Krakow and Points South

 Monday morning I woke to my first day in Krakow. I spent it trying to cover as much of the old city as I could by foot. I started with the old market square and I know these aren’t unusual around this part of the world but I still stopped to take a picture of the guardian statue on the side of the building on the street leading into the square (I don’t even know what the right word is to call these little things to be honest).

Part of the square was getting gussied up for what I assume was going to be an Easter holiday fair but they weren’t quite ready to open when I was there.

I took the time to admire the old city hall (I think) tower, the souvenir market underneath it, and the pretty pretty ponies parked outside.

The cathedral really dominates the square, underneath was a flower market that was taking a beating from the gusty winds.

I left the old town square by way of the “royal route” a walking path that identifies places of interest between the market square and the Royal castle. Mostly it pointed out a bunch of churches.

A Franciscan church.

Another church, this one Dominican

And no one had to point this out to me, I noticed all by myself that this town had the BEST TASTE in desserts that I have ever seen. The sheer decadence! I was so impressed I had to take this picture

Then it was back to the churches. The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul

Which was next to the Church of St. Andrew

And then this tiny little totem pole statue that was, I’m sure, left of the route map by accident, and not just because it wasn’t a church.

Finally I reached the pinnacle of the route, the castle! It’s also secretly a church. It’s gigantic and so impossible to fit into one picture with my dinky little point and shoot camera. So each picture is a tiny portion of the castle even though each picture could stand as a castle on its own.

The castle is sensibly located on top of a hill, so up the hill I trudged and through the gate into the castle proper

And there it was, the church! Cathedral actually.

The middle of the castle grounds are where a lot of the old castle buildings used to stand and they leave the area free now with some of the foundations still showing.

I did take the time to go through the cathedral but no pictures allowed so there isn’t much I can say about it. It was full of old kings and queens and so I picked up a little bit of old history and I got annoyingly stuck behind a school group that I could not for the life of me get past in the narrow corridors until the very, very end when I finally pushed my way through and then as their tour guide and group was watching slipped down the exit steps and came very very close to eating it. That was the first, but not the last time that the very paving stones of Krakow tried to kill me. It was insane. I tripped going down stairs, going up stairs, walking on the sidewalk, walking on the street, transitioning from the street to the sidewalk and back again, walking on cobblestones, walking on paving stones. Everywhere I went in that city I came close to falling down as the stones beneath my feet tried very dedicatedly to murder me. By the end I was remembering how my dad used to exclaim that I had the capacity to walk across an entirely clear floor and trip over a germ but this really was above and beyond my natural flair for falling.

After the cathedral I checked out the rest of the castle but most everything was closed because it was a Monday.

I finished up at the edge of the castle overlooking the river with the greatest sign I’ve ever seen

Unfortunately the Dragon’s den was also closed because it was a Monday. But the views from up on the wall were glorious.

Then as I walked away the cobblestones (which you can kind of see in this picture) tried very hard to break my ankle and failed.

I left the castle from the opposite side of where I had come in, past a really freaking beautiful clock

And then stopped a stranger to take my picture outside the main gate

Castle tour completed I continued on my way down the tourist walking path. This led me past the house where the late Pope John Paul II lived on a very cute street

Then on a circuitous route past a university and yes, more churches to the old city gate (I still recall quite distinctly almost falling on this street as I made my way towards the gate).

And the lonely barbican guarding it

Behind it is this very intimidating statue

And then back through the city gate into the market square.

I got into the square in time to hear the trumpeter who performs a tune to mark the hour, the tune cuts off abruptly in the middle to commemorate the time that legend says the trumpeter was blowing the alarm and the invaders shot him with an arrow.

I had the whole afternoon ahead of me so I decided to check out the Rynek Underground museum. It lies under the market building in the middle of the square that you can see here.

The Rynek Underground was pretty cool, it was one of the most unique museum experiences that I’ve ever had. They have excavated a good portion of the area under the current square to reveal the market that stood there centuries before. Then they use multimedia devices and technology like holograms to bring the area to life. The result is that instead of just looking at exhibits and reading about what you are looking at the exhibits do some of the work your imagination otherwise would and shows how tools would have been used and how the area would have sounded and looked like. It was an ambitious idea that I think they pulled off pretty well, although there is a lot to see so it can be a bit overwhelming. My favorite exhibit was some of the exhumed bodies that were buried in a way to show that they were considered vampires. Apparently being a lefty was one of the signs (Micah, Aliza...I’m looking at you kids) of vampirism.

When I emerged from the underground I hoofed it over to the train station to buy my ticket to Bratislava for the next night. The train station ticket lady who I spoke to tried very hard to sell me a ticket that was extremely overpriced and only mentioned the option of a non-refundable ticket that was 100 zloty cheaper when I broke down and begged for a cheaper ticket. I was on a pretty strict time table so I had no plans to miss my train regardless.

With that out of the way I took the tram to Kazimirez, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow. It has a very very strange vibe. A kind of Jewish fetishism that sits a little uneasily. It’s full of “Jewish” restaurants that play klezmer music and have signs and menus in Hebrew and pictures of old Jewish sages on the walls, but don’t serve KOSHER food. On the other hand standing outside the Old Synagogue I was surrounded by Israeli yeshiva tour groups that made me feel right at home.

I stopped outside the Remah synagogue for a late lunch and a beer in the sun and unfortunately missed the chance to go inside the adjacent cemetery because I didn’t realize it closed so early. But while sitting there I did get a chance to overhear the woman next to me asking the waiter for directions to the river which he confidently stated was in the exact opposite direction of where it is actually located. After he left I mentioned that I was pretty sure that was incorrect and someone from another table joined in as well to give the real directions. When I finally peeled myself out of my comfortable chair I explored the area, with its Holocaust memorial

its Jewish memorabilia

And realized that I had missed out on seeing the inside of this cemetery

and the inside of the accompanying synagogue

With the synagogues closed I just followed the Jewish Heritage Walking route

To the Old Synagogue

then the High Synagogue

And the Temple Synagogue

I stopped here to listen to a free tour guide describe progressive Judaism for a little while before I continued on my way. From there it was a jaunt past the Izaaka Chabad synagogue

And finally ended at the Popper Synagogue

Exhausted from all my walking I returned to my hostel to rest for a bit, only to find it had been overrun by a bunch of pre-teens on some sort of school tour. It was kind of my nightmare. Thankfully none had been allocated to my room although I had picked up a couple of roommates that day. That night I got dinner in Kazimirez and then hunted down an Irish pub near the Old Town market square to watch some football (soccer), drink some Guinness and make friends with English people. Something about traveling apparently makes me really into everything I don’t really take advantage of while actually living in England.

The next day I took a side trip to Auschwitz. It was obviously a pretty depressing way to spend a day but I’m glad that I did it. It was another thing that I accomplished this year that I had never really imagined ever experiencing in real life and it was obviously a very meaningful experience. Overall what struck me the most during my time there was not how terribly awful the whole thing was because I’ve been taught about the Holocaust my entire life, so those facts and numbers are all familiar to me, but more how impressed I was that anyone at all, survived. It really struck me how everything was calculated very specifically to be un-survivable, no one should have been able to subsist on the amount of calories they were rationed, to survive the winters with the amount of clothing they were given. As I stood there freezing in my warm coat when the wind howled across the plains in Birkenau I literally couldn’t imagine spending one day there with snow up to a meter and no shoes on my feet. At the end of the day I was completely overwhelmed by the strength of the survivors and so I suppose I left with more hope and admiration for the strength of the human spirit instead of crushed by the horrors.

But there were of course, horrors aplenty and the next bunch of pictures catalogues them:

"Work Makes You Free"

main compound in Auschwitz

Exhibit “on the way to death”

Cooking utensils

Room full of shoes

Prisoners

Recreated death by firing squad wall memorial

Assembly tower

Gallows

Small gas chamber and ovens

Once we had gone through Auschwitz we boarded a bus for the couple of kilometers journey to Birkenau.

Less of Birkenau is left and much of it remained to be built before the end of the War interrupted the Nazi’s plans. The sheer scale of it cannot be captured in these pictures. It is massive. The plain goes on and on and on and it is COLD it is absolutely freezing as the wind just whips over it. The scale of the place utterly defies belief.

I took this picture from the middle of the camp, it stretches to those tiny trees you see in the distance

A map

 

The entrance for the trains to pull directly into camp

And straight down the middle

Only the chimneys of the buildings are left from this part. I think, if I’m not mistaken they were taken apart for the materials after the war for rebuilding other areas. 

Railcar

Memorial

View from the memorial, which is located where the crematoria were in the woods to the entrance.

 Memorial plaques in languages of the victims

“Let there go up from this place a strong voice and warning to everyone. Here the Nazis murdered around a million and a half people, men, women and children. Citizens of the different European states and many of them Jews.”

Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1940-1945.

Destroyed Crematoria

Pond full of ashes

Women’s Barracks

Final stop, Men’s Barracks

I got lucky and the bus back to Krakow came almost as soon as I finished by tour and took the bus back to the Auschwitz site. I still had some time in the afternoon and so I decided to visit the Schindler factory. Instead I got really really really really lost in a pretty sketchy area of Krakow. This sign, right here, actually pointed in the exact opposite direction from the factory. I followed it not knowing that.

And in doing so found myself at a portion of the old Jewish Ghetto wall.

But finally, after getting turned around and around and doing a lot of trudging and getting frustrated I lucked upon some signs that actually pointed me in the direction of the factory and eventually found myself there.

I was there at the same time as the free tour so I eavesdropped in as the tour guide explained the reality of Schindler the man vs. the movie about Schindler. It seems that Schindler was willing and eager to have Jews working in his factory because they were free labor, which was cheaper than anything else he could get anywhere. He wasn’t involved in writing the “list” that job fell to another man in his organization. I guess it surprises no one to think that Hollywood romanticizes or glosses over certain stories to make them more palatable, but in the end it can’t be denied that Schindler was directly or indirectly responsible for saving the lives of many Jews during the Holocaust.
 

The factory

I walked back all the way up to the old town and got a late lunch/early dinner and relaxed a bit while night fell. Then I took myself back up the old “Royal route” I had followed the day before to admire Krakow at night. It’s very pretty.

The Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Andrew

The castle at night

And then I had walked over to Kazimirez for a quick drink at a bar before I picked up my bag from the hostel and made for the train station.

A little bit of train station humor

The sleeper car I was in sleeps six people. It is INSANE. When I first got there all the beds were down and there was room for one person to stand sideways in the middle.

I was supposed to be sleeping on the top bunk so I stored by bags up in the tiny little crawl space

But when it became clear I was going to be getting off the train hours before my compartment mates the Serbian guy offered to switch with me so I wouldn’t have to bumble around as much and wake everyone when I left. I spent a bit of time chatting with the two American girls and the Serbian guy in my cabin but they were going all the way to Prague (I think) and I was getting off early in Bratislava.

I slept surprisingly well and at 5:40 am I was up and off the train at my destination. Then I got to play to fun “how to find your hostel based on the directions provided” game. Eventually I found my way and dropped my bags off so that I could go exploring. I loved being out and about so early in the city. It gave me the chance to have all the touristy places to myself and I made the most of it. I walked down and into the old Town Square, where they had these probably Easter-related decorated Teepees set up.

Part of the reason I loved Bratislava so much (and I did, I really really did love that city) was that it is full of quirky little art. Conveniently they have a pamphlet for tourists that identifies the monuments and museums as well as a lot of the “curiosities” that are unique to the city. Particularly this guy, who is super well-known the “rubberneck”

This guy, commemorating an apparently beloved street performer

And this guy who is a Napoleonic soldier

 

The main old town square was totally empty and the lighting as the sun rose was gorgeous

I walked through the old St. Michael's city gate

and past the narrowest building in Bratislava

And gasped aloud when I saw the castle

My obsession with street art continued unabated and Bratislava was willing to feed it 

Then it was a hike, and I mean a seriously steep hike, up through a neighborhood to the Slavin

Steeper even than it looks in this picture

Past a part of the US embassy!

And to the Slavin, a war memorial from the communist era for Soviet soldiers that fell during the liberation of Bratislava.

Like most communist architecture, it is truly ugly.

But it has great views of the whole city because it is so freaking high up on this mini-mountain that I just climbed

I walked back down a different way than I had come up, one that would have been I think significantly easier to climb up if I had known it existed. Then back through the old town square and its pastel houses

And along the riverbank (the spaceship up there on the bridge is actually a restaurant)

And past this really great statue of a guy carrying either a defeated enemy or a wounded compatriot

By this time it was still really early and I was frozen to the bone, the light jacket I was wearing did nothing to stop the wind which had chilled my body down to dangerously low temperatures. So I went to the mall. The Eurovea is a pretty spectacular and seemingly new mall that sits along the riverbank. I got coffee and did my best to warm up before I ventured outside to take pictures of these monuments.

And as I walked away I spotted this quaint little communist farmer man and his wife on the side of a building

And then I saw it, the Blue Church. The greatest church I saw on this trip, and even though nothing is ever going to beat La Sagrada Familia, this came close.

It was like a frosted cupcake of a building.

I admired it for ages and then walked back up the street only to come across this delightful piece of art (see, this is why I just loooooooooooved Bratislava, because this sculpture doesn't even make the list of "curiosities" hahaha).

I also did my Jewish duty and found myself the old synagogue

Then took myself on a side trip to find a memory card because in my attempts to “pack light” I had decided that bringing another memory card would take up too much room. Once that was completed I was back on the hunt for touristy things and more “curiosities” to take pictures.

This painting is on the side of the city hall building an apparently appeared there mysteriously by black magic to shame this villainous city councilor who was trying to defraud a widow.

And not mysteriously at all the city hall building has measuring sticks so that purchasers could be sure that they had actually gotten a “cubit” of merchandise and hadn’t been ripped off.

By this time the rest of the town had woken up and gotten down to business, including the first Easter fair I had seen yet that was actually open for business

And there was even more funny art to be discovered!

Including this little gremlin, who is hidden on the street in plain sight, I finally had to ask the tourist information where I could find him after I had walked up and down the street looking for him. The story goes that in the Middle Ages there lived a man who would, hidden behind the curtains, secretly watch people on the street, in order to mock him, inhabitants of the town placed this statue of a grinning dwarf on the façade of the house opposite.

Then it was away from the Old Town where I stumbled across the Holocaust memorial

And up the street past the Museum of Timepieces (Clocks)

To the Jewish Cultural Museum

It was mostly a collection of Judaica recovered from the area

And a mock up of a Jewish cemetery underneath.

From the Jewish cultural museum I had just enough time to walk back to the center of the old town to meet up for the “free” (for tips) walking tour. I found the guide, who was holding a giant orange Free Tour sign, easily and he was the one who pointed out the American Embassy facing the plaza with heavy duty gates surrounding it. Apparently he had been identified as a potential security threat when he started meeting up for the tours in front of it and had to defend himself as legitimately standing around on ground that happened to be in front of the American embassy.

While I waited I spotted yet another random sculpture that once again made me fall in love with this city

I only took a couple of pictures during the tour because I was busy learning so much about Slovakia, the Australian who was leading the tour had apparently studied the history of the region so he knew EVERYTHING about it. I was super impressed with how much history he really put into context for us. Main things I learned I think is that Hungary is still pretty sore that it doesn’t own Slovakia and that Slovakia and the Czech Republic are really tight even though they aren’t the same state anymore. Also that Hitler made Slovakia declare itself its own republic even though it didn’t have any desire to do so. I think the options were “declare independence or be invaded” and then they got invaded anyway so it was all an evil trick!

Anyways here are the two pictures that I took while I was on the walking tour, the first is some sort of commemorative statue garden (commemorating....independence fighters? I don’t remember)

And the second is the Slovakian White House

When the tour ended I decided it was finally time to explore the castle. I walked up the very large hill to the fairly newly completed castle. According to the tour guide the people hired to do repairs on the castle got really drunk and burned the whole thing down so it had to be entirely reconstructed.

The castle had amazing views of the communist communities that were built across the river

And a cool perspective on the St. Martin’s cathedral in which the Kings and Queens of Hungary were crowned.

You can tell it was used to host coronations because of the pure gold crown at the top of the spire

Unfortunately the communist government built a freeway directly next to the cathedral and the vibrations of the traffic are causing terrible structural damage to the building.

I walked down off the hill of the castle after admiring the views, past this quaint little castle gate

and then back to the Holocaust memorial which I realized is also part of a memorial to the Jewish quarter of the city which was laid to waste so that the freeway could be built.

After walking the whole very long day I finally took myself back to the hostel for a quick rest, past this last little piece of quirky Bratislava that I so adored

My night was quiet, I took blurry pictures of the castle so beautifully lit up

Then I just read my book and chilled out at a traditional Slovakian beer house and then ended the night by grabbing a drink at a bar with a rose growing from the ceiling.

My goal for the next morning was to wake up extra early and get on my way to Vienna. I managed to get up on time and found this boy passed out in the hallway by the bathroom

He started to wake up about the fourth time I had to move his body to the side so I could get out the door to the rest of the hostel.

Then it was the frantic struggle to get out of the city, I, of course, lost my way and walked really far really fast carrying my backpack and going in the wrong direction. Eventually I got myself turned around and onto the right bus to the train station. At the train station I wasn’t entirely sure which line I needed to be in to buy the ticket I needed and I wasted precious minutes trying to pick a line. By the time I settled on one my train was leaving in exactly 4 minutes. I asked each of the six people in line in front of me if they minded me cutting in front to get a ticket. None of them did, they were super super nice about it. The train ticket clerk however was having absolutely none of it. She was in the middle of helping another customer and even if that customer had said I could step in she wasn’t going to acknowledge my presence until she was ready. And man did she take her time. I finallllly got my ticket from her and bolted up the stairs, down the stairs, back up the stairs to the platform and threw myself onto the train 30 seconds before it pulled out of the station.

The train was stopping at a couple of different stations in Vienna and I had absolutely no idea which one I needed to get off at. I chose the last one and then by the grace of God himself was able to find my hostel. It involved a lot of guessing. Luckily the station I was at was on the same line as another station that the directions to the hostel started from. I was able to get myself to that station and then from there to my new hostel. As soon as I dropped my stuff off I turned around and ran back to the metro station so I could go to see the Spanish Riding School training session which ran from 10 to 12 noon. I got lost AGAIN coming out of the metro and after much annoyed wandering around the palace, where I could SMELL the horses and where I found a closed and unused entrance I stumbled across the place around 10:30am.

I stayed for the whole hour and a half that was left. Every day the Spanish Riding School riders train their horses while wearing traditional costumes in half hour intervals to classical music in an actual palace. I could have stayed happily all day. No pictures were allowed by everyone and their mom was taking pictures so I couldn’t resist. I even saw the first and only (current) woman rider (one other girl, an American, started training there but eventually quit).

 Look at that extension!

 Piaffe

After watching the training I was pretty much done with Vienna. Nothing was going to top that. But I still had half the day to kill. I decided to start with the Hapsburg palace. The ticket I bought covered the palace cutlery exhibit, I’m not sure that is really the word that covers it but it was all the state china and place settings and banquet displays. I didn’t particularly care about any of it because that much opulence becomes monotonous after a while. Once you had been through that exhibit the path led upstairs to the Sisi exhibit and the kaiserapartments. The exhibit on the empress of the Austro-Hungarian empire was really fascinating. Sisi (Elizabeth) was really an interesting figure (and given that I’ve remembered all this stuff off the top of my head months later so it really stuck with me), apparently her husband met her when he was supposed to be getting engaged to her sister and chose her instead. She fell in love with him but forever resented having to be the Empress and live a public life. She was obsessed with her looks, because she was acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful women of her time, and from the descriptions sounds like she had a bit of an eating disorder. In her spare time she learned to speak Hungarian fluently and was instrumental in having her husband grant the Hungarians equal status in the Empire. I was also very impressed with her husband who was so dedicated to serving his Empire that he woke up at 3 am to start working every single day. Except when he slept in one hour to 4 am. Unfortunately this story does not have a happy ending, their only son committed suicide and she, the Empress, was assassinated by an attention seeking man making some sort of political statement because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and happened to be in town and famous when this guy was there at the same time. Their nephew, Arch-Duke Ferdinand met a similarly sad end and we all know how that went.

Ok, enough with the history lesson, here is a picture I snuck of the opulent wall decorations in one of the rooms.

And a view of the palace from the outside.

Vienna is just full of palaces. Everywhere you look it’s obvious that you are in a city that was the center of cultural Europe for centuries.

I walked back towards the main square of the old town, past this (war?) memorial

And to the cathedral the Stephensdom, the roof of which was covered in Hungarian tiles

The inside looked pretty much just how you would suspect.

With enough tourist attractions under my belt I had to take some time out of exploring to run an errand. I got the metro over to the international bus station and purchased my ticket for the early the next day to Budapest. 

With my errand done I took the metro back into the main part of the city and decided to take my guidebook’s advice and ride the tram around the main attractions for a sort-of personal tour. I rode the tram past the “neo-classical Parliament building” which was beautiful

But then I guess I had taken the tram in the wrong direction because it took me to the end of the line and just stopped there. I didn’t know what to do so I just switched over to the next train and rode it back. I was so annoyed at the tram for taking me to the middle of nowhere and leaving me there that I jumped off once we got back to the ringroad that circles the Hapsburg palaces. I had noticed what looked like a fair over by a church and walked down to check it out. Apparently I had just missed some sort of BMX expo which would have been really cool

At this point it started to rain and I was tired and too poor from spending all my money going to see the Riding School and the Kaiserapartments that I decided to just be very Viennese and spend some time at a café, sipping on espresso and eating strudel. With my strength restored I did a bit more walking around, down to a famous farmers market area and then back up to the gardens and finished up at a huge art place that is multiple galleries and cafes all together in one big building. I found a very authentic little bier house to spend the evening before I walked back to the hostel. It seemed like a really cool place with a very social crowd and its own bar but I had to be up around 4am for the bus so I didn’t have the time to hang out.

And now, I must admit, tragedy strikes. I unfortunately, upon my return to London, made the rookiest of rookie mistakes. I failed to load my pictures onto my computer immediately and then my camera was stolen so all the pictures on my second memory card, the one I had just bought in Bratislava, were lost. I will do my best to 1) review the next half of the trip quickly and without boring everyone and 2) to steal some pictures from the internet so you can get a sense for what I’m talking about.

The second Friday morning of my trip I woke up before dawn and dragged myself to the international bus station. I did my best to sleep most of the way to Budapest and succeeded in uncomfortably dozing until we got there. I actually arrived significantly earlier than I thought I was supposed to get there. The first thing that I noticed about Budapest as I took the underground metro to the stop for my hostel was how freaking quickly their escalators move. Those things are fast! Normally I get annoyed at people who pause before they step onto an escalator because there just isn’t any need, but this one, you step wrong and the chance was you were going to go flying. This was also the first city where they had extremely strict metro ticket inspectors. More often than not as you either entered or exited a station there were multiple transit police waiting to check on your ticket. As usual, I got lost trying to find my hostel. And as usual, I finally found it. I checked in and then picked up a map of the city and set about orienting myself.

My first stop was a farmers’ market in a warehouse like building up the street from my hostel and right along the river. From there I walked down the bank and stopped to enjoy a coffee in an attempt to warm myself up. A lot of the time I was traveling this trip the weather would have been really nice except for the gusty winds that just whipped the warmth right off my body. Budapest was no different. I was finally in a place where I had more than 24 hours to spend in the city so I devoted my first day to the “Pest” side of the river.

I started with the synagogue tour. It claims to be Europe’s largest synagogue today. It was beautiful, but also uncomfortably like a church. It had a giant organ. It also had two pulpits that were up a flight of stairs and off the side of one of the supporting columns, just like a church. If I’m not mistaken the resemblance was on purpose. My favorite little factoid was that the synagogue had not been built with double-paned windows so it was closed every winter because if you bothered to heat it the heat would just leak right outside.

Once the tour ended I visited the upstairs area to view their Holocaust museum, most of the information was not in English but the pictures generally speak for themselves. The most devastating was a picture of desecrated Torah scrolls. Outside in the courtyard is a garden of remembrance and behind the synagogue is another courtyard that holds a beautiful Holocaust memorial. The sculpture is a weeping willows, whose branches suggest the shape of the tablets of the 10 commandments and each leaf is inscribed with the name of a victim. It’s very moving.

After the Synagogue it was about time for lunch so I walked to a veggie place up near the river and then back towards the main Cathedral once I was done. I took some pictures of the outside but wasn’t sure if I would have to pay to go in and so wasn’t willing to commit.

For the afternoon I walked up the main large, gracious boulevard to the Terror Museum. The museum is located in the old headquarters of the secret police. It served this purpose for both the Nazi SS and the Communist successors. It chronicled a particularly dark time in the Hungarian past. I spent hours in there, room after room after room since it had to cover something like 40 years of history.

To cheer up afterward I walked down the main avenue to the large park at the end where I admired the gigantic heroes monuments.

From there it was just a few short steps to the miniature castle that stands on an island in the park, caled the Vajdahunyad castle. It is based off a Transylvanian castle and now houses the Hungarian Agricultural Museum. It was ADORABLE! It was everything a Disney castle wants to be, but better. Like life-sized but also on a totally smaller scale than any castle I’ve seen in Europe. Adorable.

The "castle" grounds are also home to this awesome and terrifying "anonymous" statue

 

It had started to get truly cold at this point as the sun started to set so I made my way past the ticket inspectors and to the hostel. I was in the kitchen making some dinner when the guy working the front desk stopped in to tell me I was “in the wrong place”? I admit, my heart stopped, how was I in the WRONG HOSTEL?! Little miscommunication, I had been told to go into the wrong *room*. My relief was immense. I changed rooms and ate. I had met an American couple, Jake and Jen, in my original room and we decided to go out drinking. At the first par we tried the local beverage “palinka” it was strong. Really strong. The second bar we checked out was bigger and livelier but the man sitting next to us was fast asleep. At the third bar we smoked hookah and met some Germans in a large warehouse like club space. By 3:30 we were back at the hostel.

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed early enough to take the free walking tour. This one was extremely popular and a ton of people showed up.

It covered a little bit of the ground I had already seen the day before and some I hadn't including this cute statue, apparently the first non-communist piece of public artwork in the city.

And then crossed the bridge over to the castle. The castle, like most other castles, is on top of a really big hill. We climbed on up and took in the view from the top. Apparently the Hungarian parliament building, which you could see just on the other side and a bit down the river, was modeled after Westminster Palace, but designed to be a couple of meters bigger as an F-U to the British version.

The tour ended up on the top of the castle by the fisherman's bastion

 I continued on into the Buda area to grab lunch and to find the rail station so I could look into the tickets for Zagreb. Then I crossed the city back up to the park I had visited the day before and spent three hours soaking in the thermal baths. I felt very ancient-Roman doing it, but the relaxation was just what I needed after so many days of walking, walking, walking.

I went back to the hostel and because once again I had to wake up at around 4:45 I turned down the offer of the 10 Italians I was sharing my room with to share their alcohol and rested and read a book instead. When they left the guy who was stuck playing all-night receptionist at the hostel asked if I wanted to play chess. It had been years, YEARS, since I last played but I decided to give it a go. I even came close to winning! It was good to shake some of the mental rust off that skill but I still don’t think I have the patience for a game of strategy. Then it was every other game we had there, some I had never heard even heard of before. Those I didn’t do too well at. Some sort of Japanese board game that made no sense to me and then a kid’s card game that I absolutely killed at. When a couple that was staying at the hostel came home around 1:30 we convinced them to play a game of “Sorry!” with us that lasted at least another hour. It was tons of fun but it lasted for ages and I got about three hours of sleep before I had to wake up. I left the room right as the Italians were coming in from their night out.

Sunday morning I was up and out super early to catch the train from Budapest to Zagreb. I had the car to myself so I was able to catch up on my sleep until I was surprised awake by the border guards crossing into Croatia. I hadn’t actually realized that Croatia isn’t part of the EU so this was the first time that I had had to show my passport since I started my trip. We were stopped for quite a while while they first checked me out of Hungary/the EU and then welcomed me into Croatia. It was a funny little receiving line almost, I stayed in one place and the officers just kept replacing themselves. Once they were done with me I slept again until we reached Zagreb.

Let me say this now, I loved Zagreb. Almost as much as I loved Bratislava, or even as much, but for different reasons. The first person I dealt with in Zagreb was the woman at the information booth in the train station and she was extremely helpful and friendly. Unfortunately the next woman at the train ticket desk was not, but I was used to that by now (sample quote “Are you sure that there isn’t a student price?” “no student price!” “but that sign in the window says in Croatian ‘studenski .... 26’ and I am both a student and under 26” “student tickets but not for you!” Thanks lady).

For once I found my hostel easily. It was only finding the receptionist that was hard, she was on the third floor cleaning and had no idea I was there. I dropped my bags off and the manager of the hostel was kind enough to give me a map of the city and then trace out for me the exact walking path that I should follow to see the sights of the city and circled all the most interesting places to see. I just love being in a city that is like “HEY TOURISTS WE LOVE YOU, HOW CAN WE MAKE YOUR STAY EASIER.” Answer, free maps with all the important sites noted on them is a great way to start. The first part of my walk was rather boring, just kind of trudging along for about 15 minutes to make my way back to the center of the lower town near the train station to begin. Then I walked up this long mall filled with greenery and statues and big impressive buildings and gazebos. It was a gorgeous day. About a block past the top of the mall is the Ban Jelačić Square.

According to my useful tourist pamphlet guide to Zagreb this square is the central focus of modern Zagreb and when I visited the square was full of an Easter market. It’s main features are an equestrian statue of the Governor the square is named after

And a fountain built over a natural spring. Legend connects a story of the spring with the name of the town.

The next stop of the tour is up in the upper town, yes that means climbing yet another hill. There sits the Cathedral. It is surrounded by some of the “best preserved Renaissance defenses in Europe.”

The day that I was there giant decorated Easter eggs had been placed in front, they were covered in traditional Croatian scenes created by local artists.

I crossed the upper town by way of the Bloody Bridge. It’s not actually a bridge anymore and I didn’t notice any blood but I guess it used to be the bridge between two areas that saw a lot of conflict.

Then it was up Radiceva street, described rather inaccurately in the guide pamphlet as “gently sloping.” At the top of this hill is a statue of St. George and the dragon and is apparently “one of the rare portrayals of St. George after he has killed the dragon and shows him paying respects to the vanquished beast.”

At St. George the path turns and goes through the Stone gate, the only intact old town gate.

 
It is also a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

According to the guide pamphlet it is also home to chains from the famous British warship HMS Victory, the flagship of Admiral Nelson but despite how hard I looked I saw nothing that matched this description. Then I walked up and up Opatcka street past a number of old palaces that did not seem too impressive from the outside but I guess played pretty important parts in Croatian history.

My hike uphill finally ended at the Illirski trg (Illirski Square) which is a tiny little square which houses a small chapel in the middle and sits right beneath the gaze of the Priest’s Tower, a fortification from the 13th century. (that I guess only I found interesting because this is the only picture that the whole entire Internet could come up with.).

 

Coming back down the hill I walked into St. Mark’s Square, which is pretty obviously the home of St. Mark’s church. It is decorated with these stunningly attractive roof tiles

On either side of the church are the palaces that house the Croatian government. It certainly struck me as very trusting in most of these countries, with the exception of Slovakia, how very close you can get to the equivalent of the White House or parliamentary buildings.

I quit my wondering to check out the Museum of Broken Relationships.

 
This museum was exactly what it sounded like. It is full up with donations from people who were trying to get rid of the detritus from ended relationships. Usually the pieces were accompanied by an explanation as to why the person felt it was necessary to donate this particular item, or a story behind it, or an explanation of the relationship. The museum stands as a kind of installation art piece that allows the visitor to connect intimately with the people who donated portions of their broken relationships to be displayed.

Once done with the museum I was also almost done with the Upper town as a whole. I admired the views over town towards the Cathedral and walked along the Strossmayer Promenade until I found a bench on which to settle and enjoy the nice weather and the chance to catch up on my book.

 

Unfortunately I was there too late to witness the daily cannon shot, fired at noon from the Lotrscak Tower (which is also the only preserved medieval tower from the 13th century fortifications – thanks tourist pamphlet!). But someone else captured it and put it on the Internet.

 I did get the chance to ride the world’s shortest passenger cable railway when I took the 66 meter long funicular from the Upper Town to the Lower Town. It takes 55 seconds but I waited about 5 minutes for the journey to start, ultimately saving no time at all over walking down.

I refreshed with a stop for coffee and then started the walk back through the Lower Town to the hostel. The only place of note I really past this time was the National Theatre which is at the end of the arc of eight green squares that form a horseshoe in the middle of Zagreb’s urban plan. Which might be why I so enjoyed this city, I do love a good park. Anyway here is that theater. It reminded me of a lot of the buildings in Vienna and Budapest.

 That evening I spent some time hanging out at the hostel with the staff who were a lot of fun and gave me a ton of advice about Split and visiting Hvar and talked a bit about joining the EU and how not excited they were about it. I did see a LOT of anti-EU graffiti all over Croatia while I was there so I don’t think they were alone.

It was also very different from Hungary because I had just come from a place where ticket inspectors were everywhere and in Croatia I was specifically told you just buy one ticket, don’t validate it and ride everywhere and no one ever asks. Later I jumped on the tram and headed up to Tkalciceva street to grab a drink (that I didn’t have to pay for!) and to watch a very exciting boxing match between two people I had never heard of. It was a Sunday so I got back to the hostel not so terribly late and was able to rest and catch up on sleep.

Now all that’s left to do is catch up on my last week in Croatia and this terribly belated blogging about my trip can stop weighing on my mind. Hope you enjoyed!