Budapest, Hungary

we spent two days in budapest, hungary, june 5th and 6th. luckily we had enough fun that our only memory of the city wont be the disgusting hostel!! it was by FAR our worst accommodation! it was actually an apartment in a run down complex and i don't think there was a clean molecule in our room. we spent the two days avoiding having to go there and slept on top of a sarong stacy gave me from greece so we wouldn't have to touch the bedding and spread a scarf over the pillows. very gross.

our first day in budpest we took at bike tour with a very nice hungarian woman as our guide. it was really a good tour except for the exhausting uphill climb to get to the top of a hill to a castle. it was sooo hard i had to walk my bike up the last bit because i thought i was going to have a heart attack. the cobblestone streets didn't help much either. regardless, we heard a lot about the city and its many hardships, past and present.

after the bike tour we walked over to the jewish quarter for lunch and to tour the 2nd oldest synagogue in the world.

later in the afternoon after biking and walking all day we went to one of their well known bath houses. it was a huge place with a million different rooms with saunas and baths, plus a large outdoor area as well. it was a little confusing because nothing is written in english and there are separate rooms for men and women for changing and such and i think there are different areas inside that are segregated as well, like certain saunas and tubs, but since nothing is in english we were nervous we were going to wander into the wrong areas.

we had fun going from tub to tub and they are labeled with their temperature. so we would get in one that was 36C and then get hot and go to 34C and then get cold and go to another... its all thermal waters from budapest's natural springs which they cool down to different temperatures. each of the bath houses is known for different mineral contents that are supposedly beneficial for different ailments. there are also a lot of older people there and we learned that it's partly because they can go to their doctor and depending on what health issues they may have they get prescriptions for the bath houses and get in free.

our second day in budapest we decided to benefit from another incident of their natural hot springs and go caving. we went with a group of 7 other people, plus our guide and went climbing all through an elaborate cave system created by the springs. it was so much fun. they give you jumpers because you get absolutely filthy and spend 2 hours deep in the dark underground (the deepest cave we entered was 25 miles below the surface) climbing and sliding through some of the smallest spaces you can imagine. some of the holes you shimmy though look like there would be no way you could ever fit, and then some how you do. everyone on our tour was a girl except for michael and one other guy who was a pretty big kid. the limit to go on the tour is 100kg (220.5 lbs) and this kid was right AT the limit at 220 and there were some TIGHT squeezes for him (squeezes for all of us really, but especially for him). it was maybe the most fun thing we've done and by the end we were exhausted!! plus we are both a little sore today (more upper body work than we are used to) but it was great, great fun!!

we took a night train last night and arrived in brasov, romania this morning!

Austria

austria was beautiful. we spent two and a half days there, june 2nd in vienna, the 3rd, my birthday, we took a day trip to the to salzburg, and we spent half the day of the 4th back in vienna before leaving by train to budapest.

we had originally really wanted to go to austria, but it wasn't fitting into our itinerary so we cut it. however, we are moving faster than we had thought we would and realized we could fit it in. i am so glad we did. i think it is THE most beautiful place we have been -- i would say even more beautiful than paris. its more quaint then paris and even off the beaten path, every street we walked was adorable.

our day in vienna was spent walking around the main town square area. all the buildings are so pretty, it really all looked like it was just out of a fairy tale. toward evening street performers begin setting up their acts in different areas of the square, one after another. we watched a bunch of groups from magicians to break dancers to a man playing music on crystal glasses to a woman playing classical pieces on the piano very, very well (she rolls our her entire grand piano into the middle of the pedestrian only street and she had quite a large and impressed audience).

the following day we went to salzburg for the sole purpose of taking the sound of music tour for my birthday! it was a great birthday and it was such a fun tour... you are taken in a huge goofy bus (every inch painted with sound of music murals) all over the city and into the country side. it is all based around the movie, but really the movie was filmed in all the most beautiful sights in salzburg so it was just a great sightseeing excursion as well. we went all the way up into the mountains into the lake area and just like in vienna everything is just picture perfect! : )

on the 4th we were back in vienna and spent our remaining half day at the schobrunn palace. this was the summer palace of austria's royal family and is similar to versailles but with more to do. we didn't do the tour of the palace, but instead enjoyed the gardens (free!). we hiked up to the highest point of the gardens to a pretty "panorama gazebo" and then played in the hedge mazes! i had never seen one in real life and it was like being in alice's wonderland. everything at the palace was manicured and beautiful and without flaw.

Krakow, Poland (and Auschwitz)

we spent the 31st of may and the 1st of june in krakow and had a lot of fun in the city. we really only had one full day in krakow since we spent our second day at auschwitz.

as we mentioned in the last post, we took a bike tour. it was a good way to get familiar with the city. i'm glad we took the time to do it because we really didn't know anything about krakow. for example, we didn't realize it had such a medieval influence. the main square, the "old town" was founded 750 years ago (really more than that, but that's when it became "official" when they finished their wall surrounding the city, which was apparently a requirement at the time if you wanted the title of being a town). this "old town" is really cute with lots of cafes and a big church and a tall bell tower which a man plays the trumpet out of the upper window every hour on the hour. this area is surrounded by said wall and right outside the wall is a grassy area circling the entire area, which we learned is what has become of the old moat that used to surround the entire city.

on the bike tour we leaned a lot about krakow's quirky legends and stories and we saw their big wawel castle and the fire breathing dragon statue. there's also a funny statue nearby of a dog. apparently, in 1990 (its a true story) a dog was leashed to a bridge by his elderly owner as the man went across to go to a market, and along the way the old man had a heart attack and died. friends of the man tried to take the dog home but he refused to budge, just continuing to wait for the man to come back to get him. they gave in and let him stay, bringing him food and water, but he died a few months later in the same spot just waiting and waiting. the dog became so well known that the city paid to have a statue created in his memory. very cute.

we also went through a lot of the old jewish quarter, although there are very few jewish people left in krakow as they all fled during the the war... or worse. the city used to have a very, very large jewish population and there are hardly any left at all. but, they still have a pretty synagogue and very old, beautiful jewish cemeteries. on the other hand, you can still see the wall built to trap them within the jewish ghetto during the nazi occupation.

after the bike tour we checked into our hostel, which was very nice, probably the best up to that point, and the guy working there mentioned that the following night it just happened to be the kickoff of the city of krakow celebrating its 750th birthday of being an official town. he said that the old town would have music and such and we should check it out. he also said we probably had noticed them setting up the stage in the town square (but we really didn't, so we figured, oh just some small stage, we didn't really notice anything special).

the following morning we traveled about 1.5 hours to auschwitz. there are really 3 different camps under the auschwitz name and we went to two of them (the third is basically completely gone).

the first was auschwitz I and consists of the still completely intact barracks and lay out of the camp. the camp is not too, too big and is strangely almost pretty if you didnt know better, but only because the nazis did not build the structures - they were built by the polish army years before the war as an army base. then, the nazis took them over. so, the result is not what we normally picture a concentration camp to look like. a couple of the barracks were kept exactly as they were found during the liberation to see the horrid living conditions. however, most of the buildings have been converted into different exhibits of the museum focusing on different aspects of the war and concentration life.

auschwitz-birkenau (or auschwitz II) is about 10 mins away by bus and is massive. they originally planed for it to hold 200,000 prisoners, which it was never that big, but it still held around 100,000 people. almost everything was destroyed, burned by the nazis during their retreat at the end of the war, but there are a few barracks still left and there are enough to realize how disgusting it was. the barracks were originally designed by the germans to house 57 horses, but they instead used them to house up to 700 people at a time. this is also the camp of the gas chambers and crematoriums, which were blown up, but the rubble remains.

going through the museum, which being located in poland, its interesting to notice the difference in wording. we saw a lot of ww2 related things in germany and every single thing we read always refered the the "nazis," but in poland, they are always just called the "germans," i guess its not such a big difference, but it kind of is.

there is much, much more to tell, but it really isn't anything that we haven't all learned.

that night we returned to krakow and having been a very long day we thought we would head right to bed. however, at the last minute we remembered that there was supposed to be something going on to commemorate the 750th birthday. since we were so close to the old town, we decided to pop by really quickly. we were so glad we did! it was a HUGE event. we had no idea it was going to be so massive. it seemed like the ENTIRE city was there to see this huge classical music group. there must have been at least 300 musicians and singers on stage plus a VERY animated conductor that was entertainment on his own. it was a nice way to spend our last hours in krakow before heading to bed and leaving very early the next morning for vienna, austria.