The City of Jan Paweł II

This past weekend I went to Krakow, and it was certainly the most religious trip I've had yet, and the cheapest. I went with Carlye's program, so my train and lodging was paid for, with the exception of my ride to Vienna. One my ride to Vienna I met Chaim, a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn whose parents had escaped Hungary prior to World War II. He talked the whole time, telling anecdotes about Hasidim, America, Eastern Europe pre-WWII, and many many jokes related to all of the above. He knew Hungarian, as his parents spoke it, and he also knew Brazilian Portuguese (from living in Sao Paulo), Yiddish (and hence German), Hebrew, plus some Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. He was a pretty impressive fellow, and very nice, he even gave me some of his kosher snacks. He also gave me a book about the power of prayer. Throughout the conversation, he referred to Carlye as my wife, and Carlye's parents as my mother and father-in-law, despite the fact that I made it clear we were dating, not married. He also said I would make a good father, and gave me a big hug when we finally disembarked in Vienna. It was a lot of fun.
Once in Vienna, Carlye and I walked around Vienna a bit, as this was the last time I'd see it. We saw a huge concert in front of the Rathaus (city hall basically, an imposing Gothic structure) where the Vienna Boys Choir sang a bit, which was quite impressive.
Saturday morning we took the long train to Krakow. Some 7 1/2 hours, with one 30 minute layover. Upon arrival, we checked in to our fairly swanky hotel, and then met up with a Macalester student who was studying in Krakow (they're everywhere, those Mac kids). She took us to the main center and we ate at a log cabin (I had Polish Pigos, which was sauerkraut, pork and mushrooms in some sort of sauce), then went to an underground cellar bar. While we were out and about, a soccer game had just finished, and the streets were filled with near rioting fans, and lots and lots of policja (Krakow has more police officers out at all times than any city I have visited, and maybe I just noticed more cause they're dressed in scary black and have large guns). It was a good night though.
Sunday we had a guided tour of the city. . . in German. So I didn't understand much, needless to say. However, I'll instead describe the layout of the city. The city is perched just to the north of the Wista River. At the southern edge lies the castle district, to the east of that the Jewish District (or the former Jewish district anyway: Pre-WWII, Poland was about 25% Jewish, and only 60% Catholic, now it's 96% Catholic and maybe 1% Jewish), and straight north of the castle lies the Old Town. The Old Town is the center of modern Krakow. Egg-shaped, it is surrounded by a park ring, and outside of this the city extends every direction. Krakow is extremely walkable, and inside this Old Town sector, there are very few cars at all. It was marvelous. It's a very old city, and is filled with oh-so-many churches. More churches than I've ever seen in a town. And they are all Catholic churches, so they're all big and pretty. The things I did understand on the tour: Copernicus studied in Krakow, we saw his university; everyone loves JPII, his picture is everywhere; the Polish and Lithuanians had a long standing partnership, so in the state museum, there was lots of Lithuanian stuff, they wouldn't let me take pictures though; more things that I've forgotten.
Monday we toured Auschwitz, which was certainly one of the most mind-boggling things I've seen so far. Over a million people killed there (about 430,000 Hungarians) and the size of the place is just so overwhelming. I didn't take any pictures, because I just really didn't care to. It certainly left me with so many questions, mainly just Why? Why didn't the Allies do anything about it (they showed us aerial footage the Allies had that was taken in early 1944, after that photo was taken over 500,000 people were murdered there. And Why do we consistently allow it to happen again (Bosnia, Darfur, many more) when so many people said 'Never again'? After the visit, we went out to eat at a Jewish restaurant in Krakow. It was amazing. I had Jewish roast beef with latkes, and Passover curd cheese for dessert. While we ate a klezmer (bagpipes, clarinet and upright bass) band played, with a Yiddish singer, and they were awesome.
Tuesday we trained back to Vienna, and then I trained back to Budapest, I was on a train for well over 10 hours. But I can say that I see why Poles like the United States. The terrain looks extremely similar, the countryside is woods that look just like Minnesota, and there are tons of bison, plus it's similar weather to the Midwest.
Alright, now for the pictures, again in a fairly random order.

This is a sculpture outside of one of the many Franciscan churches in town. I don't know exactly what the angels signify, if anything, but the stones in front were placed one by one for all the years of John Paul's time as Pope.


Here is one of the places in Krakow where JPII used to live, so there's a picture of him int he window.


Here is the main Basilica in town, St. Mary's (like Minneapolis). It's gorgeous inside. I have a picture of the inside below. The left spire there is owned by the city, and a bugler plays in the four cardinal directions every hour.


This is the last remaining tower and city wall section that formerly surrounded the city. In the foreground on the right is the tour group that I couldn't understand.


This was a fun building I liked. I don't know what it is.


This is in the inside of St. Mary's Basilica. That altarpiece is the largest of it's kind in the world and carved in 1477. It features St. Ladislaus and St. Adalbert, the patron saints of Krakow and Poland. Also the main piece is Mary Falling Asleep. It was amazing. Also inside the church there was a St. Agnes chapel.


On Sunday we saw a giant procession of monks, nuns, priests, altarboys, and altargirls(?). I saw more monks and nuns than I've ever seen, and of so many different orders.


This was the castle district, which was simply gorgeous. That tall spire is St. Ladislaus' cathedral, where all the former kings are buried.


This was on the way in to the castle district, you can see the cathedral spire again. There's Carlye in the middle there. But the reason I took the picture was the bagpipers. They were all over the city, and all of them made me think of Grandpa, so I really liked it. So here is one in traditional dress.


Here is one of the many Franciscan churches. The story goes that the church is so small that all the apostles have to stand outside, so there they are lined up in front.

I Didn't Want To Go To Chelsea

Just got back from London last night, and I can certainly say that city is amazing. I arrived late Wednesday night, stayed 4 full days, and left Monday afternoon, so only like 4 1/2 days, really, but it felt like quite a while. Enough that I felt a little bit at-homeish there. I stayed with my friend Matt (both future, and ex- roomie). Anyway, rundown of activities followed by pictures.

Wednesday night: Arrived late at Luton Airport, drove in to the city on a bus for an hour. I was exhausted, but giddy to be driving on the wrong side of the road and seeing signs in English. After meeting Matt in central London, we rode out to his dorm in Camberwell. Along the way I found a Liverpool scarf on the ground, so that was my free souvenir for the trip.

Thursday: Went to the National Gallery, saw many cool paintings. Saw Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, King's College (where Matt goes to school), had a pint at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (where Dickens wrote things) and then played a trivia game at a pub on the King's campus. The pub had glorious views of the Thames.

Friday: Went to Borough Market, the most incredible place in all of London. Stall after stall of the most delicious food. All high quality stuff, relatively cheap, plus free samples. We walked around eating free samples and buying things for about 3 hours. I bought a lamb burger with blue-veined Stilton cheese, a berry smoothie, a chorizo sandwich with peppers and rocket, and apple-raspberry juice. Free samples included the most delicious mushroom pate I could imagine, many olives stuffed with various things, balsamic vinegar syrup with orange peel, fancy cheeses, delicious pesto, sausages, jams (strawberry jam with champagne was my favorite), and much more. After Borough we walked across the London Bridge to St. Paul's Cathedral, walked back over the Millennium Bridge (a fun footbridge connecting the two sights) to the Tate Modern. Saw the Globe Theater on the way. After bouncing around the gigantic Tate for a while, we walked along the Thames and laughed at many H.M. Bateman prints for awhile. We crossed Westminster Bridge and saw the Houses Of Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. We ate Thai food and stayed up until 8 in the morning chatting about whatever we could think of.

Saturday: Went to see Stonehenge. £30 total, 8 hours total on a bus, for a couple of rocks. But it was incredibly cool. And fun headsets provided (unintentionally) funny commentary. We also saw Salisbury, which was a beautiful little town complete with soaring cathedral, and Southampton, which was one of the uglier towns I've ever seen. But at Southampton we did see the port where the Titanic set sail. It was a very S day.

Sunday: Went to the British Museum and saw all the things that the Brits stole from the rest of the world. It was pretty impressive. Then went and had a picnic in Hyde Park! It was a beautiful day and we played (and invented) many games, and ate a lot of junk food, all in a beautiful park. After eating fish and chips, we were all too exhausted to do anything more, so we hung out and talked.

Monday: Saw the Changing of the Guards, which was horrifically boring, I wish I would have gone to the Victoria & Albert Museum instead, but ah well, I'm allowed one mistake. Saw 10 Downing Street and had a beautiful walk through St. James Park. Ate an English breakfast, which was delightful, as I had been missing proper breakfasts. It consists of one sunny side up egg, two thick slices of English-style Bacon, sausage, beans, and toast. I still had a little time left, so I rode the Tube (they do actually say 'Mind the Gap' a lot on the tube) over to Blackfriars and had one last pint before catching my bus back to the airport.

Observations: It was really expensive. The pound spends exactly like the dollar, except it's worth twice the amount of the dollar, so everything is double the price of what it would be in the States. Public transit was again amazing, the buses (all double-deckered and fun) and the Tube provide an impressive network. The food wasn't as bad as I had heard, but then again I didn't eat that much English food. The weather couldn't make up its mind. It kept switching from raining and cold to warm and sunny constantly. But my last two days were gorgeous weather, so I was pleased. Mayoral elections were going on while I was there, and they do a far far better job of getting the word out and getting people to vote. The U.S. could learn a lot. The City itself didn't look like any other European city I had been too. Maybe because it's so much older. It didn't have the monolithic 6 story apartment building with shops on the first floor thing going on. All the building were different heights, skinny, different styles and colors all crammed in. The streets were a mess, not on a grid at all. Plus with all this was thrown in a lot of modern architecture. So it looked both older and newer than Budapest. Which I guess it is. Anyway, here are the pictures, if you're still reading. They aren't in any order.

Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Monument:



Big Ben:


Houses of Parliament on the Thames (that's Matt on the right there):


Tower Bridge:



Whitehall Street:



Stonehenge:


Salisbury (the river is the Avon):


St. James Park with the London Eye in the background:


Westminster Abbey:


And thats that.

Bratislava and Devin Castle

Bratislava is a small town, compared to the others I have seen (although I guess Prague was small as well), but somehow it provided one of the best weekends of my time here. Maybe because it was so cheap. Anyway, on to the story. Carlye and I met up at the train station at noon on Friday. After searching for maybe 2 hours, we found our hostel, the Downtown Backpackers Hostel. Despite the boring name, it was an incredible place. I'm not sure why I failed to get a single picture of the place, but suffice to say it was quirky and cool, plus clean. It's the first hostel I have ever been to, so maybe they are all like that, but I doubt it. If every hostel I visit is as cool, I'll be quite satisfied. Enough about the hostel though.

We wandered around Bratislava, discovered how small it really is, ate a delicious lunch on the bank of the Danube (The Hungarians and I call it the Duna, the Viennese and Carlye call it the Donau, and the Slovakians call it the Dunaj, so I'll just stick with the English on here), where I ordered a cocktail, which I have never done before. We saw this awesome bridge called the Novy Most (New Bridge), although many refer to it simply as the UFO bridge, for obvious reasons (picture below). At night we went out to a fun little coffee shop and had milkshakes. I hadn't had a milkshake in forever, and was all excited, but these were simply chocolate milk with malt powder in them. Tasty, but not a malt.

Saturday we attempted to meet two girls from Vienna (Laura, a Mac student who I take Japanese with, and Philippine, some girl from Germany? maybe). It didn't work out, so Carlye and I struck out for Devin Castle. I had heard good things, and I was expecting it to be the highlight of the trip. It's a 30-minute bus ride north of the city, at the convergence of the Danube and the Morava rivers. When we left Bratislava, it was sunny and warm, by the time we got off the bus, it was drizzling, chilly and windy. Once we finally saw the castle though, we were enchanted, and it only got better as we climbed to the top of it. Situated on a rocky outcropping nearly vertically rising from the point where the rivers merge, the castle is in a prime position. It's had quite a history as well. People had settled there since 895 BCE, it was an important front-line post of the Roman Empire (who built the first Christian church north of the Danube here), and later was a border post of Hungary (Slovakia was a part of Hungary before 1923). In fact Bethlen Gabor, whose name graces the square that my school is on, was the leader of this region, and hence lived here. Napoleon destroyed the castle in 1809 (along with the Bratislava castle, though that was rebuilt). During the Soviet era, the castle was fortified with barbed wire, as Austria lay across both rivers. Anyway, it's an amazing castle, what you think of when you picture a castle. We got to go inside, and see how it was built on top of solid rock, and rooms were carved into the stone below. It was incredible, in fact it was certainly one of the coolest sights I have ever seen in my life. Saturday night we went out to the 1st Slovakian Bar. I don't know if it was the first, but that was it's name, so we'll believe it. It was a giant timber lodge nestled into a very modern area, or maybe the modern area nestled around it, if it was indeed first. We ate Halusky, the typical Slovakian dish, which consisted of potato dumplings covered in bryndza (a sheep-cheese) and cracklings. It tasted kind of like macaroni and cheese, only the macaroni tasted of potato, and the cheese was a little sour, and there was bacon fat in it. Tasty though.

Sunday we explored the hills behind the city, seeing the Soviet memorial to their WWII victory (they did this in every city), which also had a cemetery beneath it, containing 7000 Soviet troops. We also took a nice walk in the woods, which looked exactly like a Minnesota forest. We had a nice lunch, then took trains our separate ways. Fun.

UFO Bridge


Here it is again from downstream. The Bratislava Castle is on the hill to the right. The main part of the city, including the old town district, and the hipper nightlife region, are on the right just south of the Castle.


Here is a view from atop the Castle. It's a town with lots of history, but there are more new buildings and skyscrapers than any other city I have visited (Vienna was close, and Berlin may have more, but those cities are 3 times and 10 times the size of Bratislava, respectively).


The amazing Devin Castle.


One of the many fun little sculptures.


Travel news:
I've got a weekend off, then I go to London to visit my good friend Matt, my roommate last semester, and next year. After that, I have a free trip to Krakow!! I'm going with Carlye's program, and I get free travel (from Vienna), and free stay in a nice hotel.

Two weeks later I go on my adventure, with a new itinerary.
Brussels -> Maastricht (Amsterdam trip while I am there) -> Paris -> Rome -> Geneva (to stay with Kabir and his parents, who live there) -> Venice -> Ljubljana -> Zagreb -> Budapest

Vienna is a City of Parks

Just arrived back from Vienna yesterday. Climbed off the train and went straight to class, actually. Anyway, Vienna is a beautiful city. It's so green and treelined and parkfilled, as the title suggests. It was a beautiful weekend, and we spent a lot of time sitting in parks near ponds with swans and watching families play. Very relaxing. Aside from the parks, the architecture of the city is very cohesive and beautiful. Most of the buildings are imperial baroque beauties from the Hapsburg era, with a couple Gothic cathedrals or city halls thrown in. But my favorite building of all was this one that completely stood out in the cityscape.

It's called the HundertWasser Haus, or something like that. Designed by HundertWasser, who also designed a couple of similar buildings in the neighborhood (also designed a gasworks and a school), none as spectacular as this one though.


It just springs to life out of the boring block it's located in. You can see here below that it looks as though it's moss creeping in on that beige building beneath it.


The street to the left there is pedestrian only, which is a good thing, as the architect lifted up parts of the cobblestones to make hills, and planted trees willy-nilly in the road. One can also see the vibrant green on the building's many trees. They pop out of every balcony and nook and cranny.


My favorite part of the whole thing, I think, is this fountain and the alcove under the building. The black part of the building you can see goes all the way under the building, creating a little picnic place. Also, something I couldn't really fit in to the picture, on top of the building are two Turkish looking turrets. Pretty fun.


Here is the Royal Hapsburg Palace, or something. The Palace is actually named after that fountain you see at the foot of the hill. This place extends forever into huge gardens with labyrinths and pools and everything. Like a mini-Versailles, in fact parts of Marie Antoinette were filmed here.


This is the view from the top of the hill looking back on Vienna. The yellow part is the actual palace.


This is the Danube diverted into Vienna, called the DonauKanal. Both sides are beautiful tree lined walks with lilacs and various other flowering trees. It was great.


This is StephansDom, I think named after the Hungarian St. Stephen, but I'm not sure. A beautiful Romanesque/Gothic structure, complete with Zsolnay tiling. I cut off the top of the steeple because it was only covered in scaffolding anyway. I realize this is a bad picture, but whatever.


This is on a cool square in the heart of Vienna. A large park to the right, the national library to the left, another Hapsburg palace behind me. The two domes are for the natural history museum and the art history museum.


That's all. I didn't get many pictures because I forgot to bring my camera the first two days we were walking around.

Old Pictures and New Activities

I'm off to Vienna in a couple of hours, which should be pretty exciting (and maybe excitingly pretty?) and I'll post pictures and such upon my return. But for now, I'm throwing up some old pictures and telling what I've been doing the past week and a half.

This picture is for Grandma. It's St. Elizabeth Church. Very pretty, just tucked back in to a little corner of town. I'll go inside and get a picture sometime, but here's the outside.



Here is the Millennium Monument and Heroes Square. I don't know if I have posted a picture of it before, so I thought I would. It is at the end of Andrassy Ut, which is like the Budapest version of the Champs Elysee, and marks the beginning of City Park.



This is Vajdahunyad Castle. It's in City Park, right behind Heroes Square. A pretty fun building. And it's quite close to my apartment.


Here it is from the other side. This was when I first got here and it was cold enough for ice.


This last weekend I had many visitors. I think there were 10 Mac kids in town from Thursday to Sunday. Kabir and Jack stayed with me (and Carlye joined us for a night), and the rest stayed at hotels or hostels around town. 6 of them were studying abroad on a Macalester program in Maastricht, the Netherlands, one was studying at the University of Edinburgh, and one was studying somewhere in Rome. The weekend they were here happened to be spring cleaning weekend, or so it seemed. The streets were filled with trash of all varieties. Beds, dressers, cupboards, sinks, appliances, computers, televisions, clothing and more were collected in huge piles on every street. So they saw Budapest at an interesting time. But it was a blast to have them, and kinda crazy to be leading them all on a tour of the city.
Then yesterday two more friends showed up (Paul, a Mac student, and Patricia, his gal from Sarah Lawrence, both studying in London) and I showed them around. So it's been an interesting time, getting to hear what everyone thinks about Budapest.

Now I'm off to Vienna. The next two weekends I'm either going to stick around here, or visit Bratislava or some small town in Hungary. The weekend after those I'm going to London for a little over 4 days. The next weekend I'll be in Zagreb/Croatia somewhere. After two more weekends here I'm off on my big adventure to the West.

Springtime in Praha

I went to Prague this past weekend, and it was quite incredible. It is a beautiful city, many people commented that this is what they thought Europe would look like. It's very old, and has never had a major conflict, so the buildings are actually intact and old, unlike most of the rest of Europe. It's filled with Gothic churches, a 700 year old bridge...and more tourists than you could imagine. The city is jam packed with tourists from all over the world. I went because I knew I could stay for free with Carlye, but it just so happened there were 3 more Mac kids in town to go along with Carlye and all those kids on her program. So it was a little reunion, and that made it a lot of fun. The city is a set up a lot like Budapest. The busier, flat side of the river is where most of the things happen, and the hillier, older side has a castle district and a funicular. It's cleaner, and smaller, and the river is smaller, but it's a similar look. The food was amazing as well. They have bratwurst and kielbasa stands up all over. You can get a brat smothered in onions and mustard until at least 1 in the morn. They were more expensive than in Berlin, but still, at least they got 'em. Carlye and I ate this amazing meal at some hole in the wall pub/restaurant. We got duck thigh, ham, sausage, other kinds of meat, potato dumplings, Carlsbad dumplings, bread dumplings, pickled cabbage and this delicious dark beer. It was served in a wooden trough, and we felt like kings in some old story, just shoveling food in our mouths. If I woulda had a beard, the image would have been complete.

I'll just throw up the pictures, and comment on them.




This was the incredible Gothic Cathedral in the castle district. It was modeled after Notre Dame, and I loved it.



We went to the Franz Kafka Museum, which was great, I never knew anything about him, and now I know a lot. This is the statue of him.



All the buildings in the city are old, but the ones that aren't are cool and moderny like this.



The astrological clock, where hundreds and hundreds of tourists gather to watch some minor movements of the apostles. But the clock is cool, 400 years old.



This is a turn to the right from the previous picture. This square was filled with an Easter Market, and that beautiful building on the right is another cool church.



This was the hotel Carlye stayed at, a swanky number called the Grand Hotel Evropa. It's on a historic square, and the inside is all the 110-year old Art Nouveau original stuff. Macalester paid for all the students on her program to stay there.



This is some tower in the city, there are many like this around the city, which is a lot of fun. The building that the tower is connected to on the left is the one Tom Cruise jumped off of in Mission Impossible, or so I'm told. I don't remember that, but every time we went past it, someone brought that up.



This is the river, the 700 year old bridge, and also the largest club in central Europe can be seen.



Here's the river again, from further downriver. Also Carlye is in this one.

Anyway, if you ever get a chance to go to Prague, do it. Its gorgeous, and at least for me, even the tourists weren't so bad, as they were kind of a nice change of pace.

The family came...(in Pictures)

My mother sent me some pictures, and here they are.

Katy, Emily, Carlye, and Me (for those who don't know)
We are on Gellert Hill, Castle Hill is back and to the left.


This is at M, the cool restaurant with the fun maître d' and the brown paper walls.


This is in Eger at the palacsinta place. Emily was particularly goofy at this meal.


This is on top of the minaret in Eger. The castle is in the back right.


And that's that.