Prague

The train ride was an enjoyable one, to be sure. I, however, had never bothered to book a hostel in Prague, so when the train arrived in the station, I was more or less stranded.

I did have the presence of mind to ask around of the people I was talking with on the train to see who was staying where. Gavin had booked a room at the Mosaic House, a place that I would discover, upon arrival, is run by the St. Christopher’s Inn franchise, as with the hostel in which Judson and I stayed back in Berlin. Caroline had also mentioned that a friend of hers stayed there, and found it to be perfectly agreeable. So I hitched myself onto Gavin and went with him to the hostel – a multi-tram and bus ride away from the Praha train station.

Gavin and I arrived at the Mosaic House in the late afternoon on July 17. It was fully booked. Actually, not only was my attempt at a reservation turned away, so was Gavin’s, as he had apparently booked his reservation for the wrong dates. We stayed for a beer in the bar area while we looked for another hostel. Having come this far, though, we were not about to trek across town to look for a new place. We booked two spots at Chili Hostel down the street, a place with a less-than-stellar rating on Hostelworld.com, but with a great proximity to our timely predicament.

For some reason unbeknownst to us, the reception at Chili had closed down for about an hour and a bit (they said it was to count up the days earnings, but having just worked in a hostel for a while, I can tell you that that does not require reception to shut down), so we dropped our bags off in the luggage room (“Luggage room is shielded by kamera,” so we know it’s safe) and went to dinner.

 ***

Many months ago, while Judson and I were in January, we had settled on going to Prague for a weekend. The idea never panned out, because train tickets were just too expensive, and Warsaw was much cheaper. But before going to the train station, I had been sure to email two high-school friends who were sure to know Prague better than I – Eric and Caroline. Eric had spent last summer in Prague on a study program, and Caroline, who also attends Washington University in St. Louis with me, spent the Fall semester in Prague. So I asked them for advice on where to go, what to see, what to eat, and where to drink.

Eric, like the fratstar that he is, came back with a Google Map he had made for himself of his favorite places. This consisted of many bars, jazz clubs, casinos, and a food joint or two. It was a very detailed outline of where and when to party.

Caroline, being the logical one, detailed many places to see. Tourist sites, some more known than others, but all very interesting, would occupy my days. She also gave me a few places to eat, but not many (though her suggestions were top notch!).

On my last day in Prague I would remember to email my sophomore-year roommate Alex, who spent this past Spring semester in Prague. He, as an extreme foodie, would fill in the gaps, food-wise, and would guide me a lovely last supper before I headed to London.

Prague is not a big city, and a little pocket map was detailed enough to get us everywhere in Praha 1 (the city center, where all the old, interesting, and delicious stuff is), all of which is in walking distance from any other point in Praha 1. We were on the southern side of the city center, so in a good launching point for the rest of the city.

***

Gavin and I went for our first meal at a place called Jiná Krajina, on Rezniská. Caroline had recommended it, as it was a favorite of hers while she lived on that street last Fall. I had some sort of salmon-based spread for an appetizer, with a steak and pasta and cheese combination for the main course. It was delectable.

The two of us returned to the hostel after dinner, checked in to room 43 (a four floor walk-up), showered and donned clean clothes for once, before heading out for a short bar crawl, using the places suggested by Eric as a guide.

Our first stop was U Sudu. We arrived with a Kiwi we had picked up at the hostel named Jono. Jono was a nice enough guy, though a little more mellow than most New Zealanders I’ve met.

At U Sudu, a student hangout near where we had dinner, I was made to try the Master, an incredibly dark beer Eric recommended highly, which apparently could not really be found anywhere else in the city. I don’t usually like dark beers, but this beer was almost sweet, it was so good. I might even put it amongst my favorites, up there with Fusion in Mongolia and Efes (for nostalgic reasons) in Turkey.

From U Sudu, we attempted to get into Hooters across the street, but they had closed. Instead, the three of us went to a bar just around from Eric’s home that Summer (Jerome House). The place was called Groove, though it may have been something different in Eric’s time, as his map called it something else.

We sat at the bar for a while, and before long Jono had asked me a dangerous question. What do I think of Obamacare?

I tried to explain to him in the most polite of ways how and why I didn’t agree with it, on economic, personal, and realistic grounds. I’ve had a lot of arguments about politics, especially American politics, with foreigners, but this was the first time in my life one has actually just walked out on me. Jono, at one point, said something along the lines of “Fuck it,” paid for his drink and left. This made things a tad weird between Gavin and I, as Gavin was very much in liberal agreement with Jono but had the decency to let me speak my mind and listen, and stay. It was awkward.

Gavin and I stayed out a little while longer before heading back. I was in bed by 3am.

I woke up at 8:30 on the morning of July 18, the light pouring in from the windows. Gavin and I went across the street to The Globe for breakfast around 9:45, a bookstore and café that was situated across the street from my hostel and recommended coincidentally by Caroline as well. She insisted that the mac n cheese was “real American” mac n cheese. I had to find out for myself, but they weren’t serving lunch yet, so I settled on an omelet. It was a damn good omelet, but an omelet nonetheless. Oh, and we had to try some of their famous cheesecake afterwards, which was a terribly delicious choice.

At 10:30 Gavin and I found ourselves back in the hostel, waiting to begin the Free walking tour. Justin, our guide for the day, picked us up around then and walked with us towards the main square. I forgot my phone at the hostel, so I had to run back before it was stolen. I caught up with the tour group when they were halfway to the square, though, so no loss there.

Justin is an American from San Francisco who met his Czech wife on a cruise ship a few years back, married her, and moved to Prague. His back story was interesting enough, but to be honest, I was just happy to have a tour guide that spoke English fluently.

At 11:00 sharp the tour began, with the “show” at the Astronomical Clock. It was less than impressive, but large crowds still gathered to watch it. A couple of figures come out of the clock like cuckoo birds, the bells ring a little, some mechanical figurines move about next to the clock, and a guy trumpets from the top of the tower afterwards (an old traditional Czech practice, begun in something like 2008).

The clock itself was interesting, however. According to our tour guide, the clock accurately predicts many things, from seasons to the time to the day and month of the year, to of course astronomical things, thus the name. And apparently there is only one like it in the world, as the man who built apparently had his eyes gouged out by the king so he could never repeat the feat anywhere else. Then he supposedly killed himself by throwing himself into the clocks inner workings. Indeed, the clock did stop working for about 100 years, but it’s probably coincidence.

Across the square from the Astronomical Clock is the Tyn cathedral, with both Male and Female towers. One of the towers is a little taller, larger, and apparently more manly, the other is a little shorter, and smaller.

In the center of the main square is a statue of John Huss (John the Goose). It is after him that we get the term Hussite, as well as the phrase “The Goose is Cooked,” since he was burned alive. It is said by some (probably mostly Czechs) that Huss invented Protestantism, as he was the first to publicly question the Catholic church and gain a following in doing so. Hussites still exist today, though not in large numbers.

We walked for a  while, passing Kafka’s birthplace along the way, a site so unremarkable I missed it while we walked.

Our next stop was the National Theater by the river. In Hitler’s vision of a 1,000 year reich, he wanted Berlin to be the political capital, of course, but apparently he thought Prague should be the cultural capital. As such, the National Theater was very important to him. He did learn, however, that one of the composers enshrined in stone on the roof of the building was Jewish (gasp!). It was Mendelssohn, who was raised as a Christian, but who’s grandfather (maybe father, I forget), Abraham Mendelssohn, was Jewish. Hitler ordered the removal of the statue. The workers, however, had no idea what Mendelssohn looked like, so they removed the statue with the biggest nose. In doing so, they inadvertently took down Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer. Mendelssohn still stands to this day.

Following this little tidbit, we headed back away from the river through Josefo, the old Jewish Quarter. In here we passed three synagogues. The first was Pinkasova Synagogue, which we heard little about. The second, the Old New Synagogue, was built in either 1270 or 1290, and is home to the Prague Gollum, a legendary creature that apparently lives in the attic of the temple.

The third synagogue we saw was the Spanish Synagogue, built in a Sephardic style. It looks more like a mosque than a synagogue, and if it weren’t for the ten commandments above the center windows, I would have thought it was a mosque.

We also passed the Jewish Cemetery, a depressing place. Apparently Jews used to be forced to bury their dead within the Jewish Quarter. But they didn’t have much room, so they just started burying the dead on top of other dead, meaning many hundreds of people are buried in an area the size of a medium-sized house. Grave stones litter the area.

Next to the Spanish Synagogue we found a statue to Kafka, of a un-occupied but fully filled suit supporting a man sitting on its shoulders. It was weird, but so is Kafka.

We stopped over at the Bake Shop for a quick break. Caroline had mentioned this place as well. I only got a chocolate croissant, but it was quite good.

Our next stop was St. James’ church. This is apparently the most haunted church in Europe, as there are over 100 ghost stories associated with it. One of them consists of a thief who came to rob something from the church. While reaching up to take something, a statue of the Virgin Mary came alive and grabbed his arm. The thief stayed there all night until the priests arrived in the morning to find him clutched by the statue. After much debate, someone suggested they just cut the arm off. The thief happily agreed, until he realized they meant his arm, not the stone Virgin Mary’s. His arm is still hanging from the scaffolding as a warning to other thieves. It was incredible how many people gazed inside just to take pictures of the arm, not of the beautifully adorned church it is in.

We found ourselves after this in New Town, which is still pretty old. The Powder Tower, for example, was built in 1475. The area was recently used for a filming of xXx, that terrible Vin Diesel action film a few years back, when a sniper takes a shot at Vin Diesel from a nearby rooftop.

Near the New Town is Wenceslas Square, a long narrow square that was once home to the first major student protest (hundreds of thousands of students shaking their keys in the air, as if to say ‘let us out of these cells’) that sparked the downfall of the Iron Curtain and, eventually, the Soviet Union. Today, it sees tourists during the day, and gamblers, prostitutes, their Johns, and druggies at night.

Just off Wenceslas we saw something that made me wish I was staying an extra day. Národní Divadlo, A.K.A. Mozart Theater, is the last remaining building on the planet that Mozart himself performed in. Don Giovanni debuted there. And, sure enough, a few hours after my flight is scheduled to depart the next day, Don Giovanni would be performed there. That sucked.

From here, the tour ended. Justin took us back to the main square and Gavin and I, exhausted, took a quick rest. It was 1:35ish.

After getting off our feet for a bit, we walked back towards the river. A little after 2 we stopped into a random restaurant for lunch. I got an underwhelming Cordon Bleu, but it was the only restaurant we could find in that area, so we took it.

After lunch Gavin and I crossed the river and walked into Letná Park. Up several flights of stairs to the base of the world’s biggest Metronome, built to commemorate the ‘time lost to Communism.’ It stands where the world’s largest statue of Stalin used to stand, watching over the city ominously. Now it is a reminder of how terrible things can be, and how to not end up there again.

We walked through Letná Park towards the Castle. It is a beautiful park, but the castle is a bit more impressive. Besides being the site of several famous periods of defenestration, the castle boasts an impressive cathedral, imposing walls, and a fantastic view.

We crossed a small ravine to get to the castle. Entrance was free.

The doors to the cathedral caught my eye. They were essentially a comic strip, depicting the steps to build the cathedral itself. It starts with an architect, shows him presenting the idea to a nobleman, building the foundation, building the cathedral, and then praying in it. It’s quite a series. Inside the cathedral were impressive and unbelievably ornate stained glass windows, large vaulted ceilings, you know, the works.

After trying some Smurf flavored ice cream (the scoops were too small), Gavin and I wandered passed Occupy Prague, a tent with a flag next to it, and then to Charles Bridge, of international fame for the statues that line it.

First, we stopped at the Lennon Wall, a place Caroline told me about, where people are encouraged to graffiti Beatles lyrics as statements for peace, or something like that. Caroline made it clear to not be a dick and write some sort of fraternity message, or joke, or my name, but to put a real Beatles lyric. So I did, but putting “Imagine” is so cliché! So I wrote the following: “At night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep.” I swear, it’s a real lyric!

Charles Bridge is fascinating, but there’s one terribly controversial statue. It sits on the far end of the bridge from the castle, on the east bank of the river. It’s a statue of Jesus, complete with “INRI” above him. But, in a large circle around him, are the words:

קדוש קדוש קדוש יהוה צבאוח

So yea. There’s been a long controversy about putting some of the most sacred words of the Jewish faith around Jesus Christ on the cross. Personally, I chalk it up to free speech.

Gavin and I, feet aching, walked south along the river to see the Dancing House, a Frank Gehry design. We took some pictures of the, to put it lightly, unconventional building, walked into the lobby, decided not to spend an exorbitant sum on drinks on the roof, and walked back to the nearby Chili hostel, arriving around 5:30, after 7 hours on our feet.

Shortly after getting back, I was talking to Gavin in the lobby when I heard, “Marshall?”

I looked to my left, to find Julie, a friend from Istanbul (a Canadian exchange student at Boğaziçi) sitting on the couch there. I was a little in shock, to the point where I didn’t remember her name at first. But That quickly subsided, and I invited Julie to join me at the Globe again for some Mac n Cheese.

Julie had been traveling the last few weeks with her sister, Ellie. The three of us found ourselves in the courtyard behind the Globe. Julie and I caught up on life while the three of us attempted for a while to get our dinners. Somehow the topic of St. Louis came up, and it seems every other person in the courtyard was A) American, and B) Had some connection to St. Louis. It was weird. I don’t like being around so many non-locals. But the Mac n Cheese was amazing.

Around 9 I met Julie and Ellie again in the lobby of Chili Hostel, and we headed out on the town.

We started again at U Sudu, finding our way this time to the basement levels, which are a series of three or so caves. One of the rooms has games, the other rooms have only bars. I had more Master beer; can’t get enough.

Around 10 we went to Raduta Jazz Club, an Eric recommendation, and sat listening to a band play for a while. They were very good.

Around midnight the three of us found ourselves at another place Eric mentioned, which he called the Budvar Bar. I made Julie and Ellie order Budweiser (the Czech Budweiser), which they expected to hate as much as the American version. They did not.

It was an early night. We grabbed gyros on the way back, and by 1:15am I was asleep.

I woke up around 8:30am again. I bided my time for a while, waiting for Julie and Ellie to come downstairs to check out. They arrived 10:59, a minute before checkout.

The three of us headed to what Caroline had dubbed the Rembrandt Café, which sold some sort of delicious fruit pie of sorts, which was to die for. From the Rembrandt Café, we walked southwest to Angelato, an ice cream place that, not surprisingly since Caroline suggested it, did not disappoint.

The girls had to leave Prague around this time, so we went back to the hostel and got their bags. I waited with them until they left.

I then ditched the hostel again to go on a solo run at the Sex Museum and Torture Museum. No, these were not in the same building, nor were they affiliated with each other, but they could have been, and they should have been. They were essentially the same thing.

Granted, the sex museum did have some stuff that could pretty easily be considered pleasurable. But much of the displays – anti-masturbation belts, chastity belts, hand-crank vibrators, gags, a giant wheel to be strapped to, muzzles, anti-erection belts, etc. – seemed to be torture devices in and of themselves. There was an interesting display of codpieces and gentlemen’s pissing canes (so they didn’t have to disrobe while peeing, they could pee through the hollow cane), though.

The Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments was pretty gruesome as well, though more expectedly so. This displayed such gems as the Handsaw (for sawing a person in half while they were hung upside down), Staircase of Stretching (“if the paralyzed victim, with the shattered shoulders and dying, he had withstood without confessing, the court was forced to proclaim its innocence”), Thumbscrews (the crushing of a person’s knuckles or fingers), the Rack, Fallbrett (a forebear of the guillotine, though far blunter and more painful), the Pillory, the Double Head Crusher (a way to interrogate two people, the first one to talk gets to keep his head), The Virgin of Nuremberg (A.K.A. Iron Maiden), Chastity belts (yup), The Garrote (a screw pressed to the back of your neck, used as recently as 1975 in Spain), the Spanish Tickle Torture (a rake used to reduce a victim’s flesh to tatters and then to strip it from his bones anywhere on his body), and my favorite, the Wheel (limbs broken, body woven through the spokes of a wheel, wheel put outside city walls for you to slowly die and to warn would-be offenders).

Of course, I was pretty hungry after all of this and after getting back to the hostel, so I got the great idea of sending Alex an email about food. He came back uncharacteristically quickly, with some great ideas. The closest option, U Medvídkú, seemed like the best idea for dinner, as it was the closest and I didn’t have much time.

U Medvídkú turned out to be the same place as Budvar Bar, but there was a whole upstairs section with a brewery and restaurant. I made sure to get into the back room, because that’s where Alex said they served the good beer.

I walked in, and recognized two of the guests. It was Kevin and his friend (whose name I never really learned), from the train compartment, finishing up their meals. I sat with them for a bit and we chatted before they left. I took their table.

I decided to feast on some specialties. My stomach loved me for it initially, and I regretted the amount immensely in the end. At 6pm I got my food. Dumplings stuffed with meat. Lots of meat. I finished it in about 10 minutes. The next course was wild boar with roasted apple and cranberry. That was far more delicious and worth the stomach pains. As for beer, I got X33 and Oldgott beers (the former was 12% alcohol by volume, I did not taste any, the latter was 5.7%). I was back at the hostel by 7. It was a very quick meal. I didn’t have much time.

I called for a cab for 7:30 to get me to the airport. As I was loading into the cab, one of the receptionists ran out and reminded me that I left my phone charging behind the desk. I thanked him profusely, but that wouldn’t stop me from writing a terrible review on Hostelworld about the place (more on that at the end of this post).

The airport was easy to navigate, and I got through everything pretty quickly. We took off around 11:10pm on July 19, bound for London. It would be my last stop of a 7-month adventure.

And, since I can’t not make this embarrassingly easy and terribly cliché pun, Czech out my complaints about the hostel:

The hostel had bedbugs. Not in every room, but Julie and Ellie were definitely affected. While I was sitting in the lobby, I heard a lot of other complaints. Someone had peed in a room on the floor, and it wasn’t cleaned up, someone had defecated in the shower and, again, had not been cleaned up. Most shower drains were clogged, there was no toilet paper anywhere, the beds were creaky, the kitchen was an ungodly level of disgusting, the wifi was terrible and only worked in the lobby, there were extra charges for everything, including luggage storage, sheets, towels, etc. AND THEY HAD BEDBUGS. It was really pretty horrible. But I was only there for a couple nights, and just dealt with it. Besides, my bed was bedbug free.

Prague, besides that, was pretty awesome. I am glad, however, that I didn’t study abroad there (it was going to be Prague until I decided at the last minute to go to Istanbul); I would have gotten bored after 4 months—even after a couple weeks, probably. Or I could have gone to Istanbul as I did, and spend 4 months there without seeing half of what I could have while being challenged as a traveler. I made the right choice for me.

A Night in Vienna

I had originally planned on spending 3 days in Vienna, like Bratislava. But somewhere between staying in Budapest for a full week and taking two days in Serbia and Croatia I lost a bit of time, and thus, had only a night in Vienna.

For this, I called up Nina from Kiev, Katrin from Istanbul and Bernhard from Tbilisi, all of who are Austrian and live in Vienna. Nina was somewhere else in Austria at the time, Katrin was in Germany, but Bernhard, and Leslie, were in town, and agreed to meet me at the train station when I arrived.

I arrived at 18:57 on the evening of July 16, at Vienna Südbahnhof Ost. Leslie and Bernhard were indeed waiting for me on the platform. They subsequently took me on several forms of transportation to my hotel/hostel, on Columbusgasse 16. I checked in and dropped off my stuff, and we went out to dinner.

For dinner the lovely couple took me to a ‘real Austrian’ dinner at a place called 7 Stern Brau, which was mostly sausage/wurst and spicy beer. Everything was cheesy, fatty, or carby. Very Austrian.

I was then escorted to one of the couple’s favorite bars, a place in the middle of nowhere called Travel Shack Vienna: Traveler’s Bar & Meeting Point. It was just that; a bunch of drunk foreigners having a good time. I enjoyed it immensely.

The menu itself was worth going. If you are sensitive to strong language, look away now. These were its shot choices: Blow Job, After Eight, Black Forest Cake, Mozart, Snickers, Baby Guinness, B52, Cock Sucking Cowboy, Slippery Nipple, Facebook, Jack Sparrow, Skanky Smurf, Hand Job, MILF, Fin on Fire, Fortune Cookie, Tutti Frutti, HARIBO, Strawberry Kiss, Pancake, Menstruation, Wet Pussy, Leg Opener, Lindsay Lohan, Red Headed Slut, Apple Pie, Black Jack, Big Red, Pink Shit, AC/DC, Dirty Hooker, Substi, Spider-Man, Porn Star.

Probably the two highlights of the bar was the weird girl with the piercing all over her face who just talked and talked and talked before falling over onto the floor, and the stump. The stump was a game that should not be at any bar, ever. It consists of lighting tapping several nails into a tree stump until they stand unassisted. Then you and your friends take turns taking whacks at the nails with a hammer. Whoever gets their nail completely into the stump last buys the next round. It is, as you might imagine, incredibly dangerous, and yet so much fun. I played several rounds.

Later that night I headed back (1:30am), with directions from Leslie and Bernhard, after saying goodbye to them at midnight. I had a difficult time finding where to go, though I did stumble upon the right bus stop. I had to wait for a while for the night bus, but it did arrive, and I did get on. Getting off is a different story, and I missed the stop, I think, though things were blurry at that point.

I ended up having to go to the bathroom an unbearable amount, so I peed in an alleyway before asking directions from some passing Austrians. They pointed me in the right direction and I found the hostel around 3am. I crashed until 9 or 10.

I packed up my crap and headed to the station around 11:45. I had some slight confusion getting on the right S-Bahn train, but figured it out. Everything seems more difficult when you have 50kg on your back, you know.

I got to the station at 12:05. Bought my tickets to Prague, departure 12:33. I took a seat in a car that apparently had reserved seats, so I had to move (but left my bags). I ended up sitting in a compartment with two American guys, whom I would bump into a few days later at a restaurant on my last night in Prague. We talked for a while, but ended up moving into a crowded compartment with 4 American girls (Kat, Madison, Kayley, and one other), another American guy named Gavin and two Austrians. There were only 6 seats. But it was a fun train ride.

We arrived in Prague at 17:20. I had only spent a night in Vienna, but I had a fun time, and though I did nothing touristy, didn’t go to a single museum, and barely saw any of the city in the light, it was still a good outing. I enjoyed myself, but not as much as I would enjoy Prague.

Church of God

Our train got into Budapest well into the night. Brian and I went back to his apartment, where I packed up all of my things (having left most of my stuff behind on this quick weekend excursion) into the gigantic blue backpack and little blue front pack I have been dragging with me for over 6 months now. I slept for 2 hours.

I woke up at 4am. I had to be up then, to catch my train to Bratislava.

I took a taxi to the station, arriving around 4:30am. The rosy-fingered dawn was beginning to shine on Budapest, streaming light through the windows.

I bought my ticket and got a good seat on the train (6-seat booth to myself. One for each backpack, one for my butt, one for my legs, two as a buffer between me and my backpacks). It left on time at 5:25am, arriving in Bratislava at 8:08am on July 16. I had drifted in and out of sleep on the train, but felt rested enough to make it through the day.

I checked my luggage (except my iPad, which I used as a map all day) wandered south out of the station and headed straight to St. Michael’s Gate (the entrance to the old town). This was part of Brian’s directions.

Brian has been to Bratislava at least once, probably more than that, and scoffed at my idea of spending a couple nights there. He insisted I could do it in a day, and would be bored by the end of it. He was right, but I can’t help but think if I had met some people at a hostel I would have enjoyed the city more. That being said, I found it to be a charming town and full of character. I would love to go back. Brian’s directions, though, were simple. Only one direction leads away from the train station, and he told me to just keep going and going and going in that direction until I found the old town. It was a short 7-minute walk, getting lost seemed impossible, and it was.

After passing St. Michael’s Gate, I looked for Čokoládovña, a hot chocolate place Brian suggested, but to no avail. I had a muffin at Coffee & Co. instead, while I used their internet to find out where stuff is in the city.

To be certain that Čokoládovña didn’t exist, I backtracked a bit and found the place, tucked away with terrible signage. Brian insisted it was the best hot chocolate he’s ever had, and he was not kidding; it was beyond delicious. I had the m&m caramel dark chocolate. I told the girl working behind the counter, Kate, about Brian and his love for this hot chocolate and subsequent recommendation. She was very happy to hear it.

I wandered a little until I found the cathedral. I went inside, toured the crypt, but had to leave before services started. Next I walked to the castle (finding my way by wandering through private streets, up a creepy stone staircase, and through someone’s backyard… O, the effects of not having a reliable map!), which was beyond disappointing. It had been burned down in 1811, rebuilt in 1953. Really? Come on! You don’t rebuild a castle in 1953! Who does that? There were good views of the city and the Danube, though.

After the “castle,” I went back down the hill, stumbling into the ‘synagogue’ on the way. That’s another thing all European cities have, a synagogue. Most are empty now, for obvious reasons, but the buildings still stand, for the most part.

This synagogue, however, was not really a synagogue. It was a shell of a building, and inside was a memorial video that people sat in and watched video footage of Bratislava during WWII.

My next stop was the main square, where I bought a souvenir, a little shotglass boot. Afterwards I walked to Gorkeho, finding the Opera House. It’s a beautiful construction, but wasn’t open for touring.

Brian had suggested a cigar shop just beyond St. Michael’s Gate, I headed here next, but stopped along the way for another hot chocolate. Kate made me some creative mix. It came with chili powder. I couldn’t have been happier.

Just outside Michael’s Gate I found Brian’s recommended cigar club at Del Casa Havana, had a delicious Te Amo cigar and a mojito. Both were fantastic, and relaxing.

Next, to lunch! It must be remembered that all of the preceding items were completed by about 3pm. It’s a very small town.

I hopped online to look for a place for lunch. After a short Google search I discovered a page where some American expat expounded on his favorite food joints in Bratislava. I found one that was near enough and on the route to the train station, and headed there. It was called Traja Musketieri, a.k.a. Three Musketeers.

It was the best. Meal. Ever. I haven’t eaten so well in years, honestly. And three courses, plus a glass of very nice wine, only cost 30.08€. I had the following:

Appetizer

Aramis’ platter

Slices of duck speared on Aramis’ sharp blade, with fenchel and orange made a great salad 100g

(grilled duck breast with fenchel and orange salad)

Main Course

The Sword of D’Artagnan

When he lays down his battle attire, his sword roasts meat over a fire 150g

(skewered pork medaillons with vegetables and cheese, wrapped in bacon)

Dessert

Royal Cream

Delicious cream for the lady of my heart, may the sweet caramel my love for her impart… 150 g

(crème caramel with wild berries)

Again, I can’t stress how good this meal was. I was blown away. I wish I knew what wine I had ordered, too, because I want it shipped to me in bulk.

I needed to let the food sink in, so I left lunch around 4:15 and stopped off at the park behind the Presidential Palace (just down the street) to relax. On an unrelated note, an interesting plaque I passed on the way into the park read: “On Sunday 25^th August 1878, electric light sparkled in the Garden of Grassalkovich Palace, for the first time in our country, and later it spread to the windows of houses and factories, to the streets and parks of our towns… … let there be light.” It was put in for the 125^th anniversary of the event.

I was watching (creepily, admittedly) some kids play bocce ball with their father, and some babies attempt some minor climbing with their parents supporting them on a little jungle gym, when two young Asians approached me. One girl, one boy, and one mission.

They began speaking to me in Slovakian (at least I assume it was Slovakian), but ended up switching to English when I indicated that, alas, I do not speak Slovakian. I wish I could really call what they were speaking in the end true English, because the guy, at least, could not put a sentence together without pausing for a thousand seconds and then butchering the pronunciation.

“Do you believe in God?” Was the first question he asked me.

I was stunned. How do I respond to that? I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to answer yes or no. On one hand, he could be some determined atheist, out to harass anyone who is a believer. On the other, more likely hand, he could be a devout religious fanatic, intent on converting me to his beliefs. So I did what I thought to be the logical thing. I answered, “Maybe.”

Maybe? Maybe? That pisses off both possible personalities that I could be dealing with! That’s not even agnosticism. That’s just being a jerk. This guy started rambling then, about something, before asking me, “Do you have time for us to talk to you about the good word about God? Do you believe in God?”

“Yes!” I responded, realizing what I was dealing with. I’m always happy to let a religious fanatic try to convince me of his righteousness, especially when I have an hour to kill before my train departs and I’m only 5 minutes from the station.

This guy, let’s call him Peter (the name I learned afterwards he goes by, though I would be willing to bet his Korean name is not Peter), started going on about nonsense. Well, I’m sure it was interesting but I couldn’t understand a word he said. Then he pulled out his tablet and asked me if I wanted to watch a few videos. I said, “Absolutely!” This is what I learned:

Peter and his colleague Julia belong to a church known as the Church of God. The Church of God believes that there is not just God, whom they call God the Father, but God the Mother as well. They have a passage or two in the bible that allude to some sort of woman, and say that is what that means. One of the passages is in Genesis 1, when God says, “Let Us create the heavens and the earth.” Their interpretation of that passage, and other such passages referring to an “Us” or “We,” in reference to God, is that there is no way this ancient book written during the age of kings would use the royal “We,” it has to be two beings! It all makes sense now!

Furthermore, since Jesus had not filled his goal of preaching for 40 years, and had only preached for 3 years before being killed by the Romans (read: Jews?). So, in 1948 Jesus returned in the form of Korean preacher Ahn Sahng-hong. He founded the Church of God in 1964, and preached for 37 years before his death in 1985, fulfilling the prophecy and proving, definitively, that he is Jesus reincarnate. His spiritual wife, Zahng Gil-Jah, continues his fight for salvation of the human race. She is known as “the Heavenly Mother,” and is God the Mother’s likeness on Earth.

For, you see, God the Mother and God the Father are what we mirror our family system on Earth from. In this heavenly family, however, we are the spiritual brothers and sisters of each other and the children of the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. So, it stands to reason that anyone who believes that Ahn Sahng-Hong was the second coming of Jesus and keeps the Passover and obeys His commands will be saved. The Church also believes that the Hebrew word “Elohim,” used in the bible to refer to God in the plural (some would argue as the third-person equivalent of the royal “We”), further proves the multiple Gods thing. The Church of God also observes the Sabbath on Saturday, and believes “all human beings are angels who have come to the earth after sinning in heaven.”

All of this makes perfect sense to me. But where they lost me was why Jesus, and God the Mother, came to earth A) Simultaneously, and B) in Korea. This had me perplexed. But lo and behold! Peter had another video for that, the 4^th or 5^th he showed me (it should be noted that, while the video was perfectly capable of getting the point across, Peter felt the need to torture and kill the pronunciation of every seventh word that was put on the screen out loud in a narration for the ages to cringe at).

Apparently, when Jesus left earth, his followers asked him when he would return. He responded something along the lines of “when the East meets the West.” So, once again with infallible logic, it has been deduced that since Jesus was in the West last time, he must come in the East this time. And how much farther East can you get than Korea? I didn’t think so.

I was very gracious to my enlighteners, and after many, many videos and a severe case of really-uncomfortably-close-sitting-on-a-bench-itis, I told them I needed to get to my train and head out. I asked them for a picture of them (I had to have it), they gave me their card, and I was on my way. For more information about the Church of God, my new Cult, go to http://english.watv.org or www.uccspace.net or search on YouTube “I have already come.” You won’t regret it.

After this encounter, I was running a tad late. So I hoofed it to the train station, picked up my bags at Left Luggage, bought my ticket and caught the 17:46 train to Vienna Südbahnhof Ost, for 11€.

The train was about an hour long. I slept the whole way, though, so I wouldn’t really know.

Zagreb and The Museum of Broken Relationships

We arrived in Zagreb close to midnight on July 14. Brian had booked a place called Swanky (or Swanky Hostel, I forget). And, in direct opposition to the usual result of booking a place called Swanky, it was indeed quite swanky, with a modern bathroom and kitchen in a beautifully modern building. Hardwood floors and a little deck, plus a living room area with comfortable couches, and its overwhelming cleanliness, made for a great place to crash for the night, and a great first impression of Croatia.

Oh, might I add that to get to Swanky hostel, which is located a bit far from the train station, we took a cab, which ripped us off beyond belief, and a ride that should have cost 40 or 50 Croatian Kuna cost 120. But it’s ok, because it was Brian who insisted on taking the cab, so he paid for it. On the bright side, we got a nighttime tour of the city.

We checked in at the hostel, which is located a bit far from the city center (though it’s not a big city, so hardly an issue), in a beautiful little neighborhood on a hill.

For food we walked down the hill to a place called Konzum (“K Super” on the logo). It was a 24-hour megamarket, the equivalent of Walmart – it had everything.

We picked up some cheese, bread, meat, and snacks, and headed back to the hostel.

We dined on our meat and cheese sandwiches and passed out around 1 or 2.

***

The next morning we got up early to take advantage of the day.

We checked out of the hostel and, at the suggestion of our host, we walked down the hill to the tram station (at the end of the line) and took the tram downtown to the train station again. Here we bought tickets to Budapest for later in the day and deposited our backpacks in the lockers in the station.

In Kiev, Brian called train stations “Secular Churches.” I like that. A train station has been, until very recently, the gateway to the place you’ve arrived in. In many places, it still is for the majority of people. This is the country’s chance to impress you right off the bat. That’s why (in my opinion) the Soviets spent so much time and money on their train stations and other public transit. It’s what is most visible to outsiders, and thus gives off the best version of themselves they can portray. Zagreb did not disappoint. The exterior of the station was in an older, more classic style, with a Greek-style frieze above the main windows over the entrance, and archways running along the ground level. The interior was much more modern, probably recently built, with a simplistic and elegant design.

The previous day we had been given a map at Swanky where the owner had marked out the important places to see. By July 15, however, we had lost it. Well, I found it later in my back pocket, but for all intents and purposes, we had lost it. But our collective memory of the unique things that were mentioned, combined with a knowledge of the main attractions of every major European city (Old Town, Cathedral/church, Castle/Fortress), and my sense of direction, we struck off without the map to explore Zagreb.

Right outside the train station is a beautiful equestrian statue of Kralj Tomislav. He rides with one hand high in the air, holding up a scepter that holds a small cross on top. Tomislav was king from 925-928 AD. He was Duke of Croatis from c. 910-925. He is credited with being the founder of the first united Croatian state, and celebrated for the achievement.

Beyond King Tomislav’s square is the Art Pavilion, an enormous yellow construction that was under construction. We passed it by without a second thought, choosing instead to follow a sign we found shortly afterwards that boasted the “Zagrebčko kazalište lutaka.” For those of you who haven’t brushed up on your Croatian in a while, that’s the Zagreb Puppet Theatre. We didn’t find it until later in the day, though, when we were on our way back to the train station.

Stumbling into a handy tourist-informational-and-directional-sign, we found something that we felt like we had to go to. It was the Muzej prekinutih veza, also known as the Museum of Broken Relationships. Only slightly aware of what that was, we resolved to make it there eventually.

Our first real tourist stop, however, was the Katedrala (Cathedral). Luckily for us, it was a Sunday, so when we entered the Cathedral we were in the midst of some chanting for the service being conducted. So often, when we walk into old churches and cathedrals, we forget that these buildings were and are built to be used, and the vaulted ceilings are there not just to make you feel closer to God, or for architectural aesthetics, but to feel the reverberations of hundreds, maybe thousands of people chanting in unison; a simultaneously impressive and chilling event.

We did not stay long, but soon moved on to a farmers market that we ran into. Passing through that quite quickly, we reached a large square, at which point I had a miniature problem. I had lost my necklace, the one with a piece of the tree I skied into on December 29, 2008. I wear it every day as a reminder of both my 18-year-old invincibility as well as my overwhelming fragility. But I had left it at Swanky, where I had hung it up in the bathroom before taking a shower. I called the hostel, and they said they had it, so we headed back there by tram. Brian, in typical Brian fashion, timed the excursion, to let me know just how much of his time in Croatia I had wasted because of my carelessness. By the time we arrived back at the square, having picked up my necklace, it had been 42 minutes and 17 seconds. I would spend the rest of the day hearing about how much stuff we would have been able to do had we not lost that 42:17.

Upon arriving back in the square, we walked west, in the direction of the hostel and in what we thought was the direction of the Museum of Broken Relationships. It was a bit of a detour, but after walking up a very large set of steps, we found A) The best view of Zagreb, B) The Old Town, and in it C) The Museum of Broken Relationships.

It is hard to describe the magic that is the Museum of Broken Relationships. Brian and I both generally dislike museums, as they are, Brian likes to say, the way the modern makes static a fluid concept. The idea I subscribe to is that art should be displayed in its original context, as should historical artifacts. I have seen many an amazing thing in museums, but I would rather have seen them where they were intended to be displayed, if possible. But this museum is a much different story. Everything in it is donated by regular people, and each artifact is a memory in relation to some sort of relationship that ended, or was broken, in one way or another. Their description of themselves is as follows:

“The Museum of Broken Relationships grew from a traveling exhibition revolving around the concept of failed relationships and their ruins. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from failed loves, the Museum offers a chance to overcome an emotional collapse through creation: by contributing to the Museum’s collection.

“Whatever the motivation for donating personal belongings – be it sheer exhibitionism, therapeutic relief, or simple curiosity – people embraced the idea of exhibiting their love legacy as a sort of ritual, a solemn ceremony. Our societies oblige us with our marriages, funerals, and even graduation farewells, but deny us any formal recognition of the demise of a relationship, despite its strong emotional effect. In the words of Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse “Every passion, ultimately, has its spectator… (there is) no amorous oblation without a final theater.”

“Conceptualized in Croatia, the Museum has since toured internationally, amassing an amazing collection. Although often colored by personal experience, local culture and history, the exhibits presented here form universal patterns offering us to discover them and feel the comfort they can bring. Hopefully they can also inspire our personal search for deeper insights and strengthen our belief in something more meaningful than random suffering.”

Some of these are hilarious. Some are quite depressing. Not every broken relationship ended in some ridiculous way. Sometimes it was a death that separated people. But most of the time, it was just entertaining. To try to give any potential readers (and myself, as a memory aid) an idea of what this manifested itself in, I will describe, and attempt to copy down, some gems from this museum:

A hundred Swedish Crowns [it was just that, 100 Crowns]

13 April 2005 – 21 October 2007

Forli-Rome-Stockholm-Umbria

This small bill is the only thing left after a relationship and a trip to Stockholm. He told me: “Keep it, you’re going to use it the next time you come and see me…” But there was no “next time”.

Air sickness bags

2004-2006

Zagreb, Croatia

A range of air sickness bags as a memento of a long-distance relationship. One Croatia Airlines, one Lufthansa, one Hapag Lloyd Express and three GermanWings. I think I have those illustrated safety instructions as well, showing what to do when the airplane begins to fall apart. I have never found any instructions on what to do when a relationship begins to fall apart, but at least I’ve still got these bags.

Fake breasts

3 years

Belgrade, Serbia

So, after three years together, my husband bought fake, sculpted female breasts which were, of course, larger than mine and that was the time of our biggest relationship crisis… he made me wear them during sex because they turned him on. I was disappointed and because of those sculpted, fake breasts I left him for good.

An unopened Candy G-string

2004-2008

Winterthur, Switzerland

This was what he thought of as “romantic”: a thong made of candy. I laughed, but never took it out of the package. He never bought me flowers because flowers, he said, were for boring people. Instead I got sausages or new parts for my bicycle. I didn’t mind because I loved him. After four years he turned out to be as cheap and shabby as his presents. He cheated on me with a  colleague from the office and dumped me via e-mail.

A cat collar and tag

2.5 years

Singapore

A cat collar I used to wear as a choker. I engraved my boyfriend’s phone number on the tag to symbolise submission to his ownership. I loved cats; my loved ones always refer to me as a cat.

A can of love incense

(1994)

Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Doesn’t work.

A toy [it’s a vibrator]

June 2004-June 2009

Fun Times – I donated this because it reminded me of some fun times we had. The bedroom was also a very intimate and beautiful time. The years I’ve spent with you have been the best years of my life. You could say we even had a SCREAM!!

Russian condoms

(1 year)

Bloomington, Indiana

Russian condoms given as a gift from my girlfriend’s trip to Lithuania. Didn’t use them with her or with anyone else since.

An ex-axe [just a hatchet on the wall]

1995

Berlin, Germany

She was the first woman that I left move in with me. All my friends thought I needed to learn to let people in more. A few months after she moved in, I was offered to travel to the US. She could not come along. At the airport we said goodbye in tears, and she was assuring me she could not survive three weeks without me.

I returned after three weeks, and she said: “I fell in love with someone else. I have known her for just four days, but I know she can give me everything you cannot.”

I was banal and asked about her plans regarding our life together. The next day she still had no answer, so I kicked her out. She immediately went on holiday with her new girlfriend while her furniture stayed with me. Not knowing what to do with my anger, I finally bought this axe at Karstadt to blow off some steam and to give her at least a small feeling of loss – which she obviously did not have after our break-up.

In the 14 days of her holiday, every day I axed one piece of her furniture. I kept the remains there, as an expression of my inner condition. The more her room filled with chopped furniture acquiring the look of my soul, the better I felt.

Two weeks after she left, she came back for the furniture. It was neatly arranged into small heaps and fragments of wood. She took that trash and left my apartment for good. The axe was promoted to a therapy instrument.

A key bottle opener

23 January 1988 – 30 June 1998

Ljubljana, Slovenia

You talked to me of love, gave me small gifts every day; this is just one of them. The key to your heart. You turned my head; you just did not want to sleep with me. I realized how much you loved me only after you died of AIDS.

An under-knee prosthesis

Spring 1992

Zagreb, Croatia

In a Zagreb hospital I met a beautiful, young and ambitious social worker from the Ministry of Defence. Love was born when she helped me get certain materials, which I needed for my under-knee prosthesis, as a war invalid. The prosthesis endured longer than our love. It was made of sturdier material!

A child’s wartime love letter

3 days in May 1992

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Escaping from Sarajevo under fire in a big convoy, we were held hostage for three days when leaving the city. A few days before, I turned 13.

In a car next to ours there was Elma, with her mother and some other people, I don’t really remember whom. I only remember she was blonde and incredibly cute. I fell in love, with childlike honesty, and confessed it to her with the same honesty in this letter. I had given her some tapes since she forgot to bring her own music along before leaving in a hurry. As I didn’t get the time to give her the letter, because after three days they suddenly freed us and we lost sight of Elma’s car near Travnik, she never got to return my Azra, Bijelo Dugme, EKV, Nirvane and other tapes…

Naturally, I never saw her again, although I just hope that the music reminded her of something nice and cute in that whole terrible situation.

A Galatasaray T-shirt

1 July – 2 September 2002

Zagreb, Croatia

Short but bitter. “Uzun ama aci”. A typical summer fling which turned into a two-year agony.

Intimate shampoo

1995-1996

Split, Croatia

After the relationship ended, my mother used it for glass polishing. She claims it’s absolutely great.

Toys (two doggies in love and a yellow monkey)

A few months in 1995

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

It began so sweet, just like these two little dogs in love, and it ended in pure monkey business.

A beagle stuff toy

Manila, Philippines

Pao Pao – The Fake Replacement

This stuffed animal – “Pao Pao” (meaning baby in Chinese) was given to me a month after my beloved dog died. It was A’s way of granting his “condolences” to me as he was not very good in death and losses. His remedy to my “dog’s absence” was to have a replacement… Quite interesting… Later in our relationship, in the “absence of physical intimacy,” I found him satiating himself with a replacement… A bitch.

After the enjoyment that we got from the Museum of Broken Relationships, Brian and I moved on, finding the center of the Old Town, and a really interesting building with tiled pictures on the rooftop. It looked like it could have just as easily been a town hall as a church. It turned out to be St. Mark’s Church, the parish church of old Zagreb. It’s a Roman Catholic construction in the Late Gothic style that was completed in the 13^th century but radically reconstructed in the latter half of the 14^th century. The roof boasts its most distinctive features, a tiled depiction of the coat of arms of Zagreb and the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, side-by-side. Next to the church, as we passed by, was a group of soldiers, 10 in all, that we believe to be the entire Croatian army, performing some sort of ceremony in traditional uniforms. We would see them again later, passing through town, presumably to pillage the peasantry and wreak general havoc, as is tradition in these here parts.

Circumnavigating St. Mark’s Church, we headed towards the direction of the train station again, down a large set of steps that opened up onto a lively street of cafes and restaurants. We sat for a short time while we drank some recommendation of one of the café waiters. While we sat, the Croatian army passed through, drumming and fifing.

Next we found ourselves passing through the now-dismantled farmers market, followed by the cathedral again. Off of this square we found a restaurant to go to, which served some delicious Croatian food… though I still have no idea what Croatian food is.

A souvenir shop on that same square sold us a shot glass and some hilarious Croatia hats. We just had to get the hats.

Wandering in the direction of the train station again, Brian and I bought a couple of cigars and found ourselves in a gazebo in the park behind the Art Pavilion. These we smoked, relaxing in the Croatian breeze, for about an hour. Then we headed to our train station, stopping off only to see if we could glance inside the Puppet Theatre… but to no avail. We did get some great ideas of what was inside from the pictures they posted outside, however.

It didn’t take long to find our train, and we boarded with ease, headed back to Budapest, where I would be for a couple hours rest before headed off to Bratislava, Slovakia. Croatia was a beautiful place, and in my hypothetical future plan of driving down the entirety of the Dalmatian Coast, I know that I will enjoy Croatia immensely again. Fortunately, Brian and I have now seen Zagreb, so we won’t have to detour inland after passing through Split or Dubrovnik in the future.

Belgrade

We disembarked from the train around 7:30 in the morning on the 14th of July, having arrived in Београд (Belgrade). The night was spent sleeping on the uncomfortable chairs (I spent a little time sleeping on the floor because of it)

Brian and I went to the ATM, where I took out 5,000 Serbian Dinars (about $50). It didn't last long, though. We immediately went to the ticket window at the train station to get our ticket to the next destination, Zagreb. We had not time to spend too long in Belgrade, as Brian had planned a ridiculous whirlwind tour of two cities in two days.

We tried to buy a ticket for the 15:15 to Zagreb, only to be told that they only had a 15:50. This would normally have been acceptable, but Brian had done extensive research on the train schedule, and knew that there was no 15:50, only a 15:50. We didn't buy the tickets, because they cost more than 5,000 for both. It was fortunate, too, since we found out shortly afterwards that the 15:50 was a bus to Zagreb, and the 15:15, which was shorter in duration, was the train. We got the train tickets, avoiding a costly mistake.

We sat for a little while in a pastry shop adjacent to the bus ticket windows, eating a delicious pastry and researching what there is to do in the city. After a time, we embarked on our self-guided walking tour of Belgrade.

Shortly after leaving the train station, we came across the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense -- or at least all that remains of it. Brian and I were joking about the as-of-yet-unidentified building, saying how it had clearly been bombed. Only later did we realize that the building was indeed one of the targets of the 1999 NATO bombings in Belgrade, a grim reminder of the fighting and killing that had occurred only 13 years ago.

Our first real destination we, well, never got to. Farther in the south of the center of the city is the Presidential Palace, as well as a few interesting sounding museums (both Brian and I have a natural distaste for museums, but there are some that do intrigue, one of which I will get to in a moment).

It was a farther walk than we had anticipated, so when we got to St. Sava, which we had originally planned to go to on our way north to the Danube (Serbia is another of many a city on the Danube, this time at the confluence of that famous river and the Sava), we went inside instead of bypassing it and resolved to walk north from there.

The church was empty, perhaps because it was not that popular a sight, perhaps because it was under renovations (or finishing touches, it is unclear), but more likely because we had arrived around 8am. The Храм Светог Саве, Cathedral of Saint Sava, is the largest church in the Balkans, built in the Orthodox style only in 1989. It is, however, the 10th largest church building in the world, and by volume is the biggest in the world. Inside the walls were scarcely adorned, allowing one to be swallowed inside the massive cavernous domes and imposing archways and columns. We did not spend long before venturing to the next stop, though.

I had downloaded a very useful app on my iPhone, called 700+ Cities, which allowed me to pinpoint everything we wanted to see and store all the information offline for when wifi was no longer available. It was very helpful, unlike the provided addresses in another app I downloaded, a guide to Belgrade's sights. We learned, while trying to find the next destination, of this fact, which forced us to backtrack ten or so blocks to find the Tesla Museum.

It was closed, because we arrived at 8:45 or so and it opened at 10. So we went down the street until we found a place to eat, called Orao. We bought ourselves a delicious breakfast plate of sliced meats, cheeses, and olives, as well as two salads and some drinks. We also got some delicious bread which Brian inevitably thought contained pistachios, though it turned out to be pumpkin seeds. The bill came out to a mere 1,511 Dinars, or about $15, which to me seemed a bit pricey, but we were in a fancier place, so it's not the end of the world.

By the time we finished, 10am had rolled around, and we went back up the street to the Tesla museum.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) is one of the most accomplished inventors in history. Among countless other inventions, Tesla invented or was integral in the creation of, off the top of my head, the modern alternating current (AC, as opposed to direct current, or DC), the basis for wireless communication, radio frequency oscillators, Tesla coils (surprise!), induction motors, various other devices that use a rotating magnetic field, voltage magnification devices, remote controls, robotics, and devices for ionized gases, x-rays, lightning protection, and high voltage discharge. It's a bit of a mouthful.

What that all boils down to is that the devices that allow cell phones, refrigerators, radios, remote controlled devices, and power lines to work as they do, was invented by Tesla. Oh, and every outlet we use when we plug in any device into the wall uses alternating current.

Much of the most important devices are found at the Tesla museum. In fact, though Tesla himself only once visited Serbia (he was Serbian, but was born in Croatia, lived and worked in the USA, and visited once later in in life), he had all of his work sent to Belgrade upon his death, including his own ashes. This means that 160,000 original documents, 2,000 books and journals, 1,200 historical technical exhibits, 1,500 photographs and photo plates, and over 1,000 plans and drawings are housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum. Only a small portion of these were on display, but the people who work at the museum are in the process of digitizing all of these documents for public consumption.

Our tour consisted of demonstrations of his various devices, including the induction motor with short circuit rotor, induction motor with an egg-shaped rotor (popularly known as Colombo's egg, used to demonstrate the magnetic fields in motion, wireless discharges of electricity, the first remote control and it's corresponding remote controlled boat, and a small scale (8ft tall) Tesla coil. We also saw some personal effects, his favorite suit, and Nikola Tesla himself, his ashes encased in a golden Orb. It was, shall I say, shocking.

After a fair amount of time in the museum, we trekked along the streets of Beograd, passing some beautiful old buildings (small palaces, really), a couple decent town squares, and a large countdown clock, ticking backwards until the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, which for me spelled 13 days, 10 hours, 39 minutes and 32 seconds until I would be back in America... I leave London for the USA a day before the Opening Ceremonies.

Just before we found the local synagogue (every European city has one, most of them are derelict), we stumbled across an interesting plaque. It marked an office building that I did not expect to find in Serbia. It read:

РЕПУБЛИКА СРБИЈА
АГЕНЦИЈА ЗА БОРБУ
ПРОТИВ КОРУПЦИЈЕ

REPUBLIC OF SERBIA
ANTI-CORRUPTION AGENCY

We got a good laugh from that.

The synagogue was in a very large building, with a small staircase splitting into two that lead to the entrances. A large Star of David adorned the uppermost window. Stars of David also decorated the gates to the building, which was guarded by several armed guards. We asked to be let inside, and a nice elderly woman let us in. We took some photos and ogled at the pristine condition of the interior before heading out.

Brian and I had been discussing all day how much we needed haircuts. And what better place to get haircuts than Serbia? Across the street was a haircutters, and we went inside.

It took an hour. We arrived at 11:40, and left at 12:41. But the Serbs, like the Turks, are artists with their haircuts, and everything from the two hair washes to using a straight-edge razor to thin my hair by shaving bits of my scalp (an odd feeling, to be sure) was carefully and masterfully done. Our haircuts weren't excellent, however, but good enough.

At this point we were well inside the Old Town, and headed north through the rest of it to find the castle. Almost every European city has this in common: a castle, an old town, and a church/cathedral.

The castle is in such disrepair that pretty much just the exterior walls are still discernible. But the view from the top, of the Sava and Danube rivers, is pretty amazing. Brian and I didn't spend much time there. We did, however, buy some old Yugoslavian currency, one of which was a 500,000,000,000 Dinar note, a note that still holds the Guinness Record for highest denomination of currency ever printed.

On the edge of the castle grounds, we found a small cafe. No one was there, but we sat down for a beer, overlooking the rivers. After a leisurely drink, we realized we had no money. Well, that's not entirely true. We had a few dinars, a couple Euros, and a Turkish Lira. And they didn't accept credit card. And the nearest ATM was back in the old town. And we had a train to catch soon. We had to beg with some of the coldest travelers who had come to sit in the same cafe. A couple of Swedes helped us out in the end, but basically we had to beg with them and a bunch of Brits to give them an equivalent amount of money in Euros and Serbian coins so they could pay for us. It makes no sense; it was over $4! I hope Traveler's Karma comes back to bite them in their respective behinds.

After the payment fiasco, Brian and I headed straight to the train station. We walked back, taking an odd route, down roads we had yet to traverse. Brian doubted my sense of direction, but I got us there with 10 minutes to spare. We boarded our train and departed at just about 15:15, as planned.

***

On a separate note, despite the generally interesting and positive time I had in Belgrade, I am wary of Serbians as a people. Just in the last several decades, according to the US State Department's writeup on the Serbs, they're really not very nice people. In 1913 the Serbians led a coalition of area troops that successfully ousted the Ottoman Empire from their lands and established Serbia as a military leader. After that, a Serbian killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, sparking World War I. After the war, Serbia became the dominant power in Yugoslavia, oppressing the countries around it in brutal infighting. This lasted for 4 decades under Communist Josip Broz Tito. Then, in the late 1980s, Slobodan Milosevic rose to power in Belgrade, and started discriminating against Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo, as had Tito. Milosevic's actions against the separatist KLA, and mass killings of citizens of Yugoslavia (all non-Serbs). This prompted the 79 days of bombing by NATO that led to the destruction of the Ministry of Defense. The Serbs, it seems, are the dominant aggressors in the area, and the attitude comes off in the people. I couldn't help but feel uneasy around the people themselves. The sights were wonderful, the food was alright, but the people just seemed cold.

Anyway, one man's opinion...

Budapest

Brian picked me up at the airport, a begrudging courtesy he extended to me since I had picked him up at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul a few months back, and had organized a car for him to ease the transportation nightmare that is Kiev.

I landed at 23:00, but didn't make it out of the secure area for a while. Partially because only two passport checkers were working but mostly because I was questioned about my bags and made to X-ray them again. As such, I was the last person on my plane to get out of the airport.

We took a cab back to his apartment, a lovely first-floor converted doctors office on Veres Pálné utca and Szerb utca. I took a folded-out couch, without sheets (by choice, it was hot as hell in there), and we both crashed. Brian, after all, had work the next day.

The best thing about the ground floor, without question, was the ease with which we could get my massive extra bag into the apartment. And, since my parents will be stopping in Budapest as their last stop before going home when they visit Europe in two weeks or so, they'll be bringing it home. Which means, as of when I arrived at Brian's apartment, I am officially a backpacker again!


***


The routine in this city is such. Brian has work that requires him to leave the apartment around 8am and get back about 12 hours later. We have one set of keys. So this means I get up in the morning to lock him out of the apartment, then get 12 hours to do whatever I damn well please until Brian comes back and we go drinking or eating or something.

For this first day, though, whatever I damn well please consisted of catching up on this damned blog (needed to write all of Odessa and Kiev, pretty much) and doing nothing in the apartment. I didn't leave until 6pm, when I went to grab breakfast at a nearby square just down Szerb utca in the opposite direction from the Danube.

For the first time in 6 months, I felt like I was in Europe. I know that with the exceptions of Georgia, Israel, and Anatolia, I have spent the vast majority of my time in Europe. But Budapest is the first step towards a gradual re-acclimation to Western society. The delicious pasta carbonara didn't hurt either.

Brian met up with me around 8, and we headed straight to dinner. We went to Raday utca, which is lined with restaurants. Specifically, we sought out a place that makes chicken wings that Brian likes a lot, but we couldn't find it, so we settled on the first place with a misting fan.

Brian had a steak, I had duck. They were both delicious. After dinner we walked to Kálvin Tér, a busy square, to meet Mark, one of Brian's co-workers. I stopped off briefly at the Mercure Hotel to grab a map of the city so I could actually do some sightseeing at some point.

When we met up with Mark, we went first to a place called Janis' Pub. It looked decent enough, and is right around the corner from Brian's apartment. But the proximity was overshadowed by Mark's want to go to a different place and an overly talkative American who worked at the pub and didn't seem to want to leave us alone any time soon. Interesting side note, though. The ever-more-famous band Finnegan's Wake was formed and met at Janis' Pub, and play there every month.

Instead of that bar we went to Köny Vtár, on Kiskörút. There we met up with Victor and Gerge, two other people at the office Brian works in. General shenanigans commenced (I.e. conversations and beers), and the night ended relatively early, around 1.


***


The next morning I got out a bit earlier. Locked Brian out at 8 and left by about noon to go to California Coffee Company, on Múzeum utca just on the other side of Kálvin Tér, for wifi. See, Brian's apartment's wifi is dead, and his landlord is in Romania so can't fix it while I'm here.

I spent a while there, then went to the museum next door.

The museum was whelming, neither over nor under. There was a section on Hungarian Olympians, some beautiful paintings (though most of the men in the paintings looked like stereotypes of conquistadors), and an interesting exhibit on the Gömböc, which is a mathematical stem cell of sorts. It's a three dimensional shape from which you can create any standard geometrical shape, or something like that. The descriptions they gave are as follows:

"The Gömböc is the first known convex, homogeneous object to have just one stable (S) and one unstable (I) equilibrium points. The Gömböc always self-rights to its single stable position, like a weeble - without added weight. The existence of the Gömböc was conjectured in 1995 by one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, Vladimir Igorevich Arnold."

And

"All equilibrium classes of objects can be constructed by using the Gömböc as a starting point, but not the other way around: the existence of the Gömböc cannot be deduced from the existence of other shapes."

Other exhibits included stuff on WWI and WWII, as well as the 12 day Hungarian revolution and their life as a satellite communist state.

I next stopped by at a synagogue. This one pissed me off quite a bit. I would type again what I think but since I already wrote it in an angry email I'll reproduce below:



"I'm so damn sick of being a walking museum. Why does everyone else get to live now and Jews have to be relegated to the past? Just came from Budapest synagogue. "hungary was home to 750,000 Jews." "Jews would worship here."

"But Jews still live in Hungary, in Budapest, and still worship at that shul! I almost expected them to tell me "step right up, you can meet a real, live Jew! He'll even say something in Jewish!"

"People are surprised to find out I'm Jewish. Many are genuinely sensitive to it and just accept it as fact. Others, when I get to know them enough, make jokes on occasion, which I'm happy to play along with. But too many find sick novelty in it. They make insensitive remarks or tiptoe around the subject. They tell me things like "Cool! I've never met a Jew before!" and "You don't look Jewish." and "I wouldn't have guessed." or, perhaps worse, "I might have guessed."

"I'm not a museum. I'm not a victim. I don't like the attention and I don't want to walk into a living, breathing house of worship and be told what the mysterious Jews once did there, way back when. We're still here, and I'm sick of modern world citizens apologizing for their grandparents' sins with extra attention towards the freaks in the funny hats.

"I'm all about history. I don't love but I understand the usefulness of museums. I get the whole "never forget" mentality of the Holocaust, and I couldn't agree more with it.

"But don't freeze me in time.

"I visit churches and mosques all the time while traveling. I don't walk in with the mentality that I'm in a relic. Whether or not you're religious, you should be aware that most places of worship you'll ever see are still in use. I don't go to a church and marvel at a medieval bureaucracy that let people pay down their sins for entry into heaven. I see a series of artistic works and architecture that has helped shape a modern group of individuals (And that medieval period? Totally separate from today) Churches, and christianity, continues to evolve (in 1996 or 1997 Pope John Paul II announced that the Sun was indeed the center of the Solar System, reversing several hundred years of Church doctrine).

"So why are Jews different? Is it because among minorities we (Hasids and orthodox Jews excluded), unlike blacks or Asians, can 'hide' the Jew-ness? We have a J bomb we don't have to drop unless we want to? At least a black man experiences (or hopefully doesn't experience) racism from the start, because it's quite obvious he's black. But the attitudes that people have towards me can change in a heartbeat. It's like in the Gentleman's Agreement, when Mr. Green tells everyone it's actually Mr. Greenberg.

"I got pretty upset at the Dohány Utcai Zsinagóga. The building is magnificent. I would have been lucky to have been Bar Mitzvah'd there. It actually reminds me more of a Greek Orthodox church than any synagogue I've seen (and that's fine. The architect clearly had some Greek influence); the interior is breathtaking. But to walk outside from there and hear an English man say to his 12 year old son, "hey, look, they sell those little things Jews put on their doorways" is insufferable. The little sign next to it that announces "-20% for blessings" is almost as bad.

"I don't know if the answer is education. I don't think the solution can be taught in schools. In fact, that seems like part of the problem. Putting Jews, me, in a textbook. That's a way to ensure our placement into the annals of history, not a way to move on and be world citizens who are Jewish, not Jewish world citizens.

"I'm not a God-damned museum."



I would add that it's not just Jews who have this problem. American Indians do too, as do some Mongolians. But the point stays the same. This place, a beautiful place that I would have been lucky to be Bar Mitzvah'd in, had a sign in the front with the label "Jewinform" in a Hebraic typeface. A tshirt was being sold at the entrance to the sanctuary itself with the silhouette of a Hasidic Jew dancing and the label "חיPod". Upstairs in one of the buildings was a Jewish museum, where the items used in every Jewish holiday were in holiday-themed displays. All that was missing was the wax figurines showing eager tourists what Jews used to look like. Anyway, if I keep writing about this section of my day I'll get upset and stop, so I'll move on.

I went to a Kebab place next, one that Brian had shown me the night before. That's where I wrote the rant I quoted above.

Then to a coffee house down the street. I sat at Costa Coffee for hours. I had planned to see the opera house and then go to the Museum of Terror, but I was a little too upset. Instead I sat at the coffee shop, and eventually walked past both of the above things before heading back by metro and never going inside either.

Brian and I went out to dinner this night too, but not before stopped at Brian's favorite hot chocolate place, which not only serves perfect European-style hot chocolate, but mixes bits of fruit inside as well. It was delectable.

Dinner was at the Manga Cowboy, the wing place Brian and I had failed to find on the previous attempt. The wings were delicious, and on the spicy side. Hungarians seem to actually know what spice is, unlike Ukrainians.


***


On July 11 I wandered to Buda. See, Budapest is actually two cities. Buda and Pest combined to form Budapest. Brian lives in Pest, the castles are in Buda. So across the bridge I went, across Szabadság Híd, to see them.

It was hot, brutally so. As soon as I crossed the Danube into Buda, I started uphill. First, I stumbled into some sort of Cave Church. I thought it might be the entrance to the citadel, but didn't know my mistake till I had paid the 400HUF (they use the Forint, exchange rate about 231HUF-$1, but the currency itself is pretty much a medieval fantasy currency) entrance fee. The church was cool, but not 400 Forints cool.

I continued uphill for a long time longer. It was tiring work. So tiring that when I emerged at the top by the citadel, I downed 1.5 liters of cold water immediately.

The views were amazing, but the nature hike was more impressive, and the citadel itself was simplistic and not much to look at. I don't know about the inside, though, didn't want to spend 2,000 forints to see inside.

I walked down the hill towards the other castle, the Buda Castle. Through a few parks and along the Danube brought me to a funicular that would take me up for 900 forints. Not knowing the way up without the funicular, I took it.

Again, I couldn't bring myself to pay to get into the castle/palace itself, and I didn't want to see the museums inside, so I ogled the views of the outside of the building and the city, and walked back down the hill.

I walked across the Chain Bridge (making it my second crossing of the Danube in a day. It took weeks for Alexander the Great to do the same) back to Pest, and took the tram back to the apartment.

My night consisted of watching Anchorman. I could have gone out, but I am really enjoying my sober days here. Brian went on some sort of outing or date or something, coming back around 1. I just hung out, called home, and got stuck in the torrential downpour that arrived from about 10-12 that night.


***


I let Brian out at 8 this morning of the 12th, and sat in the square nearby for a while, eating breakfast at the Hummus Bar, a delicious shop run by some old Jews which offers the cheapest and best hummus and falafel in town, while I waited for my laundry at the apartment to finish washing.

Laundry was a bit more of an ordeal than I expected, but only because I was really lazy, put it through two extra spin cycles and had to organize all of Brian's drying laundry from a heap of cotton to a well laid-out set of clothes on a drying rack to fit my stuff in as well.

I lazed pretty much all day. I tried to get to the Museum of Terror just before 6, arriving by metro and getting to the door at 5:59, thinking I'd have 1:01 before it closed, but it closed a minute later. The guard at the door was very helpful and friendly, though.

This meant the whole day was a bust. I spent the whole time in cafes and I couldn't have been happier about it. It gave me time to think. Things like:

Escalators, water bottles and useless jobs.

Jerry Seinfeld once said, to paraphrase poorly, "ever notice that when you're on an escalator, the thing you're holding moves a little bit faster than the thing you're standing on?" I always notice this. It's especially pronounced in a place like Arsenal'na, when two 2.5 minute escalators take you to the deepest metro in the world. But this is a serious issue. And some Finnish guys I met on my Chernobyl trip gave me the answer. Apparently, they do that so you feel like you're not falling backwards. I tried it. I stood without the handrail. It felt dizzying and confusing; I did feel like I was falling once or twice. Then I get to Budapest, and I found escalators whose stairs moved faster. I've never been more scared on stairs. I feel like I'm Uzbek shopper on these things (See YouTube).

Is it really so hard to figure out the difference between water bottles with gas and those without? I'm horribly allergic to pistachios, so I usually just avoid food packaging that's green. It's a dead giveaway, and it works most of the time. It also means I don't eat a lot of mint treats, but hey, sometimes it's a worthy tradeoff. But in some countries (whose languages I don't speak) I have to guess based on the labels written in what might as well be Aramaic mixed with Sanskrit. Usually I figure the choices are "gas" and "no gas." that's how it is in most places, so I usually pick the longer disclaimer on the bottom of the packaging. It's also usually blue, the label at least, when it's gas-less. These two rules have served me well, until Ukraine, when a third choice was introduced. "A little gas" made its way into the water label industry, and I became that much mor confused. Now, I'm looking at blue tops with gas and pink tops without? Make up your mind, world conspirators of water bottle manufacturers!

Every country has a job that is outdated and useless, yet people are still hired for them. The US still thinks its alright to have politicians, for example. But Ukraine and Hungary had some interesting choices for useless employees. Ukraine, for Euro, wouldn't allow anyone into the stadium with liquids. I assume this was partly for security and partly because of basic economics (though they only sold non-alcoholic beer inside the stadium itself, a completely misguided move, in my opinion). But is a wall of 50+ policemen on each street leading up to the stadium necessary for this purpose? can't you put up a fence and have 5 people manning them? Or, better yet, Have people throw liquids out when you check tickets, at those gates? They're already manned, and gated! Likewise, Budapest doesn't even seem to have gates when it comes to checking tickets. They have four people in uniform outside the escalator to every metro, checking tickets. Put in some turnstiles!

These are the things I think about when I'm relaxing in a wondrous city. That, and I marvel at how everyone here, for the first time since I was in Israel, speaks English, and damn well.

Brian came back around 7:45 and we hung out in the apartment for a while before going off to Pampas restaurant for some exquisite steak and South African wine, just down the street.


***


Brian and I both left the apartment at 9, and got breakfast nearby at the Central Cafe, a world-renowned patisserie founded in 1887. Our respective breakfast dishes were good, but the pastries afterwards were breathtaking. I had a mint-lemon item that was beyond words to describe (and I ate it so quickly I forget what it was called). Brian had a raspberry mousse and jelly combination.

At 10 we had departed. Brian left for work, and I headed to Heroes Square.

Heroes Square was, well, boring. It had a large monument in the center and a semi-circular monument on the end. There are a couple of museums lining the outside of the square, but it really is just a big communist square, the likes of which I've seen many times before, from Moscow to Warsaw, from Kharkiv to Minsk. But it is one of the main attractions that Budapest has to offer, and since I don't remember much from my visit to Budapest with the family in 2003, I felt I should go, and I'm glad I did.

Having failed twice thus far to get inside the Museum of Terror (AKA House of Terror), and since it is on the way from Heroes Square back to the center of town, I stopped by this time, with plenty of time before closing. The museum is a haunting place, a building that was once headquarters to the secret police force of every oppressive government (i.e. every government) that controlled Hungary from the 1940s (or so), until the fall of Soviet-style Communism in the 1990s. Many hundreds of political prisoners were tortured and killed there, and many more of what I consider 'paper murders', unjust killings authorized by a signature in an office, occurred on the premises.

I was not allowed to take photos inside the museum, but that didn't really stop me. I managed to get a good 20 or so. The structure of the rooms themselves -- walls, doorways, walkways, etc. -- seemed to be relatively untouched. A few of the rooms looked to be refurbished, not fabricated, and a few more were completely redone to make a statement, share something gruesome, or otherwise inform. The experience itself was haunting. Inside 60 Andrássy út, what looks to have been built as an apartment building gives one a feeling of desperation. On the wall of the middle courtyard is depicted hundreds upon hundreds of photos of victims who were killed on the premises who were, in all likelihood, tortured. A gigantic tank is stationed at the base of the courtyard, over a small reflecting pool that spills into a basin somewhere on the basement level.

I walked up to the second floor to start my tour, and found myself walking through a variety of rooms. One, for example, was a meeting hall from which the outcomes of show trials were decided, and other policy decisions were made. Another was the office of the top officers at the time in charge of the SS/KGB/Secret Police. Yet another was plastered wall-to-wall with pictures of fascist and communist propaganda, which led into a room of countless documents, probably detailing many of the horrors that occurred there.

The scariest part of the whole thing, though, was the basement. That's where the cells were. Though they were probably at best refurbished, but more likely fabricated from old pictures and records, the spot was pretty haunting. Tiny cells that once housed prisoners, a tiny office that some officer would sit in when he wasn't making his rounds or beating and torturing his prisoners. I walked into the padded cell and actually closed the door. A tiny shaft of light came in from somewhere I could not find. It was dark, lonely, and immediately unbelievably alienating. My mind jumped right to the horror that would be the door locking itself, with me inside. And while I do believe in those moments of self-actualization when you experience, if only for a brief moment, the absolute best and worst moments of life (we learn much about ourselves from how we cope with the bad, especially. I always think back to the absolute horror that was the few seconds I thought my legs were paralyzed after my skiing accident), I sincerely hope that brief brush with imprisonment, though superficial, momentary, self-imposed, and without danger, is the closest I ever come to actual incarceration.

With a relatively limited number of hours before leaving Budapest (more on that below), I made my way next towards my last touristy item in the city, Memento Park. To get there, I made my way back to Brian's neighborhood, then crossed the bridge via tram to the Gellért Hotel, where I would later spend several hours. From there, I requested a taxi from one of the doormen, as public transport was sparse, confusing, and time-consuming for this out-of-the-way gem. But the taxi ride was only 15 minutes or so, bringing me to a spot right on the outskirts of Budapest (I actually left the city for a stretch of maybe half a kilometer right towards the end, before reentering and arriving at the park).

Memento Park is, to me at least, unique among parks I've visited. When the Hungarians overthrew their Communist rulers, they distinguished themselves from their fellow satellite states in how they dealt with the signs of Communism - namely, statues. Prague, for example, was once home to the world's largest Stalin statue, which was dynamited. In its place (see a later post on Prague) was erected a large metronome, symbolizing the time lost to communism. Most other modern nations that arose after the Iron Curtain fell also destroyed their statues that symbolized communism. Not Budapest.

Budapest kept their statues - or at least 41 of them. They removed them from their prominent positions in town and, eventually, erected them on the outskirts of town in a place called Memento Park. So today, with a little commuting and a lot of time, you can run out to see the statues that once dominated public life in Budapest.

It's really fascinating. The statues range from 1949-1989. Statues of Lenin, Marx, and Engels line the parks outskirts. Other Hungarian Communist leaders are there, too, like Béla Kun, Endre Ságvári, and Árpád Szakasits. It gives you a small taste of the completely pervasive propaganda people were surrounded by every day during Hungarian's Communist regime(s).

My taxi waited for me at the park, and drove me back when I was finished with Memento Park. I was brought back to the Gellért Hotel, where I was going to spend the next several hours.

My dad insisted that I spend a little time in a Hungarian spa. So I went to the most famous one I could find, at his suggestion (and on his dime).

Walking into the Gellért was an immediate leap upward in terms of the pure luxury I was experiencing just by being inside. It was just across the Danube in Buda, and I never got a Turkish bath in Turkey (sacrilegious, I know), so why not now?

Buying my ticket was pretty easy, and it cost a lot less than I expected. Entry to the baths was not terrible, and for the same amount again I could get a 40-minute massage. All-in-all, I probably spent about $50 for the whole thing, which was good because I spend 4 hours in the baths.

The baths. They were numerous (I counted 6 communal pools, 4 private pools for men), ranged in temperature from 18-38°C, with a 40-50° steam room, and two saunas. The outdoor pool had a wave machine that went off every hour for 15 minutes. I just jumped back and forth between pools, getting my fingers all pruned up and relaxing away all my troubles.

Like I said, I was there for 4 hours. It's not easy to entertain yourself for 4 hours by yourself in a series of pools, but I was so relaxed in the incredibly ornate and luxurious surroundings I had found myself in that I didn't really notice the time. Though I had to pay a little attention, because I had booked my 40-minute massage for the earliest possible time slot (which is how I ended up with a 4 hour waiting period of hot tubbing).

My masseuse was very strong, and knew what he was doing. I asked for him to work on my neck and back, and to hold nothing back. He tried as hard as he could to destroy my muscles with his hands. In the end, he was grunting more than I from the pain I caused his hands, and when he finished, his voice was one of pure relief for being able to rest up. But I got my money's worth, and that's all that matters.

I went the wrong way getting back. I decided to save time by hopping a tram instead of walking over the bridge. But instead I managed to get on the tram that went along the Danube on the Buda side, dropping me off over by the other bridge, the chain bridge, which I walked over, and then had to tram all the way back to Brian's place. But it was fine, because I still had plenty of time to pack up before leaving Budapest.

I grabbed some food at the Hummus Bar, a kebab hummus plate, and packed up everything I own into my backpack.

Brian, for the last few months, while living in Budapest, has spent many a weekend taking trips to places around the city. So he suggested we go on a weekend trip. This would cut severely into my plan of spending a few days in Bratislava, Vienna, and Prague (as had spending a week in Budapest instead of the original 3 days I had planned for), but the opportunity was there, and I planned to take it. So I just told Brian I'd go where he wanted and he told me to meet him at 8:30 at his apartment to go.

When we met up, I learned officially that Brian had landed on a train to Belgrade, followed by a day in Zagreb, and then a train back to Budapest, where I would spend about 4 hours before heading off to Bratislava. This meant I didn't need to take all of my crap, just a small backpack, for 2 days of travel. So much easier!

At 9:30 we got a bus from Ferenciak Tér to the train station.

At the train station itself we had to wait in line for tickets, which we paid for in cash and had handwritten for us (because why would you have a machine print tickets for pennies each when you could pay someone to handwrite it?) 15 minutes before departure.

Departed 10:20pm. There were no more sleepers available, so we were stuck in seats. Which was fine by us. We played some cards, some monopoly on my iPad and chatted and slept. Oh, and we read up on Serbia, which quickly turned us against the country. Serbia has a nasty history of subjugating everyone around them. Yugoslavia was pretty much Serbia running the country and oppressing the others. They killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started World War I. They do not have a good track record. But this was exploration time, and Exploration 101 dictates that one does not judge a country by its US State Department history writeup.

At 1am we arrived at the Hungarian border. We got through at 1:25.

At 1:41 we arrived at the Serbian border. A mildly insane guy in our car (whom we had, before departure, mistaken for a train employee, as he was wearing a reflective vest) tried to get off train. "Is this the border, sir?" he asked me. I said yes, and he got off the train anyway. Moments later I hear, "Policia!" It's been a few days since this happened, and as I write I forget whether he got back on after that. I want to say he didn't, but he probably did.

We crossed the Serbian border shortly after that. But this post ends here, as at this point in my travels I am no longer in Hungary. On to Serbia!