Eger, Hungary 9/27-9/28

So that Budapest was not our only destination in Hungary we decided to stop by Eger on our way to Romania.  Eger is a small town in the wine country, and has the usual sites – churches, parks, castle… When we got to Eger we did not have a place to stay, however the night before we emailed one of the pensions that was recommended by the book.  The answer to the email did not arrive in time, and we headed out to that pension anyway.  Luckily the taxis there cost next to nothing.  Unfortunately the pension was sold out.  Which was super odd – it was a Tuesday during an offseason.   We guessed that there was some family reunion going on.   But as it turned out that particular part of the street was lined with different private pensions, and the lady who owned this place took us by the hand to another place 100 yards away that had a room.  Having unloaded the bags we set out to get some food, and see the town.  We had a few hours to do so.  Sometime during the meal it became apparent that Julie was not feeling well, so we went back to our room to chill for a bit.  A bit turned into a few hours after which Julie felt better; the castle and the churches however were closed by then, so we looked at them from the outside.  But having seen quite a number of churches, and castles we were OK with it.  I think it was Fooks who introduced me to the acronym AFC?

From 2011.09.28 Eger

Before we went to Eger we made sure that we can reach our next destination, Cluj-Napoca from Eger without coming back to Budapest.  So I played travel agent, and found a good train connection using Hungarian railroad website.  The next morning when we went to the train station to catch our train we had this itinerary saved on Julie’s phone, so we could show it at the ticket counter, and not worry that they’ll sell us something else.  As we predicted, as soon as we said we were going to Cluj-Napoca the lady at the ticket office offered us a connection via Budapest; but we were prepared, and told her exactly the route we wanted to take: Eger - Tsizafured – Karcag – Cluj-Napoca complete with arrival and departure times.  She appeared surprised by our intimate knowledge of the Hungarian train system, because we appeared to know more than she did.  You see, her particular office in Eger doesn’t use computers.  I think I spotted one there, but I’m not sure what they use it for.  For the next 20 minutes (we had about 30 until the train’s departure) she was trying to figure out the 3 tickets (our itinerary had 2 train changes), she was going through different books to find out how much to charge us for each.  I’ll give her that we did not make it simpler by not having enough local money, so she had to figure out the price for 2 smaller legs of our journey in local currency, and the last leg in euro.  The line behind us grew from 0 to about 20 passengers by the time we were done.  At one point I even asked them if anyone was willing to exchange a few Euro or US Dollars at a favorable rate.  Oh, did I mention that we used sign language to communicate with ticket lady?  Her English was as good as my French.

Once we got our tickets (2 hand written and one printed) we were on the first train and we were very excited that we made it.   Our first realization why she was surprised to see our proposed itinerary came when we unloaded at our first change station.  It was tiny, and shall we say, not touristy at all.  We had about 20 minutes until our next train, so after a thorough 30 seconds walk through the station we set down to wait for it.  That’s when I saw that the sole wagon that’s standing in front of us is in fact our train.

From 2011.09.28 Eger

In Karcag all we had to do was catch the passing Budapest - Cluj-Napoca train.  Unfortunately it was hard to do because there were no numbered platforms that would tell us which one was ours, instead all trains we saw happened to use the same one, would stop for less than a minute, and be on their way.  So when yet another train arrived within a minute of our scheduled departure time we had little time for deliberation; I got hold of one of the “officials” at the station, showed him my ticket, pointed at the train, and nodded in question “Is this the right train”, he pointed back at it, and nodded; so we boarded that train within the allocated minute.  The conductor on the train was less enthusiastic when he looked at the tickets, and in perfect Hungarian explained that we should do something.  We spent the next few minutes trying to figure out which train we boarded, and where it’s best for us to disembark.  We were successful in figuring out the answer to the first question, but we still did not know when to get off.  So we rolled the dice, and decided to exit at the next stop.  Having jumped off the train we immediately caught by the hand this station’s official, and asked him what he thought of our ticket, and whether that train was going to stop at this station.  He pointed to the direction of the station building and nodded.  We took it as a good sign, and did not jump back on the train.  Once in the station we made sure that yes, the train by this number was going to stop by, and we still had 10 minutes until its arrival.  So that was that, we made it without any more difficulties to Cluj-Napoca and to the hostel.  At least that part was easy…

 

9/25/11 Budapest Days 4 and 5

Yes, there was a day 4 in Budapest. We had planned to go to a little beach town on Lake Boloton and spend one night there. Instead, we decided to enjoy Budapest for 2 more days for a couple reasons. First, we were too lazy to wake up super early to see yet another beach town with yet another promenade (now we are truly on vacation). Secondly, Levka wanted to go caving [note from Levka – yeah, baby!] under Budapest.

Julie got tired of typing, so it's my turn now.

Good thing we stayed an extra day to explore the city ourselves a bit more.  Since we covered the Pest side quite extensively (most of the good, and cheap food is there), we went up Gellert hill on the Buda side.  That's the one with Liberation monument on top - a woman bearing a palm leaf built by the communists after the defeat of the Nazi's.  At the bottom of the hill we went inside an unusual church embeded in the cave.  From the hill we went down to the embarkment of Danube river, and walked alongside of it towards the island where we spent a bit of time walking around, chilling, eating, and reading.  Then we walked back to the hostel discovering more of beautiful local architecture.

Julie again: On the last day we went caving. But caving wasn’t happening till late afternoon and we had a morning to kill. So we sat in the park all morning reading books. Compromising is awesome! Fine, maybe it’s not the most exciting thing to do in the new country, but it was perfect nonetheless.

And me again: caving would've been a lot more fun if the guide was as good as the one we had back in California Caverns.  Also it'd be more comfortable if the suit was not riding up my tuchis and the nearby important areas. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun.  A guide would give some instructions to us as to how to squeeze into the next whole, which were hard to understand due to his accent, and then literally dive, or jump in.  That part was very entertaining for the whole group. 

The next day we caught a train to Cluj-Napoca, our first destination in Romania. 

2011.09.22 Budapest

 

9/24/11 Budapest Day 3

Everyone that we talked to in Budapest recommended for us to visit one of the Bath Houses. So we did!

I expected this visit to be similar to that of a Korean Spa. Quiet, calm, relaxing… Although I hear the Korean Spa in South bay is quite different from the one I’m used to. And so was this bath house. It was overflowing with tourists, literally. The place was huge with several outdoor pools and then about 20 indoor saunas/pools. This included wet and dry saunas and pools with different types of water.  It wasn’t the completely relaxing experience that I had hoped for but we still got a tan and had fun jumping from one pool to the other. (Oh and the whirlpool was just awesome!)

We even made some friends. Two guys who were traveling to Budapest through a Sokhnut program from Germany with a group of about 200. They even invited us to a party on a boat the same night. Unfortunately, we decided not to go as we planned to leave Budapest the following morning and needed to be away at 6 am.  Let’s hope that they managed to have a good time without us 

Dear Irin, as a representative of Sokhnut, do you think you can help arrange a trip to Budapest to the members of Mishmash? It seemed like a very educational program for everyone involved! Did I mention that they got to spend a day in a bath house and a night partying on the boat? :)

P.S. from Levka - I think it was on this day that Julie got to eat matzo-ball soup second only to our mothers’.

9/23/11 Budapest Day 2

The second day we decided to take a couple tours around the city. We were recommended a “Free Touring Company”. The way it works is that the tour guides work on tips. You tip according to how much you enjoyed the tour. In our recent traveling experience, we have enjoyed these more than the paid ones since the tour guides have to impress us in order to earn their tip. We took two separate tours that day and both were good. 

The first was an overview of the city filled with fun facts about the city:

1. Scams to avoid – men, beware of any hot blonde that approaches you 

2. College traditions to follow - take a look at a picture below and find out what shines on the horse

3. A tour of other great monuments –see an example below

From 2011.09.22 Budapest
From 2011.09.22 Budapest

4. Also we saw a castle and some churches

The second was a Jewish tour. I think the tour guide could have been more energetic and tell us more about the history, but it was Friday afternoon and he didn’t seem to be in the mood to give another tour. There were some cool things anyway. For example:

We made it inside the big Synagogue for free because it was almost Shabbat and the guard felt gracious. We got the recommendations for pubs and restaurants for the next 3 days. See pics of the really cool pub in the last post about Budapest.

P.S. from Levka - Julie got a private violin lesson:

From 2011.09.22 Budapest

9/22/11 Trip to Budapest and first evening

So as we mentioned in an earlier post, we were heading from Dubrovnik to Budapest with a stopover in Saraevo. Levka really wanted to go there based on Khait’s recommendation. Before I tell you anything else, we would both like to thank Khait.  On a separate note, congratulations to Khait and Irka!!!!!

The ride to Budapest was long and tedious. About 11 hours on a train and most of them without food. We couldn’t find anything open in Saraevo the night before to buy for our trip. But our logic was this, “It’s impossible not to have a café on such a long international trip, right?” Apparently, it’s completely possible and this is the second time in a row that this kind of logic had failed us. We had 2 bananas, 3 apples and a box of crackers to sustain us throughout our journey.  If anyone has ever seen a hungry Julie, they would all understand this predicament and feel sorry for our friend Levka.  Let’s thank him for his patience!

Another hostel, another check in, another recommendation for food and we are off to eat and explore the city. On the way to the restaurant, 1 block away from our hostel, we bump into a synagogue. What turned out to be the second biggest one in world (2nd to NYC)  Naturally, we immediately liked Budapest :)

The restaurant was an adventure all of its own with a waiter who didn’t speak English but was so entertaining in Hungarian that we had to return to this place again before we left Budapest. We barely had any idea what he would be bringing us, but it all turned out really good and relatively cheap.

A good first day! Budapest showed a lot of promise.

9/30/11 Random notes

To date we have visited Budapest, Hungary and Cluj Napoca, Romania. Before we write the full blog, here are the highlights on food and culture:

1. As we were sitting in a traditional Romanian restaurant there was a group of Americans at a table next to us. One of them was louder and semi-obnoxious so we couldn’t help but pay attention to him. Most of the time the group was discussing theology. So this particular person, was louder and tried to impress the rest of the group with his knowledge. At some point, he casually reaches into his plastic bag, gets out a big bottle of ketchup and pours it all over the traditional meal in front of him. It wasn’t any kind of rare or special ketchup. Just an almost empty bottle of Heinz. Ah the culture! 

2. Another night we are going out to dinner to a restaurant that was recommended to us. We get to what we think is the right location and can’t find a restaurant name anywhere. So Levka walks in and asks the waitress “Is this Nabokov?” “No this is Bulgakov”, she says with a smile. “Well, my girlfriend said that the restaurant has the name of one of her favorite writers, so I figured Nabokov.” 

I got to give it to him, he wasn’t far off. If we accomplish nothing else on the trip, Levka may get a taste of classical literature. 

Current Location: Brasov, Romania.

Mljet, Croatia 9/20

Julie was adamant about visiting at least one more island and the one we settled on was Mljet.  It was not far from Dubrovnik, and had a good portion of the island allocated to the National park, with some lakes, and a monastery on an island on one of those lakes.  All this sounded great to us, reminiscent of Bled.

When we woke up the rain from last night filled the cup with a rose that was left for us by Ivan on the balcony to the brim, and it was still showering at times.  But we decided that just like the day before we should be fine as long as we take our jackets.  So we set out to catch the first (and only) catamaran to Mljet.  

The weather was cooperating almost all the way to the island.  Only at the end it started to rain, and hard.  That, however, did not scare us enough not to rent the bicycles (we were advised by Ivan to rent the bikes because the park was huge), and be on our way.  After about 20 mins of uphill riding in the pouring rain Julie’s patience ran out, and I was subjected to a different kind of storm.  We weathered that storm together under a roof of some building that was nearby while playing the Tangram game on Julie’s phone.  We solved about 20 levels by the time the rain subsided, and I was able to persuade Julie to try once again to make it to the boat that would take us to the island with the monastery.  After all it was the main attraction, and the only boat back was at 4pm which was still 3 hours away.

We got on our bikes, and in about 5 more minutes in light rain we made it to the boat.  In 10 more minutes we were on the island with the old monastery, and a restaurant.  The next boat back was in 5 minutes, and the one after in 1 hour.  It did not look like there was much to explore, but taking a boat in 5 minutes did not make any sense either, so we decided to walk around.  We finished the walk around the island, the monastery, the chapel in about 20 minutes.  The weather was still sucky, and we were not hungry at all, so restaurant was no use to us.  But as it turned out the water in the lake was much warmer than the air, or the rain.  So I went swimming, and enjoyed that part of our trip quite a bit.  Julie was entertained, and took some pictures.   After the swim, and some more idle time we were back on the boat, then back on the bicycle, and then back on the catamaran.  This was definitely the wettest day of our trip not considering the night in Kolka, but we did not have to bike around then.

When we were back to Dubrovnik we felt like having a good dinner, but Ivan’s suggestion we used this time turned out less than satisfying, probably due to the fact that we did not order the right thing.  The tiny, recently born kitten kept Julie entertained throughout the meal.

Next morning we were off to Saraevo on the way to Budapest.  Did I mention that one of the reasons against Dubrovnik was that our latter destinations would be far away?..  

 

Dubrovnik, Croatia 9/19-9/21

While Dubrovnik is high on the list of places to visit in Croatia for most tourists, we were debating whether to go there quite a bit.  The reasons for going there were simple – it did not become a tourist trap for nothing, there were things to see there.  The reasons for not going were 1) it’s a tourist trap, so things would likely be expensive 2) it’s way south, and we’d have to take long bus/train rides while coming back 3) transportation from Dubrovnik was not convenient for any of our possible later destinations.  In any case after much consideration we decided to go.

Our morning started shortly after 5am at the island of Vis, and it ended in Dubrovnik around 3pm.  The bus was delayed half way because of the overturned trailer.  When we got to Dubrovnik we were greeted by Ivan, the owner of the hostel we booked.  He drove us to the hostel, which was great because the hostel is located on the hill above the old town, and the walk up with the backpacks would be very tough.  We were very excited to see our room, which had views parallel to those of our room on Vis (and a close second to the view at Santorini)  From our balcony you could see a big part of the town below us, and with the greenery, and the red roofs it was very picturesque.  Ivan told us all there’s to know about getting around in the city, the places we had to go see, and the places we had to go eat at.  Every so often he’d pause to ask in his Slavic accent “You understand me, yes?”  We explained that his accent was not foreign to us at all, and we understood him perfectly well.

Since we did not have that much time in Dubrovnik, we set out to explore the city immediately.  And as soon as we walked through the gates of the old town we saw a blonde girl standing on a slippery stone protruding from a church’s wall taking off her shirt to expose her bra.  At first we thought it was some sort of Sorority dare that she was fulfilling, and that it was kinda inappropriate to do so right by the church.  But as we later realized it was a local tradition that if you were to be successful at standing on this stone, and taking off your shirt, you’d have luck.  Granted, the tradition probably did not account for the American girls ready to bare it all on the steps of a church for luck.  In any case, I tried it, and failed miserably.  I still don’t understand how this girl’s (sizable) bottom did not drag her down, and how she managed to stay close to the wall despite her (also sizable) chest.  Appearances are misleading.

From 2011.09.19 Dubrovnik

Our next order of business was to walk the wall that surrounds the old town.  It’s one of the best preserved fortification walls, and the views from it are astounding (see pictures.)  For some time on the wall we were either followed, or preceded by a group of Russian tourists that could not stop from getting into places that were closed off, and making funny comments about things they saw.  Like the tiny room that fit all of one plastic chair, had 1 window, and 1 door.  They wanted to invest into this prime real estate of Croatia.  They kept us entertained up until the thunder and the lightning that had been happening for the past half hour materialized in the strangest rain I’d ever experienced.  The strange part was that it was not simply raining hard, instead it was as if someone was using a bucket do drop water on us.   We’d get showered for 2 seconds, and then it’d lightly rain for the next 5.  Then another bucket…  Good thing we packed our rain jackets, and had time to put them on.  The rain was done with in about 10 minutes, and the warm weather allowed us to proceed even in our wet pants and shoes.  We finished walking about the wall, found the first of the dinner places Ivan advised, and had a wonderful bbq dinner.   Around 10pm we started crashing after our long journey that morning, so we headed back to the hostel, which was no easy task since we misinterpreted the bus schedule a bit, as well as where it were to stop.  But we made it home in one piece.

 

Komiza, Vis island, Croatia 9/18-9/19

Julie had some ideas about the islands we wanted to visit after reading the Lonely Planet.  The plan was to cover a several islands and to end up in Dubrovnik. After talking to Josko at Split we started our island adventure at the Vis Island.  Josko described it as a peaceful place with some beaches, some nature around to enjoy, and also promised that his friend who owns a tourist agency there would take good care of us.  

When we got to Vis we had to take a bus to the 2nd town on the island, Komiza (“z” needs a tilde on top, and is pronounced “zh”.)  We were to be greeted by the wife of the aforementioned owner of the tourist agency, who would taken us to the room that was supposed to be reserved for us.  The wife was not there, neither was he, nor anyone else at the tourist agency.  The sign said that the agency is closed till morning.  That was a bit upsetting.  I texted Josko asking him to connect me with his friend.  After some SMS back and forth with the agent we realized a few things:  1. He had no plans to meet us that day.  2. He was going to send someone to give us the key to the room.  3. We did not want to deal with him anymore.  When that somebody arrived, it was an elderly gentleman who did not speak a word of English.  That was not convenient because the price the agent quoted us for the room was above what we wanted to pay, even though it could’ve been a great room.  So first thing we did, we explained to this man with much difficulty how much we were willing to pay for the room.  At first he explained it was not possible, but by then we’d found another agency about 15 meters away from the 1st one that was willing to let us another room for a smaller price.  As we started walking to that agency, he called the agent, and they’ve decided to accept our price.  Once we were in the room we were glad that they did.  The room was awesome – it was small, but so are we, and it had a balcony with the full view of the beach and the sea.  It also had (which was very important in 30C heat) an air conditioner.   So after all this excitement we went to enjoy the beach.

Since we decided not to deal with that agent anymore, we had to figure out what to do ourselves.  Luckily there was no scarcity of open travel agencies around despite the end of the season.  We knew that one of the things Josko was very passionate about was the Blue Cave.  So while walking around in the evening we found one agency that was offering a boat tour to the cave followed by some time on a sandy beach for less than others.  As it was already late, and everything except the restaurants was closed, we decided to wake up early enough to walk to that agency, book the tour, and find out about our options to get to the other islands the following day.

The next day we did wake up pretty early, and made it to the agency on time.  The good news was that the captain of the boat agreed to take on 2 extra passengers (what does he care – so what that his boat says he can only take 12, it’s extra money in his pocket.)  

The not so good news was that our Lonely Planet was not current, and as it turned out there were no ferries from this island to any others.  Our only way out was to go back to Split.  We decided to take the earliest ferry out the following morning to allow us to catch a bus to Dubrovnik, and arrive there at a decent hour.  That meant waking up at an ungodly hour of 5am.  Oh well, we had some cave and beach time ahead of us.

The captain took pleasure in making sure our boat was thrown around a bit by the waves on the way to the island with the cave, and the beach.  We did not feel sea-sick, but scared at times that he did not know what he was doing, and we’d capsize.  Basically he was rolling his cigarettes most of the time, or talking on the phone, and touching the steering wheel lazily at times.  But we made it to the island safely, and changed to a smaller boat to get into the cave.  The cave was very blue indeed, as the name suggested.  The reason for the color was very simple – the cave gets lit from the underwater passage that’s deep enough for light to get through.  And because of the water color, which is extremely blue, the whole cave becomes blue.  We spent all of 5 minutes looking at the cave, went back to the bigger boat, and were off to the beach.  

As soon as we got to the beach we immediately loved it.  It was in a small harbor, secluded, under-developed, and sandy.  Very few beaches in Croatia are sandy (at least in our experience); most have stones on them (pebbles and such.)  The water was warm enough even for Julie, so for the next few hours we swam, bathed in the sun, had a surprisingly good (albeit simple) meal of grilled fish and salad at a small beach café and, in my case, all while wearing my boxer trunks because I’d forgotten to pack my swimming trunks.  Luckily nobody minded because there were very few people there, only those who came with our boat, and one other.   All beached out we were back at our room by 6 or 7, had dinner while listening in on some obscene language conversations among some spoiled Russian kids who got to the island on their own sailing boat, and went to bed early for our 5am wake-up call the next day.

5:15 am – wake up call, 6:15 – bus to the other side of the island; 7am – Catamaran to Split; 9:30am – bus to Dubrovnik.

 

9/16 Split Croatia

We arrived to Split pretty late in the day after a very long ride. The ride was made longer because an hour before we were supposed to arrive they’ve asked us to get off the train, and board a bus that would take us to another train.  They did not give us much explanation why.  We were then driven through some villages and within half an hour we were stuck on an unpaved “road” because of an oncoming traffic (we were not the only ones who got rerouted.) Eventually we did make it to another train.  

Once in Split, we were greeted by dozens of grandmas chasing us down the street offering us accommodations. Since we already had a reserved hostel, we were not interested. But they didn’t speak English and some were more persistent than others and followed us a few blocks.   

I blame the grandmas for getting us lost right off the bat. We had to walk to the hostel and tried to orient ourselves in the unmarked streets and extreme heat (despite it being 7pm). So we ended up going right instead of left out of the bus station. And then we circled awhile around the city looking for what is supposed to be a “popular landmark” – the theater. However, each person we asked, gave us a different direction. Eventually we found our way and things got better.

Hostel was nice and clean and very homely. Right away we got a recommendation from the owner about where to go for dinner and headed that way. Over dinner we made a friend, an American from Denver named Phil who was traveling by himself because his wife is afraid of flying. He kept us very good company. And then we headed to explore the night city.

Split is a beach town and that day was beach weather. I was wearing a dress (gasp! Yes, I periodically wear something aside from jeans now) the entire evening.  Levka got to enjoy more legs.  Of course they were not as good or as abundant as what he has gotten used to in Ukraine, but he was happy anyway.  

The really cool part is that we stumbled upon a semi-concert in the old Cathedral. In Split, you can freely walk the streets within the Old City Walls and the Cathedral. The streets are lined with restaurants and coffee shops. Given the weather, everyone is outside enjoying themselves. The Cathedral (or what remains of it) includes the 500 year old columns and some walls. But generally it’s an outdoor space surrounded by beautiful ruins. In this space, there was some live music and people dancing salsa. Neither was professional but nevertheless really cool. Anyone could join the dancing and half the people didn’t know how to salsa, which was even more entertaining to watch. 

After a few more hours of walking, we were exhausted and headed home.

From 2011.09.15 Split

Split Day 2:

Because of the heat, we decided to spend the entire day on the beach. Did I mention that Split is a beach town?

So in the morning, we made wonderful breakfast. (By “we” I mean Levka) and then we headed out. We didn’t take our swimming stuff at first. The plan was to go, explore the area to find the best beach, then come back to pick up our swimming stuff. OK, maybe it is not the most productive way to do stuff, but we were told that everything is close. 

So we “followed” the route that was suggested to us. Once again we found that the streets were unmarked, the map was unclear and right away we walked the wrong way. It’s safe to say that we got lost every time we left our hostel. At the same time we discovered, that getting lost is a great way to explore the city. And it is not a good way to spend the day at the beach. We did make it to the beach with our swim stuff by 4pm. The water was beautiful and we swam till sunset. 

Another dinner, more walking, more music on the street, some more legs and the next morning we were off to the Islands.

2011.09.15 Split