Down Time

Sorry for those that have been avidly watching this blog looking for updates and not finding any. I've been having some down time for the past three weeks and as a consequence, there's not much to report. This will probably be the last post for a bit seeing as I head back to Jordan in three days time and from then on I have no idea when I'll see a computer again. I might get luckily and have the chance to use one every week or I might need to wait until the mid-dig break, which well be a month in. So check back, but don't necessarily expect anything.

To get you caught up on things:

Em left as originally planned by heading to the Krakow airport via a train from downtown. From there things didn't go quite as planned. Somewhere along the way, both Em and myself, caught some wired virus and it either was fast acting or incubated for a bit and then hit all at once, because about the same time we both got really ill. The only difference, was by this time I'd made it comfortably back to my second family and Em, being not so fortunate, was five hours from hoping a plane out of Dublin for the lovely States. Apparently she worried the good old airline folks so much that they sent her to the doc's, which in turn caused her to miss her flight. This led to her being trapped in the airport for two days. Apparently, there aren't that many flights that leave from Dublin to LA during the course of a week. Em said that it was like the Tom Hanks film, The Terminal, where she wasn't allowed to leave and therefore set up shop in a corner of the terminal and proceeded to live there for her tenure. I wish I could have seen the looks on everyone's faces as they tried to figure out why she was there day after day. For anyone that didn't get past the whole illness thing, don't worry...it went away eventually and we are both back to our normal selves. By the way, Em did eventually make it home and is not still living at the Dublin airport.

I am currently in residence at my second family's home in Prague, CZ, and have reclaimed my old bedroom and role as adopted daughter. It's nice to have some down time after traveling for a bit. I think it helps to re-charge the batteries so that you can go from place to place again for another bit of time. And the free food, lodging, laundry, etc. aren't bad perks either :~)

For the most part, I have been prowling the downtown streets of Prague and creating a well worn path down most of the tourist routes. I love Old Prague and therefore I tend to migrate there. My routine has come down to waking late, chilling at the house for a bit and then making my way to the center of the city. Usually I don't have any real plans, although I have managed to hit up quite a few art shows and I have seen pretty much every English language film that has come out here in the past month. I've also been on the search for the best tea house. Prague is home to a multitude of tea houses and since I can't remember where the one's that I loved eight years ago are, I've been on a quest to find new ones that are equally as good as those from my memories. This quest has led to many enjoyable hours reading and sampling tea.

There are a few days when I have actually gone out with various members of "my family" and that's helped to break up the monotony of routine. The first weekend that I was here, I accompanied my host parents to a training weekend for them and their three Czechloslavakian Wolfdogs. Basically this was 15 people or so and twice as many dogs all gathered at an old children's camp in the middle of the country somewhere; drinking, eating, and training. As much as I love animals and think having a trained dog that is very protective of you and listens and all that good stuff, dog training is one of the most boring things I have ever been to. I think this is even more boring than when I went to the dog competitions eight years ago, but that could just because those only lasted a few hours, where as this was a whole weekend. I think that I'll stick with my original love, and get a cat when I get a real place. Much easier to deal with.

I finally meet back up with my host sister, Petra, and we seem to be hitting it off much better this time around. There isn't the animosity that there was eight years ago when I was the new big sister that she was weary of. It's nice cause now we actually get along some and every once in a while I have someone to tool around the city with. The other night we went on a hunt for an allusive play that one of her friends was putting on. The problem is that Petra never got really good directions to where this play was to be held and therefore, we spent an hour running around the woods looking for something that everyone we asked about it assured us didn't exist. By a fluke, I found the place just as everyone was leaving. So we missed the play, but the good thing is that now she knows where to go there next time someone mentions this place. Besides trying to find practically fictious places is almost more fun than going to a play that you can't understand anyways due to a language barrier.

So those are soon of the highlights of the last three weeks and a little recap of what I've been up to. I know it's not as exciting as some of the other 30 entry, but what can I tell you, my life is not always going to be one exciting thing after the next. I hope this will tied you over for a bit and that all is well in the individual worlds that you all inhabit. That's all for now.

End of a Chapter

So this blog marks the end of a chapter in my "Exploration to Find Self." Today, Em went home (well, to the airport where she catches a plane to Dublin and then has a 12 hour lay-over and then catches a plane to LA) and with her departure the end of our little romp through the Middle East and Eastern Europe has arrived. This entry should bring you up to date with the intervening time between Hungary and Poland.

Praha..Prag...Praga...Prague
Prague, my second home...literally. I used to live here for those that didn't know. I effectively ran away from home when I was sixteen under the guise of studying abroad for a year, and this is where I was placed. So when Em and I decided to skip Greece and head to Eastern Europe, it was with all intensive purposes for the point of coming back here and introducing this city and my Czech family to Em.

We hopped a ten hour train from Budapest and arrived in Prague in the evening. Stepping off the platform, I was nervous because I was afraid that I wouldn't remember what my host father looked like or be able to talk to my host family or any of a hundred other things that could possibly go wrong for it's been eight years since I was last here. Thanks to the ever present dogs that my host family is so fond of and to Em who can talk bullshit for hours if awkward pauses develop, none of the foreseen tragedies occurred. My host father arrived with one of his three Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs (a cross between a German Shepard and a wolf), making him easy to recognize even though I knew him instantly. Em helped break the ice by babbling incessantly until I could think of something meaningful to say and all and all it was an easy transition back into the roll of second daughter (Petra is the family's real daughter).

Jana, my host mother, was happy to see us and started mothering with food the minute we walked in the door. It was as if I'd never gone home and there hadn't been an eight year gap since I last saw them. The funny thing is that this time around, everyone speaks to me only in Czech. When I was last here I had to fight tooth and nail to get people to speak to me in Czech and now that's all they do and they assume that I understand everything. Using my enhanced vocabulary of a three year old, I am doing quite well expressing myself with the same 8 or 10 phrases, but it's all coming back and thus things are well.

The first day, Pavel and Jana accompanied Em and I to the city. We walked all around downtown, the Old Square, Old Town, and Prague Castle. I made Em stand with the other 2000 tourist and watch the giant clock in Old Town Square. This clock was built in the 15th century and still works using its original parts (no metal I believe). Every hour on the hour, there are two windows that open and the 12 Apostles go around them while a skeleton pulls a bell. It sounds a lot more magical than it really is and Em's response was: "That's it? You had me believing that it was something cool!" What can I say? It's the fact that it's an antique that's fascinating.

Being back in Prague was interesting. I had all of these images of what I remembered it being like and the reality of present-day Prague doesn't measure up. Some would say that's because I've evolved or changed over the years or that when I last was here I viewed everything through child-like eyes, but I don't think that's it entirely. When I was last here, most of the world had never heard of the Czech Republic or even of Prague. It was a little unknown country, hardly touched by the disastrous world of consumer tourism. Now it's a hub of tourism - a "Top Ten" getaway destination. Instead of people saying "What's Prague? Where's that?" they say: "You've never been to Prague? What's the matter with you? It's a must see place!"

Tourism, although a great thing for the economy; is a great way to destroy personality and uniqueness. Many of the places, foods, attractions, etc. that I'd been babbling to Em about for weeks were either missing, changed for the worse, or way too expensive (a decline in the value of the American dollar and popularity have made this city quite pricey). Just as an example, I wanted to take Em to Golden Lane at the Prague Castle. This is the little street where all of the shops have doors that are about three feet high and you have to duck to get into them and all the buildings are painted different colors. Now, to visit this 200m long stretch, it cost you $5. What's up with that? They've made everything into an attraction and it makes it a lot harder to just go meandering and visually sightsee.

Don't take all of this the wrong way, Prague is still a great place and I still love it, it's just that it has changed and in my opinion, not for the better. If I had come here for the first time ever now, I wouldn't be any the wiser to how things used to be and would have been quite pleased with what I found. The same small cobblestone streets and shops crammed into nooks, the same hidden away tea shops, the same fired cheese that's terrible for the body but so good for the taste buds, the same great language, the same beautiful scenery; it's all still there, you just need to look harder to find it.

We were in Prague and the CZ for five days. In that time we toured many of my old haunts and chilled with the family. My old host grandparents and cousin came over to visit and say hi. Everyone looked the same as they did 8 years ago and everyone expressed the idea that I stay forever and not go back home. I think that is taking it a bit far, but I caved in to staying for a week or two of my in-between Em going home and me going to Jordan time. It'll be nice to have a home base for a bit and just relax, but that is a story for another day and another entry.

I made sure to take Em to Karlstejn, which is the most infamous castle in the Czech Republic. It's also the one most nicely preserved and easiest to get to for a day trip. The Castle, like many others in Europe, is set above a town and incorporated as part of that town. The Town of Karlstejn is also where I can purchase my much loved honey wine. Or it used to be. They still sell it, but it was hard to find what I was looking for as it is no longer as prevalent as it used to be. After a little scouraging around, I came out triumphant and Em and I cracked open our reward on the train home.

As our days started to dwindling and we realized that Em would be heading home soon, we said goodbye to Prague - her for the foreseeable future and me for a few days - and set out for Krakow, Poland.

Krakow
Krakow is considered to be the home of Jewish Europe. Before World War II and as a consequence the War, this city was a major hub of Jewish activity. Now, it is a major tourist destination and a great place from which to day trip to other places. This is also the last stop on Em and Robby's Summer 2006 Whrilwind Adventure...sniffle, sniffle.

The first day that we were in Krakow, we decided to take in the town and to see the much famed Jewish quarter. Being the type of people that we are, we got lost on purpose and wandered the streets going in approximately the correct direction until we stumbled upon what we sought. The Jewish Quarter is in a section of town, Kazimierz, that was once its own city. The Krakow Jews were transferred to Kazimierz in 1495 by royal decree of King Jan I Olbracht and there made a bustling Jewish quarter that became a major center for the Jewish Diaspora over the next three centuries. Until the Nazi invasion during World War II, Kazimierz, was a safe haven for persecuted Jews from the rest of Europe.

We toured the streets taking in the architecture and trying to reconstruct what it used to be like. We visited a few synagogues and went to the Old Jewish cemetery. The Cemetery is interesting in that many of the tombs overlap one another and the earth has pushed parts of graves that were once underground back into the sunlight. Also of note, there is a wall that completely surrounds the Cemetery from the street and this wall is made (at least the inside portion), from headstones. Em and I weren't sure whether this was to honor tombs that may have been destroyed during the Holocaust or whether there were actual tombs within the wall. I think that it is a memorial of some sort as many of the headstones in the wall are mere fragments.

Are second day had us on a local bus to Auschwitz, (in Polish the town is called Oswiecim). Many might wonder why two Jewish girls would be interested in going to a site where there was a great injustice done to their people, but I think that this is no different than Christians who search out the spot where Jesus was crucified. As the famous quote goes, "It is better to know one's history or else we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past" or something along those lines. Human beings as a whole are a culture that is drawn, some knowingly and some cluelessly, towards death, destruction, and cruelty. Scenes or death and torture are constantly bombarding the average person as they turn on the television and watch there favorite drama or even the everyday news. Crucifixion icons are seen in every Church. Action blockblusters sell out theaters. And the morbidly curious flock to scenes of horrible cruelty. That is the way of human nature, and being humans ourselves, Em and I were drawn to this place haunted with the spirits of a million and a half dead.

If one didn't know the terrible deeds that had taken place at Auschwitz and Birkenau, and they had just stumbled upon these sites, they might think that they'd walked into a summer camp. If one were to ignore the twin rows of electrified barbed wire, then this place would look like any other neatly ordered camp or school. There are rows of buildings interspersed with grass and tree lined streets. It's only when you take in the guard towers and the fences or read the signs that tell what used to take place where you're standing, do you feel that you really are standing in one of the World's most heinous prisons.

Em and I opted to take the guided tour through the two camps, but I think that it would have been better to have taken in the history at our own pace and to have gone without a group. Many of the buildings are as they were when built and all that's been changed is that the paint has been touched up and the evidence removed or made into more eye-catching and thought-provoking displays. I'm glad that we went, but I don't feel that I can express what the place is like. If you have the chance, go and visit. See the cruelty of mankind at it's best and then strive to make sure that we never again see it.

Knowing that visiting Auschwitz would be depressing, we made plans to head to Zakopane the next day. Zakopane is advertised as the "Winter City of Poland." It is the biggest winter resort town in Europe north of the Alps, and doesn't do too badly in the summer either. It was like a typical snow town, with a cute main street lined with shops selling winter apparel, pubs, restaurants, and street vendors. Almost every ten feet, there were people selling what we at first believed was bread. This "bread" turned out to be the local snack, oscypek, a piece of smoked sheep cheese. The smoked flavor is actually quite good and taste kind of meaty. The un-smoked kind though were a little too salty for our tastes.

We spent the day poking around in the different shops and eating oscypek, bbq, and waffles with whipped cream and raspberry sauce. Unfortunately we never made it up the mountain where there is great hiking and more sights to see. I think that we really need a minimum of two, if not three, days to really see this town and its surrounding wilderness.

Day four in Krakow, today. The last day of Em and my's journal together and our last day in the city. Since we hadn't gotten to see the Krakow Castle on our first day, we decided to visit it today. Being a giant tourist hub, the Castle was broken into many different parts, all charging various admissions. We arrived later in the morning and some of the places that we'd wanted to go see were sold out for the day. So we visited the Wawel exhibit and the State Rooms.

The Wawel exhibit is a small archaeological exhibit that is built around the ruins of the Castle foundations. There is a walkway that allows one to walk around these ruins while viewing a few artifacts in display cases. It was a nice exhibit, but could have been greatly enhanced with the aid of English translations and more things to see.

The State Rooms are where members of State used to live. These are richly decorated in tapestries and reliefs that depict royal people and Biblical scenes. Yet again, mankind' fascination with death is shone, as many of the rooms show battle scenes, the Crucifixion of Christ and the world dying in the Great Flood.

To commemorate our last hours together, we found, by chance, a tea shop and had one last cup of tea together. Then it was a race back to the hostel to grab gear and a speed walk to the train station. Em boarded the train that would take her to the airport and after a quick hug, she was gone.

And thus ends this chapter. Now I have 19 days time for which I know not what I will be doing. I will start by returning to Prague and my host family, but I don't know how long I will stay. Maybe a few days, maybe all 19. Stay tuned for more updates, but be aware that that they may be shorter, farther between, and far less interesting as there might not be much new to say. Thanks for staying with me this far.

Hungary

So for those that have patiently been waiting for an update and an explanation for the change in travel plans, this is the blog entry for you.

I will address the second issue first since it is the shorter one to explain. First off, the war in Israel caused general paranoia among friends and family, all fearing for our safety if we were to return there for Em to fly home and me to chill out for a month, and an increase in the cost of flights terminating there. Secondly, touring through the Middle East and viewing many wonderful and fascination Roman, Egyptian, and Byzantine ruins, we decided that we'd both reached the point where looking at similar ruins would be wasted on us as we'd reached our current capacity for such things. This fear of apathy towards things that we would normally have loved, plus the idea that we really weren't that far from Eastern Europe and thus my host family of old (in Prague), and the happy delusion that it would cost the same to travel in Eastern Europe for 12 days as to go to Greece for 7, led us to the logical conclusion that we should change routes at the drop of a hat and explore some familiar and some new sites. Thus the reason for our abrupt, although maybe not completely unforeseen, change of course.

Now to the first issue above, our visit to Hungary.

The trip to Hungary was almost as exciting as Hungary itself. After our eight hour layover in Istanbul, we boarded a Metro bus and headed out of country. Thinking that this was one of the nice plush, accommodating buses that we'd become used to while traveling in the Western part of Turkey, we were sorely disappointed to find that this bus wasn't quite up to par. They'd decided to crowd a few more seats onto the bus when constructing it, thus successfully creating a cramped atmosphere. Then a nice elderly couple decided to sit behind us and make sure that we couldn't put the seat backs back. Everything Em tried to more her seat back, the grandpa would growl at her. It was really funny cause she kept looking at me for help. What we ended up doing was that peeking through the seat to see when gramps didn't have his knees in the seat back and then moved the seat back inch my inch so that he wouldn't notice. This worked until we got off the bus for bathroom breaks or the boarder check, only to realize that the seat was back in it's up-right position and our little battle of wills would resume once again.

The border check was fun too cause we were there for three hours and people would get off and on randomly and no one told us anything so we didn't know what we were supposed to do. Eventually we found that we were the only people left on the bus except for the bus driver and decided that maybe it was time to abandon ship . This was good cause we next had to wait in line to hand over passports. The best part was that I handed mine over a person or two in front of Em and when Em handed hers over the guy totally did a double take and was like, "Didn't I just receive this?" I think that was the highlight of waiting unknowingly for three hours at a boarder at 2 in the morning.

When we where in Turkey, we had been told that when we finally made it to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, we were to wait for a certain bus company to open to get a ticket to Budapest, our real destination. After two hours of waiting for this company to open for business, we found out that they didn't actually go were we needed. So we ran around all the other companies asking, only to find out that one we'd asked a hour previously, had found some seats, but that they only accepted their currency. Here, we had another problem, tickets were available, but we only had US dollars and our friend only had Euros; the ATM wouldn't accept anyone's cards and the one change place that we could find would have stolen about $50 to change the cash. So we ran around like headless chickens and finally found a slightly less devastating exchange rate at the train station. Running back to grab the tickets, the unhappy bus driver threw our bags under the bus, pushed us aboard and drove away.

The 12 hour bus ride was for the most part uneventful, except for almost getting left behind at the gas station cause we were a few minutes late getting back on. This led to the couple behind us reminding us the we had fifteen minutes only at all further rest stops. Also, there was a comedic point where Em really needed to pee and all she had was 20 Bulgarian something or others, some Israeli money, some American, a Euro, and some Turkish, when all she needed was 5 Serbian or so. It was hilarious cause the bathroom lady wouldn't accept anything that we had and wanted us to change the Bulgarian to Serbian at a big loss just so Em could go pee. Seeing as we were only driving through this country, that seemed like a ridiculous idea. Eventually the lady got the idea that Em would probably just pee right in front of the bathroom, and she let her go for free.

Tired after nearly two days on buses, we arrived in Budapest around 9pm and headed to the hostel. Our friend that was with us got money out of the ATM, but it was in such a large bill and we couldn't find anyone that would give us smaller amounts, we were forced to ride the Metro without a ticket. Eastern Europe relies upon honesty and heavy fines if caught without a ticket, on their public transportation, so stealing our way on wasn't that hard to do. Judge us as you will, but you'd do the same thing if it were late and you were tired and had a heavy pack on your back.

A Metro ride and a short walk alter lead us to our hostel, which turned out not to meet our expectations. The place smelled a might funny and everyone staying their was odd, I was half expecting to see sharp canine teeth, maybe it was just the lighting. Thinking that we'd only be in Budapest for two maybe three days and that we'd already paid a deposit, we said screw it and dropped our bags. As things tend to be, we stayed there three nights and then moved to a much nicer hostel where we'd actually been spending more time.

Being the good little walkers that we'd become, we spent a good deal of time outside enjoying the fresh air and learning all the different streets and alleyways of this magnificent city. We had thought that we'd found our favorite city after visiting Istanbul, but then we came here and realized this was really the best place. I can't even really begin to describe why this city is so great, but I think it partially has to do with the fact that it is old coupled with new; the people are friendly (well most anyways); there are cute cafes, shops, restaurants, bars, etc. littering the streets everywhere; everyone can mingle and blend in, thus making it easier to gain the full cultural experience as an insider rather than an outsider; you can walk the same streets over and over again and always find something that you missed the first time around; and that being there had such a serene, unhurried feel to it. I think this is partially why we ended up staying six days instead of our planned two or three.

Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest. The cities were united into one Capital city in 1873 and have been happily integrated ever since. Buda is the more woodsy, old world part of the city; while Pest is the continually expanding, fast paced, 21st century section. We stayed in Pest for the whole of our stay and enjoyed it very much as it was close to most of the main attractions and provided a plethora of things to do.

Most of our days were spent wandering the streets haphazardly without a real plan in mind. Sometimes it's nicer to get lost and then find your way back. That way you tend to find little jewels that you would never have seen by sticking to the main streets and having a singular destination in mind. I think that we must have walked 10 miles our first day and only seen about twenty different streets. We went up and down and up and down. It turned out that we concluded our day at the main train station, which was a good place to know as we were going to go there in a few days time.

Our first day in Budapest, we also visited the main Jewish Synagogue, which had a museum attached to it and a memorial art park. The art part was small, but contained within it a very unique sculpture that I liked immensely. It was a Weeping Willow tree made entirely from metal and containing the names of murdered Holocaust victims. I thought that this was a very poignant piece and very thought provoking. The museum was also well done with various different exhibits, one that combined perfume scents, photographs, and staged sets to recreate or maybe imitate ideas or social standards. It was nicely done and I think that many people that I know would have liked it.

On the following day we went to the main park and toured through Vajdahunyad Castle which really isn't a castle. It's really a collection of buildings that exemplify the different architectural styles of the country. Each building is purposely designed to express a type of architecture found elsewhere in Hungary. These buildings all serve different purposes, but most house museums or offices of sorts.

In addition to Vajdahunyad Castle, the park houses: sports fields, green lawns, boat and duck ponds, street performers, ice cream vendors, the Zoo, and the most noteworthy item, the Szechenyi Medicinal Bath. Hungary is known for two things above all others (at least that's what the inhabitants lead you to believe) its underground caverns, and the thermal baths. Both of these can be found in large quantities all through out the country, but there are a multitude of them in the capital as they provide a steady source of income (via tourist dollars). The thermal baths come from sulfuric springs deep in the ground that are taped into and then pumped up to man made baths. The Szechenyi Medicinal Bath, is the largest in Europe and most infamous in Budapest. It is feed by two different thermal springs, and contains some 15 or so different pools of varying temperatures. We were going to go enjoy an afternoon here, but decided that we would find a smaller, less notorious bath elsewhere.

While in the park, we took a few hours to pay a visit to the Zoo. I realize that Zoos are cruel in that they keep captive animals that would otherwise be happily living in the wild, but curiosity makes me happy that they exist. It's a sad dichotomy of mixed feelings. This zoo was neither the best nor the worst that I have ever seen, in that it didn't give the animals as much room as I'd have wished for them, but that it didn't forced them into too cramped of quarters either. The animals on display were interesting as there were many that Em and I hadn't seen before.

Our third day was the best in that we went Sandwiching. Which is not something erotic as many of you perverts out there might be thinking. Sandwiching is a term that means to go exploring underground caves and squish through small cracks and crevices. We'd found out about this the previous day and just had to sign up.

So at the appointed time we went to the appointed bus stop and systematically located all the other participants by the white vouchers that they clutched in their hands. There turned out to be about 20 of us (we were later broken up into three groups). Two city buses later and a trip to Buda and we arrived at the cavesite. Each person was nicely outfitted with their own mechanical (or prison, if you will) jumpsuit, a helmet, and a heat lamp. We then trekked across the street and followed Alice down the proverbial rabbit hole. The cave system that we were in was the second largest in the country at about 20km long. It used to be two separate systems, but someone knocked a wall down and they were joined. Our trip consisted of two and a half hours sliding, shimming, climbing, crawling, and laughing our way through a 700m loop of labyrinthed pathways. It was a blast. There was even a Pooh hole that we attempted to fit through. Only three of the girls in our group managed it as those of us with actual hips couldn't fit through. I think that this was one of the highlights of my entire trip.

The fourth day brought with it at trip to the Chinese market and the Grand Budapest Parade. The Chinese market was considered to be a stop for anyone looking to find weird olds and ends, the equivalent of a Flea market in the US. It sounded interesting so we headed there for a visit. What we found was mainly a clothes market, but it was fund to go through and look at everything for a bit.

We had extended our stay in the city mainly because the advertisements for the Parade made it sound like a can't miss event. Like many other over advertised events, this one didn't much live up to expectations. The first hour of the parade was happily spent watching costumed performers, martial arts competitors, balloon people and other fascinating things, but that hour gone, we were left with float after float of pre-adolescents in skimpy outfits houchy dancing to terrible house music, while hoards of pedestrians followed along beside each float. It was interesting to watch for a bit, but it never seemed to stop and eventually we just left.

Our fifth day in town was are last day there and as such we determined to see as much of the remainder of the city as we could. To help us out in this little endeavor, we rented some bright orange bicycles. These riding advertisement helped up to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Our first stop was to ride over to Margaret's Island, which is between Buda and Pest. The Island contains the Centennial Memorial, a Japanese garden, a Musical Fountain, several recreation facilities and Franciscan, and Dominican and Premonstratensian ruins from the Middle Ages. We didn't see all of this, but we did take a nice stroll through the park and managed to find the Church of Margaret, after whom the park is named. Another little oddity of the park is that everywhere you could rent a bicycle, but not just a normal two wheel one. You could rent bicycles that looked like cars or like trains, that had three wheels or five, that carried one person or five, that were made for children or families, etc. It was very cute.

Our stroll though town also brought us all around the lower part of Buda (not so much up into the green mountainous areas), and eventually down to the Buda Castle. By the time that we arrived here, we had just enough time to hike to the top and quickly ride across before needing to return our bikes. The Castle is like the one in Prague in that it is comprised of many different buildings that are hodge podged together and all house different things. It's like a little village complete with everything that it needs to function properly.

After returning the bikes, we hurriedly gathered our belongings and headed to the railway station where we had a night train to Eger, our home for the next four days. Trying to catch our train turned out to be harder than we originally thought in that we waited for an hour on the wrong platform for the one that was arriving from Eger instead of headed there because we couldn't read the board and just saw the name. If I hadn't asked the information what was going on, we would have missed the actual train that we needed. We ended up having to run to get to it when we realized our mistake.

So the hostel that we were booked to stay at, stated that their place was a mere 700m from the train station and easy to get too. The joys of backpacking are that things are never what you are led to believe. After walking in circles for 10 minutes or so looking for a phantom street, I asked so locals where we should be headed. The language barrier got us a pointed direction but little else to go on. Heading where steered we discovered ourselves to be in a residential area and as far as we could see, the middle of no where. A mile and a half walk later, we realized that we'd found our destination and that it wasn't so much a hostel as a University dorm that was renting out rooms. Too tired to argue for the night, we signed in and crashed early, vowing to leave the next day.

Bright and early, with only the overcast sky and some rain to greet us, we said goodbye to the creepy dorm and set off for the center of town and the hope of better accommodations. After aimless walking around and rejecting overpriced pensions, we found the tourist information office and ask for help. They so kindly directed us to another dorm, but one that turned out to be much nicer and two blocks from the center of town. Booking ourselves in for the remainder of our days there, we grabbed our swimming gear and headed to the Thermal baths. I'd been wanting to do this since coming to Hungary and was happy that the rain had finally let up for a bit.

The Eger thermal baths were nice in that they had about 10 different pools ranging from a normal swimming pool, to luke warm water, to a hot spring pool, to ones with water slides for kids or massage jets for everyone. It was nice and we spent the next four hours unwinding. I think I need to go back now...maybe I'll make a side trio on my way back to Istanbul.

Our second day in Eger was spent touring the town itself, which during the day is quite quaint. It contains it's own castle, a host of wineries, dainty little shops, and cute restaurants. Nighttime, though, and the city was like a horror film where the heroines wonder what's eaten the townsfolk and when it will come for them. The entire town seems to have disappeared in doors by 8pm. Except for some pubs, the entire town is closed up by 10pm and there aren't any people walking the streets. We were waiting for the vampires to come out, it seemed so much like a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Day three found us on a bus to Szilvasvarad, where lies the Bukk National Park. Being the kid at heart that I am , I forced Em to ride the little train with me up to the Veiled Falls. From there we hiked to a cave that once housed prehistoric men, but now only houses tourists and peddlers. On our way down we saw some other tourists headed on a branching path and decided to follow them. This led us on a two mile climb straight up the mountain. At one point we asked a couple were we were going on if we could take a look at their map. They gave us a quizzical look and let us, but not before asking what we were doing there without a map and just hiking haphazardly. We replied, "We're not really sure, just going for a walk." It turns out that the purpose for this great climb was to reach the highest peak in the park and a supposedly great view. The height of the peak I don't dispute, but the view I disagree with. After this arduous task, I had expected a magnificent vista. What I hot was a small field with a giant cross and no view at all. How's that for totally anti-climatic? So after a "What-the-fuck?" moment, we headed down a different way.

On our trek down, we ran into some Germans that kindly lent us their map to peruse and thought us as crazy as the Hungarian couple in hiking with no real direction. Our trip down involved many different trails, a few wrong turns, some off roading, and general craziness. We kept losing the path markers and then finding new ones and deciding to follows those instead. At one point we ended up following the rode for about 4 miles cause it started as the trail and when we lost the trail we decided that the rode would eventually lead us to town - which it did, many miles later.

All in all it was a very nice day. We even ran back into the Germans while waiting for the bus back to Eger and I think that they were glad to see us as they didn't have to worry that we'd died on the mountain somewhere like they believed we were going to.

The next day we rode the train back to Budapest and caught a subsequent on to Prague and the reunification of my second family. But that story and those adventures are for the next entry. I hope that this section of the book has satisfied your hunger for the time being. If you so feel like it drop me a line in the comments and let me know that you're all still reading this dialog.