Pictures

Ljubljana

Belgrade, Serbia

Turkish Baths, Budapest

Krakau, Poland

Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland

Croatia/Slovenia

December 7th - 

We woke up in the morning and went straight to the Tesla museum, as we didn’t make it the day before and it seemed the most interesting thing to do in Belgrade.  Tesla was considered Serbian, even though he did all of his best thinking in Colorado Springs.  When we got to the museum we were disappointed to find that the museum was being rennovated, and that only one exhibit was open.  The only consolation was that we finally met one attractive Serbian girl.

We then boarded the train to Zagreb, Croatia.  The train ride was fine, and we were met at the station by Hrvoje, a nephew of an acquaintence of my dad from work.  He was awesome and brought us straight to his uncle’s apartment.  We drank some beers and ate a little before crashing on the best bed our bodies have come in contact with in the last two years.  

December 8th - 

We woke up relaxed after a good night’s sleep.  We went out into the city determined to see all that we could.  We started in the center and proceeded to go into every church and site that we could.  Being that it was monday, we didn’t have to worry about the museums, which made our task a little easier.  After procuring train tickets to Slovenia, we went back and walked around one of the biggest parks in Eastern Europe, which took us about and hour to walk around.

We cooked dinner that night, did laundry, and hung out with Hrvoje for a couple hours and had another fabulous sleep.

December 9th - 

After dropping our stuff we walked through Ljubljana, which is a delightful European city that is surrounded by mountains with a river cutting through.  The river surrounds a hill on top of which stands a castle.  We went to the top of this castle and imagined what it would have been like to rule Slovenia.  We decided that it would have been good, but Devin disagreed.

We continued to visit churches and walk along the river.  The town is really done up for Christmas with big trees standing everywhere and a bunch of different markets.  Unfortunately, Ljubljana is really expensive for what it’s offerring.  It is due to completely switch to the Euro at the end of the year, and prices have shot up since that announcement.  

Poland/Hungary/Serbia

November 29th - 

We had the morning to ourselves and prepared for Thanksgiving dinner at Devin’s buddy Tim’s house.  Tim put out appetizers, salads, and of course, turkey.  We ate to our hearts content and laughed a bunch as TIm’s two-year-old son ran roughshod over him, his wife, and their “rules” for the house.  David speaks a hybrid Russian-English and is the cutest little kid when he is disobeying his parents.

After diner we were given a bag of M&Ms and we made our way for the bus and for Poland.  The rest of the night passed uneventfully as we rolled through the night.

November 30th - 

We then made our way to the old part of Warsaw.  It was blown to bits by the Nazis and the Russians, but after the war almost the entire area was rebuilt by the Polish according to the original plans.  The main square is indeed nice, and that part of town is really well done.  It still feels new, which isn’t really a complaint.  It just feels like something that a retirement community in Florida would try to build, admittedly much less successfully.  

December 1st - 

We caught the morning bus to Krakow, which everyone tells us is the best city in Poland.  I would say something about the Polish countryside except I slept for most of the ride.  When we arrived it was almost dark, 3:30.  The sunlight is our biggest enemy on this trip, and it’s becoming more scarce.  By the time we got out into the main part of the city it was already dark, but it was possible to see why everyone who comes to Krakau seems to like it.  There are a couple of really beautiful churches with great ceilings.  It is here that we have had our first Christmas Market, and the booths here with food have huge Polish sausages, something that we felt was lacking in Warsaw.

At night we saw a performance of Vivaldi’s four seasons, a piece that neither of us was real familiar with.  It was played by a sextet in one of the churches off the square, and even though the church was freezing, it was still an enjoyable performance.  

December 2nd - 

We got up early this morning and got on the train to Aushwitz-Birkinau.  Once we got there we wandered around town until we found a sign to point us in the right direction.  Once we got to the camp we were able to watch a video and then set out around the exhibits.  Auschwitz is actually a series of 4 camps that were strung together because the first camp proved much too small for its purposes.  We visited the first two, the second of which, Birkinau, was the biggest and killed almost 1.5 million.

December 3rd - 

We finally saw Krakau in the daylight, and it’s about what we expected.  We went over to the castle and walked around the archaeological museum a little bit.  Both were good, but we were ready to move on to our next destination.  I had a final sausage at the Christmas market before we left on a bus to Budapest.

When we got to Budapest at 10:30 the real adventure started.  Noah said that the hostel was about a 4km walk from the bus station, and that was assuming we knew which way we were going.  Because we are cheap, we decided not to take a cab into the city, and we proceeded to walk in the Hungarian night for 2 hours before we finally happened upon our quarters.

December 4th - 

After sleeping off the last night’s walking, we awoke to a gray day in Budapest.  We were nevertheless determined to see as much as we could of the city, and proceeded to walk around for the next 6 hours without rest.  We saw much of the Danube, and visited a lot of the Buda side, where the castle and old churches from the 11th-13th centuries were built.

After dinner we walked up to the baths, built by the Turks during the Ottoman rule of the city (1541 - 1686).  This turned out to be the treat of Budapest so far.  The baths are actually outside, and the steam rising off them from the reaction with the cold air made for a really nice evening.  We stayed in the huge hot tub for nearly two hours, and finished our night with a beer.  We will have another full day in Budapest tomorrow before catching a night train to Serbia.

December 5th - 

We went to the citadel, the top point of which looks out over the entire city, and it was at this point that the weather cleared enough for us to get some good photos of the city.  We also saw our share of churches and parks.  As we were searching for lunch, we happened upon a Chinese restaurant serving real American Chinese food.  What luck!  The both of us ate our fill and then we continued on to the train station just to make sure our train was coming, and finally to the opera to secure our tickets to the evening’s performance of Madame Butterfly.

At the opera house we were immediately escorted to the side entrance, which was just as well because we also did not want to be seen.  Our seats ended up being obstructed, which didn’t matter as much because we couldn’t understand the opera or the translation on the screen.  The music was great as far as our ears were concerned, and we got to see enough of the stage to know that the Madame kills herself at the end, which is the most important part.

After the opera we booked it back to the hotel and on to the train station for our connection to Belgrade, which we made without sweat.

December 6th - 

Belgrade means “White City”, although it’s unclear why it’s called so.  There might have been something white about it before the bombings of WWI, WWII, and 1999.  There’s little destruction lying about, but it is clear from some of the hasty construction that much is being rebuilt quickly.  The old castle guarding the intersection of the Danube and Sava rivers is nice to walk around, and there are some excellent Orthodox churches around the city.  There were special services held today also as the Russian Patriarch died yesterday.

Romania/Ukraine

The friendship rainbow, Kiev

Dracula's Castle, Romania

The Lavra, Kiev

Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia

November 22nd - 

We finally made it to the Alexander Nevsky cathedral, an early 20th century church comissioned by the Bulgarians in honor of the Russian saint.  We thought that we visited the church two different times yesterday, but both churches turned out to be non-Nevsky.  The church itself is huge, based on the designs of the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, and we were lucky enough to watch an orthodox baptism.  We then made our way back to our hostel to dry off and get ready for our night train to Bucharest.

November 23rd - 

We arrived in Bucharest this morning and found our hostel by taking the bus in both directions and then only a couple of wrong turns.  We weren’t able to get into our rooms until 12, so we decided to go walk around the city for a while.  

Bucharest is plain.  Most of the buildings are cement and even the palace of the people, the second biggest building in the world behind the pentagon, looks bulky and out of place.  Ironically, the palace isn’t actually open to the people, and the grounds behind the building look like any old abandoned lot.  The one redeeming quality of the city is its old quarter.  It contains architecture reminiscent of most of old Europe and has more soul than the rest of the city.

After our walking tour, we went back and crashed for the afternoon.  I was tired and sick from wearing wet socks the day before, and possibly being out too long in the wind.  I spent most of the day in bed, while Noah and Devin took turns walking around and using the internet.  Tomorrow we will leave for Brasov, the heartland of Transylvania, which promises to be more interesting.

November 24th - 

We got out of Bucharest around 1 today and boarded a train up to Brasov.  The train ride was uneventful except for a bunch of Americans who were being unreasonably loud and jubilant.  We truly are the most voluable people in the world.  I can’t stand us.

We got to our hostel and went out for a walk around the city.  The old part of town is full of beautiful squares and buildings that date back to the 14th and 15th centuries.  With the snow on the ground the effect of the whole town is enhanced.  

November 25th - 

This morning we went to Bran castle, the fairytale home of Dracula.  The “real” dracula, Vlad Tepes, didn’t actually visit here, but the castle is famous for being the favorite retreat for some of the inbred royals of the Hapsburg dynasty.  We then continued to another castle/fortress built upon the hill overlooking Bran, which was much more impressive and fun to run around.

The fortress was used to protect the entire town from invasion, and offers spectacular vies of the mountains and the little town below.  It also has all sorts of fun ladders and passages that would make it an ideal place for a paintball game.  As it was, we did manage to have a snowball fight, which came out lopsided in favor of me.  Devin is ok, but lacks armstrength.  Noah needs to turn his shoulder more, his aim is awful.

November 26th - 

We finally got on our train at 4 am, and met our connection at 7:30 to Ukraine.  The passport checks have been painless and the places we have are comfortable.  Devin refuses to share his fake fanta.  The only dissapointement was that the Batman movie we were planning on watching turned out to be in French.  This cancels out the experience at Carrefour the night before in my opinion.  We will be in Kiev tomorrow morning, which will also be Thanksgiving.

November 27th - 

Kiev is more hilly than I was prepared for.  There are tons of churches, including the Lavra, the heart of the Russian Orthodox Church.  Noah and I spent the entire day in and out of different churches.  They all kind of blend together since Georgia, when we saw our first concentration of Orthodox churches.  Kiev does have a fantastic main artery and a park that runs the length of the Dnipro river, even if it does begin with the “Frienship Arch,” a mammoth steel rainbow.

For Thanksgiving we decided to make a decent meal for ourselves.  Tim invited us over for Saturday lunch with a bunch of other volunteers, so that will act as our real T-day, but we bought a chicken, rice, carrots and some apples anyway, and acquitted ourselves nicely. 

November 28th - 

We spent the day at the Chernobyl museum, which had a lot of interesting personal letters and documents, but wouldn’t be that interesting if you didn’t speak Russian.  It is weak on displays of what actually went wrong, and some of the displays are hard to see.  After that we went to the Lavra, a system of churches dug into the bank of the Dnipro and set with huge golden domes.  We went down through the “caves” where many of the saints of the Orthodox faith are buried.  To get into the cool parts, where only prayer passes are allowed, we had to take up the Orthodox way of crossing, which involves going up, down, right, left, as opposed to left right, as is the proper Lutheran way.

Noah and I then went to the circus, which was the best decision we’ve made this trip.  There were all kinds of animals, including lions, tigers, bears doing people things, salukis, porcupines, small rats, big rats, hogs and camels.  The clowns were hilarious and there were some cool tumbling acts involving innertubes, which was awesome.