Krakow, Poland

June 20, 2010
We apologize for the delay in posting again. Our trip has been thankfully and tiredly non-stop. Nonetheless, after Budapest we trained north to Krakow and visited our Texas frisbee friend Witty who is working a one year assignment for Shell. Thanks Witty!!!

These photos are a bit out of chronoligical order, but still enjoy!

Following our night of dancing and drinking, Cara and >I went to the market to use Witty's amazing kitchen for the first time. Breakfast goulash even Cookies would be proud of.

The local market with extremely cheap produce

Strawberries (Witty's favorite fruit) are in season and can be purchased for about 1 USD per pound

Dragon drain off of the church at Wawel Castle

Cara and I had an early morning hill workout before the tourist crowds came up the hill leading to Wawel Castle. This photo is taken in the courtyard of the castle.

The piece by piece church at Wawel Castle

A statue of our favorite Pol, Kosciuszko. The highest mountain in Australia is named after him and he also fought as a colonel in the American Revolutionary War.

Pope John Paul

Our first communist themed bar. The juxtaposition of young adults rocking out to 80's hair band music in a room full of communist posters is an experience.

A little break to enjoy what America has contributed to Krakow...Roosters, a knockoff of Hooters with American license plates all over the walls.

Hooray for cheap beer!

Massive wooden sculpture of the 12 apostles at St. Mary's Basilica located in the main square

St. Mary's Basilica

The outside of St. Mary's Basilica, also wear the bugler plays every hour.

Market Square, the biggest in central Europe

Our first experience of being in a European town with a massive amount of tourists.

'Milk Bars' are still around from the communist era. These restaurants do not serve alcohol, but instead provided a cheap meal to the workers. Now they are a great way to experience Polish food for very cheap. These are definitely not set up for tourists so thankfully a friendlz local translated the menu for us and helped us order. Unlike Spanish, we have had very little success guessing or figuring out food names.

Local student's art for sale.

An old gate which used to be part of the wall that protected the city

Bacon and Budgy Smugglers in Budapest

Doing the typical "backpacking" type of travel isn't really our cup of tea, jumping from hostel to hostel and, because of that, hanging out with people of every other possible nationality besides the one you are currently trying to explore in depth. Doesn't really make sense to me, and we were lucky enough in Budapest to be staying with Denes, an incredible host well versed in Hungarian culture, the provision of warm and comfy beds, and all things pork related.

Denes taking a shot of Palinka from the "Don't Mess with Texas" shotglass we brought him.

Our last few days in Budapest were full of exactly the type of travel that we love to do. Hanging with locals, learning about the endless and different perpectives of their culture and history from their perspective (not only the national museum's perspective), and reaching that sometimes elusive level of comfort and familiarity with a people and culture. Now, I'm fully aware that one week is nowhere near enough time to truly delve into a place or people, but we're on the fast track, and I think we did a pretty great job scratching the surface thanks to our hosts (Meetesh and Barbara, Denes, and Benedec, among others). Monday night ended with us hanging out with some of Denes' co-workers at the same make shift bar (basically an open plaza that serves alcohol from a stand) that we went to with Meetesh on our first night. This made for good people watching and quite a bit of Palinka tasting.

We spent Tuesday morning exploring the Hungarian National History Museum, a one stop shop for the official state story of Hungarian history. It included such historical bias as the period placards declaring 1900-1914, the "Happiest Time", A.K.A. "The Time Before We Got Screwed by the Treaty of Trianon and Lost Most of Our Land". That noted, we observed an undeniable pattern in the defensive position that most Hungarians take when talking about their history, and this was even reflected in the museum exhibits. The gist of the WWII exhibit section was essentially "The Time When We Were Forced to Decide Between Being Occupied by the Nazis or Winning Our Trianon Treaty Land Back". Now to be fair, both of those things were slight possibiities, and geographically they were in a pretty shitty place (although they've got nothing on shitty geographic luck during WWII compared to Poland, who resisted occupation on both sides), but still. But despite the defensive WWI and WWII exhibits, they had some excellent exhibits on Hungary during the Middle Ages and an impressive collection of Communist propaganda posters and paraphenelia.

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After the museum we ran a killer fartlek in the pouring rain and rewarded ourself by checking out another famous bath, the Gellart Baths, which proved, despite some pretty cool architecture, to be entirely underwhelming and overpriced. The "hot" pool was tepid at best, and there were not enough pot bellied old men in budgy smugglers (speedos) playing chess in the pool and drinking beer, as there were at Szechenyi to satisfy our curiosity.

We then met up with Denes, who had a sand volleyball tournament in an outlying suburb of Budapest, and we decided to come along and heckle him. Volleyball, both indoor and outdoor, is incredibly popular in Hungary, and Denes and his teammates have been playing together since college (15 years) in a compeitive city league. The highlight of this tournament was the huge pot of goulash being cooked over an open fire by 2 old Hungarian guys. It's the traditional way to cook goulash, and it was mind blowing.

Goulash simmering over an open fire.

We then made our way back to Denes' flat. He had a huge block of pork in his fridge, that I at one point attempted to eat thinking it was some crazy Euro cheese. Shudder. It's basically a block of fat, not much meat, similar to bacon with no real streaks of meat. He introduced us to another typcial Hungarian tradition of eating this chunk o' pork raw with just a piece of bread and raw onion. So after the traditional shot of Palinka (or two) we gorged ourselves on raw bacon for a good hour. I would like to say I felt guilty eating all this pork, but there wasn't a guilty bone in my body, and this brings us to another Hungarian tradition that I am determinded to participate at some point in my life.

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Once a year, duing the frigid Hugarian winter, Denes and a group of his friends drive to the country, to a "pork cutting". They eat lots of good food, take a few man shots of Palinka, and then ceremoniusly kill a pig with their bare hands. At first this sounds like some barbaric dude fest (which apparently it kind of is), yet this intrigues me greatly and makes tons of sense. I don't eat meat because the industry is so messed up, dirty, and far removed from the actual process of how animals should be raised and killed. This is exactly how I want to eat my meat, if I can manage to steel myself from all emotion and harden my heart enough to kill Babe, the star of my favorite movie.

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Maybe someday.

Szia from Hungary!

We've stayed busy exploring Budapest. We've been filling our days with wandering around, working out and training with the Hungarian National men's team (thanks to Meetesh and Denes), eating and drinking plenty, and watching World Cup games. I'll let the pictures (and silly videos!) do most of the talking.


Our shout out to all the happy cows and pigs in Europe. Mike is eating some kind of meaty, supposedly-but-not-really-Hungarian, meal at the Nagycsarnok Market. I had the goulas, a meaty tomato based stew...delicious! We've temporarily thrown vegeterianism out the window in the interests of experiencing the true cultural cuisine of Europe.

Party pic near the liberty bridge that crosses the Danube River and connects Buda on the west to Pest on the east.


Nagycsarnok Market, a huge indoor market on the banks of the Danube.


Szent Istvan (Saint Stephen's) Basilica, a roman Catholic church completed in 1905. Many historrians consider St. Stephen to be the first king of Hungary, after achieving independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1000 CE. He was most known for strengthening Christianity in the region and for acquiring the land that is now Transylvania (which until post WWI was Hunagrian land, along with parts of today's Slovakia). Today, Transylvania and Slovakia still have large numbers of ethnic Hungarians.


A look from the back up to the altar of St. Stephen. Similar to other Catholic churches of its size, there are pulpits further back so that the people in the back could hear the service as well. Also, we could not believe the size of the organ pipes.

A beautiful high dome dominates the center of the basilica and everything is bathed in gold. Goooooold.

St. Stephen at the altar. Someone mentioned that this is the only Roman Catholic church in the world that has someone besides Jesus at the altar, but that is uncited information. The mummified remains of St. Stephen's hand are housed at the church and available for viewing.

Video of St. Stephen's Basilica.



The Great Synagogue of Budapest, built in 1859. By area, it's the largest synagogue in the world! Temple Emanuel in NYC can seat more people, but this one is bigger by cubic meters. Amazingly it has served as a Jewish temple ever since it's opening (even though badly damaged during WWII) since it was located in the Jewish quarter of the city.



Mike admiring the inside of the Synagogue. Usually synagogues are not as ornate as this one, but the wealthier Hungarian Jews were already seen as outsiders, so they wanted to build a temple that would fit in with the local architecture and be respected by the Hungarians.

The inner courtyard of the temple was forced to be used as a cemetery, even though according to Jewish tradition cemeteries cannot be in such close proximity to a synagouge (so technically the Great Synagogue is not kosher). In the fall of 1844, the Hungarian fascist party (Arrow Cross) took over and started swiftly eradicating Jews from the Budapest ghetto to "work camps" or i some cases just killing them outright. The Jews that were left in the ghetto were forced to endure one of the coldest winters on record, so many died from lack of services and food. Since the ground was frozen, they could not bury the bodies of the dead, so they had to wait until the ground thawed in the spring. By that time, there were thousands of dead and upon Soviet "liberation" of Budapest in 1945, they buried the people in the courtyard of the temple.


A wall of the ghetto was left by the Soviets to memorialize the ghetto. It still has the barbed wire on top of it.


A view of Parliment from atop Castle Hill on the Buda side of the Danube.


Parliment is a beautiful building right on the Danube, and apparently the first building in continental Europe with "air conditioning" since the architects build special rooms in the basement to house large blocks of ice and a ventilation system that runs throughout the building.

View of Parliment from Castle Hill, near Matthias Church.

Széchenyi Chain Bridge was the first permanent bridge in Budapest, build in 1849. You can see the huge St. Stephen's Basilica dominating the skyline in the distance.


Meetesh and Denes demanded that we go to a very old (est. 1827!) little bakery (pekseg) called Ruszwurm for a Hungarian dessert called Kremes (pronounced Kremesh). You don't have to tell me twice to go eat dessert, so we hit it up on our time in Buda on the hill. It was mindblowing...basically a layer of two crispy wafers with rich creme (best compared to the custard of a creme brule, but much fluffier) in between. Aghhhhh...


A view of the Royal Palace from the Citadel, the highest hill on the Buda side.

Whit and Claire, this one is for you!


Another picture of Parliment, the Chain bridge, and the Danube from the Citadel.


Pedro, a frisbee friend we met on Friday while training with the Hungarian men's team, (Benedec is his real name) is a traditional Hungarian dancer and had a performance on Saturday night in a small village outside of Budapest. He was kind enough to invite us to go see the performance, which included his troop of adult dancers, and also performances from the little kids in the classes that they teach at the local dance school.


After the amazing performance, there was a party in the courtyard of the small village, and we ate Hungarian sausgae, dessert, and drank beer while the band continued to play and the audience danced. His family was incredibly welcoming and filled us in on all of the cultural and historical details of the dancing style. Then we watched U.S.A. play England in a basement bar in the village. Unfortunately, we didn't meet up with Meetesh like we were supposed to because he came down with a really bad fever.


Heroes Square, built to commemmorate the 1000th anniversary (in 1896) of the Magyar (Hungarian) conquest of the Carpathian Basin (area that is now Hungary) under Arpad.


The Szecsenyi Baths. Hungary is full of thermal baths! We spent a few hours rotating between the hot/cold/warm baths until we had shriveled up to half of our original size. Many of the baths have Turkish influenced architecture from when the Ottoman Empire ruled over Budapest (during the 16th and 17th centuries).


Party pic in front of the Parliment building. There was a marathon going on, so we cheered on the runners as we walked along the Danube.


We finished up the night by going for a jog on a beautiful park island in the middle of the Danube with Denes and his school friend Corine, grabbing a few beers, and throwing the frisbee in the middle of St. Stephen's Square in front of the Basilica. Beautiful!

A few more days in Budapest, and then we're off to Krakow to visit Witty!

Hungarian late night food, Langos (pronounced Long-goash)! It's a super fried piece of chewy bread with sour cream, garlic sauce, and cheese on it. All of Cara's favorite food groups!


Taking shots of Palinka with Meetesh and Denes, our hosts. Palinka is a local Hungarian digestive. It's traditionally taken upon the entry of a guest into a house, and before and after meals.


Playing with Danny, Meetesh and Barbara's son, before dinner.


Mill - Vienna Garden Restaurant near our hostel.

Arriving in Vienna!

Vienna and Budapest

Vienna welcomed us with blue skies and 80 degree weather. We arrived around 6pm, and after taking a short bus trip into the city we found our hostel (Hostel Ruthensteiner) with the help of a friendly local. After settling in we asked for a dinner recommendation from the hostel staff, which lead us to an Austrian restaurant settled in a beautful garden courtyard.

We will return to Vienna at the end of our trip to fly home, so we decided to spend just one quick day exploring before heading to Budapest. Our day involved a workout in the park, figuring out our train logistics, and taking a quick tour of the inner city of Vienna.

The inner city of Vienna has all the museums and historical buildings. The centerpiece is Stephansdom. It was built in the 13th century is huge and intricately designed. We then walked around a bit before heading to catch our train to Budapest. We are excited to revisit Vienna at the end of our trip.

After a 3 hour train ride, we were greeted at the train station by the awesome smiling faces of Meetesh of Danny. While they were happy to see us, we later learned that Danny loves trains and Daddy also bought him an ice cream. The later lead to an awesome amount of energy to run off in the apartment before dinner.

After a welcoming shot of Palinka, we had a delicious meal of paprika mushroom and pasta that Barbara prepared. Paprika is the word for pepper (any pepper, similar to chile for us), and peppers and the traditional spice paprika that we are familiar with is used in many Hungarian dishes. Following dinner Meetesh drove us to Denes's (pronounced 'Day-nesh') house. Denes is a long time frisbee friend of Barbara and plays on Meetesh's team. His apartment is located in the southern central part of Pest and very close to the action.

We got to know Denes over another two rounds of Palinka shots followed by a beer for me and wine with sparkling water for Cara and Denes. After our starter drinks we made our way into the city to have a few more beers and hang out. We started at a huge outdoor square which is a massive gathering of locals drinking and relaxing. From their we went to one of Meetesh's favoriate bars which had a massive courtyard. The highlight of the night, is shown above. To settle those extras beers and Palinka we had our first taste of late night Hungarian food. While I had the falafal I've been craving since we landed in Europe, Cara went for the local fare of fried dough with sour cream, garlic butter, and cheese. Pretty much a massive savory funnel cake!

Thank you friends new and old for a great welcome to Hungary.

We have arrived in Heathrow airport. It was a bumpy ride over the Atlantic but we made it! Another few hours until our flight to Vienna. We did book a hostel, so we have a place to stay. Nap time.


mike

Europe 2010!

Cara and I head out tomorrow afternoon to begin our two month European adventure. We fly out of Houston, so I've had the last weekend to hang out with my parents and also my hometown friends for a night. It has been a great weekend.

Our adventures begin in Vienna and then quickly onto Budapest. We have a good idea of our travel plans before Worlds July 3 - 10th. For the month of July, we'll see.

Here we go!