Week 7 – Budapest and Timisoara

Budapest:

·         The bus ride from Krakow to Budapest could have passed for Route 29 in Virginia for part of the way – trees changing colors, fog in the rolling hills, billboards now and then, clusters of homes in town and farmhouses outside.  We passed through Slovakia and I could be fooling myself but I think I could spot a difference in the writing on signs between Polish and Slovakian, without understanding 99% of either.  The road there was narrower and more mountainous but never felt sketchy.

·         First, a nod to Tibor Sarkaday, my soccer coach, Steve’s dad, and a onetime Freedom Fighter in 1956, the attempt to overthrow the communist regime.  To recognize the anniversary the Parliament was flying the Hungarian flag with a hole the middle in it for where they cut out the hammer and sickle, which is what the revolutionaries flew for a few weeks until Soviet tanks, ext. crushed the movement.  The new flag has no need for a hole because it’s simply red, white, and green.

·         I get the feeling some of the political tension in Hungary is based on the simmering desire to restore the lands taken from Hungary after WWI.  This is partly based on the light propaganda mixed into the Museum of Terror, ostensibly about Nazi and Soviet occupation but was focused 99% on “communists were bad” with slight mention of Hungary’s authoritarian regime in the 30’s and 40’s that partnered with the Nazis.  The EU has said Prime Minister Orban has crossed the line between democracy and hybrid democracy-authoritarian.  One of his first steps was to control the media.

·         A shout out to Sean and especially Evelin for insider tips.  Budapest is clearly foodie heaven.

·         We took a walking tour with Petra and 30 others, whom she called her “students.”  Karen chatted with her 1:1 a lot during the walking bits.  Not as focused on history, more an overall intro to the city.  Worth it and she was interesting and entertaining, but we still wish we’d gotten a history lesson.

·         We walked a lot both days, covering the Buda side (we stayed on the Pest side of the Danube) including a climb to the Citadel overlooking the city.

·         Karen and I toured Margaret Island, which is about a kilometer long and has play areas, lots of walking paths, and great views east and west.  The next day we walked Varosliget Park, another huge space with museums, playgrounds, and exercise equipment, all being well-used on a Friday around noon.  Hungary is second in the world for Olympic medals per capita - could be unrelated but having ping pong tables and small soccer spaces, etc., couldn’t hurt their chances.

·         We also did a one-hour cruise on the Duna (Danube) river.

·         Heard lots of English around us, seemingly mostly as the universal second language.

·         We left Hungary saying it’s one more place we would love to spend more time in.

Timisoara:

·         Brian from Sitecore recommended trying Romania.  We’re glad he did.  I was cautious after knowing that’s where Bobbie had her camera stolen years ago and after reading about how sketchy the trains are.  We didn’t make it to Brian’s hometown of Sibiu but went to Timisoara, based mostly on train and bus options.  The population is almost 500,000 but the old center, dating from 18^th century.  The city started as a fort in the 13^th century, controlling the trade route between Vienna and Constantinople.

·         The highlight was a walking tour by Vlad.  Karen and I were the only ones who signed up for the Sunday morning slot, so it ended up being a private tour.  Although it was listed as 2 ½ hours we took 4 hours.  I’m not sure if it was our 100 questions.  Vlad was 3 during the Romania Revolution in December 1989, which started there in Timisoara as a small protest about the government ordered a Hungarian (based on ethnicity, not nationality) priest to leave town and it grew from there.  Vlad remembers hearing machine guns firing (government) and crawling on the floor with his mother and siblings to avoid being hit by stray bullets.  His father was at the protests.  Afterwards I read more about how it spread to Bucharest after Ceausescu fumbled a public speech at a government rally designed to bolster support, but the TV broadcast caught enough boos to show he misread the crowd and the state TV suddenly witched to another program.  A few more things then, he and his wife were executed by on Christmas Day less than 2 weeks later.

·         Vlad also talked about there were 3 channels on TV in the 80’s:  State news, government propaganda/movies, and Dallas, to show how decadent Western life was.

·         We took a boat “tour” along the Bega Canal, which is actually just the city’s tram on the water and road bikes slowly along another section of the canal.  We lucked out with still more weather in the 60’s so we walked a lot.

·         The city is designated as the 2023 EU cultural city so there are a lot of buildings under renovation.  Our sense is of everywhere we’ve been this is the place that will see the biggest growth in property values over the next decade.  Vlad said a lot of the workers fixing the concrete are Vietnamese.  And he said very few Ukrainian refugees want to be in Romania.

·         Romanian is much closer to Spanish and much easier for me than Polish or Hungarian.  But I’m sure with my accent I said the equivalent of “thunk few” a lot of times.

·         The Romanian countryside reminds me of Mexico’s.

Misc:

·         The US is exporting our fashion brands, at least.  It’s common to see a group of school kids on a field trip where one in four is wearing a name of a US location or team or brand.  In Scotland I talked to a couple in their 30’s where one had a Yankees hat and the other a Red Sox one.  They had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned the rivalry.  Makes me think the girl in the New Jersey sweatshirt might not know that is a state.  Most Americans don’t know Jersey (the original, not the New) is an island but they don’t wear shirts with that name on it.  BTW, I know it myself only because a project I once worked sent a document there for signature.

·         The lack of liability laws means there are a lot of poles sticking up in random spots on the sidewalks and

·         Hungary and Romania have a clear hierarchy, with traffic-light and crosswalk following pedestrians at the top, followed by patient bikers.

·         I think I could write Communist designer handbook:  Use a lot of concrete, flat right angles, and not a lot of windows.  Plus find a way to use less or cheaper concrete so that in 50 years every wall and balcony looks suspect.  Don’t worry if it’s next to a beautiful 19^th century building.

·         About half the music I’m hearing is modern American pop.

·         Halloween isn’t a big deal, even in Dracula’s home country.

·         On our next European tour we hope to hit more smaller, less-touristy cities and to move hotels less frequently but said this is a good intro to a lot of places.

Week 6 – Dresden and Krakow

 Dresden:

·         The city is beautiful.  Most of the downtown ruins were left untouched under communist rule but about 20 years ago there was a determined effort to restore the buildings, often with painstaking efforts to put the original stone back in its exact spot, even if most of the stones were already repurposed for cobblestone roads, etc.

·         We took a long walk through their equivalent of Central Park as the sun went down, feeling safe among the hundreds of other couples strolling and bikers cutting through.

·         Two thumbs up for Museum of Military History, which was focused only Germany, not the world.  It included no swastikas and Hitler’s name only once that we saw but mentioned Nazis a lot as they didn’t sugarcoat their history.  There was an exhibition on the Allied bombing Dresden and next to it were similar ones of the same horror in Rotterdam and another city the Germans bombed.

·         Tomas gave us a tour of the city.  Art Historian who had good enthusiasm for the details in the Baroque architecture in town and I think could have talked for a week straight without running out of things to say about the architecture.  A lot of it was within the historical context of the royals trying to impress other royals.

·         We rented a tandem bike and rode along the river Elbe.  There’s a 500K route similar to the path along the Danube but it’s pretty crowded

·         We tried a hop on/hop off tour and were underwhelmed.

·         The food was only OK.

·         Over 95% of what we heard on the streets was German, I think.

·         A shout out to Roy for recommending Dresden as a stop.

Cracow / Krakow:

·         We spent 6 nights in town, the longest stay anywhere so far.  A comfortable close to the Old Town.

·         We found freewalkingtour.com offers scheduled tours where you tip what you would like, with the guideline that it should be worth what a movie costs.  We were 3 for 3.  Damian, a historian and former librarian, showed us around the Old Town and gave us an overall history of Krakow. 

·         Tomascz, who I think has a graduate degree, gave us a tour of the Jewish Quarter, covering the first synagogues and life there through the Holocaust.  Karen and I watched Schindler’s List that night in our room (primarily based in Krakow and mostly filmed there) for the second time (the first was in 1994.)  The Third Reich murdered 90% of the Jews in Poland.

·         Tomacz, also known as Big Tom, possibly because he’s 202 cm (6’7”) also gave us a tour of Krakow in WWII – he “promoted” it at the end of his other tour.  The Polish Army left the city to fight the Germans outside town and then the Germans left before ethe Russians arrived so there was little physical damage.  But the Gestapo (short for a version of German State Police) inflicted immeasurable damage on the people.  He once again did a great job bringing things to life, including things like the complexities of the underground resistance.  Poland fought off Russia after WWI to stay independent then lost that status after WWII.  The Soviets killed 20,000 Polish army officers in 1940 (Katyn Massacre) make that easier, and blamed the Germans.

·         Weronika from Sitecore met us for dinner.  She moved here a year ago from an hour away and is still learning the city.  Once again a good connection with somebody I’ve seen only via Zoom.

·         We went on a guided tour of the local salt mine (production shut down 20 years ago), which meant walking 2 of the 200 miles underground and having Elizabethia explain the history of it.  There are salt veins still visible and some miners created sculptures (mostly Catholic) and floor tiles.  As long as the mine controls temperature and humidity they stay hard.

·         And we had a tour of Auschwitz (primarily a workcamp) and Birkenau (primarily a killing camp.)  A gray, rainy, chilly day, which added to the gloom.  It felt like a factory, where the focus was primarily on efficiency but there were mind tricks as well to keep the victims compliant.  The guide was good but not on Big Tom’s level.

·         Sunday was beautiful weather and a lot of walking among crowds of families, including a long walk up to the Tadeusz Kosciuszko Mound, in honor of the solider who helped the American Revolution and then led an attempt for Poland to gain independence in 1820.

·         We met Monique from Sao Paulo on the WWII tour and then walked some more and went on a river cruise and is now a Facebook friend of Karen’s (I won’t have Facebook access until I get back to my laptop in Boston.)

·         Of our 4 tours, with about 80 fellow participants, I think we had only one other from American, Paul, who was from Ashburn, Virginia and on assignment in the Army reserves in Germany.

·         Pedestrians have more right of way here – cars stop for people in crosswalks, even if they seem to wait until the last second to slow down.

·         The language is a notch harder than German.  While getting a haircut, the hairdresser offered me a beer and my smooth reply was “no good morning.”

·         Pope John Paul II and Copernicus are from Krakow.  I think Copernicus would make a good name for a pet.

·         Next time we visit Poland I want to go on a tour on the 2 Warsaw Uprisings (43 and 44) and stay in a smaller town, too.

·         Krakow has absorbed about 170,000 Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children.  That’s almost 20% of the city’s population and they are generally squeezing into residents’ homes and going to school.  I couldn’t distinguish a Pole from a Ukrainian.  Poland has given higher percentage of their GDP to help Ukraine than all other countries (the US is in the top 5 or 10, I think.)

Misc:

·         Despite the European focus on energy, we haven’t yet stayed in a place that seems to have low flow adaptors for showers.

·         The bikes ad scooters and pedestrians all seem to peacefully co-exist in both cities.  Bikers will generally wait patiently behind a walker for an opening to pass, especially on a crowded Krakow sidewalk.  Most of the bikes we’ve seen in Europe are closer to what the teacher rode at the start of the Wizard of Oz than a typical road bike in America.

·         I’m getting an appreciation for the fluidity of borders over the centuries here.  It would be like the Union deciding to give Garrett County in western Maryland to Pennsylvania after the Civil War and then getting half of it back decades later after some negotiation.