24Sep / 2014

Move Over Munich

This has been an amazing trip, full of more experiences and moments, both great and small, than I can ever relate in a blog that I write while half awake every night. (And I have been barely conscious for some of these.) But it has been almost entirely lacking in true surprises. I knew the Tirol was going to be beautiful, I knew that Dachau was going to be difficult, I even sort of knew that Salzburg was going to be the black hole of the trip.

I didn’t know Budapest was going to be … well, this.

Harsh admission time, Gang, but I was a little scared of Budapest. I don’t speak the language, and it’s unlike anything I do speak, or even understand in an Arizona Spanglish sort of way. You can’t suss out words like you can in any of the Romance languages, where etymology is king and a good basis in Latin will take you far. I’ve heard terrible things about Budapest, about scams and pickpockets, some of it on this trip, from travelers in other cities. It’s an Eastern European city for crissakes, and I’ve heard stories about that too. (Even read a few in my former line of work.)

Budapest is, simply, amazing.

Matthias Church in the old Medieval City
 

It’s not just pretty, I mean we have seen pretty. It has a level of charm and beauty I don’t think we’ve seen in a city thus far. It’s not just the spirit of the people (which is on display everywhere if you know where to look) and it’s not just the proud and determined history of the place. You can’t take any of that as a single piece. It all just fits together and makes this amazing (I’m really too tired to come up with a better word) city that I’m so glad we came to visit.

Today we took the first of our two private tours in Hungary with our guide Agnes and our driver Zoltan. One of the reasons we went with this group of tour guides is that they provide a car and driver, so the guide can do the guiding and not have to pay attention to traffic or spend time trying to park.

Jim and I had done some reading on Hungarian history before the tour (ok over breakfast today, it was before, it counts!) and Agnes really knew her stuff. She told us about the first nomadic tribes to settle in the area, and the influence of the church over the formation of the country. From the Romans to the Turks to the Hapsburgs, and then the Nazis and Soviets, Hungary as an entity hasn’t had all that long to figure out who and what it is and what it’s going to be. The place has hardly ever known freedom.

I love this statue. This statue is dedicated to the anonymous monk (it’s assumed he was a monk) who wrote the first history of the region. It was in Latin (hence the monk theory, only monks back then knew how to write) and found in the National Archives. Generally it’s believed to be a lot of fable and not a lot of fact, but I love that the city felt the need to honor someone who will forever remain unknown, and I adore the statue. My crappy pictures don’t do it justice, and I couldn’t effectively tell you how I felt looking at it knowing it honors a man whose work will stand forever in this country but whose name will never be remembered.

The changing of the guard at the presidential palace

 

The public Széchenyi Thermal Bath, where much of the city takes in the waters, with 15 indoor pools, 3 outdoor pools and a bunch of saunas, steam rooms and treatment rooms. One of the outdoor pools has stand up chess tables in it and it works much like the chess tables at a park, only in hot water.

I could (and might tomorrow) prattle on at length about this city’s incredible rebirth from communist rule, and it’s resiliency. And I could (and may yet) prattle on about its artistic and cultural heritage, about the effect of Hapsburg rule on a society of engineers and thinkers. But instead I am going to sign off for the night only saying that while Munich is my first love, I believe Budapest will be the most enduring.

 

Secret message for Johnathan:

Tell your nephew he was absolutely right. About all of it. Absolutely 100% without a doubt right, and we thank him from the bottom of our very tired traveling souls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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23Sep / 2014

Taking Salzburg with a Grain of Salz

 

Ok so fair warning, Gang. The hotel we were in in Salzburg was a dump with no climate control and very bad beds so I haven’t slept in three days. We spent six hours on a train today and just had dinner (at which I had wine) and the lavishly amazing Hotel Kempinski Corvinus sent a bottle of sparkling wine up to our room (when they heard they were the last stop on our four year delayed honeymoon tour) which I am now drinking.

Don’t expect high poetry. Hell, don’t even expect punctuation.

So I was trying to decide which picture to use for my “headline” that best expresses Salzburg and our last day there and it came down to these two:

There you go, Salzburg in a nutshell.

I wanted to like Salzburg more than I did. In the interests of complete honesty, this may have had something to do with the lousy weather (the sun never shone on Salzburg, not once) and the horrible hotel (that probably would have been less horrible if all the other places we stayed weren’t so wonderfully un-horrible) than it did the charms of Salzburg itself but looking back over the whole trip so far, I just can’t recommend the city. The Salzkammergut? Heck yeah. The Tirol? Of course, if you promise to stay at Gasthof Badl. The rest of Austria? Probably so. But unless you really like Mozart, really like the Sound of Music (and the local Salzburgers don’t get the hype. The VonTrapp family didn’t escape Salzburg in the night, they took a train to Italy like most rich folks did to escape the Nazis) or have some form of Salzheimers (credit to Jim for that one) maybe you give it a wide berth.

 

Or do what we did, and have some Schnapps.

 

Mirabell Gardens. The attached palace is used for Mozart concerts.

 

We walked around Salzburg in the rain most of the day, taking another one of Rick Steves audio walking tours that we downloaded to our phones. It gave another good overview of the city and it’s political and historical heritage, and as with all Rick Steves tours, was heavy on the churches. Or as Jim put it “Kirche, Kirche, Kirche, Kirche, Biergarten, Kirche.” He’s pretty funny after two beers and a glass of Schnapps.

That was pretty cool. The statue in front of the church is situated so that if you stand in the center of the archway leading into the square it looks like Mary is being crowned by the two cherubs on the facade of the Cathedral. Thanks Rick Steves!

It was Jim who noticed that the stumbling stones we learned about in Berlin were here in Salzburg too (we also saw some in Munich, and in Hall in Tirol). These were outside St Peters church and indicate the deportation and murder of a priest and a monk. (The monk, Jakob’s, stone says he was “in resistance” working against the Nazis when he was deported to KZ-Ravensbruck.)

But if you ask Jim, the best thing about Salzburg was this:

Those are OBB employees linking up the parts of Railjet 63, or as Jim put it “the Salzburg Escape Express.” The Railjet service from Salzburg is actually made up of a train from Munich and one from Zurich which are linked up in Salzburg and then travel together as far as Vienna. Then they are split again and the second train continues on to Budapest.

It was really cool to watch the two trains link up together, and the whole Railjet trip was the nicest high speed rail experience we had. The first class cabin was comfortable, and the service attentive, we had free internet for the Austrian legs, and the food was really good.

 

Jim’s tikka masala and another Zugbier! I had a sandwich that was not as photogenic.

We are in Budapest now, enjoying the luxury of what is by far the nicest hotel we have stayed at (this was intentional as Budapest is our last stop.). Tomorrow we have an eight hour private tour with a local guide that should take us through most of the city highlights. We are looking forward to getting out and seeing this beautiful, historic city.

More tomorrow, live from Budapest!

 

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