featureless. This was in sharp contrast to other, newer, very beautiful sculptures had been intricately detailed in this very impermanent substance. I asked our guide what measures they were taking to preserve the newer (and by newer, I mean 150 years old) sculptures. "Nothing," she said. In other words, in 50 years, when Krakow is the new Prague and Lviv is the new Krakow, all those tourists won't get to see the same level of amazing details as I did. Which is why one tries to get a little off the beaten path.

But hopefully by then, they will have replaced the one four-person elevator that was the only route back to the surface. The tour was two hours. Wait time for the elevator? An hour and a half. So sometimes it's not bad when, like a red-headed stepchild complaining ther her food tastes bland and could really use some, um, pepper, the path is beaten.


Sean, holding his hands under water pumped out of the mines. It looks like (insert Dr. Evil voice) liquid hot MAG-ma.


Oh, yeah, the legend of the salt mines: a Polish princess was allowed to throw a ring and whatever the ring touched, that would be for her people. It landed in a field and when the peasants dug down, they found the salt that would bring so much wealth to Poland. This is the ring being returned to the princess. Actually, modern archeology shows that tribes had been mining the salt for thousands of years, but who needs scientific fact when you have a cool salt sculpture?

One of the chapels, carved entirely out of salt.


A crucifix carved out of salt.


The Last Supper carved out of salt. When Jesus said "take this bread and eat it", do you think any of the disciples added a certain condiment?


Lastly, yours truly licking the salt

Czech Republic: Getting Robbed

So I'm chilling in Amy and Anna's hostel with them when we meet two guys who have just come from Krakow, Poland. I'm heading there next and ask them how it was. They tell me, then ask me how I'm getting there. The overnight train from Prague to Krakow, I tell them, and then they give me looks of horror. They tell me about two guys they met in Krakow who said they were gassed on the train and had their daypacks stolen.

Are you kidding me?

Another person in the hostel, and Australian, confirms the rumor with her Lonely Planet guide: a blurb says that there are many reports of theft on the overnight train, including a couple of people who say they were chloroformed while they slept.

Talk about having the fear put in you. I had already bought my ticket, though, and was determined to go. "What are you going to do?" asked Anna. "I'll lash the door shut," I said. "What if they're already in the cabin with you?" asked Amy. I thought about it for a moment. "I'll duct tape everything of value to my legs," I said. It was meant as a joke, but I actually did it. While the people in the hostel's bar looked on, Amy duct taped my camera to one leg in the bar, my mobile phone to the other. I put some grivnas in my wallet and money belt and put the rest of my money and my check cardin my shoe. "Anyone who is robbing you is going to get in and out quick," I said. "They're going to go for the wallet and the money belt, not go feeling up your legs." Amy and Anna still looked dubious. They suggested I go to Paris with them. Had I the time or money, I would have. As it was, I had to go to Krakow to meet my friends Sean and Seth, threat of robbery or not.

"Well," said one of the guys. "If you do get robbed, at least you'll get a whole new wardrobe." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Travel insurance," he said. "I don't have travel insurance," I said. His friend laughed. "Wow," he said. "How retro."

Which brings up why people get travel insurance while in Eastern Europe It's because you're likely to get robbed blind.

The rugby team in Budapest? Three of their daypacks were stolen while the slept on an overnight train in Croatia. Another one of the rugby members had his camera stolen while we were dancing at Rio. It was a bit of his fault: he dropped it. But it no sooner hit the ground then someone had picked it up and it was gone forever.

Jenny, the Scottish girl that went to the five-story club with us had her purse stolen while she was there. She was too drunk to remember how; she thinks she set her handbag down on the bar or something. In any case, in the morning her handbag was with her, her purse was not. Luckily, the guy that came back to the hostel with her gave her 100 crowns to get her through the week before she flew back to Scotland.

And then there was me. I'm anal and paranoid about my stuff while traveling. Everything of value: my mobile, my camera, my checkcard and my passport, stays on me at all times and I'm really careful in crowds. My whole backpack could get stolen and I could still finish out the trip with minimal hassle as long as I have those four things. Still, despite my precautions, something near and dear to me was stolen in Prague: my socks.

In Slovakia, in the mountains, there were sporting goods store on every block to supply the mountain trekers. My wool hiking socks, three years old now, were shot. I bought a $10 Slovakian-made pair (I believe in paying good money for good socks) for climbing to the top of Poland and they were fantastic, better than the SmartWool ones I buy at home. In Prague, I left them hanging on my bunk to air out and they were gone the next day. Possibly someone knew the value of good wool socks. Possibly the guy below me just thought they were his and took them with him when he left.

In either case, grrr. But still, small loss.

As far as getting gassed and mugged on the train? Well, I found out it was an urban myth. I checked the State Department website for Poland and read that while train robberies were common, there were no reports of people being cholorformed. Had it actually happened, it would have been in there. A borrowed Rick Steves' Travel Guide said the same thing: the cholorforming was an urban myth, probably told by people too embarassed to admit that they slept right through being robbed.

By the way, I've asked to see and flipped through a lot of travel guides while in Eastern Europe, trying to find which brand is the best. The only guide I had were the torn out pages of a 2000 Let's Go guide that was left on the Peace Corps shelf. Having looked through Rough Guide, Let's Go, Lonely Planet and Rick Steves, I would have to say Rick Steves was the best for both accuracy and layout. The hand-drawn maps are annoying, but you can't have everything. Also, for off-the-beaten track places (i.e. Ukraine), Brandt's Travel Guides are the best. They specialize in the areas the tourists don't normally go. When I go through Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Aizer Baijan next year, it will be with a Brandt.

Anyway, when I arrived at my coupe on the Prague-Krakow train, I found I was sharing it with five women: three Americans, an Australian and a Finn. In other words, no rough Hungarians to gas me in the night. I announced my attention to lash the door shut for security, which they readily agreed to, having heard the rumors themselves. One of the girls loaned me a canvas belt for the job and, viola, we were safe.

Actually, someone did try to open the door around one A.M. After a couple of tugs, though, they left. Whether it was a robber or someone at the wrong coupe, who knows?

I arrived in Krakow safely the next morning, with all my things accounted for. Let me tell you, though, it was a bitch getting that duct tape off my leg hair.

Czech Republic: Prague Pics

I spent the last two days in Prague with Amy and Anna, in a state no sane person could call sober. Ironically we saw a lot--including Prague Castle, the largest ancient castle in the world--, Mala Strana, and the Jewish Quarter but in the end it turned out I hadn't taken many pictures. So here's some highlights of what I did take:


This is the hostel: price was great ($9 a night) and location was great (right by the Charles Bridge) but accomodations were only so-so. As you can see, it's a bunch of bunk beds in a old gym. 64 bunk beds to be exact, with cushions instead of mattresses (Ukraine style!) and no pillows (I stuffed a tee-shirt full of clothes; Camping style!).


The river that runs through Prague, as seen from the Charles Bridge.


The astronomical clock in Old Town Square. This clock was thought to be so magnificent that legend has it that the maker was blinded so that he could never make another.


Old Town Square


Legend has it that if you touch this statue on the Charles Bridge, you will to return to Prague. You can see how multiple touchings has worn away the grime back down to the bronze.


A crucifix on the Charles Bridge.


Prague, as seen from Powder Tower.

Czech Republic: The Museum of Torture

NOTE: You may not want to read this if you have a delicate nature.

So, still limping around Prague, I decided that a museum wouldn't be a bad idea. It involved less walking and a lot of resting between walking to look at exhibits. But those of you who have travelled a lot know all about museum-fatigue, and I haven't gotten over mine from my Western Europe trip two years ago. If I ever see a hall full of Renaisance art again, I may have to decapitate myself with a John the Baptist painting. But Prague has a handful of specialty museums meant to snare the more base interests, including a museum of live snakes and tarantulas, a museum of sex machines (at a $10 entry fee, I decided to give that one a miss), and a museum of torture.

It was educational, to say the least. You've heard of the rack and the iron maiden, but have you heard of the Street Sweeper's Daughter (it pins the wrists, ankles and neck close together)? Or the Spanish Spider (metal claws attached to a wooden handle; used to tear breasts)? The museum was full of hundreds of devices and I suppose the worst realization was that people actually had to sit down and design all of these, knowing full well what they would be used for.

The following is a few photos (surreptiously snapped because I wasn't supposed to) and some of the more interesting stories accompaning the devices.


This device was used to torture people before killing them. The screw was slowly wound into the base of the skull until it finally pierced the brain.


This is called the bock. It was mostly used on females suspected of being witches, and you can guess how. Accompaning this device was the story of one woman who was tortured for four months without confessing. She was sentenced to 12 hours on the bock and confessed after 3 hours. They made her do 5 more hours to make sure the confession was "real". Satisfied, they then beheaded her and burnt her body.

Although I didn't take a picture of it, possibly one of the more sickening tortures was the pear. It was a pear shaped metal device that, when a screw was turned, steadily widened. It was used on women accused of having sex with the devil, blashpemy or provacative speech. It was also used on homosexuals. You can guess how.


Used to impale people. Through the anus and out the mouth...


Although not technically torture devices, there were a couple of chastity belts on display. I found it ironic that one belts had a hole for urination in the shape of a heart.


The infamous rack.

A variation on the rack was "jerking", where people would be hung up by the wrists and painfully jerked. It was supposed to be a more humane form of torture. Along with this device was an account of a whole family being tortured. The father died quickly in jail, but the mother and daughter lived to be tortured by jerking. The daughter didn't confess after being jerked eleven times, but when she was told that her mother had confessed, she then confessed to crimes ranging from: "sex with the devil since she was eight years old, having eaten the hearts of 30 children, participated in the sabbath, caused storms, killed people and denied God."


A torture chair. A victim would wear themselves out trying to hold themselves off the spikes.

Another intersting device that I didn't photograph was the see saw. It was literally used to catapult people into the air, after which they would come crashing down, breaking bones.

Some of the less painful means of toture were the stocks and metal masks used to embarass offenders. One mask that had a metal bit that went into the mouth was used on: "noise makers, disturbing the peace, obscene langauge or swearing and bad morals."

And lastly, there was an account of a minstril from Lancre. His crime was that his music offended a nobleman. His punishement, after having the mask on, was that his tongue was cut out and his hands cut off.

Czech Republic: Haratice (With Pics)

[Note: Due to an upsurge in internet access, posts are probably going to come daily for a bit.]

I was finally able to meet up with Jana, whom I had accidently stood up due to the train that never came to Budapest. After sending emails and text messages back and forth, it looked like we would be unable to meet: she had her surgery scheduled and then had to go teach for a month at a children's camp. It would be a little hard to swallow: me being in the Czech Republic and us not hanging out, but it looked like fate had conspired against us.

Finally, though, I got an email that said: "You can go by train at 9:13 Am from Prague hl.n. It's train Praha-Harachov, I live in Plavy. I can wait at the station. I hope I wil be back from the hospital. But my boyfriend wants to celebrate something in the evening and I promised I wil come.(at about 7 PM I must be with him.). If it fits you tomorow,you are welcome."

I was dead-ragged from being up late, but I got my butt to the train station at 8:30 AM to buy a ticket to Plavy. In my rudimentry Czech (the language is related to Ukranian, but barely) I tried to buy a ticket. The lady told me that the Praha-Harachov train did not go to Plavy, and before I could answer, the person beside me pushed in to buy his ticket.

A word about Slavic lines: there are none. There are simply mobs at windows and you push your way in. Any hesitation at the window--fumbling for money, unsurety about train routes--is a valid reason for you to get pushed back. This is absolutely normal and you learn not to be ruffled by it and instead push your way forward as ruthlessly as the people around you. Still, I was sans ticket.

I went to the next window. Perhaps, I wondered, I had to change in Harchov and then go to Plavy? I asked if the train went to Plavy. Yes, I was told by the attendent, it did go to Plavy. Slightly confused and not knowing who to believe, I bought the ticket anyway, hoping Jana was right.

On the train, I asked the attendent: yes, it went to Plavy, he said. Reassured, I sat down. I remember Jana saying she lived about an hour from Prague. After an hour, I asked about the stop. The attendent told me Plavy would be two more hours. Two more hours? Now I was worried if I was even going to the right Plavy. Was there more than one place in Czech Republic called Plavy? I didn't even know where her village was located geographically. I didn't even know if the train I was on was going north, south, west or east.

Settling in with my book, I decided to wait and see. At worst, I'd catch the train right back to Prague. Two hours later, I was starting to get worried. The attendent had left the train, most of the passangers had gotten off, and all semblance of civilization had dissapeared out the windows. We were currently going through heavily forrested land only occasionally interrupted by a dillapidated house or two.

I asked other passangers: Plavy is coming, they said. But would it be the right one? Finally, the train stopped, not at a train station but in the middle of a field. Plavy, said the other passangers.

Are you joking?

Hesitantly, I got off my only means of conveyance in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country where I didn't know the langauge. I turned my head and, thankfully, Jana was standing there. Plavy turned out to be a small village in the north of the Czech Republic, just 40 kilometers from the border of Poland. It warranted a train stop, but not an actual station, hence me getting off in the middle of a field.

Jana didn't even live in Plavy, though: she lived in Haratice, an even smaller village in the hills above Plavy. Jana was exhausted from her exploratory stomach surgery that morning (she turned out to be okay), and I was exhausted from staying up late. So it turned out to be a rather subdued, but nice, afternoon. I got to meet some of her family, and her sister made us a lunch of mushroom soup and some sort of cake made out of a vegetable I had never seen before. Not knowing the English word, they showed me the vegetable, and I can only say that it looks somewhat related to eggplant.


Jana, above Haratice and Plavy

Afterwards, Jana and I did the only thing people do in her village: we took a walk. We walked in the hills and forest around the village and then went "mushrooming". This means a completely different thing where I grew up, but here it meant finding mushrooms to make more soup with. We hung out at her house for a while, showing each other pictures of our travels and talking about life in general, but by then I needed to go: her boyfriend was coming up to see her after her surgery and I had to catch one of the few buses heading back that day to Prague.


Taking a walk in the Czech countryside


Jana 'shrooming

We hugged good-bye, not knowing when we'd see each other again, but it was still good to see her and a bit of the Czech countryside I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Czech Republic: Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (With Pics)

I spent three days limping around Prague and reading, waiting for my foot to heal. Limp to the Charles Bridge. Sit. Read. Limp to Old Town Square. Sit. Read. It was slightly frustrating. I realize that when people take vacations, this is what they do: sit, read, relax. But when I travel, I like to do things. If I wanted to sit and read, I would have stayed at home and done it for free.

Luckily, though, Amy and Anna arrived in Prague with plans to paint it red. They gave me a text message: they wanted to go out dancing. I was still limping slighlty, but figured the girls and the alcohol would make me forget the pain in my foot. They did.

***

I walked into the bar, Jenny in tow. I had met Jenny, a Scottish design major, at my hostel. After some dinner, she had come along to meet Amy and Anna with me before we all went to a five story club Prague club with such a good reputation, we had heard about it in Budapest.

Amy and Anna were in their hostel’s bar, surrounded by a group of six British guys. Both bounced over at my entrance, giving me hugs and cheek-kisses while Jenny excused herself to the bathroom. I sat down at a table and Amy and Anna sat down with me, one on each side. When Jenny returned, I introduced her to the girls and she sat beside Anna. With the three girls sitting with me, I was now with 100% of the females in the bar.


Jenny, Anna, me and Amy

One of the British guys came over and asked--only half-jokingly and slightly drunk-- “what does he have that I don’t?”

Without missing a beat, Amy said: “Absinthe” and Anna said: “Blue eyes.” I felt like a rock star.

Part of it, the girls confessed to me, was that they just didn’t like the British guys. I figured they were sidling up to me kept the Brits at bay. But still, laughing with these three girls while half a dozen guys jealously looked on: I’ll admit I was ego tripping.

Amy was right about the absinthe, the day-glo green hallucinogenic drink legal in only a handful of countries, the Czech Republic being one of them. I had bought a bottle that afternoon, had text-messaged the girls that I was bringing it over. Not drinking absinthe in Prague is like not eating fish and chips in London or not drinking sake in Japan.


The infamous absinthe

The bartender brought what we would need for the true absinthe experience, free of charge. Jenny, who spent a semester in Prague, begged off, claiming one too many bad absinthe experiences. Instead, she took the pictures as we poured glasses, filled spoons with sugar and a few drops of absinthe, lit the mixtures on fire, blew them out and dumped them in the glasses before the absinthe was quickly swallowed.


Preparing the sugar


Absinthe on fire

Although no longer as potent as it once was, absinthe is still extremely strong. The bottle I bought was 77% alcohol: 154 proof. Knocking back that much of the sugar-filled and warmed liquid brought on a feeling best likened to napalm in the chest.


Me and Amy, post drink

A lightweight, I went from 0 to drunk in about six seconds flat. Amy and Anna were party girls, though, and had been drinking every day of their five week trip, missing only once when they were on a ferry and had no access. They were up for much more, but the bottle was already gone. I figured I was done for the night: I had only enough Czech crowns for a taxi ride and club cover, but it didn’t matter: the girls never stopped handing me drinks. Before we left for the club, the three of us did shots of Jose Cuervo Gold with cinnamon and orange slices instead of salt and lime. It was pretty damn good.


Doing tequila shots

The club was by Prague’s famous Charles Bridge, overlooking the river and five stories tall, different music on each floor. A LED board in the entrance showed the available music: a techno DJ on the fifth floor, oldies on the fourth and so on. Ignorant of American political correctness, the second floor was labeled: Black Music.


Look at the music second from the bottom

We popped into the techno and “Black Music” floors, but spent most of the night in that oldies room, singing along as great song after great nostalgic song came on, from “Bloody Sunday” to “It’s Raining Men”.

I remained the rock star. Amy and Anna danced with other guys, but still spent the majority of the night with me. Jenny and I made out early on in the night, lips locking almost accidently while we were dancing and then staying there. When I was dancing with Anna, though, she went off with another guy, who she’d spent an hour making out on the dance floor with. I didn't mind: I was enjoying the attentions of Amy and Anna and was happy that Jenny was getting some. Jenny eventually disappeared and I wouldn't see her again until I went back to the hostel, her and the guy crammed into her bunk (she claims nothing happened :-) ).


Girls in the club



Some time during the night, Anna managed to loose my shirt. She had pulled it off me, possibly to make me match a lot of the other shirtless guys in the club, and then tucked a corner of it into her waistband. When I later asked for it back to go to the bathroom, she looked down to realize that it was AWOL. A search of the floor proved fruitless and Anna became upset, her mood nearly maudaline. I didn’t care; it was a $2 cotton tee-shirt. Still, she apologized over and over, saying she never lost other people's things things, promising to buy me a new one. I accepted the offer: “buy me a Prague tee-shirt tomorrow,” I told her. She agreed, but then pulled off her tee-shirt, revealing a black bra. “Wear mine for now,” she said, even though my fleece was tied around my waist. And then, and I’m not sure of the reasoning, Amy pulled off her tee-shirt so that Anna could wear it, putting on her cover-up she had brought. When I got back from the bathroom, shirts were re-exchanged, me going back to skin and getting photos of the girls changing in the process.


Anna taking her shirt off.


Amy changing her shirt

And it was in that state that I would dance with the girls until light was coming in through the club's windows. The interim period was a little blurry (as the girls seemed to have quite a bit of money and the alcohol never stopped coming), but I do remember a lot of making out, ice, and somehow I ended up with double stomach hickies.






To tell the truth, I don't remember how this happened

I realize, putting this on a public forum, that people might say I'm bragging. They would be right. I don't know how my skinny ass lucks out some times, but I did. It was a very enjoyable night, and I don't mind sharing it and this piece of advice: absinthe make the heart grow fonder.

Hungary: Eternity is a Hungarian Train Station (With Pics)

I stared at the train board, willing it to say, well, anything else. What it said was that my train was 120 minutes late. It had been saying that, mockingly, for six hours. Apparently, 120 minutes was the highest the little flipper board could go to. Even in Ukraine they had moved to LED boards. Not so in Budapest, where the staccato clacking of tiny flipping metal panels warned travelers of train changes. The panels with my overnight train to Prague stayed silent. As trains pulled in, more clacking ended with line numbers telling passengers which line their train was on. Beside my train, the metal panels were black.

You choose how to take your travels. I prefer to stay upbeat: good things are karmic kindnesses and thanks are owed to God for the privileges. Bad things are identified as the fodder for funny stories and thanks are owed to God for the lessons.

But this had to been one of the more annoying turns of events. I was in a social Catch-22. Although I had not meant to meet fellow PCVs Teresa, Terese and Lisa outside the Kiraly baths, fate or coincidence had made it possible. But I had to leave scant hours later, after some lunch and walking around. In addition to a request to stay from them, the invitation had come from two more fronts: Hugo and Dowat and their rugby team, and from Amy and Anna. All three groups were independently going to Rio tonight. It seemed a shame to miss that critical mass.


Terese, Teresa and Lisa

Plus, I had yet to have a good Turkish bath experience: T, T and L were going to a good one the following morning. I was also exhausted: staying up with the rugby team, Amy and Anna had not been conducive to my 7:30 AM wake up call to get breakfast and be checked out of my hostel at 9:00. Also, my tendon in my right foot had been torn or severely strained from walking around in my sandals and I was limping. Every step bordered on agony, despite the popped painkiller. That would not have prevented me from going to the club, but it certainly made limping around the train station annoying.

Although everything said to stay, I had an appointment: my Czech friend, Jana (the one I met in Chicago, if you’ve read that travelogue), was coming into Prague to show me around and then take me back to her village for the evening. My schedule with her was locked: she had an appointment for exploratory surgery the day after and could only come tomorrow. Plus, I couldn’t have cancelled if I wanted: it was rapidly approaching midnight and the Internet cafes were closed. The only way we could cheaply correspond were via e-mails and internet-sent text messages. I had also changed all my Forints into Euros, and the currency exchange places were also closed, so I couldn’t buy a phone card.

So the goal was still to go to Prague, and, so far, the delay wasn’t lethal: Jana and I were scheduled to meet in front of a museum at 10:45, and my train was supposed to arrive at 5:30. But as time moved on and the train didn’t arrive, the cut off marched closer.

There were at least forty or us waiting on that train, tourist-circuit rounders of Brits, Australians, Spaniards and Germans, with the occasional American thrown in (we were still in the minority this side of the former iron curtain). Spread out in the labyrinthine Budapest train station, we were trying to track down any kind of solid information about the train, spreading news like viruses as we met in halls. It seemed no one knew anything. The train was coming from Romania and had obviously been held up, but for how long? Long enough meant leaving the station to eat or relax. Anything less meant staying put for fear of missing its arrival.


Waiting for a train

Hungarian train attendants are the most willfully uninformed people I had ever met. If the information wasn’t in their computers, they didn’t care. Some, in a huff, made phone calls or left their cubicles to ask other people. The consensus answer seemed to be: four hours. It will be four hours late.

The board stayed stuck at 120 minutes. There was no line number.

Figuring three hours would be safe, I went back to the hostel to have dinner and to talk with Hugo. As I had already said my big good-bye, I got ragged on for being back again. Amy and Anna were on hand, and I passed the next two hours with their pleasurable company.

Ironically, if I had given up on the train right then, the night would have been perfect: everyone was readying to go out. I didn’t know where Teresa, Terese or Lisa were, but I would probably run into them at the club. But despite my desire to stay, I couldn’t stand Jana up. So I said yet another big good-bye and trudged back to the train station. On the way, I ran into T, T and L on the street. Budapest is a big city. Running inadvertently into the same people twice was an amazing coincidence, but I could do no more than another big good-bye, and then walk to the train station.

Back at the train station, the 120 minute sign mocked. The line number was blank. I settled in with a group of Australians, their monstrous bags piled together and making mine look puny, us circling them like wagons guarding against attacking Indians. I finished 100 Years of Solitude and gave it away to another traveler. I wrote. Midnight came. I sat half awake as the date changed and the sign didn’t.

After the four-hour mark passed, more inquiries were made. Forty minutes, we were told. An hour later, more inquires were made. Forty more minutes, we were told. By now, the few attendants still at their jobs were sick of us. At the international tickets desk, the woman whose job it was to sell the tickets for our train and, one would assume, be aware of its location, stonewalled all questions. This was my 1:00 AM conversation with her, in English:

“Do you know when the train will arrive?”

“I can’t help you.”

“Can you ask when it will arrive?”

“I can’t help you.”

“Who can help me?”

“I can’t help you.”

“Can you get someone who will help me?”

“I can’t help you.”

“Can I change my ticket for tomorrow?”

She hesitated. “Your ticket is valid only for today.”

“If the train does not arrive, can I get a refund?”

“I can’t help you.”

Then she looked down at the paper in front of her and refused to look up again.


Still waiting on a train

Finally, at 1:30 AM, the viral information started spreading that the train would not arrive until 4:00 AM. The Australians decided that if the train never came, they would catch the 6:00 AM train—a different train—to Prague. Then they settled against their backpacks and went to sleep.

As I had paid extra for both a reservation and for a couchette on the night train, I was annoyed to have to spend five and a half more hours in a train station to take a cheap day train to Prague. Plus, if we didn’t leave until 4:00 AM, there was no way I’d be in Prague in time to meet Jana.

Where did this information come from, I asked? No one knew; it was just spreading. I went to the woman who handled domestic tickets. She was the only helpful attendant, and our train wasn’t even her responsibility. She suggested two things: 1) Find the information office and/or 2) Just switch the ticket to the next day; she was pretty sure the train wasn’t coming.

I finally did find the information office, this mythical office no one had been able to find in the six hours people had been wandering around the station. It is not near any of the ticket windows, the train lines or the departure board. Rather, it is a tiny office in the back of the train station with no signage pointing to it. You either have to know where it is or, like me, find it by accident.

Inside were two older women, chatting, and a ten year-old girl, sitting and looking bored. I asked about the Prague train. The two women looked to the little girl for translation. After a moment’s conversation, the girl looked at me and said: “Don’t know when come. Maybe four. Train…” she hesitated and then smacked her hands together while making an exploding sound with her mouth.

A train wreck. There had been a fucking train wreck. And no one had bothered to tell us.
The departure board still said the train was 120 minutes late.
I was pissed. Had I been told six hours ago, I could have notified Jana and partied in Budapest. Instead, even if I got on a train now, it was too late to meet Jana and too late to notify her. I had just wasted a lot of my time painfully limping around a deserted train station in the middle of the night because the Hungarian rail service does not know the first thing about customer service. Or when its trains blow up. Welcome to Eastern Europe.

I took the domestic lady’s advice to switch tickets. The Australians renewed their commitment to wait on the 6:00 AM train. I shoved my ticket through the hole in the window of the unhelpful international lady and told her to change it. As bitchy as she was before, she could have caused me all manner of problems now. Instead she changed my ticket without a word and without a fine.

A cab driver took five American dollars to drive me back to the hostel (all the buses had stopped running at midnight), I gave the hostel my passport as collateral for a night’s payment (since I still didn’t have Forints) and, wonder of wonders, while checking in, Terese and Lisa walked in, having just gotten back from the club

It turns out that their hostel had overbooked and they had ended up in mine.

Three times we ran into each other! Chalk that up to travel karma.

The rugby team had forgone the club, but were still awake when I arrived at the rooms. I got ragged on for returning yet again after having said I was leaving the country. Hugo leapt up and said: “let’s go to Rio! Amy and Anna are there”. His mate reminded him that the clubs were due to close in an hour. As is, I was too tired: the rugby team and Amy and Anna had slept to noon. I had gotten up at 7:30, walked all over Budapest trying to go to a bath and had spent most of the night limping around a train station.

But, this is what happened: Jana was already on the way to Prague when I sent her a message early the next morning, but it wasn’t a bust because she got to spend the day with her boyfriend in Prague, who works there. With T, T and L at the hostel, the four of us were able to meet up with two other Ukraine PCVs I hadn’t known before, and all of us went to those good baths I talked about last posting—after I bought a speedo, of course.


Peace Corps Ukraine about to bathe Budapest


The baths we went to

I tapped some cash and bought myself a couple of good meals—including a not-bad Cuban sub--to make myself feel better. Amy and Anna said I missed a great night at the club, but promised better clubbing in Prague, when they got there. Also, I got to say a proper good-bye to David and Frances, the Australian couple I went caving with. Getting off the packed bus, we had lost track of one another and had only been able to bid good-bye via e-mail. I ran into them in a subway station later that afternoon. Budapest is a big city, but it’s in a small world.

I did finally get out of Budapest the next day, after a day of trying to keep at bay my paranoia that I’d have a repeat of the previous night. When I arrived at the train station, the 120 minutes late sign was staring at me.

I sat down with another book. As I told Hugo that evening, I wasn’t leaving the station unless I was on a Prague-bound train. He told me I’d probably be back again. Some time later, a staccato clacking caught my attention. It ended with a line number by my train. I felt a wave of relief wash over me: after getting held up in a very frustrating way, my trip was continuing.

The 120 minutes sign was still there, but that night, my train was exactly two hours late.

Hungary: How to Bathe in Budapest

Step 1: Budapest is famous for its many baths, so you decide on which bath to go to. Of the two parts of the city, Buda has the oldest baths, pumping up the same thermal waters that created the caves in the Buda hills. Choose Kiraly Baths because, at almost 500 years old, it is the oldest and most traditional of the baths in Budapest, one of only two preserving the original Turkish architecture (or so the guide says). So old and traditional, in fact, that it still has days for men and days for women so the two genders shall never meet.

Step 2: Reading in said guide that the bathing is nude, don only shorts, shirt and cheap Ukranian-bought sandals. Walk to the Buda side from hostel on the Pest side over the Elizabeth bridge.

Step 3: Realize you are hungry and to be so in the bath would be annoying. Decide that you will instead go to one of the closer baths on your map instead of far away Kiraly and find food on the way.

Step 4: Find first nearby bath. It is closed for reconstruction. Only available food is an overpriced, nearly-empty cafe.

Step 5: Find second nearby bath. It is also closed for rennovation. Once again, no nearby food.

Step 6: Cross bridge back to Pest. Eat at Burger King. Hope this does not later add to the jaqcuzzi action of the pools.

Step 7: Walk back to the Buda side. Walk all the way to Kiraly. Sandals start to hurt feet.

Step 8: Spend 15 minutes locating bath, as free map you are using incorrectly has the bath on the wrong block.

Step 9: Realize that the prices for the baths are higher than quoted and that you are exactly 15 forints (7 cents) short.

Step 10: Walk 6 blocks to nearest money exchange.

Step 11: Walk 6 blocks back.

Step 12: Pay for bath entrance and 15 minute massage. Read the sign above the window in four languages that says that you must wear a bathing suit. Figure you will just wear your shorts.

Step 13: In locker room, attendent tells you in a mix of hand signals and Hungarian (which is not a Slavic language and is actually related to Finnish and Turkish, meaning it is Greek to you) that your shorts are not a bathing suit and that you must have a bathing suit. Try in English and then Russian to explain that these are bathing shorts in America. Attendent points that they have a zipper. Figure that the metal zipper might heat up in the pool and that makes sense. Attendent refuses to let you enter, but offers to rent a bathing suit for 600 forints. Decide you don't want to pay money for someone else's suit.

Step 14: Cross back to Pest. Go to hostel. Get boxer shorts, which, save for being cotton, are no different from the shorts seen on other men in the bath.

Step 15: Cross back to Buda. Walk back to bath. On the way, tendon on the top of your right foot pulls and begins to hurt. Walking several miles in cheap sandals was not good idea. Limping towards bath, tell yourself that all this trouble will make the relaxing nature of the bath much more worth it. It has been three hours since Step 1.

Step 16: Attendent tells you that your boxers are not a bathing suit and once again refuses to let you enter. A three-language mild-arguement ensues, during which neither of you understands a word the other is saying. Through hand signals, the attendent tells you that you can't go into the baths, but tells you to go get your massage and hands you a sheet. Annoyed, you walk into the massage room.

Step 17: Your masseuse is an amazingly fat man whose gut hangs over his pelvis like a gelatinous waterfall. He points at your boxers and says "take off". As others receiving massages are also nude, you do as instructed, placing your sheet on the massage table and getting on it.

Step 18: Lie naked on table while fat man rubs your ass.

Step 19: Realize entire massage consists of fat man absent-mindedly rubbing your muscles with one hand until a knot is found and shoving half his weight onto it. Not sure if it helps, but it certainly does not feel good. Realize (this being the second massage you have ever paid for, and the second time said massage has sucked) that it is not worth it to pay for massages. Resolve to stick to current regime of free massages from attractive women. Resolve to never pay for a massage again.

Step 20: Take sheet to attendent, who points to drop off area inside door that happens to lead to bath.

Step 21: Wonder what it is like to get kicked out of a Turkish bath and, after depositing sheet, keep going down the hall and then down the stairs to the bath area. The signs to the bath, very old, are in Hungarian and Russian. Wonder which Soviet luminaries came to Budapest to take part in its famed baths.

Step 22: In bath area: a large round, tiled pool beneath a green Turkish dome, natural light coming from small holes in the dome itself. The larger pool, which turns out to have tepid water, is flanked by smaller, rectangular pools, the water in them warm, but not hot. Behind the large pool is a sauna, cold pool and showers.

Step 23: Realize that you are being stared at by many of the middle-aged Hungarian men sitting in the pools. Wonder if it is because you are in boxers and not in a bathing suit.

Step 24: Sit in large pool. See one guy giving another a massage and mentally remark that Eastern European men are certainly more comfortable with each other than American men.

Step 25: Realize that the men are touching each other a little too amorously for it to be a massage. Realize that this is a gay bath.

Step 26: Recall that the Let's Go guide--the one that said that the bathing was nude--specifically cautioned gay readers that because Kiraly was traditional, man day did not mean gay day. Resolve to never trust Let's Go again.

Step 27: Having no problem with alternative sexualities, decide to stay. Stares continue. Realize that this is how women must feel in a club when being stared at. Rather than flattering, it actually produces a feeling of discomfort. Resolve to have empathy for women who wear revealing clothes at meat market clubs and then complain when middle-aged men stare at them.

Step 28: Decide to do this Ukranian Banya-style and do cycles of sauna/cold pool/shower. Whenever in one stage of this cycle, men gravitate in your direction. Realize that it is perfectly natural for them to assume you are gay, as you are standing in your boxers in a Turkish bath on gay day. Don't make eye contact, so they don't get the wrong idea. This seems to work, as none of them try to speak to you or touch you.

Step 29: On third time into sauna, walk in on something you shouldn't have. Quickly walk back out. Go to the pool and sit. Stares continue. Realize that discomfort is the exact opposite of desired effect of Turkish bath. Decide to leave, passing bath attendent, who sees you in my wet boxers and glares. After three hours of trying to get in, you have spent $15 and less than an hour at the baths.

Step 30: Run into three Peace Corps friends outside of bath. Knew they were coming to Budapest the day you were leaving, and so did not bother to arrange meeting. Explain gay bath situation. Their Lonely Planet guide says that Kiraly is gay on men's day, but also listed the days wrong, and so they thought today was women's day, hence their arrival. Still, company of Peace Corps females is welcome after a week of travelling alone, and decide that travel karma is on the upswing.

Addendum: Bought a speedo (all they were selling in Budapest) and went to mixed-gender bath with the girls. This one was much more touristy and not traditional in the slightest. It had jacquizis, whirlpools and swimming pools in addition to the thermal baths and saunas, and was very relaxing. Apparently I look good in a speedo, or so say the girls. I suppose if I want a professional opinion, though, I could go find the bath attendent

Today's Lesson: As both the "local" versions of caving and bathing were not as good as the later-bought "tourist" versions (I went on a cheap, crappy walking cave tour with a guide that only spoke Hungarian prior to paying more money for the cool cave tour), do not do the backdoor thing without a local. And do not do the Kiraly backdoor thing unless you are gay.

Hungary: Caving in Budapest (With Pics)

So, one of the coolest experiences I've had to date: four hours of crawling and climbing my way through the caves in the hills of Budapest, my way lit only by the tiny lamp on my helmet and the flashes from my camera. It was my first caving experience, for the dirt cheap cost of $17.



This is David and Frances, an Australian couple that I met on the cave experience, all ready to go in. They had both just finished a six month stint in Cairo, doing missionary work (business development and education, respectively). As a fellow volunteer and interested in going to Cairo, we all got on instantly. Frances' sister, Kathryn, was also on the tour. More of her later.



The start of the cave tour, before the decent. The thermal waters that made Budapest's baths so famous eroded away the limestone to create these hundreds of miles of caves in the hills. During WWII, the caves were used as bomb shelters.



More of Katheryn, as promised. As she was ahead of me on the tour, while crawling through a hole the remark "the view is tremendous" escaped my lips. Luckily, she shared my sense of humor and while crawling through a tight passage called The Birth Canal (from which you emerge upside down, head first), she said "this is what a sperm must feel like."



One cave had a face shaped rock, pronounced to be the god of the cave by our guide. To appease this god, we had to climb up to this depression in the wall, wedge yourself in and clap with your hands and feet three times simultaneously. It was harder that I thought, but I did do it! This is me wedging; photo taken by Frances.



In a route called "The Worm's Hole"



David, emerging from The Worm's Hole. We asked how they turned away larger customers who wouldn't fit. Our guide said that if there were larger people, we would have taken an easier route. Luckily, everyone on the tour was compact and we got to check out the tinier warrens of the caves.



Me, sliding out from a hole.



Katheryn, taking a break. I figured everyone should see her face as well.

The last obstacle, after hours of climbing and crawling, was called the sandwhich. An optional part of the tour, you got to sign a book if you finished. I elected to be the first in, which was a horizontal slit between two flat rocks which required you to pull yourself between them at an upwards angle with your fingertips. It was so tight once you got in it that it freaked my skinny self out, but I and many others did get through it.

The only problem was that my camera, in my side pocket, managed to role beneath my thigh while manuevering through an opening half way up and then most of my weight got put on it. The cover bent slightly and it would no longer open. Some surgery with a swiss army knife later that night, it works, but is currently held together with duct tape.

That thing has now been through caving, moutaineering, rock climbing, scuba diving, every manner of water, snow, sand and dust and is still working. Olympus Weatherproof Mini-D. I highly recommended it.

But, yeah. Caving was cool as hell. Apparently the deepest cave system in the world is in Ukraine (according to the guide) so I'm going to see about doing more when I get back.

Hungary: Budapest Peeps (With Pics)

Half the point of traveling is meeting people, and when, left alone (as happened when Carrie went back to Ukraine) I tend to get really social. Budapest turned out to be a really good balance: seeing sights alone during the day and then meeting people to hang out with at the hostel at night. So, Budapest peeps:



Itali and Efrat, two Israeli girls I met because they were walking behind me, singing opera. Both live in Jeruselem and go to music school and were practicing a duet while walking between sights. When they finished, I turned around and applauded. Slighlty embarassed that they had been overheard, we made introductions and then the three of us saw Mathias Cathedral and Fisherman's Bastion together. It was the last night of their trip, though, and they left shortly thereafter.



I met a group of Brits at the hostel and we all went out to a club called Rio, a club I would end up going to every night I was in Budapest. How could one resist? Huge, open air, pumping techno and FREE, it's easily one of the best clubs I've been to. Here, the British crew is chilling on one of the many mattresses there for lounging. I ended up sitting there for twenty minutes, debating the pros and cons of Chuck Palahiniuk's writing style with a long-haired Irish man named Tom before I hit the dance floor.



This was the gimp at Rio. I have to admit that I didn't actually meet him.



Claire. A British medical student with a lip piercing. I'll have to admit that we not only met, but made out on the dance floor.


Hugo, from London. I met Hugo the day after making out with Claire. That crew had already moved on, going to Romania, but Hugo, hearing my accent stopped me and said: "you're Dan, right? You were with Claire last night, yeah? She's my mate." Apparently they had grown up together and she told him she had met an American named Daniel. This made me his mate's mate and therefore part of the group.

The group happened to be ten guy's from Hugo's rugby team, which had taken over two rooms in the hostel and the balcony and were exceedingly good at getting blitzed every night. Hugo introduced thusly: "This is the American named Dan. He knows Claire. We have to show him a good time." Apparently, I also have a dozen places to crash in London now.


Hugo

Finding out I was going on to Prague next, Hugo then pressed about $10 worth of Czech crowns in my hand since they had just came from there and didn't need them. Almost every night I was in Budapest from then on, we usually killed an hour or two talking about nothing on the hostel's huge balcony that faced a gothic church. Hugo, the team's appeaser and a constant people pleaser, is probably one of the nicest blokes I've ever met. He also calls everything that he likes "quality". "Ah, Dan, Prague is quality." "Check out that girl. She is quality." "I love this beer. It's so quality." British slang is fun.

In any case, the night I met them, the rugby team was going to a strip club, and going to a strip club with a drunk rugby team seemed like a prime seed for an interesting night. Hugo refused to go, though, for moral reasons and I didn't want to bail on him since he was the one who introduced me to everyone else. Instead we ended up back at Rio and met Fera.



This is Alex and Fera. I had no sooner mentally lamented that my sights/hostel circuit would never lead me to actually meet any Hungarians when Hugo and I met these two while the rest of the rugby team was at the strip club. A raver, Fera came up to me and started battling out moves. Alex was her friend, but didn't speak much English. It turns out she goes to film school and was a production assistant on movies with both Ed Harris and Diane Krueger (I had forgotten that a lot of movies were being filmed in Prague and Budapest because the costs were cheaper; in fact, I saw them prepping for a scene for a movie in a under-street crossing: setting up lights with a girl I didn't recognize getting done up in make-up). Fera's boyfriend was a bartender at Rio and she invited us back for a third night, which is how we ended up there with the entire rugby team and Anna and Amy.


Dowat, me and Hugo

The shot above is from the next night at Rio, the third night at Rio. By then, I had also gotten to know Dowat, another of the rugby guys, who had scored so high on his exams that an accounting company was not only paying for his University tuition in exchange for working for them after graduation, but "sponsoring" (AKA paying for) a month long vacation to America.

Anna and Amy were also met at the hostel, on their fifth week of travel through Europe and with another month to go. Anna is Swedish by birth but in possesion of both Swedish and British passports. Amy is, as Hugo describes her, a "London bird", and also British. They went with us to Rio and, since they were going to Prague as well, they exchanged e-mails with me so we could meet up there.


Anna, me and Amy


Anna, Amy, Dowat and Hugo

Needless to say, I had fun.

Hungary: Budapest's Redemption (With Pics)

I am sitting near Budapest's oldest bridge, the Chain bridge, that first linked the two towns of Buda and Pest, on opposite sides of the Danube river, 500 years ago. I am drinking a Pepsi, listening to a jazz band playing on a small stage and jotting in my notebook. All is right with the world.


Jazz band

I have fallen in love with Budapest. At first, I was finding it hard to work up enthusiasm to come here. Previous cities: Kocise, Bratislava and Vienna had not impressed, sucking money for only sporadic satisfaction. In contrast, romping around tiny towns in the Slovakian mountains had been magnificent. On hot buses and waiting for late trains, I had wondered what was the point of travelling Eastern Europe. It's twice as difficult as in Western Europe, and, while half the cost, is still a lot of money to my voluntarily impoverished self. Why, I wondered, am paying to see second rate things? The Tatras do not compare to the Alps, no church can compare to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and no castle can compete with the sublime wonder of Neushwanstein in Germany (although I will admit the sprawling, decaying hulk of Sprisky Hrad was amazing). They're famous because they're the best. Eastern Europe has its own flavor, yes, but they're all just variations on a theme that I live with in Ukraine every day.

And so it went with Budapest. The guide promised only more churches and castles and Central European architecture. I had seen plenty of all and the farther west I went, the more money was required. Money was never a problem before: I lived on a teacher's salary but a college student's budget, had no debt and only one unused credit card with a zero balance. But as my pre-Peace Corps savings began to deplete, I wondered why I wasn't spending the money on Thailand or Egypt or Turkey, something radically different and utterly new.


Chain Bridge, with the Hungarian Parliment building in the background


Guards preparing for a parade


A statue by the Danube

But thank you Budapest. It is a New York City with history: none of the skyscrapers but still the compressed humanity that leads to the critical mass needed for vitality. The streets were an explosion of vendors and art. Booths cooking up hundreds of cuisines lined the streets and the closed-to-traffic chain bridge. The buildings were an amazing conglomeration of centuries of styles.


Budapest archetecture


A statue in front of Budapest's opera house

A vendor pulled me aside and offered me a couple free shots with a sling shot at a wooden targets spun around by a man pedalling a bike. The walnuts I shot missed and cracked on the back wall, but the crowd surged in after to take their try. Both ends of the chain bridge had live performances of every kind of music, all for free.


A girl tries the sling shot


Traditional dancers performing near the Chain Bridge

And behind me, as I drain the last of the cold Pepsi on a warm summer night, is Buda castle, on a hill and lit up and, having explored it today, can confirm it is a really cool castle. And past it, its Gothic spires reaching up into the blue deepening to black, is Mathias Cathedral and it's a damn beautiful cathedral and both were better than the dry words of the guide book and my own cynical expectations.


A turrent of Buda Castle


People relaxing in Buda Castle


Mathias Cathedral

And before me that Hungarian jazz band jams, its lead female singer having come onstage and giving a throaty and heavily-accented rendition of "I Love You Porgy", the crowd watching with steady eyes and tapping feet and I'm in Budapest and all is right with the world...

Austria: Vienna (With Pics)

Vienna was brief, and thankfully so, because it was as hot as Keira Knightly in hell and expensive as...expensive as... Well, it wasn't cheap. New York on the Euro, that kind of blow to my budget, along with the fact that even though they are nearly equal distances, a train to Budapest from Vienna was literally four times as expensive as one from Bratislava.

But I went to send Carrie off and because I had never seen it.

A wedding cake would be an apt description for Vienna, towering gothic sprires and a preoccupation with the color white, make the whole city look like some bridal cullinary fantasy. We sweated our way around the more famous churches before going to the cemetary where Beethtoven, Schubart, Straus and Brahms (along with--I kid you not--2,500,000 other souls) are buried. That cemetary was a sight to behold: packed with graves, each more ostantacious than the last, final resting places marked in huge sculptures of marble and granite, wrought iron fences and for some, inexplicably, lanterns hanging from the tombstones.

Two of Vienna's more beautiful buildings:





The graveyard (I forget the name):



Beethtoven's grave:



One of the prettier graves:



Because Carrie had to get on a plane in the late afternoon, we schlepped through the heat, seeing what we could see before she left. That left me exhausted in the evening. I went to see a free outdoor opera, but it turned out to be a free outdoor movie of an opera and I was falling asleep halfway through Act I.

Back at the hostel, two interesting things happened:

1. A beautiful German girl in my room emerged from the shower in a towel, removed said towel and got dressed without a hint of modesty, all while keeping on a running conversation with me. For my part, I tried to be very European about this and pretend that a beautiful naked German girl carrying on a conversation without a hint of modesty didn't affect me in the slightest.

2. I waltzed in Vienna. Talking to a Turkish girl named Ryea (if that's how you spell it), I asked her if she knew how. She not only did, but knew better than me and showed me a few steps in the middle of the common room floor. Thus educated, we whirled around without music for a couple minutes, while people looked on perplexed. But I can now officially say I waltzed in Vienna.

Off to Budapest!

Slovakia: Bratislava (With Pics)

I have to admit, there's not much to Bratislava. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, though, I loved it.


Me, with the Bratislava castle in the background.

Bratislava is usually just a night at most for the Eastern Europe backpackers, a cheap junction point between Prague, Vienna and Budapest. The guide books don't even recommend going. You know those "if you have one day...", "if you have three days..." things? Well, even if you have 1-2 weeks in Slovkia, a country the size of Florida, seeing Bratislava, the capital, doesn't even make this list.

It's like Central Europe's second son: it's got a castle, just not a good one (and rebuilt so many times it's barely the original one). It's got churches, they just happen to be mediocre. It doesn't stand out for its culture, its food or its archetecture. But here's what it does have: subtitled movies.

Unlike in Ukraine, where everything is dubbed in Russian, Slovakian movies (save for children's movies) are in the original language with Slovakian subtitles. Now, there's nothing really wrong with watching movies in Russian (as I have done for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, War of the Worlds, Star Wars III and countless others...). I get to work on my language skills and miss badly acted lines like "hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo" ("dershite menya kak vi cdelali azerom na Naboo" hurts less to hear), but I do miss the subtleties and jokes that I would get were I to watch a movie in English.

Add in the fact that Slovakia is one of the few fronts where Pepsi one the cola wars, and Carrie and I were happily sitting in an air-conditioned movie theatre out of the summer heat, watching "Batman Begins" in English, eating popcorn and drinking ice cold Pepsi and enjoying every second of it.

The other exciting thing was that we found the Slovakian version of Wal-Mart and stocked up on train food that included pretzels, pudding, tortilla chips and two well-missed bevies: Mountain Dew and Gatorade.


My GQ pose on the Danube. Notice the Mountain Dew in my hands. My shirt is open in these pics because it was 98 frickin' degrees and I was doin' it Florida style.

Someone might point out the ills of globalization and franchising this represents, but I think the real fault lies in buisness ethics and how unilateral the trade is. No one complains about Dutch beer or Japanese electronics in America (well, not since the 80s), and as there is no problem with picking up ingredients from Mexico in the Spanish aisle of an American grocery store, so too should I revel in getting a Gatorade in Slovakia. As long as the buisnesses are ethical, I see no problem with shipping American products abroad, just as I see no problem in foreign franchises setting up in America. In fact, I would love to see a Wagamamas (British chain in America. When everyone can find their favorite foods everywhere and everyone has a the chance to have authentic foreign food in their home country, we just might have world peace.


Posing with one of the natives.

Anyway, five other things of note in Bratislava:

1: Walking through the arch in Michaels tower, the only thing left of Bratislavas original walls, you are not supposed to talk lest you be unlucky in love. I remembered the first time through, not the second. Whoops.


Carrie, at the top of Michaels tower.

2: Cows. I had seen such a thing in Belgium: distribute huge, white, plastic cows to artists and displaz the results around the city. Carrie hated nearly every one, as she pointed out repeatedly.


A flying cow.


Carrie and cow, eyeing each other.

3: I had goats cheese filled dumplings, a Slovakian delicacy. Pretty good, actually.

Slovakian food, the goats cheese dumplings on the right.

4: A church called St. Martins, where they used to crown Hungarian kings (Slovakia has been conquered by the Hungarians, the Franks, the Austrians, the Turks, the Nazis and the Russians), had an out of the way area with plexiglass on the floor. The plexiglass was scratched, but when I got down on my knees and looked past the glass, I could see the churches foundations underneath. And then I saw, just lying down there on the rock, two skulls with spines.


St. Martins church, the Hungarian crown on the top.

5: Not only was there still a gold reprodution of the Hungarian crown on top of St. Martins, but monuments left by the Soviets were still around (not to mention a space saucer on top of a bridge and hundreds of block apartment buildings). This is interesting, because other countries have torn most of them down. In Hungary, Slovakias southern neighbor, all the Soviet statues have been moved to one park in Budapest so that people can peruse the past, and there is a court case where they are trying to ban the red stars on Heinekin bottles because displaying Soviet symbols, which the red star is considered to be, is illegal. I dont know if the Slovaks leave them up because they are better able to deal with past attrocities, they have been conquered so many times that they just dont care, or it just takes too much money to tear these things down.


The Soviet flying saucer and all the block apartment buildings across the Danube river.

In any case, it was a nice bit of Americana to be in Budapest, and all for cheap, too. The next stop, which wasnt even on the itinerary, is Vienna. Carrie did not feel like taking the 38 hour train back to Kyiv and has to get back to work with her new job at American Councils (she quit Peace Corps a month ago to make a million times more money doing pretty much the exact same work), and so is flying back because she can now afford to do so. The cheapest flights are out of Vienna (although Vienna is not cheap and my cash strapped self fears the Euro) and so that is where we are headed.


Weird Daniel Artsy shot of a woman looking out over the city, taken through glass.

Slovakia: Ice Cave (With Pics)

Carrie and I went to an ice cave, a cave where it's below freezing and trickling water from the surface finds itself frozen into beautiful columns and intricate little designs. It was pretty sweet. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:


Entering the cave






Cave bear bones