Greek Driving

Greeks seem to drive in a massive coordinated dance. My defensive need for order on the road would get me nowhere in this country. Somehow Tassos, the man I would never trust with my car in Chicago is actually a safe and very responsible driver here. I’m starting to realize that safe driving doesn’t depend on your own driving but how you mesh with the other drivers on the road.



You would never see driving like this in a country where the liability laws are as strict (dare I say draconian?) as those in the US. After being over here for less than a month I’ve come to accept the fact that the American legal system keeps Americans doing things in a very American way. A certain amount of organic togetherness that is seen on the road here, where everything moves with a bit of harmony, has been replaced by systems of rules that outline how one should behave if they don’t want to get sued.

American driving is a very isolated experience. In fact, I’ll speculate that it is this isolation that leads to our issues of road rage and driving anxiety. When a driver is forced to drive by following rules (designed to protect them from prosecution) instead of the people around them, any event that forces them to acknowledge another person (intrusion) on the road can lead to mental struggles related to power. Any level of anxiety, embarrassment or rage will follow.

OK, I’ve obviously been drinking too much frappe (a cold instant coffee drink) this morning. This is understandable since we managed to wake up at 6:40 AM. Compare this to yesterday where we all rolled out of bed between noon and 2PM. Out of our group, I think that I got the most sleep last night. Chloe came up the big looser in that department, clocking in at less than 1 hour. No wonder she’s nagging Tassos about the speed he’s driving at. When you’re riding shotgun and sleepy you really feel the true speed of the car instead of the relative speed to other motorists that the driver feels.

In her defense, Chloe would like to add that we are driving down the most dangerous highway in Greece. Legend has it that entire armies have been wiped out along this road.

We’ve been sleeping in and taking it easy here. Athens doesn’t have a ton of super interesting tourist sights after you exhaust the Parthenon and a few of the museums. Those are great sights. However, once I started saying, “Hey, more old rocks!” I decided to get around to doing what I really wanted at this point in the trip: to be as lazy as possible for days on end. The only reason I left the house yesterday was to buy cheap vodka for our current trip. My travel barometer says that when Tassos is doing more work than you, you’ve officially reached the vacation leg of the trip.

The freeway has ended and we’re on a 2 lane road now. When not passing, it’s courteous to drive with half your car on the shoulder of the road, this allows other cars to straddle the center lane marker and pass in the presence of oncoming traffic (at 160 km/hour). My American sensibilities are left to wonder which direction of traffic has the right of way over the center of the road. From what I can see, there’s really no formal rule other than Don’t Hit Nobody.

Like I was saying, this leg of the trip has been dominated by hanging out and relaxing. I’m completely freeloading off of Tassos and Chloe. They live in an apartment on the bottom floor of their parents house. Mrs. Benetatos brings down delicious Greek food every day and there’s a wonderful bakery with fresh spanikopeta (sp?) up the street. I’ve passed my time with Tassos by playing music, reading a bunch (sweet!), kicking around town, and helping his friend move. Honestly, that last activity was one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had here. Not because Athens is so incredibly boring but navigating the insane streets and trying to get around back alleyways by car is so incredibly awesome. Trying to find your way down single lane streets with no sidewalks (crowded with people) while hauling stuff on your roof and trading Greek obscenities is good fun. You should try it sometime.



Anyways, we’re headed to Kehpalonia (pronounced kif-ah-len-ya) for a few days. Joining our happy, get-along-gang family is Tom, Natalie and Vasili (who’s name kinda’ means basil or king in Greek). The Greek coastline is beautiful. It actually has a lot in common with the California coastline (500 meter jagged mountains falling into the sea). I feel like I’m in Greece’s Big Sur (or, with a less ethnocentric spin, I live on America’s Greek coast). I’m sure it’s going to be a good and relaxing time.

Warsaw Poland

I traveled to Warsaw (Warszawa) to get to Greece. Norwegian air shuttle makes a cheap hop from Warsaw to Athens twice a week and I needed a way to get to Athens from Northeastern Europe on the cheap. That was pretty much my only reason for taking the train to Warsaw. I’ve never heard a glowing review of Warsaw and you’re not going to find one here. Overall, it’s a big post communist city that’s westernizing quickly. There are tall hotels and commercial buildings, some big city nightlife, large shopping centers and in the center of it all, the Palace of Culture and Science.



The Palace of Culture and Science. was a gift from Stalin to the people of Poland. While it’s an interesting building, I have to say that if I got something like that as a present, I’d hope there was a gift receipt inside. It’s too much of a monstrosity to regift and too damn expansive and prominent to have in the center of town. Many people joke that the best views of Warsaw are from within the building for the simple reason that it’s the only place in the city where the building can’t be seen.

Through my travels through Eastern Europe I’m starting to realize that communists had downright awful taste. Yea, some of their buildings and artwork are cool in their own soviet way but the utilitarianism with which they approached architecture boggles the mind. Didn’t they realize these things were frightening utilitarian symbols? Were they attempts to remove the humanity from the city and thus the people, in a totalitarian bid to turn the people into machines of the state? Perhaps that was the point but then one must wonder, why would someone want to live (or create) a state where the people are subjected to such things? What type of people would actually believe in this shit?

As a westerner, I’m not qualified to answer these questions. However, I find the following excerpt from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being relevant:

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.

Then everyone took to shouting at the Communists: You’re the ones responsible for our country’s misfortunes (it had grown poor and desolate), for its loss of independence (it had fallen into the hands of the Russians), for its judicial murders!

And the accused responded: We didn’t know! We were deceived! We were true believers! Deep in our hearts we are innocent!

In the end, the dispute narrowed down to a single question: Did they really not know or were they merely making believe?

OK! OK! I’ll get back to the travel stuff.

The hostel in Warsaw was packed. In fact, every hostel in Warsaw was full for the weekend. I could only book Friday night and was left to fend for myself on Saturday. What was really surprising was the number of Warsaw residents staying in the hostel. This might be due to the fact that Warsaw lacks any midrange hotel options. There are budget hostels and upscale business hotels but nothing in between. If you need a place to sleep and you don’t want to spend a lot of money, you’re staying in a hostel. While it wasn’t a super friendly or personable place to spend a night, I did manage to meet Polish students, a Polish teachers and a Polish businessman. I also played Monopoly with a gang of English soccer hooligans. Good times.

For my second day in Warsaw, I stashed my pack in the hostel locker and set out on foot to explore the city. Since I lacked a home base, this left me with a lot of walking and time to sit in cafes drinking overpriced espresso (drip coffee isn’t very popular here in Eastern Europe). Despite the rain, wind, a broken umbrella and 40 degree temperatures, I got around to a lot of the museums and sights. Old town is incredibly interesting if for no other reason than it’s a complete recreation of the original old town. The site was leveled by the German army in WWII and meticulously rebuilt in the 1950s to match its prewar state. It’s got a bit of a Disneyland sheen to it but, in the end, it works!



The other highlight was the Warsaw Museum of Contemporary Art. They had a few good exhibitions, including “Fly” by Yoko Ono. Her work includes a number of projects that bring the Museum patrons into the creation process. You’re invited to decorate plates with magic markers and construct works of art from their broken pieces, write on the walls and adorn leafless tree branches with small pieces of paper you’ve written on. She’s included personal notes to Warsaw, framed on the walls. Very fun.

At the end of the day, after an unsuccessful search for other accommodations, I resigned myself to spending the night in the Warsaw airport. Norwegian Air Shuttle flies out of Warsaw Airport’s Etiuda terminal, a terminal that has a reputation for being for being one of the worst in Europe. It’s a fitting reputation. After a few hours of shuteye on a metal bench in the international terminal, I made my way over to Etiuda at 4:10AM to check in for my 6:10 flight. I was a bit shocked to find that, even at 4:10 AM, the line to check in was already out the door. In hindsight, I would have never made my plane had found a place to stay in the city.

After waiting in line for a while, I passed through security, conked out on the plane and woke up in Athens. Upon exiting the plane I was greeted by warm Greek air and could feel the sunshine radiate through the terminal windows. It’s funny but, in my first 5 minutes in Greece, I could tell that I was in a country with a completely different mentality than Poland. Free, laid back (if not lazy) and cool (with a certain 80s flair in their style). It’s not a European city as I know them, it’s Mediterranean and it’s a nice change.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

This was one of those day trips that’ll stay with me for the rest of my life. In high school I read Elie Wiesel’s book Night. It’s a horrific book but did no good in preparing me for my day at Auschwitz. The immense amount of work that went into exterminating the Jews is so apparent and in your face when walking around Auschwitz and the massive Birkenau sites that there’s no escaping it.



I won’t go into too many details about my visit but here are a few memories.

1. There’s a 30 meter long glass display in the museum that contains a few tons of human hair. The Nazi’s would shave their victims and sell the hair for use in industrial and textile manufacturing. Visitors and relatives of victims have left roses in front of this glass display case. For me, it was by far the most powerful, shocking and immensely saddening display in the museum.

2. We call them concentration camps but they were actually extermination camps. After visiting I see why holocaust scholars make the distinction. The few who made it through the selection process faced an average life expectancy of 2-3 months before succumbing to exhaustion, disease or starvation. I have no idea how a few individuals managed to survive a single a polish winter of hard work with rations of 1300 calories and clothing as thin as pajamas.

3. The inhumanity displayed by the Nazis is shocking.



4. The visit is immensely worthwhile.

Krakow Poland

It’s been almost three weeks since I was in Poland but I’ll try to re-hash my experience there by picking away at my sleep deprived memory and checking with my (more reliable) pictures.

I purchased my train ticket to Poland at the main station in Budapest. From my dealings with ticket agents, I’m starting to get the feeling that being a ticket agent in Europe must be the most fun job in the world. As far as I can tell, you can be a complete dick to any and everyone who comes to your window and acting as if you give a shit about anything is completely optional. After negotiating a nonrefundable path to Krakow with the agent, I took my ticket and noted that they spell Krakow as Katowice. This didn’t strike me as odd because in Hungary and Poland, Warsaw is known as Warszawa, Krakow could very well be called Katowice.

For future reference, Krakow is Krakow or something that looks like that in almost every language on this planet. Katowice is English, Hungarian and Polish for a medium size industrial town about 80 km from Krakow… Travel tip #187: don’t be too shy to double check any suspicions with the ticket agents once you get your ticket, no matter how unfriendly they are. This is a good skill to learn and practice. Failure to do so can leave one with an unsettling disoriented feeling as you step onto the train platform in the wrong city at 4AM. In hindsight, I was really lucky that Katowice is so near to Krakow. After touring the train station and watching a few polish cops rough up a drunk (who, by his singing, didn’t seem to mind the attention), I was able to purchase a 6AM commuter train ticket to Krakow. Instead of getting to the hostel at 4AM, I arrived at the reasonable time of 8AM having seen a good bit of the Southern Poland countryside.

Krakow is billed as the next Prague. I’d say it’s more along the lines of Prague Lite. There’s gorgeous architecture and impressive religious buildings but most of the beauty is confined to the old town in the central portion of the city. Once you leave this area, Krakow is still an interesting eastern European city but not much more. The old town is small enough that, by the end of my first day, I felt as if I’d seen most of the sights and had a good feeling for the area.

Having seen the a lot of the city, I decided to plop down a bit of cash to do the Polish tourist thing: Wielicza Salt Mine. The mine and associated tour (required in order to visit) has been described as kitschy and a bit silly. After visiting, I can confirm these reports. It’s essentially a Disneylandesque salt mine tour tied together by the salt carvings and statues made by the miners. Probably the highlight of the trip was taking a minibus through the Polish countryside. Seeing traditional houses with long, skinny farming plots stretching out behind them and into the rolling hills was well worth the 60Pl price of the tour. Then again, when it comes to touring salt mines , it would be difficult to beat my previous experience.

When I was 5 or 7, my family toured the salt mines of Salzburg Austria. I still remember a lot of that tour. Not only did we get outfitted in awesome white miner jumpsuits but the method for getting from one level of the mine to the next was The Slide. Yep! If my memory serves me right, a wide banister shaped slide connected each level of the mine. These banisters were over 50 yards long and, to get to the next level you would straddle it and zip down to the next level. If I ever own a house with a cave I’m definitely getting one of those installed.

Here are a few notes from my stay:
Polish Food: Heavy, heavy heavy! One evening, I had an entire meal of fried perogi. I’ve never eaten such a greesy meal. It’s like the long lost relative of The Best Breakfast Ever.

I’m pretty sure my sweat consisted of 5% vegetable oil for the next week.

The hostel staff at Tom and Greg’s hostel are fantastic. They even took us out drinking with them when their shift ended. I had a good time talking about American movies ("I love Big Lebowski!") and cheering on the Montenegro football (soccer) team with them. As the newest country in the world, Montenegro is an easy team to root for when your favorite team isn’t playing. They’re young, spirited and complete underdogs. When they tied the game at 1-1 the bar went nuts. Unfortunately they lost 3-1. Maybe next year guys...

When the conversation turned to politics I was treated to a real surprise. Many of the Polish people are actually strong McCain supporters. Here’s why: The Polish people really don't like Russia. They're pissed off about the Russian aggression in Georgia and they’re very nervous about Russia exerting it’s power in the region again. They want a very strong US leader who will stand up to Russia. They view Obama as a thinker, not a fighter but they view McCain as a soldier who would have no problem telling Russia to “cut that shit out”. Interesting. When asked about American domestic issues I was told that they really don’t care.

Romania got a lot of plugs from other travelers. Cheap food, nice people and not a ton of tourists. I’ll try to get there.

Every year...

I’m 30. It's incredibly strange to say that but it feels good. I feel like I can say it with a certain air of authority and wisdom. It just so happened that my birthday here in Budapest coincided with Blake’s goodbye party so we combined the two and had a blast. I think I got the better end of the deal since he didn’t get a tiramisu cake with a rocket ordinance jammed in the top.



To really celebrate the occasion, we made the trip out to Mongolian Barbeque, an all you can eat extravaganza that’s a hell of a deal. For about $15 you get:

1. All you can eat (a) buffet, (b) meat bar where you pile your plate sky high with deliciously marinated raw meat, veggies and quail eggs, hand it to the friendly cook who sears it all on the grill and (c) desserts.
2. All you can drink wine, beer, soda, sangria, etc.
3. Five hours to do it all in (12-5).



Everyone had a blast. I can’t think of a better way to spend a birthday.

Budapest

I take the night train to Krakow tomorrow evening and I’m not looking forward to the trip. It isn’t the fact that I’ll be arriving in town at 4AM and I still don’t know where I’ll be staying. No, I’m just having a wonderful time here in Budapest. For the past few nights I’ve been staying at the ridiculously friendly Backpack Budapest hostel. It’s located a bit off the beaten path in the Buda half of the city (Budapest is actually separated into 2 halves, Buda to the East of the Danube contains the historic and mostly residential portion of the city and Pest to the west contains the downtown, (not so) central park and Parliament).



I suppose my visit here started in Prague when I met up with my college friend Alisa. We had a spectacular time tromping around the city Tuesday night, eating and drinking at the local/expat hangouts in the less touristy part of downtown Prague. I didn’t get a lot of sleep before we made our way out to the Museum of Contemporary art the next day. It’s a very well done museum and even cooler since it was free for the day as they were installing some type of Ikea looking art installation on the first floor. Pardon our dust but the Museum is free today. No Problemo.

I planned on catching up on sleep on the night train to Budapest but ended up drinking $1.50 beers with a guy from here for the first few hours of the trip. So much for sleep. By the end of my first evening here I’d come down with a savage cold from my lack of Z-s. The cold stayed with me for about 36 hours (and ended with what was probably the worst headache of my life) and eased up by Saturday morning, allowing me the chance to enjoy the Budapest Baths and see the (not-so) central park with Namon (??) my new friend from the Netherlands.

The Budapest baths are absolutely awesome! If you come to Budapest and don’t have a bath, you’ve missed out on the experience of a lifetime. Imagine lazily swimming laps in a heated pool complex that looks like this:



The locals play chess while relaxing in the 37C water, lazily soaking up the sun. Some stand under stone fountains and get massaged by the falling water. It was an amazing experience. Life is good here.

The rest of the day passed by lazily and then made way for Saturday night. I won’t go into details but the hostel made a pilgrimage to the city, bars were hit, strange Hungarian pop hippie bands were amusedly stared at and house music was danced to (The DJ played tracks I haven’t heard in about 8 years). Much of Eastern European art and culture carries a funny side of the 80’s close to its heart. It’s not strange to hear a guitar solo or see a guy rocking out to an electric flute. For this American it’s absolutely charming and silly all at once.

We found our way home around 5AM and many of us didn’t make it to bed until 9AM (Formula 1 was on). That’s just the way it seems to work at Backpack. Since they’re a 24 hour hostel, one of the 3 workers is always awake. This keeps everyone else up and going to the wee hours of the morning. It reminds me of college but without the whole study thing. I have no idea how they keep on going. The pace and intensity with which Jai talks makes me think he’s a speed freak but his behavior just doesn’t match up. I think after 5 years of working strange hours at the hostel he just doesn’t need a decent nights sleep anymore. He’s also a bit looney.

I can’t remember a single minute where music was not playing here.

To sum up Budapest, the reports are true: It’s an Eastern European city but with a Turkish twist. Many people are friendly (but not overly so) and have even gone out of their way to help me get on the correct bus or lend a hand in pointing me in the right direction.

As for the sights, they’re cool but not what you travel to Budapest for. Go and soak up the culture, the people and have a bath.

Zizkov - The most awesome of TV towers

I first saw pictures of the Zizkov tower on the internet a few months ago. The pictures said nothing about where it was located or the story behind the tower so I was absolutely PSYCHED to look out my hotel room and see the creepy and yet somehow beautifully awesome tower perched over the Prague skyline.

Have some pictures.

Prague (so far)

Prague is beautiful. Please notice the period at the end of that sentence. I can’t remember ever visiting a city with this much pure beauty. Everywhere you turn and everywhere you go, you’re absolutely overwhelmed by the architecture and layout of the city. Narrow stone alleyways randomly run into large courtyard squares surrounded by art nuveau? buildings. It’s truly an amazing place. I’ve never been to Paris but I can’t imagine a city’s beauty besting that or Prague. I’ll visit sometime to make the call but in the meantime I’m making a mental note to never move to Prague for the simple reason that every other city I live after moving away in will be downright ugly in comparison.



The past few days have been spent walking around the city in no particular direction and marveling at every turn. It’s an adventure here. City structures and pathways date back to medieval times (I stumbled upon a large orchard/garden that’s existed in the same place since the1200s to today) and back then, city planning consisted of someone saying “gosh it’s nice I’m not dying today” and then throwing their shit in the street. I can see why the Czech cubist movement flourished here. There are no right angles in the streets and it adds to the flavor of the city. Why not extend that idea to your buildings, furnishings and paintings?

BTW, the black Madonna house is quite nice:



As is the café inside. I enjoyed my time there a lot:



I really don’t have much more to say, amazing sums it up well I suppose I’m getting my feet wet, learning how I like to travel by the seat of my pants in a foreign country and exist on the go. Learning a few Czech phrases has been fun and there’s a bit of adventure at every turn from buying beer in shops to figuring out how to use and get cheated by the local pay phones.