I can stumble out of bed late in any time zone

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Episode 1: How to enjoy Budapest without ever knowing where you are
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Budapest is a totally awesome town. I've heard. I was, in theory, there for almost a week. While there, I stayed at the largest, roomiest, cheapest and dirtiest hostel I've been in yet. I never asked, but I'm quite sure it was a residence building of some sort built by the Communist administration.

Lana & I arrived in Budapest, along with a Canadian fellow named Todd, completely unaware that it was the Hungarian independence day. Actually, it turns out Lana knew and just didn't bother to tell anyone else. The grimiest hostel in Europe (with very friendly staff! but no mops..) was the only place with any room left for guests because of the holiday. Todd, Lana and I checked into a spacious, dirty room on the 17th floor with an excellent view of a mostly boring part of Budapest.

We ventured into the city in search of dinner and noted the people lining up on bridges to get a good view of the fireworks display. They had a good view of the sun setting to hold them over:



We stopped to withdraw some Hungarian Florints (Exchange rate: $1 US = 225 HUF... I withdrew about 40,000 HUF and felt oh-so-rich in HUFs) We chose a restaurant very carefully, and succeeded in finding mediocre food at a mediocre price (everything is cheap in Budapest, anyway). We ordered slowly, ate slowly, ordered another drink, and heard the fireworks starting in the distance.

In a flurry of fear that we might miss the whole display, we threw back our drinks, hurried to pay, and ran for the river. In an unfamiliar city. After dark and a couple drinks. So of course, Lana trips over a speed bump and does an impressive slow-motion fall and forward roll. She rises with nothing but some dirty marks on her clothes to show for it, and we hustle on. Huffing and puffing, we reach the river and a nice view of the fireworks display. Which goes on for about an hour, making us feel completely ridiculous about our panic. It was a pretty sweet display:



Afterwards, Todd (a beer-lover if ever there was one) took out his guidebook and read us a passage about the Hungarian "Sorozo" (except with 2 little vertical lines above each 'o'): "Beer-serving establishments where drinking is taken very seriously." Convinced that we would be witnessing an entertaining cultural phenomenon (while enjoying a local beer!), we went in search of a Sorozo.

When we found one, it was distinctly similar to what one might call a "pub" in other parts of the world. We thought, maybe, we'd found a bad one, and moved on after one drink in search of an establishment recommended in Todd's book.

On our way there (8 blocks?) Lana asked if we could stop at a market to buy a beer for the walk. To the place where we were getting a beer. On our way from a place where we just had a beer. This was, as yet, the most obvious clue that Lana was a walking bad idea, and I daringly ignored it: a mistake I would repeat.

Later that evening, we were sitting outside a little Sorozo when we finally found a local who had been taking his drinking seriously. From the signs, he'd been taking it seriously every night for the past 40 years. He smiled, was very friendly, and spoke only a small amount of English. What he said did not make any sense, because he could rarely pair a noun with a verb, and when he did it was not in a meaningful way. At first, we thought this was because of his poor English.

He asked if we spoke German, and I said I did. He said his German was much better. I think. I spent the next half hour trying to translate incomplete German sentences into coherent English for this smiling, crazy Hungarian. ("The people..." "This pretty..." "My girlfriend..." only less coherent) While I was focusing on this absurd task, something strange with a dog and a bicycle occurred nearby involving my acquaintances, but I never quite found out exactly what.

Eventually we escaped and wandered back toward the hostel. In an attempt to find a restroom, we wandered into an outdoor nightclub. It was a crazy place- the size of a small city block, with multiple dance spaces, a huge area with Fussball and air-hockey and such, and a little hut with a fountain around it occupied by drunk, crazy young people and a creepy old dude or two, splashing around:



We eventually found a restroom and escaped, bought some snacks (and, yes, beer) and retired to our spacious, grimy room, where Todd had a good look at my music collection:




After that adjective-defying night, we slept in. We wandered into town after noon the next day and had dessert for breakfast:



Yes, that's basically a chocolate crepe, baked stuffed apple, and whipped-cream covered fruit salad, with coffee, for breakfast. At 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm almost positive it was all Lana's idea, but I must confess being rather enthusiastic about the baked apple.

After that almost-productive first day, Budapest continued in the beer-on-the-way-to-the-bar, dessert-for-breakfast-in-the-afternoon kinda way. Lana started the morning with coffee, then coffee again, then beer straightaway. Public transit was confusing, so we didn't use it at first, just walked around the city. Which meant that every day, if we were lucky, we would see 2 things. Usually just 1.

Some days, like the day we took the bus out to the suburbs to see the Communist Statues that were removed from the city when Communism fell (but wisely set up as an outdoor museum, rather than destroyed as in many places), when we got completely lost on the bus system and couldn't get there before closing, we did nothing.

We did eventually make it to the Communist Statue Park (2 days later), which was totally surreal. All these huge, colorless, blocky statues of people with arms raised in victory and stuff. Like this:



So now we know why Communism *really* fell: too top-heavy & not real clear on that center-of-gravity bit.

What we managed in Budapest, aside from finding a bar with wireless Internet, was visiting this crazy cave church, playing on this awesome playground, and witnessing some locals short-out every streetlight for 100 yards on a major street- by accident. We heard a loud pop, the lights all went out, these guys looked surprised at the street-lamp pole next to them, then looked around for police, then laughed and j-walked across the street to a club. Investigation revealed the cause.

By the time we were on our way to the train station in Pest to leave, lazyness had won out over inefficiency, and we were riding public transit. My instinct had been to buy tickets for the subway in Eastern Europe, but Lana shunned the ticket machine and, like in Vienna, I was influenced to do the same. This had not been a problem, until we were actually on our way to the train station to leave. The ticket-checkers appeared, demanded tickets, and fined us each 2000 HUF when we couldn't produce. Fortunately, 2000 HUF is only about $10. My souvenir Hungarian money went away. And we missed our train.

At this point, my Railpass was less than a week from expiring, and I needed to head West (you'll find out why soon), so we were off to Munich in southern Germany. Given our record, you might be right to question Lana & my decision to travel to a place known as the beer-drinking capital of the world and the birthplace of the Nazi party. But I can't hear your questions, you are too far away.

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Episode 2: I only took pictures of beer... that's normal, right?
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I was in Munich 9 years ago during my exchange, for just a day. It was fun to recognize a place a little.

During our first three days in Munich, I learned a few things:

1. I am not going to find some temporary work during Oktoberfest, which means I'm probably not going to go to Oktoberfest.
2. The people in Munich are beyond friendly.
3. The Germans actually have a "traditional food" that's vegetarian- called "Käsespätzle"
4. Käsespätzle goes really well with beer
5. It is not physically possible for me to get a beer-belly at this point in my life. I tried.
6. Leaving your pocket-journal on the subway is stupid.

I did wander through the lovely old-town, go to a good museum, meet some really awesome locals who were all named Martin, and sample plenty of local food & drink.

I also stumbled across a rally of the new far-right, Nazi-esque German political party, the NPD. You can see that the party appears (thankfully) to be quite small, though a fellow I saw there told me they have a surprising amount of support. He pondered aloud (in German) at some people's inability to learn from history.




Had a picnic dinner in a Biergarten- you can bring your own food and order their beer. Brilliant. It comes from some historical mumbo-jumbo about storing beer underground with trees above, but that's not really important: your own food, fresh-from-the-tap-in-a-huge-mug German beer. These things are, you won't be surprised to hear, quite popular (all locals- a local told us about this place), and much bigger than this picture demonstrates:




Lana and I pulled a repeat of Budapest, arriving at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site just as they were closing, so we only saw the (still huge) outdoor part of the camp. Fortunately, I had already seen the rest on my last trip to Germany.

We did have a fabulous dinner at an Italian restaurant where no one spoke English and they didn't have a menu. The waitress gave me lovely descriptions that I could barely understand, the cook whipped up something special for the vegetarian, and at the end of our meal the cook came out and spoke German with me and Italian with Lana (who speaks as little Italian as I do German- the fellow was very patient). It was pretty cool.

Ah, and here's the Käsespätzle, with beers, fries, and schnitzel- Lana's last meal before she headed off to Berlin:



I know, today I'm just showing you pictures of food. It's Ato Micah's fault, he told me to include more pictures, and all I've been photographing is food.

I spent another day in Munich attempting to find my journal through the German lost & found system, but it had not come in yet, and my railpass was on it's last day. I hopped on a train headed Northwest, stayed on as long as I could stand it, and jumped off the train in Cologne, Germany, and tore up my used-up railpass.

In Cologne, I would meet someone who was almost as bad an influence as Lana, but this time there would be no travelling together. I may not learn quickly, but I do learn.

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(P)review
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Why did I want to head Northwest, you ask? Well, the Parisians that I met in Barcelona had told me they would show me around Paris.. but best if I was there at a particular time. So, after all this doddling around obscure places like Arcos, Figueres, and Interlaken... I am finally headed for the European destination to beat all. The big one. Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, the Louvre. For 10 days. But not yet! I just wanted to land closer, to make the eventual trip less expensive.

How many cities did it take? Here's the list of just the cities that I slept in, in order, as I can't remember all those I made day-trips to just now, since I left Portland:

Ashland, OR
Palo Alto, CA
Santa Cruz
Berkeley
New York, NY
Philadelphia, PA
(back to NY)
Randolph, VT
(back to NY)
Beachwood, OH
Oberlin
an airplane over the Atlantic
Arcos de la Frontera, Spain
Barcelona
San Sebastian
Pamplona
Bilbao
Madrid
Seville
(back to Arcos)
(back to Barcelona)
Bern, Switzerland
Interlaken
Zurich
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Munich, Germany
Cologne