Thursday, July 31, 2008

Last Day in Europe

As our flight out on Sunday was from Prague, we caught the train back from Budapest and, after a seven-hour journey and hostels for the past three weeks, indulged in our only accommodation splurge on the trip for our final night in Europe -- a five-star hotel. It was nice to have a good shower and comfortable bed in a clean room.

That Saturday night we went out to see the National Marionette Theatre company perform the Mozart opera Don Giovanni, a well-known performance with tall marionettes that has been performed continuously since 1991. At two hours, we thought it might be a bit long to keep us from getting bored, but it was very good -- very skilfull and quite humorous, and we really enjoyed it. We loaded up on mojitos afterwards at a Cuban bar and went back to the hotel splattered.

Mai Li almost left me behind in Amsterdam the following day. When we got to the Prague airport three hours early, as is our usual practice (and once again we found use for the additional hour) this grim-faced monotoned golem at the counter checked us in, giving us each a boarding pass from Prague to Amsterdam and another for the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur leg. Airside, we bought some slivovice (iconic Czech plum brandy) and had to show our boarding passes for the duty-free rate, and noticed that the idiot had given us the two boarding passes from Amsterdam in Mai Li's name, sitting in completely disparate rows, no less. So, we had to get back out through customs to get to the transfer desk, where they laughed at how they had never seen such a gross error, to have my boarding pass reissued. Had I not noticed, I wouldn't have been able to get on the connecting flight in Amsterdam!

So now we are in Malaysia, spending a week visiting with Mai Li's family. On Monday, we go to Cambodia for four days to see the ancient temple complex Angkor Watt, after which we return to Sydney, so I don't expect to update this blog until sometime after August 10th. I then aim to edit, distill (from over 700) and upload all the trip photos in August or September.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Last day in Budapest

The languages on this European trip are more difficult than the last. Speaking a bit of French, I could muddle my way through Romance countries last year -- France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy. This time, I have to deal with German, which I have no background in (though it's at least related to English); Czech, a Slavic language related to Polish (try to pronounce ctrnáct dnyí!); and Hungarian, which is distantly related to Finnish and, according to my phrasebook, is reputedly one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn. Apparently, English has more in common with Sinhala (from Sri Lanka) than with Hungarian.

Europeans can be very polite people, and the Hungarian language is apparently very courtly. So, it was with some surprise that, when a waiter on the footpath in Budapest crashed into me with a tray of plates when he wasn't looking, HE said to ME, "Watch out." I was aghast and turned to Mai Li. "'Watch out'?!" We laughed at how rude it was, but it seemed strange; his manner was deferential. So, I had a look in my Hungarian phrasebook and realised that he actually said "excuse me" -- when spoken softly, the Hungarian word "bocsánat" sounds like "watch out." I had great fun with this at the Budapest train station when an old lady was blocking my way onto the carriage and I said to her, "Watch out!" and she politely moved out of the way.

On our last day in Budapest we planned to visit the House of Terror, a museum housed in situ at 60 Andrassý Street, the former headquarters of the Arrow Cross party (the Hungarian arm of the Nazi party) and the subsequent ÁVH (State Security Office), documenting the torture and murder of Jews and the campaign of terror against the Hungarian citizens by the Stalinist secret police. It looks like a very well done museum, but it is so confronting that, walking inside, we didn't even get past the ticket booth before Mai Li was so upset she wanted to leave. Afterwards, she was a bit annoyed with herself because she was very interested to see it, but it is a place you need to be in a certain mood for.

Instead, we went to Statue Park, a kind of mortuary for Communist statues that were removed from around the city and erected here, out in the unkempt rural suburbs, after the fall of Communism. There is Lenin, Marx, Engels, and Béla Kun, the leader of the communist Republic of Councils who seized power in Hungary in 1919. And there are Stalin's boots. In 1956, a popular uprising toppled an 8-metre tall statue of Stalin by sawing through it at the knees, and nearly toppled the Communist government until the Soviets intervened, invaded the country, arrested 20,000 and executed two thousand for their roles, however minor, in the revolt.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Budapest

Parliament; Buda Castle

First arriving in big cities is disorienting, and Budapest is huge -- sixth
largest in Europe, in fact, after London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and...
somewhere else. The first day, arriving in the afternoon after a train
journey, is always spent getting your bearings. There's also a certain
amount of trepidation about what the hostel will be like (Mai Li has come
to hate hostels; this has been her first and last experience with them).
Combine this with arriving in Budapest in the rain and the day was a near
write-off, which really only left us two days to see this historical
metropolis.

Budapest lies on a fault -- the Danube being the rift between hilly, green
Buda and flat, urban Pest -- and natural springs percolate up from beneath
it. The city is famous for its thermal spas, several of which are Turkish
architectural masterpieces from the 16th and 17th centuries where the
experience has been compared to bathing in a cathedral. I am culturally
embarrassed to admit it's one of the things we didn't find time to do.

We did, however, see the Royal Palace and Buda Castle complex on the hill,
including the 700-year old Matthias Church which is apparently beautiful.
We couldn't tell what it looked like under all the scaffolding and netting;
probably something like an elaborate eggshell, given the "restoration"
technique of pressure washing the sandstone. In Prague, the Czechs opt to
carefully and painstakingly scrub their St Vitus Cathedral by hand. There
was also a fee to get inside -- the first church I've ever encountered
which charges a fee -- but we didn't know how much of the interior was
being worked on as well so didn't bother.

Matthias Church defines the view of the castle quarter from the whole of
the Pest side of the river, and is visible alongside the medieval
monastery-encompassing modern monstrosity of the Hilton Hotel, built in the
early eighties during Soviet rule and which is equally inspiring.

I make it all sound terrible, but that is only because the city and its
monuments are so beautiful that its frustrating to see them abused.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Summer in Europe

Mai Li and I have generated a low pressure system that is being reported by the weather bureau as the centre of rain in Europe. Elsewhere is experiencing 40°C weather. So, when we arrived in Hallstatt it was raining, and while we were there it rained, and when we left it deemed to rain. We caught the ferry across the lake and boarded the train at the little unmanned station, bound for Vienna in transit to Budapest. We headed south because I wanted to go via the historic Semmering Railway, though this would take longer and require more changes, but like a giant board game we reached a sign that read Bad Aussee and we had to turn back. It seems there was track maintenance and this little town was as far as we could get, so we headed north, the faster and boring way to Vienna. I looked at the map of the Austrian rail network. Perhaps it was better than finding ourselves in Rottenegg.

When we got to Vienna it rained. Mai Li's $6 umbrella snapped in the wind and cut open three of her fingers.

We spent just that afternoon and night in Vienna since our destination was Budapest, where we arrived the following day.

In the rain.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Hallstatt

A couple of hours out of Salzburg is a little lakeside village called
Hallstatt, which European travel guru Rick Steves lists as one of his
favourite little towns in Europe. Wooden houses cling like barnacles to the
side of a mountain as it descends into the water, strung together by
rolling, narrow footpaths and stone stairways. From the bathroom window of
the private room we rented at the top of a tight, winding staircase in Frau
Gummerer's house we could reach out to touch the rocks and plants of the
vertical mountainside. From the room itself the view was a bit less
claustrophobic: a vast and uninterrupted vista of the lake, looking across
to the little unmanned railway station in the distance where we lit from
the train to board the waiting ferry to the village.

There are two small chapels in Hallstatt: the simple Protestant church with
its tall spire and clock tower is the most prominent central feature of the
village; and the Catholic church with an elaborate interior, small cemetary
and beinhaus ("bone house") where, because of the lack of real estate in
the graveyard, bodies were disinterred after ten years, the bones then
bleached in the sun and scraped of any "remains of decay," and the skulls
painted with symbols and the names of the deceased and arranged in the
beinhaus.

The single cobblestone road in Hallstatt runs along the lake and is shared
by both cars and pedestrians, most of whom are tourists. Quirky art
installations are moored in the water, such as a wooden table and chairs on
a floating platform. At night, what may be old boardwalk pylons appear
beneath the surface in the gloom of the water like spectral fingers.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Salzburg

Salzburg is overrated. It's okay, but is really like a big tourist trap of
wall-to-wall shops and Sound of Music tours. As my Lonely Planet says, it's
Austria's capital of kitsch. The Americans in particular seem to flock
here. Cesky Krumlov was certainly touristy, but it felt authentic in a way
Salzburg does not. I think Ljubljana, Slovenia -- which I cut from the
itinerary -- would have been better, but then we wouldn't have made it to
the Eagle's Nest, which was worth it.

We had beautiful weather on Saturday and spent the day exploring the
Festung Hohensalzburg, the medieval fortress on the hill. In the evening we
zipped around on Segways like we did in Paris, since this time it wasn't
part of a tour and we could go where we wanted, but once again you don't
end up seeing much of the city because you're too distracted with what
you're doing. It is a motorised vehicle, after all. Still fun, but not the
novelty it was in Paris.

The Eagle's Nest

I can now say we've been to Germany -- a little corner pocket called
Berchtesgaden which is the gateway to Obersalzberg, the Nazi southern
headquarters and second seat of power. We caught a bus an hour out of
Salzburg and joined a tour which Mai Li had spotted on the internet and
booked before we left Sydney. This particular tour is recommended by the
New York Times, Lonely Planet, Rick Steves (European travel guru) and
others. The guide was extremely knowledgeable about the Nazi history of the
mountain, covering the life of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi high officials --
Speer, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess, and quite a bit on Martin Bormann,
Hitler's secretary and architect of much of the mountain stronghold;
indeed, it was his idea to construct the Eagle's Nest -- a luxurious tea
room (what we might call nowadays a conference centre) perched at the apex
of the mountain, accessible by a steep and winding mountain road, and then
a long (and once-heated) tunnel to the large, completely brass-lined
elevator which takes you to the top -- as a fiftieth birthday present from
the Nazi party to Adolf Hitler.

About half of the Nazi buildings remain, including some of the officials'
houses, but Hitler's residence sustained two direct hits in an RAF bombing
raid on Obersalzberg in 1945. The remains were completely razed in the
early fifties and trees were planted closely together over the site to
ensure it is never used as a place of pilgrimage by Hitler sympathisers.

We explored part of the extensive bunkers which were built under the
residences as a potential last refuge and means of escape of the Nazi high
officials and their families.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Austria

Bloody rain again. We've had one day of sun to every four of overcast
weather or rain. This is summer in Europe?

We took a 3-hour shuttle bus trip from Cesky Krumlov to Salzburg, winding
through lush and verdant Czech forests before the rustic landscape yielded
to more manicured Austria. Eventually the landscape gave way entirely to
freeway, and we transited Linz before finally arriving in an urban and
industrialised Salzburg. Where was the famous picture postcard baroque
town? We hoisted our packs and traipsed across the river to get to our room
in a modern, basic dorm-style youth hostel which was everthing one expects
in a youth hostel, complete with the common kitchen area rendered filthy by
still wet-nursed kids.

More from the 37-year old backpacking grump tomorrow: Hitler's house!

Friday, July 18, 2008

Czech recap

Cesky Krumlov at night.


The smaller towns in Europe are always more enjoyable than the big cities.
Prague is very pretty and well-preserved, and certainly worth visiting, but
it still bustles as a metropolis. That is amplified by the hordes of
tourists, and while it is easy to find quiet lanes out of the tourists'
way, it's a bit like Saturday night in Sydney every night in Prague. The
locals appear quite jaded by it. The worst appear to be British and Italian
groups of loud drunk blokes who holler up and down the streets at four in
the morning, though quite a number of other (Eastern) European tourists
bring their own special type of odorific offence, like the fat old Polish
woman sweating garlic sausages who bowled us right out of a shop.

Cesky Krumlov, while also unavoidably touristy, is intimate and friendly,
comparably beautiful with Prague, and easily digested in three days. All
the 17th-century buildings perched all over the little hill in the crook of
the river are painted pinks and greens and reds and overlooked by the
castle on the hill with the multicoloured tower. There is a tea house there
with Arabian rooms full of cushions and a quiet garden where "master tea
brewers" serve countless types of tea from China, India, Africa and Latin
America with spices like cardamom, cloves, white pepper and chocolate. You
can even smoke perfumed tobacco in a shisha, or hookah.

The preservation and restoration of buildings is done supremely well by the
Czechs. There is almost never graffiti to be seen in the well-maintained
old town centres. Although a minor aesthetic nuisance for photography,
there's always restoration scaffolding up somewhere.

When you get out of the historic centres, there are some interesting
buildings understandably maintained with considerably less enthusiasm --
monotonous crumbling grey concrete slabs of flats from the Communist era,
which is rather improved by its graffiti.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Cesky Krumlov

The weather has been less than summery since arriving in the Czech
Republic, with many days overcast or raining. We did have one nice day in
Prague, though, and today in Cesky Krumlov is bright and sunny.

Krumlov, near the border of Austria, is a quaint and beautiful cobblestoned
town nestled in a meander of the Vltava River. As you'd expect, it is
hugely popular with the tourists. Of course, that also means the food,
entertainment and amenities are excellent. Tonight, our last of three here,
we are going to a concert of "secular music of Renaissance Europe," part of
the ancient music festival.

Tomorrow... Salzburg.

After Prague

The last day in Prague we took a day trip to Kútna Hora, a town which boomed on silver and rivalled Prague in influence in the 17th century before it stagnated when the silver ran out. One of the legacies of its wealth is St Barbora Cathedral, which the guidebook tells me is as grand as the more famous St Vitus Cathedral in the Prague castle (which we were dissuaded from entering by the queue, which had developed its own border crossing).

Kútna Hora is also famous for the bone church, where the bones of 40,000 people interred there have been assembled into elaborate chandeliers, a giant coat of arms, and other macabre contortions of the human body. Not sure what they would have thought of that. Unfortunately, though, we dragged our arses that morning and then had to wait two hours for the train, so it closed before we reached it.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Prague Castle

From Prague
Golden Lane in Prague Castle, featuring Kafka's sister's house (the blue one) where he lived for a year and wrote a book of short stories. It's now a shop which sells books, including the one I'm talking about, which I bought.

Wrecked.

Holidaying is hard yakka. Yes, you mugs at work have got it easy. Up again
this morning at 5 a.m. and I've only just lain down to bed at 8:30 p.m.
We've been on our feet for about 12 hours, and longer yesterday. Hard work
with jet lag and a cracked rib, but we've had a good look at the Charles
Bridge and Prague Castle.

The tram is the easiest way to get to the Prague Castle. We bought a
24-hour transit ticket on Friday which ran out before we returned from the
castle to the Old Town on Saturday. The ticket machines at the tram stops
only take coins and we didn't have enough, so having caught transit several
times and never been bothered we decided to chance it without a ticket
until we could get to a tobacconist to buy another couple of 24-hour
tickets, but the plain-clothed transit officer sitting at the tram stop who
overheard our plans and boarded our tram fined us 700 crowns ($50) and
kicked us off. More walking.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Prague's cobblestone streets

City of Kafka and Velkopopovický

Arrived in Prague at 08:30 and caught public transit into the centre of Staré Mesto (Old Town) where we are staying. We really didn't do anything on the first day, just spent it orienting ourselves, eating and drinking the delicious Czech beer.

The rib I suspect I cracked keeping goal in the last soccer game has been grieving me a bit -- nothing major, but I feel it when I lean over or lift things a certain way. Not the best when backpacking.

Jetlagged, we had a nap in the afternoon and went to bed early, about 21:30. We understand why the locals are tourist cranky, given that there were some loud British and Italian drunken tours at it in the street four floors below us until 04:30, by which time we just decided to get up and check out the Charles Bridge at dawn before it was mobbed by the swarming tourists.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

First day.

We touched down in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 05:00. The flight to Europe
is in two legs because we bought two flights, the first one on points, so
we didn't have a clean transit -- 18 hours in KL. So, we ducked out through
customs (dead at that hour), checked our luggage into lockers (just taking
our shoulder packs), and caught the train into the city to visit Mai Li's
family. We showered and changed and I managed a short nap and Mai Li one
shorter, had breakfast, had dinner, visited all the reloes and we were off
again, to return in three weeks.

On the flight from KL to Prague I managed to get quite a bit of sleep,
probably because I got so little on the previous leg. After about six hours
I woke to the steady sound of the engines like rushing water, and with my
eyes shut I thought how quiet apart from this the plane was. I opened my
eyes and the lady sitting next to me was gone, and so was Mai Li, and when
I looked around I couldn't see anyone -- everyone was gone! No one was
sitting in any seat. There were no stewardesses. I got up and quickly
strode down the aisle to the front of the plane, past rows of empty seats.
Business class and first class were also empty. You can't get to the
cockpit because it's secure, and I had no way of knowing the pilots were
still on board. I walked back in the direction of my seat and checked the
toilets -- all vacant. What a relief. There's nothing worse than needing to
pee and all the toilets are taken.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

The Plan.

All plans go to plan. This is ours.


View Larger Map

Click on the placemarks in the map above for more detail.

09 July: Fly to Kuala Lumpur for 18-hour layover.
10 July: Arrive Prague, Czech Republic.
14 July: Cezky Krumlov, Czech Republic.
17 July: Salzburg, Austria.
20 July: Hallstatt, Austria.
22 July: Transit Vienna, Austria, en route to Budapest.
23 July: Budapest, Hungary.
26 July: Transit to Prague.
27 July: Fly from Prague to Malaysia.
28 July: Arrive Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
05 August: Angkor Watt ancient temple complex, Siem Reap, Cambodia.
09 August: Arrive Sydney.