There are a number of reasons for the extended silence on this frequency.
First: most, if not all Internet access points in Central Europe we found were unwilling to permit me to use this laptop to connect to their system. As a result, blog entries and photos were trapped on my hard drive like flies in amber. Our hotel in Prague offered free 'net access, but in a room the size of a phone booth that contained only a keyboard and monitor -- the rest of the computer was locked away from prying eyes.
Additionally: there has been much to see, but little to relate. Life in Europe is very similar to life in the US -- people conduct their affairs in offices, apartments, private homes. It's been hard for me to get a sense of the continent and its human rhythms.
In Asia, almost every aspect of life was on display to anyone who cared to look. I'm not romanticizing the poverty and deprivation we observed, but it was fascinating to see people living their lives entirely in the open. Work didn't take place in cubicles, but in fields, stalls and paddies. Water wasn't brought home in recyclable, collapsible plastic bottles, but often in earthen jugs or oversize buckets.
Julie opened the door wide enough for us to see a slice of German life in Hamburg. I left with a definite sense of place, but also with false expectations about what I'd be able to observe in our next two stops: the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Prague
We'd intended to see my friend Ray in Prague, but it was not to be. Ray decamped San Francisco after the dot-com bubble popped so messily, ensconcing himself in a gorgeous and inexpensive city. He teaches English, and so he's now enjoying his summer vacation, traveling. From Hamburg, we'd made vague plans to connect while he was home between jaunts, but when I called his mobile last weekend, he was off in sunny Italy. I'm sorry we missed him.
Prague was an unexpected delight. A few of my peers lived there after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, so I'd heard a few anecdotes about how inexpensive and beautiful the city was. Still, I was expecting to see a place that was still scrubbing off the grime of Soviet occupation -- not an Art Nouveau showcase with lovingly detailed architecture, camera-heavy tourists and veritable Bohemian cafes.
We spent two nights and two days in Prague, creating itineraries that suited our respective moods and levels of energy. Liz caught the cold I'd nursed throughout Germany, so we took it fairly easy. Riding trams and walking leisurely, we ambled around the city's old and new quarters.
Guided less by travel guides and more by a desire to see, we largely wandered through Prague without intent. We'd turn a corner and find ourselves before the elaborate Municipal Hall with its copper dome, or caught up in the hive-like pedestrian mall of Wenceslas Square. One afternoon, without even meaning to, we ended up at the elaborate 15th century Astronomical Clock. I couldn't tell what time it was, but I made damn sure to take a photo.
The high concentration of bookstores, museums and public art installations confirmed what we'd read -- Prague is a city with a strong literary and artistic tradition.
History rubs right up against the burgeoning free market, however. We walked past Franz Kafka's house and paid for the privilege. His home was along our last stop after our tour of the Prague Castle in a narrow, crowded alley called the "Golden Walk." The street was cozy but kitschy, lined with entrepreneurs who offered to lighten our pockets as we descended from the castle mount to the riverside.
After our inspection of Prague's castle, we waited out a downpour in the original Pilsner Urquell restaurant (woot!) before returning to our hotel to retrieve our luggage. Luckily, we'd given ourself plenty of time to arrive -- there are at least three international train stations in Prague, and we were at the wrong one. A short bus trip and a metro ride later, all was right again.
Buda and Pest
We left for Budapest on a evening train, arriving in Hungary on a gray morning that promised rain. Although we'd slept on the train, it wasn't exactly restful. It was hard to get into a deep REM cycle, knowing that we'd be interrupted every few hours for border checks in Slovakia and Hungary. When we arrived, the tourist office at the train station gave us the number of a bus that would take us to the outlying district where our hotel was to be found. We also received a tourist map touting strip clubs, youth hostels, and the Sziget music festival -- a weeklong party on a muddy island in the middle of the not-so-blue Danube.
Budapest is two cities in one. Buda is on the west side of the river, and Pest is on the east bank. We were booked into a hotel in a suburban conclave in east Pest.
Sadly, it was located slightly off the map, so we meandered in a light drizzle for several blocks after my travel partner was able to extract more precise directions from our bus driver. After checking in, I lay exhausted on the bed and tried to make friends with my lower back while she explored the neighborhood for beverages and snacks. After a night of righteous sleep and a continental breakfast, we caught a bus downtown to Andrassy utca, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The broad avenue didn't receive this designation due to an ancient temple or a wonder of nature, but because Budapest's belle epoque aesthetics are still in full force. Strolling down Andrassy is a peep backwards into a time when offices, shopping arcades and apartment buildings were expected to be as beautiful as they were useful. For a city that chafed on the Soviets' leash for a few generations, it managed to retain a good bit of its character.
(I read in this morning's International Herald Tribune that the newest addition to the Las Vegas skyline will be an 80-story pink and black structure "designed" by Ivana Trump. It discomfits me that Americans build things with the full knowledge that we'll tear them down when they're no longer fashionable.)
We stopped for lunch along Andrassy -- Liz was served an enormous bowl of spicy, rich soup, while I was presented with a grilled sandwich that was large enough to have petitioned for membership in the EU. If I hadn't eaten it, that is.
Finishing our promenade at Heroes' Square, we hopped aboard the Metro and crossed into Buda, emerging at the base of a slope that led to the capital's colossal castle. We hopped aboard a bus with a castle logo on its LED display and chugged uphill until we were deposited at a spot that looked out over Pest, the Danube and its environs. Simply stunning.
We wandered the castle complex for hours. There was plenty to see, as Hungary's royalty had built the place out well enough to contain everything they might need -- without ever having to go downhill and mix with the commoners. Mattius' Cathedral, the palace grounds and the village that sprung up around the area are all well-preserved, or are undergoing reconstruction. The great hall in the palace has steps that are wide enough to accommodate a horse and rider -- apparently, merchants would set up an indoor market there for the hoi polloi, back in the day.
As the sun fell and the clouds drew in, Liz talked me into taking a tour of Mattius' Cathedral. Normally, I'm not engaged by ornate churches. I'm not a religious person, and I don't understand why elaborate structures that absorbed so many resources can bring you closer to the Creator.
Once inside, I softened my stance. Cathedrals were islands of beauty and solemnity in an otherwise uncomfortable world where life was short and cheap. If you wanted to visit a contemplative, beautiful place in the 16th century, you wouldn't go to a museum or an art gallery -- you'd go to a church. The artisans who hewed gargoyles from stone, painted elaborate friezes on walls and ceilings and carved timber into pews and altars achieved something truly awesome and enduring, even if it did take them 400 years to wrap up the project.
The next morning, we checked out and made our way to the train station, yet another product of architecture's golden age where form met function and became fast friends. The building was topped with statuary and symbols that were unfamiliar, but I was clearly able to pick out James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, in his perch atop a portico. Credit where credit is due.
The station was crowded with hippie kids, many still with the mud from the music festival caking their bell-bottoms. They sacked out in piles of people and rucksacks swilling cheap beer and nursing hangovers, many still wearing their green wristbands that got them into the show. More than a few couples who'd clearly, um, connected in a deep and meaningful way were saying their languorous, passionate goodbyes on the platforms.
Many of them were on our train when we pulled out hours later, heading for Paris via Vienna. We'd been told by the Euraide office in Berlin (more on them later...) that our sleeper cars would be attached when we stopped in Austria. Confusion reigned as engineers scuttled about under the train and conductors met all requests for information with vague hand gestures that conveyed little information.
All the while, the Sziget crowd was whooping it up on the platform, gulping wine from bottles, a few literally sitting on cases of beer. With only a few minutes to spare, we determined (hell, intuited) that we were to change trains in Vienna so we could make it to Paris via Zurich. In retrospect, the conductors were probably grumpy after conveying scores of party kids over the rails. I can only imagine the mess they left behind.
We settled into our sleeper compartment with a massive sense of relief. We'd found our berth, and we were free of the vexatious crowd of young'uns who seemed intent on drinking and yelling. And then, drinking some more. I was never that young, and if I was, I apologize.
The train shuddered into motion, and Liz cocked her head to one side and furrowed her brow.
"Do you hear that?" she asked incredulously.
As the train picked up speed, I could still hear the bacchanalian chorus a few cars down. After a minute or two, wheels on rails drowned them out, and we settled in with the bag of books we'd picked up in Prague.
Despite the "help" we got from Euraide, we're now in the City of Light, sur le Rive Gauche, exactement. I've never had a chance to practice my French outside a classroom, but I'm sure it'll get a good workout before we're off to Spain and points south. After that, it'll be Liz's show, linguistically.
Until then, I bid you adieu.
Posted by Walter at August 18, 2005 05:56 PM