3 more countries!!!

March 20-24
Budapest, Hungary

This is one large, beautiful city - actually a combination of two cities, Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesht - don't sound like a tourist!) that are separated by the river Danube.  I stayed at a hostel here that was owned by Andi, the hungarian girl I traveled with in Brasov, Romania.  I'll give a shout out to Paprika Hostel - if you're ever in Budapest and need a place to stay, check them out.  They are clean, cheap, well-located and Andi's employees Myck, John and Elana all gave great recommendations for bars and restaurants and even organize pub crawls most nights of the weeks so you are guaranteed to hit the best places on any given night - Monday night at Morrison's!  The nightlife in Budapest is excellent as there is something going on pretty much every night - and it's a lot like Las Vegas or New Orleans where drinking alcohol on the streets is legal!  :)

The pictures below will give a good idea of the scenery in this town, but the one recommendation I have for this and other cities is to participate in one of the free walking tours that originate in the city centers.   Most cities have both paid and free tours.  The people who organize the free tours are usually students and artists who do the tours for tips, but they provide a nice 2 or 3 hour experience that fills you in on the little nuances of each city that give all of the architecture and sites some context.  They tend to give a brief overview of the history in order to keep the pace more lively and show off some of the little unique areas and statues.  Food here was also excellent, and even the fast food Indian was good and affordable. My favorite dishes from Budapest were the pancakes, crepes which were served as appetizers and either filled with  chicken and topped with chicken paprika sauce and sour cream, or filled with shredded beef and topped with a goulash type of sauce.  Andi was sweet enough to teach me how to make these for myself my last night in Budapest, so I can fill my hankering whenever I want after I get home.

A panoramic shot of the Danube from the Buda side of the river.  On the left hand side across the river is the Hungarian parliament building, designed to look like London's Palace of Westminster on the Thames.  The central bridge (Chain Bridge leads straight into St. Stephen's Basilica.  On the very right hand side, on my side is the royal palace.

Post-Communist countries - the near building is the Four Seasons hotel, one of the most luxurious in the city.  Immediately next door is a Soviet building, with paper-thin walls and concrete floors that stay cold in the winter and turn into hot boxes in the summer.  At the end of the street is St. Stephen's Basilica.

All the statues in the city can be touched and climbed on!   This statue of Andras Hadik on his horse is special because the horse was sculpted with enormous testicles.  Students would cup the testicles before exams for luck.  Placing both hands simultaneously on them is supposed to make one a better lover (that's me ladies!)  You'll know when the statues have some superstition associated with them because the bronze will be completely polished in only one spot from all the rubbing the statues have received.

On our tour we were told rubbing this policeman's belly would ensure a good meal later in the day, which ended up being true!  However, I have seen other reports that women should rub the belly if they want to get pregnant!  I hope that one isn't true...

The Budapest Opera House is regarded as one of the most beautiful in Europe.  I bought a last minute ticket to see Bellini's Norma from the third tier, center section - $5!

The fisherman's bastion, Buda side designed in the neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque styles, blah blah blah...whatever, it's pretty beautiful.

Hungarian pancake - crepes with chicken paprika topped with sour cream - one of my favorite dishes so far!

A freaking Hilton build right next to the Matthias cathedral and Fisherman's bastion and completely built around some ancient ruins.

3 shots of Szechenyi, one of the several Turkish baths located throughout the city.  This one is special because it has outdoor pools as well as indoor.  The water is reputed to have health benefits and all the pools have different temperatures, from room to hot-tub.   The outdoor pool pictured at the top has a circular area surrounding a hot tub area.  The surrounding circle has jets that turn on every once in a while and create a huge whirlpool sending bathers spinning round and round.

Another beautiful castle, this one located by the Szechenyi baths.

March 24-28
Prague, Czech Republic

I thought Budapest was beautiful, but Prague takes the cake.  It is absolutely the most beautiful city I have ever seen.  The gothic architecture mixed with the art nouveau keeps everything interesting, with dark and forbidding churches and statues surrounded by the brightly colored, 4 and 5 storie buildings completely enclosing all the streets.  The city is filled with great food but annoyed me with the swarms of tourists.  In the city center it seemed 50% of the people I saw or heard were tourists, with the majority from the U.S.  Nearly all the bars and clubs were just as bad.  Fortunately, I made friends with a Latvian girl living in Prague who took me to Lucerna Music Club, a large club with nearly no tourists, packed with locals and giant projection screens showing music videos for all the songs being played.  I gleefully danced to songs I haven't heard in YEARS - Rock Your Body by Backstreet Boys, Barbie Girl by Aqua, Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode...some of the cheesiest and worst music from the 80's and 90's.  And, even better was the fact that half the songs were completely impossible to dance to but that didn't stop anyone!

View of Prague Castle across the Vltava river

National Museum from Wensceslas Square

Clock Tower in the city center at night

Church inside Prague Castle walls - serious gothic architecture.   I felt like I stepped into an H.P. Lovecraft novel.

Inside of the church

Tyler, Brandon and Scott, three kick-ass Canadian guys I traveled alongside in Prague.  This is the view from Prague Castle.

AND NOW SOME SHOTS OF FOOD :)

Yes Burger - a little shop next to my hostel that had only opened about a week prior.  This was their bacon cheeseburger and is among the top 10 burgers I have ever had in my life.  Fresh ingredients, cooked to a perfect medium-rare, with a sturdy, toasted sesame seed bun.  This and a pint of beer for less than $5!

The sign of a great burger - grease and blood on the plate from a juicy burger and the bun never got soggy or fell apart!

Absinthe shots all around!  The beginning of a looooong night.

Mmmmmmm....traditional Czech fare - fried cheese.  Thank goodness there is a quarter tomato and 2 leaves of lettuce to make it healthy.

Over a pound of honey glazed baby back ribs served on a cutting board with a spicy brown honey mustard, a dijon mustard and a horseradish sauce - less than $8!!!

A chocolatier sold two types of hot chocolate.  I was really disappointed with it though.  As awesome as it looked, it was just melted chocolate.  After 10 minutes outside in the cool air the bottom of my cup had turned into a solid coating, plus it was too sweet.  Bulgaria still takes the cake for the best hot chocolate I've had in Europe.

This was a dish I got at a traditional Czech restaurant that was a bit off the beaten path...$12 got me: a quarter roast duck, sausages, thick lardons of bacon, potato pancakes, czech dumplings and pickled red and white cabbage.  Even I couldn't finish this meal, it was so heavy!

March 27: Day trip
Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

This is a sweet side trip to take if you ever visit Prague.  Kutna Hora is only one hour by train and trains run every hour.  It is home to "The Bone Church", or the Sedlec Ossuary where the bones of 40,000 to 70,000 people who died from the plague or while defending the town from invaders have been preserved and arranged in artistic patterns.

There are 4 of these piles of bones in the ossuary, stacked up about 8 feet high each.

March 28-30
Munich and Garmisch-Partenskirchen, Germany

I got to spend a couple days visiting Ingrid, my good friend Norm's mother who has retired in the Bavarian Alps.  This is an incredible beautiful area and Garmisch is such a small city that it seems like everyone knows each other.

I arrived in Munich by train from Prague and Ingrid and I immediately went to one of the largest beer halls in town.  This time of year is the starkbierzeit (strong beer festival) which is kind of a spring version of Oktoberfest but focuses on the higher alcohol beers in Bavaria.  The incredible thing about this beer hall was that for as busy as it was and as many tourists as I am sure they receive, the food was amazing and prices reasonable!

A huge pork haunch that had been slow cooked until the meat peeled off the bone, with the crispy pork rind still attached served with potato dumplings.

Amazingly tender beef medallions served with freshly grated horseradish and boiled new potatoes.

Mutti and me drinking some of the best beer I have ever had.  And how great is it that this is the ONLY size they offered?!  Who needs to go to the gym when you are doing bicep curls like these?

The next day in Garmisch we travelled from 700 meters to the peak of the highest mountain in Germany - the Zugspitze (2962 meters = 9718 feet).  We were blessed with warm weather and clear skies which are always iffy at this altitude.  The ascent took us about an hour via train.  The majority of the trip was done through tunnels carved into the mountain on a train that operated on geared tracks at thirty degrees. We took a cable car down in about 5 minutes, which could have been done going up, but the rapid ascent causes many passengers to experience altitude sickness since they don't have time to adjust to the change.

Mom, don't freak out because I'm not wearing a jacket!  It was really warm in the sun and we were shielded from the wind in this spot!!!!

To the left you can see the Eibsee lake which still has a portion frozen, and in the valley beyond you can see the towns of Garmisch and Partenskirchen.

Panoramic shot including the actual peak of the Zugspitze marked by the gold cross.  The cross is barely visible from the towns below.

The ski slopes just below the peak.

On my last day Mutti and I drove to the Partnach gorge, a natural gorge created by the Partnach river with walls as high as 80 meters high.  The gorge was closed due to the risk of falling ice and areas of the path that  have been destroyed by avalanches, but we went anyway...rules are meant to be broken.  In the winter the entire area is coated in white and there is a path that runs along the water at the bottom cut into the rock wall surrounded by icicles.  They organize night tours by torchlight which I can imagine must be among the most beautiful experiences imaginable.

Look out for falling ice!

We briefly drove into Austria after the gorge.  On the way we stopped at a picturesque little town called Mittenwald, renowned for its violins and woodcarving.  The town is directly at the base of a huge, steep mountain.  I am amazed that it hasn't been destroyed by a rock or ice avalanche.  In the winter, the forestry ministry plants controlled explosive charges across the mountains in order to periodically create controlled avalanches, preventing the buildup of huge glaciers that could easily tumble down and crush the towns.