Caving under Budapest

I'm Alive!!

When I first got to my hostel in Budapest I saw a flyer for “Caving Under Budapest” and it looked like I had hoped the salt mines in Krakow were going to be. There were pictures of people squeezing through small holes in rocks wearing jumpsuits with headlamps on. The flyer said to ask at reception to find out about prices, times and location. I went to the front desk and found an extremely hung over employee who was in no mood to talk. I struggled to get even single word answers to my questions. My questions had to become more elaborate so that one word answers would suffice. I left him confused and hit up the internet to see what I could find. I couldn’t find an actual website but I was able to piece together information from a couple of websites and headed to a bus station across town. When I got to the bus station it was easy to find the group and the guide. There were a bunch of foreigners standing together in a loose circle speaking English and asking the “travelers questions” (How long have you been traveling? Where have you been? Where are you going next? etc...)

We boarded the bus with the guide and headed out of the city and then got on another bus even further out. Once we were sufficiently out in the middle of nowhere the guide lead us to a lodge where he split us into two groups. If there was any order to the groups I would say he put the skinny, lanky and athletic people in one group and everyone else in the other. I was of course in the first group because of my amazing athletic build.

The guide led us upstairs in the lodge where we were given jumpsuits and headlamps. I was given a very nice yellow jumpsuit and matching helmet. The guide lead us into the woods and not too far from the cabin we came to a steel door locked from the inside that the guide opened by sticking her arm through a hole and then unlocking the door. My guess is that they do it that way so that someone cannot come along with bolt cutters and cut the lock.

We entered the cave and descended down the only ladder and then got started. The caves were made by underground springs a long time ago that are no longer present. The rock was soft and covered with mud, from when the river was present. The air was full of dirt and at first it was very cold inside of the cave. After we had been climbing and crawling for a little while it started to feel really hot inside of the cave in that jumpsuit.

The guide led us through the tiniest of holes under and around rocks from room to room inside the cave. The rooms had names like “The Big Room” and “The Theater”. The guide kept asking us if we wanted the easy or harder route and my group chose the harder route every time. The guide was amazingly good at fitting into the smallest of holes and would seem to almost run and jump into holes and disappear ahead of us only to have her head reappear through the hole moments later to help guide us through. We were climbing up one set of rocks and I got my foot wedged in a hole and it was twisted and I couldn’t get it out. I yelled at the guy behind me to help me and just as he got there I fell back onto him. My feet slipped out of the hold and I slammed down shins first onto the rock.

In one room the guide showed us this really tiny hole and said it was called “Winnie the Poo”. The guide climbed around and stuck her head through the hole that looked barely large enough for her head. I thought she was going to simply pose for a picture but then she climbed through the hole and told us it was now all of our turns. The hole was really small, so small that I was having birthing flashbacks. I was making all kinds of grunts and squeals and my hips were caught so I was doing my best Elvis dance moves to get free.

The caves were amazing and it was a lot of fun. On this trip I able to see all kinds of exotic and exciting places while also getting to do a lot of things that I have never done before and as the McDonalds slogan says “I’m lovin it”.

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10_28_09 Budapest small

Naked Santa

Stock Photo

I stopped at a Kabob restaurant for lunch yesterday and when I went in and said “Hello” in English they had a woman that spoke English come and take my order. Since I was walking around town and have difficulty eating/drinking while walking I sat down and enjoyed my delicious Kebob in the restaurant. When I was done and leaving one of the non English speaking employees behind the counter looked at me and waved while saying “Hello”.

Budapest is the capital city with the most medicinal baths and as such I felt I needed to give one a try. I had talked to several other travelers who had been and they all highly recommended going to relax. There are three main baths and lots of smaller ones around the city. Of the big three two of them were very close to my hostel and I looked up the reviews for those two. The first had reviews that said it was dirty and the staff wasn’t very helpful, the second had mostly positive reviews and so I picked that one, it is called Rudas Baths. I packed up my shorts/swim trunks, flip flops and towel into my backpack and headed out.

When I got there the staff only spoke Hungarian and most of the signs were also in Hungarian. I used my usual hand motions and acting out to purchase my ticket and find the changing room. On my way to the changing room I was handed a tiny white apron with strings attached. See the picture below:



What is this for, I thought to myself and then I saw the other men. I was supposed to strip down naked and put the apron part in the front and leave my butt exposed like a tiny hospital gown. I went into my locker room, it’s a combination of a changing room and a locker and put on my apron and then wrapped myself in my towel and headed out. There was a sign in both English and Hungarian instructing me to shower first and so I entered one of the many showers, closed the door and removed my towel and then took a shower while wearing my apron. When I got out of the shower I loosely hung my towel around me, to cover myself without letting the towel touch me so that it would be dry for later.

I walked through a hallway that was filled with water, I assume to clean your feet and into the large main room. The room was filled with many very old, large, Hungarian men, some of whom were wearing their aprons while others were naked holding their aprons in their hands. In the main room was a large bath in the middle and in each corner was a small bath with a sign designating its temperature, 28, 32, 38 and 42(82 – 108 in Fahrenheit). The large pool in the middle didn’t have a sign but I am going to guess it was around 35. There was a hallway to the right that branched off to two separate hallways. The hallway to the left had a steam room that was 50 degrees. The hallway to the right had a sauna room of 40 degrees and then another of 60 degrees and finally a room of 70 degrees. The 60 degree room was plenty hot enough for me and I couldn’t ever stay in there for more than 5 minutes at a time. In another hallway off the main room was a massage room and a room with a bath that was 10 degrees (50 in Fahrenheit).

Overall the place was very nice and seemed very clean. I went from bath to bath and steam/sauna to the cold pool and then back in the baths. It was really relaxing to just listen to my MP3 player and soak in the water. For reasons that I hope are more than obvious there are no pictures besides the 2 stock photos I found online and the one of my apron.


Outside the Bath House

Budapest is Beautiful

Overlooking the city

This morning I went to the ATM and got another 10,000 HUF and then went to the grocery store to get some breakfast. My total came to 288 and I handed the woman my 10,000 and she gave me back 9010 in change. I looked at the change and counted it myself 1 – 5000, 1 – 2000, 2 – 1000 and 1 coin worth 10. I held it up to her and she took it and recounted it to be 9010 and stared at me. I held it up to her and pointed at the receipt that said I was supposed to have 9712 in change and she again counted the 9010 and looked content. I kept pointing at the receipt and she finally realized that there was only 9010 there. Then she started to pick up things off the counter and throw them around to look for the missing money. Then she grabbed my wallet and started to look through there, I grabbed my wallet back from her and tried to get her to understand that she had never given me anything more. After several long moments of her shouting and slamming things on the counter she pulled out a 500 note from the register along with two 100 coins to make up the missing 700 HUF.

Today was a magical day full of sunshine, walking and relaxation. I walked all over the downtown area near the river and stopped in two different parks to relax and listen to an audio book (It has been pointed out to me that listening to an audio book is not in fact reading and I shouldn’t say I am reading when I am listening to an audio book). This is a truly beautiful city and it was an amazingly beautiful day. Be sure to check out the pictures for today.

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10_27_09 Budapest small

Hungry in Hungary (I know I am very original)

The Danube

On my way to the train station last night I took the trolley. I sat in the very first seat because it had extra room to put my bag next to me. After a couple of stops the trolley came to a stop but the doors didn’t open. A man who wanted on the trolley started banging aggressively and shouting things because he wanted on. The driver walked to the door and pulled really hard to make the doors open so the man could get on. As soon as the doors were opened a really strong smell of poop overcame me and the people around me. The man who was getting on the bus appeared homeless and was very dirty. He was carrying two bags and I’m not sure where the smell was coming from but it was definitely something the man had in his possession. The man also appeared to be drunk as he staggered his way onto the bus and cornered me in my seat while he tried to stay standing. Everyone else on the bus was covering their noses and moving towards the back. There was no where for me to go, he had me cornered, though not on purpose. Every time the trolley would stop and fresh air would come through the doors I would take a deep breath and then try and hold it until I got to the next stop. I never could hold my breath that long and every time I had to breathe in more poop stink air. When we finally reached the train station both the man and I got off and I quickly walked away from him so that I could get some fresh air.

When I got to my compartment there was an elderly woman in my bunk of the train. I let her stay there because she was old and I assumed she had the top bunk and would have a difficult time climbing up there. After about 2 hours, she got off and a young Ukrainian guy got on and wanted to know why I was in his bed. It took much gesturing and talking very slowly on my part, but I think he either finally understood or didn’t care and took the larger bottom bed.

As with the other overnight train there were the constant wake ups from the train staff and the border crossing people. This time however there was an added twist. The tracks in Hungry and those in the Ukraine are of different sizes and the wheels of the train have to be changed. This involves lots of very loud power tools that shake the entire train violently. I think I was also in a lucky compartment because an engineer came into my compartment removed my rug from the floor and exposed a cap covering. He removed the cap covering and then reached down under the train and pulled out 4 large metal things and placed them on the floor in my compartment. About 30 minutes later he returned and put them back in the floor and resealed the hole and covered it with the strip of carpet.

Sometimes when I get someplace new I just smile, I don’t know why, and Budapest is one of those places.

The exchange rate here is 1 USD to 178 HUF (Hungarian forints), the most out of sync exchange rate that I have yet to encounter. Whenever I get to a new country I find an ATM and get money from there because I use E*trade and they exchange my money at the actual exchange rate and don’t give me any fees from any ATM anywhere in the world. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a single working ATM at the train station so I headed into the city to find one. I found 2 more that weren’t working before I was able to find one that was. I withdrew 10,000 HUF ($56.17) but I was given a lone 10,000 HUF note and I didn’t think that I could buy a train ticket with that, so I went and got some Chinese food for lunch. Oh how I love Asian food, even if it is in Hungary.

View from my hostel window

Chinese food

The hole in my floor

Even when my compartment door was closed you could still see inside of it

Walking in the Streets

In front of the Opera House

After dinner on Friday I went out to a bar to have a drink and found an English language Lviv magazine. I settled in with my beer and was reading the magazine when I was approached by a man who said “It is very obvious that you are a foreigner. Ukrainian people don’t come to bars by themselves. You should sit at the bar instead of a table because you are drawing a lot of attention to your foreignness.” I don’t go to bars by myself at home, but when you get to a new city and your hostel is empty, as mine was on Friday night, it’s nice to go out and see the night life. It is interesting that of all of the things about me that are un-Ukrainian the one that stands out the most is that I am at a bar alone. The guy had spent some time in Arizona and his English was very good. He invited me to join him and his friends for the rest of the night, which I thought was very nice of him.

Saturday I walked around town some more and went to the Lychakiv Cemetery, on the outside of town where many famous Ukranian people are buried. I have included the Wikipedia link here so you can read more about it if you are interested. I walked around the cemetery for a couple of hours, it is very large, and it got me to thinking back about Auschwitz and if there were a proper cemetery there how big it would have to be.

Saturday night I met up with some Americans from my hostel and we went to an underground restaurant. By underground, I mean it was literally underneath a church in a cellar. It was a really nice restaurant with Quail and Rabbit on the menu. They even had a cage with a live rabbit in it, which I assume was like a lobster tank. We all had salads with our meals, I did not have the rabbit, and we split a bottle of Walnut Vodka and our bill came to less than $10 each. After dinner we went and sat on one of the hundreds of benches that line the square to talk and watch the people walk by. At night in Lviv that seems to be the thing to do and we had a really great time.

I was surprisingly not cold outside at night and I only had one of my jackets on. Lately I have been quite warm and have been wearing only one coat and often sweating underneath it. I’m not positive but I think I might be approaching menopause.

Sunday night my hostel was fully booked because of a large group coming from the Eastern Ukraine and so I was forced to decide to find another hostel or another town. There is a train ticket purchasing place very close to my hostel but the international counter was closed on Sunday so I had to walk to the actual train station. I could have taken a bus or a trolley but I prefer to walk and see things off the tourist maps. It was impossible to tell where trains were going because of the Ukrainian names of cities, I had no clue what any of them were. I looked at the times the trains were leaving, not wanting to leave too late, and the time they arrive at their destination, not wanting to arrive too early and came up with a couple of choices. I wrote down the letters as best as I could and then went to the ticket window to find out what cities they were. Of the cities the only one that I had any interest in was Budapest and I bought a ticket for there. I am taking a train tonight from 9:20pm to 11:17 am to Budapest, I hope I have a better overnight train experience this time.

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10_24_09 Lviv small

Passport Stamps

Nice Truck

After waiting around in my hostel all night for my train to arrive I finally got to get on. When I gave the train attendant my ticket he took the ticket from me and motioned for me to get on. The problem was that I had an assigned place and I didn’t know what it was because it was on the ticket and the attendant had taken it. I tried several times to get him to show me my ticket and he kept motioning for me to get on the train. Finally I snatched the ticket from him and opened it to see my number. Once I did that he understood that I didn’t know where to go and he took me to my compartment where there were three bed births. The bottom one had a woman in it, she opened the door. The middle bed was her husband a very large naked man, covered only by a small white sheet. My bed was the top bunk and I quickly put my stuff away, climbed up to the top, put my ear plugs in and laid down to sleep.

Nearly as soon as I had fallen asleep the attendant came around to make sure that everything was okay. As I fell back to sleep I was awoken by Polish Immigration to look at my passport and give me a stamp to leave Poland. Once they left I went back to sleep to be awoken by the Ukrainian Immigration officials who stamped an entry into Ukraine in my passport. I was feeling very frustrated at this point that people kept waking me up and once I had fallen asleep again the train attendant came around again to let me know my stop was in 30 minutes. Needless to say when I arrived in Lviv at 6am local time, 5am in the time zone I came from, I was irritated and tired.

At the train station I went to the bathroom and was greeted by my old friend the squat toilet. I decided not to use it because I have only mastered the squat toilet while naked and I had tennis shoes, jeans and several coats on and decided that it would be too much work. The sun wasn’t up yet and it was raining outside. I rode the tram to the stop for my hostel and walked back and turned right as the directions I had been given instructed. After walking around for thirty minutes on the empty streets I discovered that they meant follow the train and then turn right.

In the Ukraine the language is Ukrainian and uses a different alphabet than in English, making it much more difficult than those foreign languages that have the same alphabet. Nothing is the same and it is impossible to pronounce anything by simple looking at the words. I feel terrible that I don’t know anything in Ukrainian, but when I only plan to be in the country for two or three days, it doesn’t make much sense to learn.

I went to my hostel and dropped off my bag and then headed out into the city to explore. For lunch I found a cafeteria style restaurant that was nice because I could simply point to the things I wanted. Everything in Ukraine seems to be very cheap, I had lunch for $4 and got my haircut for only $3. Walking around the streets I noticed that the women are very beautiful and wear knee length boots with short skirts. This is definitely a good style that I wouldn’t mind seeing in every country that I visit. I know that I am a pig, but at least I am an honest pig.

When ordering meat at a restaurant they have a price on the menu that is per gram and then you tell them how many grams you want and they bring you that amount. I didn’t know that they did this and when I ordered ribs and the waitress started saying things, I thought that they didn’t have ribs, so I was going to change my order but then she went away and brought me the amount that she thought I would want. It turned out to be the prefect amount, which is good because now that I know how it works I still don’t know how many grams of something I want.

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10_23_09 Lviv small

Kicking it in Krakow

I make castles look small

Last night I had to decide where to go next, I have my schedule but I haven’t been sticking to it and figured why start now. I had three choices L’viv, Bratislava or Vienna. I plan to go to Bratislava and Vienna anyway and had decided earlier to skip L’viv, but I am the closest I will be to there in a while and I heard from another person how great it is. I have decided to take the night train on Thursday night to L’viv, Ukraine for 2 nights. The train leaves Krakow, pronounced Krakov, at 10:30 pm and arrives in L’viv at 6am, which should make for a perfect afternoon nap once I can check into my hostel.

Since I doubt I will be getting much sleep tonight I slept as late as I could to still get my free breakfast and then checked out at noon, the latest time possible. I went and walked around town to see the castle. I climbed down into The Dragon’s Den, which was actually pretty cool it’s a cave underneath the castle where legend holds a dragon once lived.

I ate lunch at a truly polish restaurant where nothing on the menu was in English and the guy working there didn’t speak English either. I just looked at what other people were eating and pointed to what I assume was pork, sauerkraut and bread. The bread in Poland has been delicious it is so light and fluffy in the middle, I love it. The lunch was really good and it’s nice to splurge on a locally prepared food to get a flavor of the country that I don’t get when I make myself pasta.

There is a giant modern mall, right next to the train station with names like H&M, Jack Wolfskin, Timberland, D&G and many others. Everything has to be imported from elsewhere so the prices are ridiculous and I am not paying those prices for anything. After wearing the same small set of clothes all the time some of them shrink too much or get holes and I am forced to throw them away. I found some second hand shops and found a tee shirt that I liked and bought it. I couldn’t read what the words were but I liked the way it looked. I brought it back to my hostel and asked the polish girl who works here what it says and found out that it is not in Polish. I looked around online and I believe that it is in Norwegian and says something similar to “Strong like a Rock” but I’m not entirely sure.

Now I am just waiting for what I suspect will be the most awful train ride of my life, I hope L’viv is worth it.

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10_22_09 Krakow small

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Work Brings Freedom

One of the reasons for coming to Krakow was the close proximity to Auschwitz. To get to Auschwitz from Krakow it is an hour and a half bus ride each way. There are two places that you can visit at Auschwitz, the Auschwitz Museum at Auschwitz I and Birkenau which is close by and called Auschwitz II.

Auschwitz I was a former Polish military base that was turned into a prison for anyone the Nazi’s felt like putting there. The entire facility is still standing and consists of many buildings that were used to house the prisoners, a gas chamber, crematorium and a “Death Wall”, where people were lined up and shot.

Auschwitz II is about 3 KM away and is much larger containing over 300 buildings during WWII. Most of the buildings here were destroyed by either the escaping Nazis, were burnt down or were demolished. This camp consisted of mainly housing for the prisoners and four gas chambers and crematoriums.

Here are my thoughts both good and bad about the place and my experience there:

There are too many people and too many groups in the museum and they are on a very tight time table so they move people though as quickly as possible. I did not join a tour but purchased the guide book and went on a self guided tour. I was run over several times while looking at the exhibits by tour guides and their groups. I often found myself rushing through exhibits to get ahead of the crowds.

Whoever did the English language translations should be fired and the money should be spent to make the corrections. If the translations were anywhere else they would be comical, but since it was Auschwitz it was just sad and disappointing.

It was really hard for me to connect with what happened there and how terrible it was. I know what happened and now that I have seen the places where it happened I have a little bit better feeling for it, but it just seems so unreal that something that terrible actually take place. Auschwitz II was enormous, as big as any fair ground that I have ever been to. The massive size of this place is frightening and overwhelming. There were thousands of tourists and the place looked empty. It isn’t like this place was full and they killed only those people, it was constantly being filled and then people were being killed so it could be refilled.

I understand people taking pictures, I took many as you can see below, what I don’t understand is posing in a picture at Auschwitz. It doesn’t sit right with me that there are people posing in front buildings where innocent people were tortured and killed with big smiles on their faces.

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10_21_09 Krakow small

Salt Mines

In front of the Fireplace

The train ride to Krakow was pretty much uneventful. I had the compartment to myself nearly the entire time and was able to listen to music, read and watch movies to pass the time. Once inside Poland immigration officials got on the train and asked for my passport. I presented it to the two officials who kept looking through it and looking at me. Then they called over two more officers and they all looked through my passport. Finally they asked me where my stamp for Europe was and I explained that I didn’t have one. When I went from Morocco to Spain I got an exit stamp from Morocco but not an entry stamp into Europe. I think they were worried that I had been in Europe since 2001 without a visa because that is the only stamp I have from Europe in my passport. They believed me and moved on to the other passengers.

My hostel in Krakow is nearly empty and the people that are here are teenage groups who don’t speak English. The first night here m room was full of teenagers with laser pointers, lucky me. I have only found a couple of people who actually speak English out of those who are here. I’m not sure why the types of people I am used to seeing everywhere namely Australians and Canadians are not here maybe because the Eurorail pass doesn’t work here or maybe because it’s too cold.

This is the first European country that I have encountered where it’s not safe to drink the tap water. I guess I will just have to have beer with my breakfast and lunch instead of my usual tap water.

Tuesday I went to the nearby salt mines and took a tour. I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting but it wasn’t what I got. The tour takes you down three hundred plus stairs underground and then you walk around in rooms that have religious carvings made out of rock salt. My tour guide was polish and had the demeanor of a Russian from the movies, very serious even while telling jokes. I was the only one who laughed at them, at first because of the way she delivered them wrong and then because of what she was saying. Her delivery reminded me of Borat learning how to tell jokes…………NOT. An example was when we went to an underground lake and she was telling us how much salt was in there and if we were to go swimming we would float. Then she said “There is no fishing please”. The tour also took us to this dark room where we were told we would see a “Light and music show, where a lake is mysteriously lit up”. When the show started it was spot and rope lights, I’m not sure where the mystery was but I was not mystified.

On the bus ride back I overheard a couple speaking in English and asked them where they are from and found out they are from Canada. The couple is traveling around the world helping children and their families with disabilities. We were having a good time talking and went to a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant had waiters, menus’ that you can hold and a fireplace. It has been a while since I was in some place so fancy. The couple paid for my lunch, which I thought was extremely generous of them.

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10_20_09 Krakow small

God Laughs At Plans

Yes, I will in fact be wearing this in all pictures from now on.

Saturday the weather was much nicer and by that I mean moisture wasn’t constantly falling from the sky. I went to the train station to check prices and times for a train to Krakow (Poland) my next planned stop. Then I went to the Astronomical Clock, which shows a calendar and the position of the sun. The astronomical clock is in the main old town square and on Saturday they were having a festival. There were booths of food and a stage where various artists were performing. I stopped and listened to a woman sing classic rock songs. She sang with such conviction but without knowing the actual words. I think that maybe she listens to the songs a lot but doesn’t have the lyrics and as a result says words that are blatantly incorrect. Everyone was having a really good time, many locals and foreigners alike were dancing and singing along with her.

I sat down and made a tentative plan for the rest of my trip with stops in Athens, Bled, Bratislava, Budapest, Crete, Istanbul, Kotor, Krakow, Ljubljana, London, Tirana and Vienna. The list is in alphabetical order not the actual order that I plan to visit them.

I woke up yesterday morning, the day I was supposed to leave Prague and decided to stick around for one more day. I didn’t do anything productive, but it is nice to just lay around some days and do nothing.

I have officially run out of both clean and bearable clothes and have nothing left except for very stinky and destroy immediately. Today is my turn to be the stinky guy on the public transport as I take the train from Prague to Krakow for 7.5 hours in very stinky clothes.

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10_17_09 Prague small

Like Rain Only Worse

Look how happy cold weather makes me

The weather in Prague continues to be miserable, lots of cold weather and constant rain that is teetering between rain, snow and sleet. I went outside for a little while and tried to do my usual first day wandering around a city but the weather was not cooperating. I went to a museum and it was randomly closed so I decided to go to the store. The grocery store is very cheap. For example 1/3 of a liter of beer is 7 czk which is $.40 each. Other things in Prague are more expensive than in America like electronics, toys and clothes. At least that is true for the store that I went to, I was looking for some new headphones, gloves and a beanie to fit my giant head. Normally when I put a beanie on it doesn’t cover even the top of my ears.

Last night at the dinner table at my hostel we were talking about the states in America and a Canadian and an Australian decided to have a competition to see if they could each name all the states. In a mere 11 minutes the Canadian was able to list all of the states and then the Aussie gave up with 38. I was really impressed, I couldn’t name a single Australian state and I could only come up with 4 Canadian provinces.

Here is a piece of random information; some Aussies say both words pawn and porn exactly the same and have to explain which one they mean when they use it in some sentences like “I need to go to the pawn/porn shop later today”

Today I went to the Prague castle and inside of there is a museum called The Lobkowicz Palace. The museum is in the former Lobkowicz Palace where they display a bunch of their art and artifacts. The collection was taken by the Nazi’s and then again taken by the Communists. The audio tour is spoken by several members of the Lobkowicz family and was really interesting. This is the first time that I’ve seen old paintings of rich people and enjoyed it because of the way it was displayed and the audio tour. I really enjoyed seeing the 18th century engravings of Rome because I actually saw those places while in Rome. I know the ruins in Rome are really old but it reinforced the idea in my mind by seeing old engravings of things that I actually saw.

Below is a video of stop motion graffiti from a guy that I saw in Berlin. It is an amazing video of what an artist can do with spray paint.



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10_16_09 Prague small

Snow

Sunset in Prague

The bar in Brussels that holds the world’s record for beers was a lot of fun, it’s called Delirium. There was a short beer menu with around 50 beers on it but if you were looking for something else there was also a phone book sized menu as well. There is a picture of this in my pictures below. At the table next to me there were two guys from Belgium who were drinking Budweiser. No disrespect meant to Budweiser but with over 2000 options I didn’t have any Anheuser Busch products.

Once back in my hostel I helped a really drunk guy find his room. It turns out that he had just gotten robbed and lost most of his money. A group of guys approached him, grabbed him and threw him against a wall and then took everything he had. This is a good reminder to not be wasted and alone at night in a city you don’t know. This guy was really drunk, he could hardly talk and he couldn’t find his room, I have no idea how he even found the hostel.

I got a flight to Prague from Brussels on WizzAir, a discount airline, for €24.99 including taxes and €10 for checking my suitcase. As with other discount airlines in Europe they use the name of big cities but the airports they use are actually 45 minutes or more outside the city. To get to the Airport I had to take a metro to a train and finally a bus, which took as long as the actual flight.

As the plane was landing the sun was setting over the clouds and the sky came alive with color. I’m not sure what it is with budget airlines but every time I fly on them there is a terrible body odor smell. I’m not sure if it’s just luck that I have those people around me or if there is something inherent about discount airplanes smelling.

I have rarely seen anyone checking tickets on public transportation. Mostly I only see them check on the longer distance trains that I have taken. Last night I saw a metro employee board the metro train I was on to check tickets. The metro employee approached a well dressed man in his 60’s and asked him for his ticket, which he apparently did not have. The man without a ticket tried all kinds of excuses and then pulled the metro employee close to him and said something quietly into his ear. Whatever he said didn’t work because he was asked to produce his ID and he was given a fine of some kind.

Prague is cold, really cold. The current temperature is 1 and feels like -5 according to Weather.com. When I woke up this morning and looked out the window it was snowing. An Australian girl in my room had never seen snow before and she opened the window so she could touch it and the icy air rushed into the room and she quickly shut the window. I later overheard the same girl asking the front desk if there was some place warm and free in Prague that she could visit. I guess she isn’t all that impressed with the snow.

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10_14_09 Brussels small

-€.50 Museum Visit

The camera was on another elephant's butt


At my hostel in Bruges I liked everyone that I met with the exception of one guy who was a know it all jerk. As luck would have it when I checked into my room in Brussels that same guy is in the bed next to me. I said hi to him but he has been avoiding me as much as I am avoiding him, I guess the feelings are mutual.

When I first got to my new hostel there were 10 people in line to check in and the clerk was going crazy. He couldn’t handle all those people and was telling people to put their luggage in the luggage room and come back later. I went to the Grand Square, a place only for tourists with really old buildings that look pretty cool. I went into the tourism office there and looked at the brochures and found one on the Natural History Museum that looked interesting. (I always spell Museum wrong when I type it)

Last night I went to a local Jazz Bar that was full of both people and smoke. No one else I encountered there with the exception of the bartenders spoke English. The music was awful, I don’t know if any of them had played together before or really if they had ever played instruments at all. I stayed around long enough to drink two beers and then have a drunk guy try and convince me in French to buy him a beer. Of course I did not buy him a beer, I’m stingy that way.

This morning I went to the African Museum, which I thought was supposed to be about the exploitation of the people of the Congo. It is actually a museum that was built to gain support for the colonization of the Congo in the late 1800’s. Mostly it has lots of animals, art and memorabilia from Africa. There is also a small section on the exploitation and on the Congo’s independence. I did learn some interesting things about Africa though like that 45% of the population is under the age of 15. That is an insanely high number. Luckily it only cost me €1.5 to get in with my student discount and when I went to put my stuff in a locker I found €2 in there and so I ended up making money out of the trip.

After seeing all of the dead animals at the Africa Museum I decided that I would skip the Natural History Museum and instead go on a brewery tour. I went to the Cantillon Brewery that is family run and makes a special type of beer called Gueuze. The beer uses water from under Brussels, that has special organisms and it takes three years to make. The tour was self guided through their small brewery and then samples are given out at the end. The beer they sell is unlike any beer I have ever tasted, it is really sour, mouth puckering sour. Tonight I’m going to a place that hold the Guinness Book of World Records for the most beers, I’m sure I can find something there that I like.

The beers I have drank on this trip

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10_13_09 Brussels small

If Bruges Were a Woman I Would Marry Her

I asked a guy to take my picture with this in the background, he apparently decided I shouldn't be in it though.

I just really like this town! I’m sad that I am only staying for 2 nights but I bought a ticket to Prague and I need to be in Brussels for my hostel reservation. I will be flying from Brussels to Prague. I walked around Bruges again before I needed to leave and went to the cathedral where they have the marble statue of “Madonna and Son” by Michelangelo. Unfortunately not the Ninja turtle, but some other Italian guy with the same name.

As I was walking along a cobblestone street next to the river I heard music and saw that a man was sitting inside his house with the windows open playing the piano. I sat on a nearby bridge and listed to him play for quite some time. He was really good and I enjoyed sitting in the sun listening to him play unaware that he had an audience.

I started flossing for the first time in my life while in Stuttgart. I have used a flossing stick in the past but not regularly and it isn’t the same. My teeth feel so clean, it’s wonderful. I would recommend to everyone to try for a week and floss everyday and then at the end see if you can stop, it is addictive. Of all the things to get addicted to, flossing isn’t a bad one.

I head to Brussels next for 2 nights.

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10_12_09 Bruges small

Bruges is Bad@$$

I had a really great picture of myself in front of this mill but then deleted it by accident.

To quote the movie In Bruges “If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn’t, so it doesn’t”

If you cannot tell from my subject line I completely disagree. Immediately upon arriving in Bruges I really liked it. I don’t know why, I cannot explain it but I did. I went to my hostel to check in and the guy working the counter was really friendly and funny. He gave me the “Bruges Free Map for Young Travelers”, which is itself hilarious. There are two sides to the map a daytime side and a nighttime side. There is a section entitled “Act like a Local” that has things like “Use your bicycle to run over tourists”, “West-Flemish, the dialect of Bruges, is the most powerful dialect around.”, “Always complain that Bruges is dead. There is no graffiti, no skating, no good shopping area, and there is no decent music club in the city centre…If somebody else complains about the same thing shout ‘shut up’ and say it’s not true” and “Just because there are statues everywhere doesn’t mean you have to take a picture of every single one”. Those are some of my favorites but you get the idea, it’s very lighthearted and fun, which is the vibe of the city and why I like Bruges so much.

After checking in I dropped my stuff off in my room and went down to the bar where the desk clerk is also the bartender. The beer in Belgium is delicious and has lots of alcohol 9.2% and 11.3% were the beers I was drinking. For comparison Bud Light has 4.2%. I also learned that if something says “Made in Belgium” it actually is only if the first two digits of the UPC code are “54” otherwise it’s actually made elsewhere.

I met up with some people from the hostel and we all decided to go out. A local walked by and we talked to him about where to go, he told us he was going to a bar and we could join him. When we got there it was more of a family restaurant and not really a bar so we all headed elsewhere. In most of Europe that I have been to so far businesses charge for using the bathroom usually around €.5 per use. At the bar that we found and spent the evening at they had a deal where you could use the bathroom once for €.4 or you could buy an unlimited pass for the evening for €3.

At Oktoberfest I first heard the song “Dance with Somebody” by Mando Diao and then I heard it again at my hostel in Amsterdam and I really like it. Here is the YouTube link if you want to check it out. If you don’t like it wait until the chorus starts before you turn it off because that is the best part.



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10_11_09 Bruges small

Throwing Axes

My what a big sword you have...

Often in life the smallest things make the biggest differences. I know this, yet I often forget or don’t believe in it until something small happens and changes things dramatically.

On the way out of The Netherlands on my way to Belgium I stopped in Maastricht a small town in the east of The Netherlands. I knew the train was supposed to take between two and a half to three hours so I settled in and watched a movie on my laptop. Every time the train would start to slow down to stop, I would listen intently to the Dutch words to see if I needed to pack up or if I could stay seated. I heard the name of my stop mentioned several times and packed up my stuff to get off, however once the train stopped it wasn’t the stop I wanted so I sat and waited. Then train made a couple more stops, which weren’t mine and then terminated and everyone exited the train. I was really confused, I had been paying attention. Had I missed my stop? I got out and looked at the map and realized that on the stop where they kept saying the name I wanted I was supposed to exit and take another train from there. I guess that’s what can happen when you travel and only know one Language. I was able to catch another train anyway and ended up where I wanted to be in Maastricht.

Maastricht is known for having hundreds of kilometers of tunnels under the city and I came to explore them. As usual I didn’t look at a map or make any plans I just followed the crowds of people out of the train station and then down the streets. When the masses turned I turned and when they went straight so did I. Eventually the crowds started to thin out and they weren’t really going anywhere and I was left to wander around on my own. I found a really nice park that also had some caged animals and lots of terrifying swans. I know from my childhood and America’s Funniest Home Video’s that you don’t want to mess with a swan.

Eventually I decided to look at a map and found one on a sign post on a corner. While I was looking trying to figure out where I was and where I wanted to be an elderly Dutch man came up to me and asked in Dutch if he could help me. I told him I was looking for the tunnels and then pointed underground. He looked at me for a moment and then replied “tunnels” with a look of understanding. He started to talk in Dutch and point down the street and then he told me to follow him and he would show me. We walked together for 10 minutes through a park and down a street and he kept talking the whole time to me in Dutch. I did pick up a few random words that sounded the same in English and I think he was telling me about the history of Maastricht and the tunnels underneath it. I thanked him for guiding me and walked the rest of the way he had pointed me.

I found a gate that was open, that I don’t think was supposed to be open and went down into the tunnels. I walked around for a little bit but I was worried that whoever had opened the gate might close it and I would be stuck down there and so I snapped some pictures, got the idea of the tunnels and headed back out.

My notebook that I bought and started using in India to write down ideas, words and directions in finally full. I have bought a replacement but I am somewhat sad to be done using this one, it has been a good companion.

Back on the train and headed for Bruges there was a man talking on his cell phone very loudly and every time he wanted to put emphasis on something he was saying he would make a very loud “Plllt” sound. I don’t know if this is a cultural thing or what it was, but it was pretty funny and obnoxious.

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10_10_09 Maastricht small