A whole new way to travel

Couchsurfing is the future, folks. Get on board.

My first couchsurfing experience was in Hungary, where I stayed with two fantastic women: Judit, in Pecs, and Irina, in Zalaegerszeg. They are best friends, and taught me the meaning of hospitality.

When I arrived in Pecs on the train, Judit was at work but arranged for another couchsurfer, Plazzi, to pick me up at the station. He made me crepes.

When I arrived at Judit’s house, that has a stunning view of the whole city, she had prepared for me traditional Hungarian food, and invited me to a jazz concert. The next day she showed me around her town – stunning, but in the midst of a major facelift because it will be Europe’s Cultural Capital in 2010 and has been infused with EU money.

Then Judit drove me to a small village famous for its vineyards so we could do a wine tasting. She took me to a sculpture park filled with bizzare works made from the marble of the surrounding hills. She made another Hungarian feast, and invited Plazzi and his friend, and we drank more wine and I soaked up the conversation, and thought about how damn lucky I was.

In Zalaegerszeg, Irina greeted me with equal enthusiasm. She taught me more about Hungarian food, about literature, about the language. She drove me to a castle, and to Lake Balaton (the largest in Europe). She suggested itineraries for my stay there, looked up train and bus times, made me breakfast and did my laundry.  We ate and drank beer and laughed and laughed and laughed.

When I signed up for couchsurfing I didn’t quite get what it was all about – I thought it’d be a good way to save some money and get a bit of local insight to the places I visited. What I’m learning is that this system can be a way of life, it can create community, and it adds a whole new dimension to travel. I love to stay in hostels and meet other travelers, but staying with local people so enhances the experience and deepens your understanding of a place, that it’s hard to want to travel any other way.

In Sarajevo

In Sarajevo, a man sits on a suitcase in the main square every day, surrounded by pigeons, and sells birdseed.

In Sarajevo, they brew beer drawn from a lake below a lake below the city.

In Sarajevo, roses bloom from the concrete.

In Sarajevo, a family whose house was on the front lines of the war keeps a rocket shell on their kitchen table. They got it from their own roof.

In Sarajevo, men play life-size chess in the park.

In Sarajevo you can follow the sound of hammer on metal  down a narrow lane to find a man making a coffee pot in his shop.

In Sarajevo, up on a hill, is one of the world’s best bob sled tracks. It can’t be used, because it’s surrounded by thousands of land mines.

In Sarajevo they sell pens made of bullets as souveniers.

In Sarajevo you can stand at the synagogue and listen to the call to prayer from the mosque.

In Sarajevo you can wander up up up the hill to an old army baracks, eating a bag of fresh Turkish Delight.

In Sarajevo, a woman working at a 24-hour cafe comes across a group of travelers at 2 a.m. She invites them in for cappuccino, and starts to tell her story – in German, to those who understand. She takes out pictures of her son; a teenager when he was killed in the war, and she lays her head down on the table, and weeps.

Train: Budapest to Pecs

I set out early from my hostel to catch my train south. I came to an intersection, that I’d been to several times before, where you had to cross under the street. I went down the stairs on one side, navigated the square underneath, came back out to the sidewalk, and continued on.

About 15 minutes later I started to wonder why I hadn’t reached the station yet. I couldn’t even see it. I looked up at the street sign.

Hang on, that’s not the street I should be on.

Shit. I got out my map. Turns out, somehow, I’d take the wrong set of stairs up from the underground passageway, which had spit me out onto the wrong street going the wrong direction. This was more frustrating because all I had to do was go STRAIGHT. Gawd.

I trudged back 15 minutes, set myself in the right direction, and by the time I got to the station after an extra half hour of lugging my backpack around Budapest, I was tired. And sweaty.

I got into the station and glanced up at the board with the train destinations. Beside the one that said ‘Pecs’ was the number 10. I took that to mean platform 10, and headed off to find it. It was far. When I got there there was a small two-car red local train, whose sign did not say ‘Pecs’. I asked a Hungarian man standing beside it.

‘Pecs?’ It’s pronouced paich, and I was saying it wrong.

‘Pecs?’ said the man, correctly. He shook his head, waved his hand to indicate I needed to go several tracks over.

I wandered back towards the station entrance, asked someone in a day-glo yellow vest – ‘Pecs?’. I was pronouncing it worse as time went on. This time, the man held up ten fingers, then three.

‘Track 13? Thank you’.

I went to track 13. There was no train there and destination listed on the sign beside it. I asked someone else. Again.

‘Pecs?’

This time the yellow vest just shrugged his shoulders. I checked my watch; my train was supposed to leave in 10 minutes. I hoofed it all the way back to the station entrance to look at the board again.

It said Pecs, alright, and ‘10′ beside it. But as I looked closer, I saw that above the ‘10′ it said ‘Minutes delayed’, not ‘Track number’. The track wasn’t even listed yet.

Damn it.

When the track number did come up it did in fact say 13, and I did get on the train, back aching and cursing my impatience. And, eventually, I learned how to say ‘Pecs’.

Budapest

In Budapest, the weather changed. While I’d had summer-like conditions in Vienna, when I arrived in Hungary it rained, and it got cold. I spent my first day wandering around in the dreary weather, until I discovered – Huzzah! – that my peeps from Prague were also in Budapest. I took some beer to their hostel to celebrate, and moved into their hostel a day later.

The crew is Hylton (South African), Becs (Australian), and Adam, Mitch, and Jarod (from Manitoba, Alberta, and BC, respectively). We stayed out of the cold dampness by doing the Lebowski challenge, which consists of watching The Big Lebowski, and taking a drink everytime someone says ‘dude’. It’s hard.

I did make it around Budapest despite the rain, and then a sunny afternoon but with cold, cold wind. It’s a beautiful city.

 

What’s best about it, though, are the Turkish baths. We went to the Szechenyi ones; a sprawling yellow building with an open courtyard and warm mineral baths in the middle, with old men playing chess in the pool and occasionally yelling at each other (good-naturedly, I mean). Inside the building is a labrynith of smaller baths and saunas of various temperatures, and we spent hours going from one to another. The biggest challenge was going to the 90 degree sauna, then dropping yourself into a 16 degree pool. I disliked it. One sauna smelled of citris fruits, another like peppermint, one had changing-coloured lights. The outside pool had a section that pulled you around in a circle, then sprayed jets up from the bottom. Standard dress code for men of all ages and shapes = black speedos. Don’t leave home without them.

(The baths were hard to photograph at night)

 

Other things about Budapest!

1. At the grocery store, weigh your produce yourself. If you can’t tell the clerk how much your bananas weigh, she won’t sell them to you.

2. The ‘pizza’ croissant things at the grocery store, that you buy as a quick and cheap lunch, have peas and carrots in them. Yuck.

3. If there’s no crosswalk, it’s because you have to go through the passageway under the street.

4. Dogs wear clothes a lot.

5. The subway makes fantastic Nintendo-like noises that remind you of Duck Hunt. I giggled at every stop.

Vienna: The Highlights

 

 

C’mon Vienna. Seriously. You’re a bit ridiculous. We get it, you’ve got big buildings. One after another, giant, ornately-carved, expansive, grand buildings, surrounded by sprawling gardens. At first, it’s pretty. Then, as you continue to walk, and are continually bombarded by giant, ornately-carved, expansive, grand buildings, you start to wonder: Hey Vienna, what are you trying to prove?

It really is lovely, if in an over-the-top sort of way. The many, many museums, the palaces, the Parliament, the opera house, cathedrals; they’re all beautiful, and there’s much to see. Too much, for one visit.

What was really beautiful about Vienna is the Cousin Peter lives there, and could show me what he likes about it. When I arrived, he took me first to the best vantage point, from which I could see the whole city. We drank a beer, and he pointed out the bits I’d be seeing during my stay.

While he was at work, I’d wander about, being overwhelmed. When he was finished he’d meet up with me, show me a bit more. He knows a lot about his city, does Peter.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, it seems, was a pretty big deal – or so you surmise by the scale of their palaces – like Schonbrunn, or Belvedere (where I saw Klimt’s The Kiss. I’m not an art person, but I love that painting).

The weather was freakishly warm for October, and we spent an afternoon in the Schweitzerhaus beer garden. It was packed on a Tuesday afternoon. People were eating 1.5 kilos of pork. The dark beer tasted like honey. Women – not coming from Oktoberfest, but just from work – were wearing dirndls.

Pete took me to the market, where we tried Sturm (which is not-quite-wine), and to a classic old Austrian coffee house, Cafe Hawelka, where we sipped Wein Melanges and talked politics. Perhaps most importantly, he showed me where to get €2 kebabs.

 

He made me goulash one night, and schnitzel another, and on my last day there (halelluja) turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving.

 Cities are so much better when you have a great host. 

Raft + river + beer = bliss

Cesky Krumlov, in southern Czech Republic, is lovely. Really lovely.

 

It’s also a bit like Banff, in that it’s a touristy town with mostly restaurants and sovenier stores in its centre, but the prettiness makes up for the touristy bits. And I guess I can’t complain – I am in fact a tourist.

The hostel I stayed in arranges, every day, for guests to hop in an inflatable raft, grab some drinks, and float down the river away from the city for the afternoon. Me, a Kiwi, and four Aussies showed up for the ride, drinks in tow. Pedro from the hostel chucked us in the boat and pushed us downstream – he came and picked us up hours and miles later.

The raft tour is usually a pub crawl, but after the summer most of the pubs along the river route are closed for the season. We were surprised, then, when we spotted a campsite with a little stand that looked open. We pulled the boat over and got out, but no one was there. We laid in the grass in the sun for a bit.

A man appeared from over a hill, then, pushing a wheel barrow. He waved and pointed at the small stand.

‘Pivo?’ he called.

Yes please!

His tattoos covered his entire body, and his earlobes were stretched more than anyone I’d ever seen. He stolled over, sold us some dirt cheap beer, and disappeared back over the hill with his wheel barrow of rocks.

Are all my posts about beer? It’s starting to seem so.

The Prague disease

The Canadian boys from the hostel and I decided to check out the Jewish museum in Prague. Our Aussie friend Jack, one of the original absinth shot drinkers, had been planning to stay in Prague only two nights, but he was still sitting in the lobby that morning, six nights after he’d arrived. We tried to convince him to come with us, spend just one more night.

 

‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘I have to go.  I have four more countries to cover in 10 days! I’ve been here too long!’ Okay, we agreed. He had to leave.

When we got back, hours later, he was sitting at a computer at the hostel.

‘Just one more night,’ he said.

***

Then, happily, Dan arrived.

Jase’s brother, who’s been travelling Europe for a few months, was going to Prague to visit an old friend. We dedicated his first day there to beer. Well, beer and walking.

My guidebook said there’s a good beer garden in a park that has a great view of the city, and we went to find it. It was empty, pretty much, when we got there (apparently it’s popular in the summer), but we could still buy a cheap beer at the stand. We sat looking at the city, and looked up how to say ‘Cheers’ in Czech.

Na zdravi!

Wandering, later, towards our next beer-related destination, we passed a group of people with an antique-looking video camera on a tripod. A woman from the group approached us – I thought they were going to give us hell for walking through their shot; instead she asked ‘Do you want to be in our movie?’.

My job was to walk to an ‘X’ she drew in the dirt with her shoe, look both ways as if waiting for someone, and turn and walk away. We practiced a few times, then shot it. I think it was an award-worthy performance.

We went up the funicular to the top of Petrin Hill, our destination: a monastery within the castle district that brews its own beer. We tried one of each kind - the amber, the dark, and the wheat, the amber ending up the clear winner. Monks are smart people.

The next day I was sure I was going to continue on to Cesky Krumlov south of Prague. I got up early, started packing my bag, phoned a hostel to see if they had available beds. By the time I’d finished packing my bag, I’d changed my mind. One more night in Prague – JUST ONE. I went down to the desk to say I’d be staying another night at the hostel.

‘Again?’ the receptionist said.

For the day wandered the city with my camera, read Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. A friend from the hostel, who had continued on to Cesky Krumlov, sent me a text to see if I’d be arriving any time soon.

‘Decided on one more day in Prague,’ I wrote back. ‘JUST ONE.’

‘Haha, I see you’re not immune to the Prague disease,’ he responded. ‘Might see you in Budapest’.

I did manage get out of Prague the next day, telling myself there is, in fact, more of Europe to see. Much, much more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prague: the first three days.

I got to Prague in the dark, and wandered a few cobbled lanes to my hostel. Early the next morning I hopped out of bed and headed directly out, deciding by my map to go towards the river and follow it.

 When I got there – when I got my first glimpse of Prague and the Vltava River, of the castle and city’s red-tiled roofs and layers of skyline, my eyes got big, and I couldn’t force the smile from my face. I got out my phone and texted Andrea: “I LOVE MY LIFE”.

I spent the first two days in Prague wandering the streets – I took in the free walking tour and then the castle tour, and tried to retain all the history I could fit in my excitable brain. Here’s what I retained:

1) Throughout history, Czechs have apparently prefered to solve political disputes by throwing important people out the window.

2) The Czech calendar has a different name for every day of the year, and children are only given those names – therefore they have a birthday, and a name day.

3) The astronomical clock is pretty, but the thing it does at the top of every hour is pretty underwhelming. 

4) Russia invaded after The Prague Spring in 1968, in which the Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek tried to liberalize the system, allowing more freedom of speech and releasing political prisoners. A student set himself on fire to protest the invasion.

***

On my third night in the hostel I was sitting in the common room with my computer in my lap. Four guys were watching TV in their own corners; one was drinking a mixture of absinth and Fanta, slowly. A group of people came in, on their way to a movie, and saw the bottle.

“You know how you should drink that?” said a blonde girl. “Get a spoon, put a sugar cube on it, then pour a shot of absinth over it, light the sugar cube on fire for a few seconds, then pour water over it, stir it all together, and drink it. There’s some sugar cubes in the kitchen, okay bye!”

Absinth Guy looked at the rest of us left in the room and said “Well, I’m not going to do this by myself, who’s in?”

And that’s how long it takes to make friends in a hostel.

We decided the absinth tasted like Christmas trees. After a few more of our own drinks the movie group returned, and we retreated to The Fun Room (aka the basement). We started the largest, noisiest and most disorganized game of King’s Cup ever, and passed around a jar of Nutella that people either ate with their fingers, smeared on each other, or, unfortunately for Mitch from Medicine Hat, put in the King’s Cup.

At 2 a.m. we gathered everyone’s pocket change and went ot the corner store, which was still serving beer out of the fridge for 14Kc (about €0.50). We came back with four bags full.

I love my life.

Train ride, Munich to Prague

There are signs everywhere that this train splits in half part way through the journey – only part of it goes to Prague, the rest somewhere else in Germany. I make sure I’m in the right half. In my compartment there’s a couple from Bosnia, who now lives in the States, a blond Czech girl who speaks both English and German fluently. The Bosnian woman asks her husband to go get her a drink. He doesn’t come back for an awfully long time. Then she hears her name being called over the intercom.

The drink and food car is in the part of the train that doesn’t go to Prague, and her husband was in it when it split in half. He got off at the next station, but now they have to figure out how and where they’ll meet up again. She’s distraught, poor thing.

Once she’s worked out a plan, and the tears have subsided, the three of us chat. Bosnia was part of Yugoslavia when she left, and when the Czech girl was young, it was Czechoslovakia. They talk about ‘before the war’, how its hard for the older woman to go back to Sarajevo where she’s from. How Czech was able to split peacefully, and Yugoslavia not so much.

“And who wants the split? Not the people,” says the Bosnian woman.

The Czech girl nods, puts her hand up and waves it side to side, to indicate the ‘higher ups’, the proverbial ‘them’ is who wants these things. She shrugs.

When the train arrives in Prague, the Czech girl is heading in the same direction as I am — I tag along with her through the metro station, she tells me where to get off the train. I wave thanks, and wander the dark lanes to my hostel.

Happiest Place on Earth

Dear Oktoberfest: I wish I remembered more of you.

I am a seasoned beer drinker. I’ve been seasoned, however, to drink Scottish beer over the last year – my favorite being Belhaven Best, which weighs in just under 4%. German beer, at 5.2% in giant steins = trouble for Aasa.

 We took the coach from London to Munich, overnight, and arrived early in the morning, had breakfast, and got to the beer hall. I had one stein outside, quickly ordered a second, and by midway through my third it was clear I had to be taken back to the campsite. I woke up in my tent and looked at my watch – 5:30. It took me a second to process whether that meant morning or evening. Yes! Afternoon! I called Jase, who had generously seen me back to the tent in the first place, and met up with him back at Beerfest. That’s when I got to see what it’s all about: the band playing and the standing on tables and the singing and the (probably less common) limbo.

 It is the best party ever. Each beer has its own hall, that holds about 6,000 people – on Saturday we went mid-afternoon and couldn’t get in anywhere: they’d locked the doors because every one was full. We took the chance to go on some rides, drink some Jager shots from kiosks, and then go back to the campsite for some leisurely drinking games.

Screw Disneyland. Oktoberfest is the happiest place on Earth.