October 9, 2015

 

 

Border Fun

We’re up at 6:00 this morning to get packed and be at breakfast ready to go by 8:00.  Host Andrus is back on duty this morning.  His father-in-law, the cook/handyman actually greets us and we point at the breakfast menu to get him on the coffee and eggs.  When Andrus is in the house, so is Doody his miniature dachshund.  Doody is the resident vacuum cleaner so takes an immediate interest in John, either snuggled up next to him looking for a little treat, or hanging out under his seat waiting for the inevitable food from heaven.  John gets the fried eggs with ham, toast, juice, coffee and other stuff because we have a long ride ahead of us. Mary has a light breakfast because we have a long ride ahead of us.  Different strokes. We grab a couple nectarines out of the basket for later.

Andrus has one of those personalities that would be valuable in any relationship business.  He is outgoing, smart, interesting and very customer oriented.  He goes through the same things every day with lots of different guests but he makes it feel like he is designing a plan just for you.  We appreciate a good host.

We pay up, grab our bags and are on the street at 9:00 with a half hour window before we worry about our ride to Croatia.  It isn’t raining this morning but it feels like it might.  About 9:20 an 8-passenger van pulls up and Aron the driver jumps out ready to get loaded up and on the road.  Andrus helps with Mary’s luggage with goodbye’s all around.  Inside the van are two other couples about Mary’s age who are traveling together and having a great time.  One woman says, “OK, who are you what are you doing and let’s all introduce ourselves.”  As it turns out the two men members of the group are old school pals and the four of them have traveled all over the world together.  One couple (Pierre and Joann) is from Brooklyn and the other (Maureen and Ken) are from Minneapolis!!!  Well, let’s get the party started and Aron the driver is all in.

Joann and Ken are both attorneys, Maureen is the party leader but we’re not sure what else she does, and as it turns out Pierre is a writer/publicist.  He is the writer of all of Dr. Ruth’s books as well as some on his own.  He also does some big company PR and is a very pleasant guy. Pierre told us that he found out at a young age that he had a knack for BS which made him a natural publicist.  He says clients can give him a topic and he can have 200 pages back to them in a month. He is in our row and the other three are behind us so he is our primary chat partner.  Aron stops at the Budapest airport to pick up two Asian guys who share the front seat with him, effectively taking him out of the party.

When we hit the Croatian border about 3 hours into the trip, the three folks in the back seat are pleading with Pierre to behave himself.  Apparently they have had occasions in the past where he has displayed his puckish sense of humor which proved unamusing to border security.  We all keep our heads down, even Pierre (sort of) and while there is a lot of discussion they move us along after about 15 serious minutes.  Aron follows his GPS around all sorts of loops and turns into Zagreb where he finds our B&B in the center.  Strangely the two Asian guys get out with us but we don’t have a clue where they are going and we think maybe they don’t either.  We wish our travel partners well (they are on their way to Split yet today) pay up with Aron and our big worry of the trip so far is behind us.

Our B&B is up some steps and after being bussed in we meet Igor who is the desk attendant of the moment.  We’re in an old Zagreb neighborhood, but the interior of the building is recently redone.  The whole place seems like a marketing project and feels just a little bit slick to us.  We’ll know more later.  The room is polished and there are a couple in-house publications on the desk.  The bathroom is new and we have a little balcony off the bedroom.  John can’t get anything to work on the TV.  On our way out for a get-acquainted walk we meet Dubravko (call me Doobie) the owner and chief host and mention our TV issue.  He walks John back up, tries to get a channel for several minutes and finally finds something in Arabic.  He says the cable company keeps changing network locations and he can’t keep up so just keep looking.  Hmmm.

Anyway, our first walk around Zagreb is interesting for a couple reasons.  First there are virtually no tourists except us.  Second, the streets are jammed with the after work Friday afternoon crowd and they’re all shopping, drinking, eating and generally enjoying their city.  This is the first time we have had a city of a size that we could grasp immediately without being surrounded by tour groups or drunk Brits.  We’re not sure what we’ll do here but it seems to be a nice change of pace.

We’re a little farther from the center than we would like, about a mile, which makes the walk back for our late afternoon break and then back for dinner seem like a bit of a chore.  After our long ride on the mini-bus today though we think we can pull it off.  For fortification we stop for a local beer at an outdoor café in the middle of a pedestrian mall.  Time to send Michelle a text so she knows that we got out of Hungary and she shouldn’t pay the ransom.  We have checked out our Doobie-suggested restaurants for this evening and have a target in mind.

We fire up, get back on the street to the B&B, take a break and get back on the street for dinner.  Tonight it is Tip-Top, a typical Croatian Café with only locals present.  There is a back dining room, but we sit in the front bar area where the bartender is our server.  He is attentive and always there when we need him which is a huge change from the rest of our Eastern Europe experiences.    We order a liter of the house red wine and an anchovy bread appetizer (a slice of French bread topped with roasted tomatoes and anchovies).  John has the “Zagreb Schnitzel” a pork fillet pounded and stuffed with ham and cheese served with an odd version of a French fry.  It seems like they have cross-sliced boiled potatoes and tossed them in the fryer—a new version of blanching before frying.  Mary had the Cuttlefish Pasta that is loaded with ink and immediately turns her mouth a navy blue.  It is a big flavor however so worth the Elvira look.  Everything is pretty good and the service makes us believe we will like Zagreb.

It is starting to rain as we do the mile hike back but we brought umbrellas and stay mostly dry.  We find the Ukraine Today network on the TV in English so we get the latest news from Kiev.  Good to know what the crazy Russkis are up to. 

What did we learn today?  It’s fun to pick up on the vibrancy of an ascending capital of a “new” country.

October 8, 2015

 

 

 

Hungarian Rain Comin’ Down

After a run of mildly acceptable weather we are back to another soaker today.  Our breakfast next door is fine with an awning between the doors.  Roland (our original desk person) is back from his days off and is sharing his desire to go to New York to hang out at the Blue Note and listen to Jazz.  It’s good to have a plan.  We both have omelets this morning with the usual complement of cold stuff.  The tour bus company has confirmed that they will pick us up tomorrow morning between 9:00 and 9:30 so that worry is one step closer to being gone (but not until the bus actually shows up).

Hungary is a big city but is certainly walkable for the key parts.  We have another day to go on the Hop-on Hop-off bus but it is really just as easy for us to walk to our immediate destinations.  First up is the Jewish synagogue that was closed yesterday.  The ticket office has just opened and there is a line-up of umbrellas and we consider our options deciding that we will have tickets and be in the synagogue before we could get anywhere else.

Like everything else in this part of the world the building has a long and dramatic history.  It was a compromise design with a couple church architects trying to figure out what a synagogue would look like while reading bible passages about the original temple in Jerusalem.  The result is a sort of mixture that would never be acceptable to the orthodox but for the less severe branches of the faith it is OK.  The huge pipe organ was one unique feature since orthodox Jews would never allow the work of playing an organ to be done on the Sabbath.  John is required to wear a little paper yarmulke which refuses to stay on his flat head so it eventually gets interwoven with his jacket hood.  You can never find a bobby pin when you need it.

In the garden outside are graves and memorials to the Jews murdered during the German occupation of WWII.  In the U.S. the generation older than us certainly have memories of that war but for us it is movies and stories.  Throughout Europe there are still the lasting effects of multiple wars and there is certainly a presence of it wherever we travel.  It is definitely because we are seeking out some of the history, but you don’t have to look very far.  There are also memorials to those who helped saved Jewish lives during the war, with much of the financing coming from Hungarians worldwide (including Tony Curtis).  We view other exhibits in the community center and museum reflecting the lives and history of this particular Jewish community.  Very interesting.

Still raining.  It is after 1:00 and we huddle under umbrellas to the main square for lunch.  We still think we should be outside but now we need an awning and a heater.  The Gerbeaud Hotel on the square has all of the above and the menu looks good.  John has a stewed beef in a red wine sauce and a noodle cake and both are very reminiscent of his birthday dinner last night.  Can’t have too much of a good thing.  Mary has the creamed pea soup also very good.  Beers have become our go-to drink at lunch—must have started in Germany.

Our next indoor activity is the tour of the Opera House.  We get there at 2:20 to buy tickets for the 3:00 tour and mini-concert.  To kill time we walk down Andrassy peeking in fancy shop windows and Mary finds a cheap umbrella to replace her even cheaper (free) umbrella that is on its last legs.

There is a huge tour crowd when we get back.  We are separated by little sheepdog tour guides, first by language and then we English speakers into four more manageable smaller groups.  Our young lady guide is fine and there is a pretty tight procedure to moving about ten groups of folks around the building.  The opera was built by the head Austrian as in Austro-Hungarian Empire Franz Josef.  It was designed by the same fellow who did the Vienna Opera (that we have also visited) and is basically the same.  The only requirement by the emperor was that it had to be smaller than the one in Vienna.  Picky.  Apparently FJ only visited once but his wife Cici was more of a fan and came more often, although she was relegated to a lesser box when she was on her own.

With so many people coming and going (about 30 people in our group) it got a little claustrophobic after a while.  The mini-concert took place on the grand staircase with a diva performing 2 arias for all of the now-combined tour groups.  Yes she was very good.  Yes we were happy when she finished.  Again, we were cattle herded through the 4:00 tour people and out a single door into the cold damp air that never felt better.  We are reminded why we don’t like big tours.

We opt to take one of the big pedestrian/entertainment/retail streets (Vaci) back “home.”  In spite of the rain there are swarms of folks doing the retail stroll down the avenue.  It’s a very cosmopolitan feel. One more beer at “Fatah” for people watching under a market umbrella.

Wandering through the rain with multiple tours mixed in seems more draining than just going for our usual walk-about.  We don’t ask for dinner advice tonight deciding that we will walk down the street and into a place that serves food.  Low energy, low stress evening. We eliminate a couple possibilities before picking “Pampas,” an Argentine steak place.  No kraut, no sausages.  We get a nice Hungarian red wine, John has the “Gaucho Steak” with chimichurri and excellent potato cakes, while Mary has a very good chicken breast with 4 kinds of cheese and garlic mashed potatoes.  Ok, this turned out to be a little bigger deal than we had intended, but the service is good, the food is great and we’re still in Hungary, not Argentina, so it’s all reasonably priced.

Our only slight piece of stress still on our plate is wondering if our bus guy will really show up in the morning.  We can’t do anything about it now, turn out the light.

What did we learn today? Once in a while we should look at fancy historic buildings, but we shouldn’t make a habit of it.

October 7, 2015

 

 

Happy Time in Budapest

Happy Birthday to me!  At 50 you think you’re old but know that you really aren’t, at 60 you’re enjoying the advantages of “senior citizenship,” and at 70 there isn’t any dodging the issue.  There are no more advantages, no more upsides, only hanging on as long as you can to keep the party going and that’s the plan here.  I’m starting by having a great day today.

It starts at breakfast.  While were scarfing down a big breakfast (Mary an omelet and John fried eggs with ham and mushrooms), Andrus gets on the mini-bus to Zagreb project.  There is a reasonably loud phone conversation in Hungarian and by the time he hangs up we already have an email from the tour company that we are booked on a trip to Zagreb Friday morning, time to be confirmed later.  90 euros apiece door to door which is about twice the price of train plus taxis but a small premium to get where we need to be.  Happy birthday!

Andrus sells us a couple hop-on-hop-off bus tickets which we will use to catch up on our Budapest geography lesson today.  When we get to the bus pick-up point we have 25 minutes to kill and the market is across the street.  Let us take a small break to get a Langos, exhibit “A” on a list of Hungarian street food.  It is a Frisbee sized circle of fried dough that is topped by sour cream, garlic and cheese.  Mary has a bite to say that she did and John gets through the first half before we need to run back to the bus stop.  It cost HUF550, otherwise known as $1.90, so a small price to pay for an authentic local food experience.

The whole bus route is a 2-1/2 hour, 21 stop tour around the city.  We are boarding at stop number 18 and are riding through stop number 15 so we will be sitting for most of it.   Again, it is nice enough to sit up top in the elements although a little chilly when the wind blows.  We repeat some of the route we walked yesterday and then add new visits to Hero’s Square, the Parliament and across the river to the castle.  That’s where we get off.

We’re now in Buda, the hilly castle side of the Danube.  Pest is the flat city side of the river where you find most of the action.  The castle is the former home of kings, queens and occupying governors that held the defensible high ground over the city from across the river.  There are some dignitaries in attendance today.  We know that because a couple of streets are closed while lined with black cars and drivers, and there are several TV reporters filming background stuff while waiting for whomever to appear.  We don’t wait.

The whole scene is a reconstruction of the historic buildings and there are very few pieces of the authentic past.  One exception is St. Mathias Church sitting on a precipice near the fisherman’s gate overlooking the river and Pest.  John coughs up the 3 bucks to visit the church while Mary acts as official volunteer tourist photographer for those who want pictures with Budapest splayed in the background.  Both projects are well executed.

We have been told that we should visit the reconstructed hospital that is under the castle grounds, but an hour tour is required and doesn’t start for 40 minutes so we aren’t giving up that amount of time. Instead we hop-on and move to the next stop on the tour which is down our very steep precipice and up another about a mile away.  This is the citadel, the highest point in Buda.  From here you get breathtaking views of the Pest side, the Danube and back at the castle hill.  This has been the defensive fortress for Budapest since there was a Budapest continuing through WWII and well into the Russian occupation.  Now it is all about hauling tourists up here in big buses for photo ops which works for us.

We abandon the bus and decide to follow whichever path we see that looks like it is going down.  Most of the paths are paved or smooth dirt with a lot of switchbacks that pop us out of the trees at the Elizabeth Bridge.  Not ours, but we can find our way home from here.  No broken bones or skinned knees.

It’s time for our afternoon break.  Our B&B guys have made a 7:00 reservation for our “Birthday Dinner” tonight at Borsso, a French bistro next door.  We get a nice corner table and a couple glasses of bubbly as our birthday treat.  The place comes highly recommended and the menu looks like somebody is paying attention.  John has the sautéed lamb liver with Brussels sprout appetizer (it was a lot better than you might think) and the Oxcheek Bourguignon with a vegetable/pasta cake and every bite is like heaven.  Mary had the corn quenelle with mushrooms and camembert appetizer and the ocean perch and sweet pea risotto dinner and all is perfect.  The Hungarian Cabernet is just the right touch to complete the picture.

Soon after we’re seated a group of 6 “elderly” ladies is seated next to us.  It is hard to avoid being sucked into their atmosphere and soon enough we are like a group of 8.  They are from Scotland, all in their 70’s, all were schoolgirls together and have been taking a trip once a year for more than 50 years.  Somebody picks the destination and the only requirement is that it has to be a direct flight from Edinburgh.  They are having quite a time and pretty soon a birthday party breaks out with way too much laughing and funny accents for a French bistro.  You probably had to be there.

We take a long arm-in-arm stroll around our neighborhood before getting back to our Hungarian home.  This ranks right up there in a pretty long line of memorable birthdays.

What did we learn today?  Actually confirmed that when you open yourselves up to new experiences, good things will happen in your life.

October 6, 2015

 

 

Budapest Explored (Sort of)

So Mrs. Lincoln, outside of that how did you like the show?  Details to follow.

We meet our host/owner Andrus (Ahndrush) this morning at breakfast.  He’s a very personable fellow who has spent time in Canada so speaks perfect English.  There is a nice cold buffet with an option for omelets and fried eggs—John has an omelet and Mary has fried eggs.  We visit with a Canadian woman who is leaving today on a river cruise.  The river levels are apparently down so she is going to be bused to somewhere downriver which would seem to take away a bit of the romance.  Well, she’s alone anyway.

We spend some time with Andrus after breakfast and he expands on Roland’s directions from last night.  He wants us to spend today on foot exploring the areas closest to us and leave the bus for the next two days.  Fine with us.

As we stroll past the Hungarian History museum we choose to spend time instead walking the neighborhood rather than look at dinosaurs from central Europe.  We pass the Jewish synagogue, the second largest in the world which is closed today as the October Jewish high holidays are wrapping up.  Wandering the old Jewish quarter behind the synagogue is interesting but a little subdued today.  Hungary was a co-conspirator to some degree with the Nazis during WWII as a long-time partner with Austria.  There were certainly Hungarian heroes who are honored at the synagogue for saving the target groups (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals) but the official line was harsh.

As we move further into the heart of the city we decide this will be a good time to pick up our train tickets to Zagreb for Friday travel.  We dance around a bit before finding the central ticket office and moving to an international window.  This is where it started to go very wrong.  “No trains,” she said. Beg your pardon?  “No trains.  Border closed.”  But we need to get to Zagreb on Friday.  “No trains!!!  Border closed!!!!” OK then.  A fellow walks past and says he’d rent a car if he was us.  One option.

It’s lunch time so we go to a recommended restaurant (Menza) a few blocks up the street to get on the internet and start weighing our options.  John and Mary share a burger with fries and a bowl of real Hungarian goulash.  We wouldn’t skip lunch details would we?  After an hour of false starts, a draining battery and weak connections we think we had better get back to our laptop and work in earnest.

We make a detour to the American Embassy to see if they have folks with their finger on the pulse of the border situation.  The Hungarian guy manning the gate says it’s all news to him and after a phone call gives us a couple websites which prove to be worthless.  Where are the marines when we need them?  The walk back to our B&B takes us along the Danube which is a nice lining to our cloud.

The car rental option offers a vehicle for Friday for $38 and when adding taxes and fees comes to $500.  They don’t want their cars going to Croatia.  The main bus line doesn’t run on Friday but an option is a Saturday departure.  A second bus line has a 6:00 AM bus on Friday but it is full.  We can fly for about $450 and twelve hours through either Paris or Belgrade. Finally we find a private tour bus operator who is enterprisingly offering one way travel between Budapest and Zagreb for 90 euros a head if they can put together a group.  We email them but don’t hear anything back before the end of the day.  We’ll get some help from Andrus in the morning—maybe he has a buddy with a car who wants to make a few forints on Friday.

The perky Janus is on the desk tonight and he recommends a restaurant in the Jewish quarter but we decide to stay close at ”Ifcafe”, a little jazz club/café about 6 blocks away.  It is still reasonably warm (mid 60’s?) and there is outdoor seating available.  They have a little tapas menu and we start with a trio of smoked cheese, very lean prosciutto and black olive tapenade. Mary goes back to the goulash soup and John gets the zucchini pie with ewe’s cheese, marinated feta cheese and grilled red paprika all washed down with some local beers.  The jazz group kicks in at 8:00.  We listen for a while and people watch from our sidewalk perch.  There’s a place called Paris, Texas across the street that is doing a nice business.  This is a new street for us so we take the opportunity to explore on our way back to our beds.

Things go wrong when you travel and on a scale of 1-10 this is about a 4 so not a big deal.  We’ll feel better when we find a resolution and have a new plan.  Off to bed.

What did we learn today?  Without internet access, solutions to problems would be much harder to find.

October 5, 2015

 

 

Nashiedanou Bratislava, Jo Napot ivanok Budapest

And you thought this was easy.  Actually we continue to be amazed at the acceptance of English as the world’s second language.  Almost everyone we encounter knows a few words of English that fit into their job description.  Rules of grammar are harder to come by but we can always communicate.

It’s departure day for us and we’re ready to roll shortly after 9:00.  Josef is going to come by at 10:50 to make sure we have the means to get to the airport and to make sure we haven’t stolen the silverware. That gives us a solid hour and a half to kill which means another morning walk around the city.  Monday morning has a different feel than the weekend and the hard-working locals are scurrying off to work.  There are one or two tour groups milling around, probably from one of the river cruises.

It’s overcast and cool this morning so a good travel day.  Josef is right on time and after he pats us down he calls a taxi for us.  There has been an Uber car floating around earlier but has now disappeared.  The taxi driver gets us to the main train station for half the price of the guy we booked on arrival.  Learning the ropes can be costly.

We have an 11:53 train to Budapest and the good news is that it is on track 1 and platform 1 which are both right in front of us when we walk into the station.  We have our car number and seat numbers so when the train rumbles past we spy our ride and hustle to the right spot.  We throw our bags onto the train and we’re moving before we get to our seats so there is no messing around here.  It was scheduled for a three minute stop and they didn’t miss it by much considering the large number of people who had to board.  This car configuration is different than the last we were on.  There are no compartments, only airline style seats in a 1-2 configuration but plenty roomy.  We find a setup with two seats in each direction and a table in the middle that will do just fine.  Mary reaches for the sausage and cheese that we brought with us but we didn’t.  It’s still in the apartment refrigerator where Josef can enjoy our lunch.

It’s a 2-1/2 hour ride to Budapest arriving at 2:35.  We spend a lot of time along the Danube passing through little Slovac and Hungarian towns.  The Hungary-side seems a little bit more cared for but the sample size is too small to reach any conclusions.  We have been a little nervous about arriving in Budapest Keleti Terminal because of the recent problems with the influx of Syrian refugees.  We arrive 5 minutes early and there is a fellow there with a “Zesbaugh” sign who whisks us to his waiting taxi with zero problems.  In fact there are no crowds and seemingly no current issues.

We’re back to oohing and aahing as we take the 15 minute drive through Budapest.  The city is about the same size as Berlin and it is gorgeous.  It seems very clean, very well restored and/or cared for.  Our driver is sort of an old hippie whose white hair makes him seem a little older than he really is.  There are little toys hanging all over the taxi with some extra speakers wired in for better rock sounds from his sound system.

Roland meets us at the taxi when we arrive at Butterfly House B&B and gets us situated in our room a couple walking flights up.  We have separate sleeping and sitting areas which is always nice but the configuration is a little weird, or should we say unique.  After we unpack we meet again with Roland who pulls out the map and marks up sights and restaurants giving us some ideas for the next few days.

We opt to start with the massive market a few blocks away.  It is acres of produce, meats and pastries with souvenirs upstairs and a full blown Aldi store in the basement.  It is the Philadelphia, Barcelona and Melbourne markets on steroids.  The corn and tomatoes are still going strong while there is a good supply of apples, pears and squash.  It’s warmer here and as we move south we are moving through the Minnesota latitudes.  Bergen was our farthest point north at 60+ degrees and Budapest is at 47-degrees north which is a little north of the Twin Cities.  Our host has told us to sample a local snack called a langos (Langoosh) a sort of fried bread pizza with sweet or savory toppings sold at a market stand but the lines are too long and we’re not that hungry.  We do a further neighborhood stroll down to the river and the Szabadsag hid (our local bridge) while poking our noses into little shops along the way.  John hits the ATM for 25,000 HUF, sometimes known as $90.  We grab a poppy seed strudel to make up for our missing lunch (maybe we are that hungry) and do a little shopping before finding our way back to the B&B.

Our strudel doesn’t make up for crackers for lunch so we ask our desk guy (Roland) for a quick easy recommendation for dinner.  Our plan is the Italian next door and he says definitely not.  The spot he suggests, Sonka, a few blocks up the street is mostly empty when we arrive which gets us a window table overlooking the active street scene.  We’re breaking out of pork and kraut.  Mary has a nice ham and vegetable pasta, while John goes with the chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms and a ratatouille sauce over mashed potatoes.  Both very good and a great Hungarian Cabernet all for about $35.  The place is full when we leave so it is worthy of a front desk recommendation.

We take the long way back to our place exploring a couple new streets.  We hope we have this down by the end of the week because it looks like it will be worth it.

What did we learn today?  Easy. Budapest is way beyond our expectations.