Dzien Dobry!

Warsaw Graffiti

Although I was so congested that I could barely breathe, the bus ride to Warsaw was better than expected! I ended up next to this jovial suspender-sporting Latvian man who got me speaking Russian again. When I was sneezing, he offered me hot coffee from his thermos to help and he later pressed an apple into my hands saying it would also help. I dropped my contact lens on the floor at one point and he got down on all fours to help me look. Did I mention he was probably in his 60s? Really nice guy :)

Warsaw: Old and New

Warsaw: I liked it here! It wasn’t so much the city and its sights, but more loving being in Poland. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t remember too much about Warsaw. There wasn’t anything too exciting in the old town and I couldn’t get to the fragment of the Warsaw Ghetto wall because of massive construction in the Jewish Quarter. I really enjoyed the Lazienki Park though with its famous statue of Chopin and piano keyboard-benches playing his music. The best part of Warsaw (and perhaps all of Poland) were the milk bars (mleczny bars). These super-simple cafeteria-like places have a long list of traditional Polish foods to choose from. You pay at the cash register, hand your receipt to the ladies at the counter, and see if you can’t force a smile from one of their stern faces while you wait for your food. The crowds at the milk bar vary from high-powered business execs wanting a quick lunch to homeless people looking to turn their zlotys (Polish currency) into a good meal.

Polish Cuisine: Hit and miss. In terms of street food, you could find kielbasa, zapiekanka (baguette with cheese and other toppings), and gelato everywhere! These were great! But I have to say I was pretty disappointed by the soups in Poland: The barszcz czerwony (borsht) was a watery beet soup that was about as tasty as the juice that comes from canned beets and the popular zurek, a fermented rye soup with sausage, was just sour and rather unpleasant. Main dishes were also hit and miss. Bigos, a meat and cabbage "Hunter's stew" is hearty, and considered the national dish of Poland..every time I had it though it was too salty:

Their famous pierogi, savory dumplings, are like the Russian version and best eaten with sour cream and butter – delicious! 

Kurczak is a stuffed chicken steak that was sold to me as the best thing ever… it’s pretty tasty, but I much preferred zrazy – stuffed sirloin. The zrazy I tried was a pork sirloin stuffed with a pickle and draped in gravy! So good!!

I ate the zrazy too quickly so here's a picture of kurczak instead :)

Krakow: The Polish have an amazing company – Polskibus – that has leather seats, individual outlets, free wifi, and a steward to serve you a free tea or coffee. Polskibus also happened to offer the cheapest tickets available for my five hour journey from Warsaw to Krakow. It's awesome! Most tourists would say they prefer Krakow to Warsaw, but I think I actually prefer the latter. It felt more real in Warsaw I guess? Krakow reminded me a bit of Prague with its old town and heavily concentrated tourist areas. I was happiest avoiding the crowds, trying delicious Polish foods at Bar Grodsky 6, and catching The Hunger Games at a nearby movie theater. :)

Scenes from Krakow (and the only picture I have of me in Poland...)

Auschwitz: I think a visit to Auschwitz is basically a must for any visitor to Southern Poland – something like 1.3 million people visit the site each year. Having seen Israel’s memorial to the holocaust, I didn’t have as strong an emotional response as I thought I’d have at Auschwitz. I think it’s because the way you learn about Auschwitz on the tour is very fact-based. They give you numbers that are, for me at least, beyond comprehension. Roughly 1 million people died at Auschwitz…. (the official number is debated) and I can’t seem to wrap my head around that figure. In that way, for me, the horrors of Auschwitz are literally unimaginable. 

"Work sets you free..."

Inside Auschwitz I

Inside one of the bunkers was an exhibit that really humanized the victims of Auschwitz. There were massive collections of things like kitchenware, shoes, prosthetics, glasses, and even 1,950 kilos (~4300 pounds) of human hair. Women's heads were shaved before going into the gas chambers - the hair was later sold as raw material for the textile industry. 

Prostheses and eyeglasses collected from the victims

Once muddy and grimy areas are now green, grassy, and spurting flowers...

Auschwitz II (Birkenau)

Leaving Poland: I had to skip the High Tatras (mountain range on the border of Poland and Slovakia) in the interest of time and I’m a bit bummed about it. The national park looks absolutely amazing in pictures and the Morskie Oko Lake especially is on my future travels list. I skipped Zakopane (gateway to the lake) and ended up leaving Krakow on a bus bound for Vienna. I meant to stay a day, but ended up spending the rest of my time there before meeting up with the family in Venice. Staying in Vienna also meant skipping Slovenia unfortunately… I had gotten a strong recommendation for Bled and the Triglav National Park - someone told me it was their favorite place in the whole world!.  So I'm passing the recommendation on in case any of you are headed to Slovenia! I hope I'll get there one day too :)

Up Next: Vienna & Venezia!

Czech-n-Slovakia

Bratislava Castle

Slovakia: Sucks. To be fair, my experience in Bratislava was sucky; I hear Slovakia is actually supposed to be very beautiful and maybe worth a return visit someday. Bratislava is the capital, but its most famous site is the rather unimpressive Bratislava Castle. I walked around the old town and saw the sights, but it was really cold, windy, and rainy; I admit I was much happier watching House in my hostel :) The best part of my experience in Slovakia was getting to try Bryndzove halusky, the national dish of dumplings, bryndza (sheep cheese), and bacon:

Bryndzove Halusky & Kofola @ the 1st Slovak Pub

The dish was topped with tiny pieces of juicy bacon that would explode incredible flavor. Finally, a national dish that’s tasty! Slovakia’s version of Coca Cola though, Kofola, is very, very bad: Flat, overly sweet, and like a bad mix of rootbeer and coke. Slovakians love it though making Slovakia one of the few countries where Coca Cola is not the #1 coke product. I don’t pretend to understand.

Prague's Old Market Square w/ Tyn Cathedral in the background

View of Prague Castle and the city

Czech Republic: Prague, Praga, Praha! People love this city. I can see the ways in which the city woes tourists with its charming little streets and random oddities – David Cerny statues… locks of love…peaceful parks, etc. I can’t say I particularly liked Prague, however. It was way too touristy! The touristy sights are all concentrated together so the streets are jammed with people. You can’t power walk your way away from smokers or smelly people, you’re just stuck in the crowd breathing funk until there’s an open space to maneuver around in. Yuck! Because the city was so touristy, everything was also expensive – overpriced food, museums, and even bathrooms! Beer was fairly cheap, but they don’t even have the good Budweiser! 

Mango Hostel: In the last post, I mentioned being affected by my hostel and restaurant experiences – these were some of my main issues with Prague and why I didn’t fall in love with the city. My hostel put me in an empty dorm room without letting me choose my bed. They assigned one to me, a top bunk, and I’d asked for a bottom because my foot had been hurting me. The cost of changing beds, even if you haven’t set foot in the room, is a night’s accommodation. Bullshit! So I had one night to myself stupidly climbing up and down a tall bunk bed, and then two nights with the smelliest people I’ve encountered on my whole trip! One guy hung his stinky clothes in the bathroom so it reeked in there, and another girl smelled like she hadn’t showered in months so the room reeked too. There must have been poor ventilation in the room as well because I got the worst cold of my trip from the smelly (and continually coughing) guy.

The Food: Disappointing!!! Knedliky is the famous Czech dumpling and though I realize dumplings come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, I have never seen it in the form of sliced bread. What the hell kind of dumplings are those?! This is the famous vepro-knedlo-zelo (pečené vepřové s knedlíky a se zelím) dish – roast pork, dumplings, and sauerkraut:

Individually, each thing was bad. When it was possible to get it all on my fork, it was just okay at best. Everything put together might have been passable as a sandwich but I’d never order this must-try Czech dish again. My accompanying Gambrinus (beer) was also bad and they charged a 25% cover charge for the privilege of eating at their crappy restaurant! Hmpfh! I gave another famous dish a try – svickovana smetane (beef in cream sauce) and though I swear the menu said rice, I got my favorite dumplings again. This wasn’t so tasty either, but the service was better at least:

The best local food I had was probably the smazeny syr – a fried cheese sandwich (but overall my best meals were at a Chinese buffet and McDonalds).

Smazeny Syr

Artbanka Museum of Young Art, Entryway

The Silver Lining: I didn’t particularly enjoy most of the touristy stuff like the changing-of-the-guard at the Prague Castle or the gargoyle “dance” at the Astronomical Clock, but I loved hunting for random oddities around the city. 

Astronomical Clock

David Cerny statues and Frank Gehry's Dancing House were fun to seek out and really random…the Lennon Wall was awesome (!) and I’d never seen anything quite like the locks of love in town. 

David Cerny - Pissing Men (in front of the Kafka Museum)

David Cerny - Tower Babies

Frank Gehry - Dancing House

Locks of Love

The Lennon Wall

They also had a Sex Machine Museum and of course I went! In the lobby, they had a chair that lit up describing how sexually charged you are - I am apparently "lukewarm." :)

(Different chair from the one described above...this is an antiquated sex machine of sorts lol...)

Quite unexpectedly, while I was wandering the Old Town, a shopkeeper said to me, “Are you from California?” (One of my favorite questions I’ve gotten so far!) I said yes and asked the guy why. He was perfectly logical and said he deduced I was a Californian based on my “Chinese face, suntan, and sandals.” In Prague, I also saw a pug! I'd love to be this old lady hanging out with my pug someday: 

    

Four days after arrival, I left Prague on a bus bound for Poland. I’ve been waiting ages to get to this country where one of my favorite people is from! Up Next: Warsaw, Krakow, and Auschwitz! 

Happy in Hungary!

Parliament Building

Budapest is a city rising in the ranks of top tourist destinations and for me, Budapest has been one of my favorite cities I’ve visited on this trip! I had a fantastic time here and would happily come back. :) I can’t pinpoint exactly what made me so happy, but it was a combination of beautiful architecture, tons of things to do, good food, company, and weather, and a huge city expanse to navigate. Maps of Budapest were deceptive and tricked users like me into thinking the city was small. Rather, it’s perfectly large! I could (and did) walk for days through the city, continually discovering new delights. I’ve also come to realize that my opinion of a place is significantly impacted by the hostel I stay at and the food I eat. The people at Bebop Hostel were fantastic, and the food, when not delicious, was at least interesting :)

I arrived around 5am on a bus from Romania. I met a girl, Andrea, on the bus ride and together we tried to get in to the hostel (unsuccessfully – no answer), then sat outside McDonald’s for an hour until it opened. I’ve never heard of a Mcdonald’s opening at 7am! So late! The workers were there around 6am but felt no sympathy for us sitting outside in the cold. So it goes. I was able to check in to the hostel later, take a nap, and then meet Andrea for lunch in the Jewish quarter. She is awesome, and lucky me, I get to visit her in Vienna!

Me + St. Stephens Basilica Panorama

St. Matthias Church

Fisherman's Bastion

That first day in Budapest, I got to see a view of the city from St. Stephens Basilica and cross the famous Key Bridge to the Buda section of the city. I saw the Royal Palace, the magnificent St. Stephens Basilica, and the castle-like Fisherman’s Bastion before having an awesome Mozart gelato. I had seen Mozart Kugeln chocolates in some European cities already, but not only did Hungary have a Mozart gelato (chocolate with marzipan), they had a Mozart-dedicated store! 

I made sure to see the highlights of Pest (House of Terror, Heroes Square, Andrassy Avenue, Parliament, Opera House, etc…) but I devoted most of the next day to the Great Market Hall and the Szechenyi Baths. The baths were fancy! They had three outdoor pools and more sauna rooms and indoor baths than I could count. I spent three hours experimenting with hot baths, icy baths, stinky baths (sulfur) and saunas at different temperatures (they were all very hot). Good times :)

 

The Great Market Hall was a lot of fun too! … brightly colored produce sold everywhere, souvenirs (of course), and restaurants selling traditional Hungarian dishes. I bought the most amazing strawberries and blood oranges (?) from the fruit stands:

Then, I got to try the famous Hungarian goulash (but goulash as we know it is called pörkölt in Hungary):

It was exciting to try, but so-so from a taste standpoint and in terms of a beef stew, I might prefer Dinty Moore :) I had dinner of halaszle (paprika fish soup) from the market also and found a not-so-nice lump of fish sperm in my soup! They are not discriminating with their use of fish parts! (In case anyone is interested, fish sperm tastes like cow brains, which tastes like a cholesterol-filled version of medium-hard tofu... Not so good….) I didn’t get around to trying langos (deep fried funnel-cake-like bread with savory or sweet toppings) or taking any shots of absinthe… next time!

Two days was much too short for such a fantastic city, but I’ll be back :)

Next Up: "Czechoslovakia" (Currently the Czech Republic and Slovakia)! 

Rain In Romania

Lipscani (Bucharest's Old Town)

After a pretty horrible overnight train from Belgrade, I was in Bucharest, Romania! The train was very old, unreasonably loud, and either sweltering hot or freezing cold. At the Romanian border, the customs officials performed the most rigorous search I’ve ever seen; it included pulling apart the seats and even using drills to peer inside the wood paneling! Crazy! Despite not sleeping very much at all, I think I lucked out – I heard that a girl who’d taken the train by herself the night before was disturbed most of the night – made to feel uncomfortable by two Serbian men...

Bucharest: I liked this city. There were a lot of charming old buildings in an architectural style I can’t quite identify. I spent the first day walking around in the rain, the second day seeing the sun shine over Bucharest, and the third day relaxing in the park until it started raining :) It was Easter (again) that first day in Romania – the Christian Orthodox version that occurs a week after the Catholic holiday. The day wasn’t so great because it rained heavily all day, everything was closed, and the only places open for dinner were KFC, McDonald’s, and Burger King. On the upside, I went to all three! (Light snacks from each because they were next door to each other... Happy Easter to me!)

Athenaeum

Palace of Parliament

Bucharest is famous for such sights as the Athenaeum, its national theater, the Old Town, and Parliament. The Palace of Parliament is the largest government building in the world second only to the Pentagon! You also see a lot of old juxtaposed with the new: 

The parks were probably my favorite part of Bucharest.... I remember being utterly charmed by a group of young people in the Cişmigiu Park: One of them had downloaded song lyrics to their handphone and the group of them sat singing songs like Adele’s “Someone Like You” to each other. It was so sweet! I wish my friends did that! I spent a lot of time in that park, engrossed in The Hunger Games :)

Cişmigiu Park

Romania was fairly interesting from a food standpoint with a lot of things to try. Sarmale, cabbage rolls, are very popular. The store-bought version I tried was pretty terrible, but the very kind woman at my hostel gave me some of her homemade sarmale. (She was rushing out to bring lunch to her son and then sort of gave me some of his lunch….) 

Sarmale

I got to try grocery store versions of mamaliga (polenta), mici (spicy and oily sausages), and moussaka – they were okay. One of the most famous restaurants in Bucharest is Caru cu Bere; there, I tried tochitura – a meat stew with polenta and eggs:

It looked and sounded a lot better than it ended up tasting unfortunately… sour cheese... sour stew. Eh. I have mixed feelings about Romanian food because although tochitura wasn't so good, the lunch special at another famous restaurant - Hanv Berarilor was great! I enjoyed their rooster soup, baked chicken legs, and mashed potatoes. I felt a little guilty about the rooster soup (because a good friend of mine probably wouldn’t approve), but the chicken was so tender it came right off the bone with a spoon!

Brasov: Bucharest was a nice break from the former republics of Yugoslavia; it was also the only part of Romania I really enjoyed. Brasov – gateway to Bran (Dracula’s) Castle – on the other hand, ranks close to one of my least favorite cities. Although Brasov has an old town with a charming little BRASOV sign that looks like the HOLLYWOOD sign in LA, I didn’t enjoy the city much because of the annoying combination of wind, rain, and cobblestone streets. I was also really mad at myself for going to see the Bran Castle:

Basically, I knew nothing about Dracula and didn't particularly care much about him at all…I’d never read the novel or seen any movie’s based on the novel but I thought I should see Bran Castle anyway. The castle ended up being pretty lame and, as it turns out, has almost nothing whatsoever to do with Dracula (or the guy Dracula is allegedly based on)! I guess I’m still figuring out how to enjoy myself and learning to let go of the things that don’t interest me… 

Transylvania

All in all, I enjoyed Romania. I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if it hadn't rained so much, but the people were lovely, the cities were beautiful, and the food was at least interesting when it wasn't delicious :)

Up Next: Hungary!