Nürnberg, and Parting Ways

Our last stop together, Nurnberg, Germany.

Some pics:

This is the view from our new dorm room in Nürnberg, and we face the Opera House! Or, in German, Opernhaus.

And a view out the bus window, on the way to Nürnberg. We got caught in a HUGE storm on the way, but you can't tell at this point.

Oh, and look at my spiffy sandal tan. You really don't want to see it, probably. But believe me, it's not dirt. My feet are especially clean here. And I have a hiking sock tan as well. Am I proud of these two things? Maybe a little.

Now that the close up picture of my feet is past, let me leave you with something more pleasant.

We didn't actually explore the city at all, this time. Since it was our last day we just felt exhausted and it even took us an hour just to figure out if we wanted to go to the supermarket to find something for dinner.

A rather unique experience came out of this though. As Tessa and I flopped onto the couch in the reception/common area, we started talking to this guy sitting there as well. We asked the usual travelers questions like where you're from, and what you're doing in the city...turns out he is here for a music festival, and he has been sitting in the common room people watching for the last five days or so. Why? Just so he can meet cool people, and think, and observe.

For the whole afternoon we sat there too, discussing just about anything that came into our minds. Tessa and I did have a city map and we all consulted it at various times, with full intention of leaving the couch to go see the Documentation Centre, or Hat Museum, or Pencil Museum. 

We never did leave to see anything exciting except for another grocery store run, and we managed to get this guy to come with us, because we felt he really needed to get out. And once we left, he should know where food was available.

So it was a great day of non-exploring, and I recommend anyone to do that sort of thing (not in your plans) at least a few times on any trip you're on. We met some really interesting people in the common room that day, and I felt bad the last day was when this first occurred to us.

~~

Since our changing-of-plans crisis, we had decided to go through this last week so I wouldn't miss Prague, but then part ways right after. Tessa managed to get a flight home booked out of Frankfurt, so that's why we stopped in Nürnberg, making our way over there. And I booked a flight to Brussels, where I'll be staying with my friend Elizabeth until the 21st of August. Details on that later.

It's been a crazy and fun trip this summer, and even though the majority of it is over and I'm ready to go home in a few weeks...well I can't wait to plan the next adventure.

Bye, Tessa!

Prague Pt. 2

We joined a free walking tour that started at 11am, which is way too late by the way. And I did get a fair amount of sun. But we learned a whole lot of history, and I can't wait to look up more about Prague when I get back. And since I don't have any particular stories to relate at the moment, here are some pictures.

(After the pictures there may be a story.)

First, this is one of the statues on Charles Bridge. I think the pinwheel hats are a little avant-garde but--wait, they're halos? Never mind.

The astronomical tower! Extremely pretty and so incredibly detailed, I loved just staring at it. But the on-the-hour "show" that's so famous? One of the most overrated touristy things ever. I did get video that I might share later.

View from the side of the square, to the left where you see the church, is where the main area opens up. But this corner looks huge with the panorama.

In the Jewish Ghetto. This clock runs backwards, as expected.

A statue of....anyone? Anyone? No not anyone. Specifically Franz Kafka. Author of The Metamorphosis and other stories. He's from here. Born lived and died here, actually.

A bad combination of a black building, and sunlight in the back. But it is really this dark in real life. Used to store gun powder for the city.

This artist (of a random door at a garbage facility) is actually the architect for some famous things, including something or other from the London Olympics last year. The heat was getting to me, I'll admit my mind wandered.

Tessa being a bad vegetarian.

This guy was one of our roomies (we had to switch rooms for the second night.) but I never saw him awake. When we got there he was asleep, and he slept all day, and then later when we came back to go to sleep, he was out with the other three dudes in the dorm, until 3 or 4am, when they all came back and fell asleep. And he was still asleep when we packed up and left in the morning. He had a sombrero. 

These random-words Coke bottles are everywhere in Europe, and we can't figure out why. For fun I guess. Tessa sure got excited upon spotting this one.

This is my horrible attempt at a Star Wars impression thing. What it turned out as: a too-skinny backpacker trying to swat a fly with a cape on.

Tessa's worked out better. She had been wearing the shirt all day anyway like that, to avoid sunburn. And in case you're wondering, this building behind is a very famous concert hall where Mozart conducted at, and parts of the movie Amadeus were shot. And the statue is in honor of the opera Don Giovanni.

And for all those Lemony Snicket fans (this includes me and Tessa) well take a look, they're everywhere....and this weather did take a very frightening direction from the norm, a few minutes after this was taken.

~~~

And you thought the post was over, no? No. See, as we did our last outing and looking around for postcards...well we had another close call with the apocalypse.

I almost bought a water color from an artist on the Charles Bridge, but I wasn't sure how I'd bring it back. But as we explored the old town that afternoon I thought and thought about it and decided I really wanted it, and would find a way to get home. 

So we're walking back, about a 20 minute walk to the bridge, and it starts to rain a little. This was in the forecast, so we expected it. But I had stupidly worn my sandals anyway, and of course a tank, because it was still insanely hot out. But within 10 minutes, gusts of wind were shooting through the small streets and into the shops, and the sky got dark, and rain started coming down sideways. I was reminded of the movie, The Day After Tomorrow. Since the shop windows and doors were open to all the tourists, things were flying around, and breaking, and we still slowly made progress, ducking in the eves, toward the Charles Bridge. People were rather freaking out, and we found ourselves against what seemed like every tourist in the city. Why was everyone going this way? It's hard to walk against a frightened crowd.

Tessa managed to get some video clips before it got too bad. 

We finally get to the bridge, and realize we can't see it at all, which is not a good sign, and so we hide with a bunch of other people in a tunnel nearby for about 15 minutes, waiting to see if it will let up. 

Well it didn't.

Since our hostel was about 100 meters after the bridge, once we crossed it, we would be good. So we take a deep breath and start sprinting in bursts again. We meet a lady on the edge of the bridge, in a covered area, and she says, "I got halfway across before I had to turn back!" Cue our horrified faces.

Apparently some sand is mixed up in the tornado-like weather, so as we finally brave our way across for the next 20 minutes, sand is stinging every part of our exposed skin, and we are soaked to the bone, and Tessa is trying not to have an asthma attack.

By the time we make it to the other side, the weather is okay enough to take out the camera, and look at the famous bridge...with no tourists on it! 

Happy ending.

And I'll leave you with a very nice view of our dorm window. The calm after the storm. 

Budapest exploring pics

The walking tour was good, but so hot because it starts at 10:30, and is about 3 hours long. I vote midnight tour for the next one. If only.

One of the coolest things I learned this time was Hungarians are technically from Asia before mixing with other cultures (after wars had to bring in new population) so that's one of the reasons their language is so different than the areas around it. George Lucas actually used Yoda's lines in Hungarian. He wrote them in English, translated them to Hungarian, and then back to English. That is why it sounds so weird. :) so Hungarian is the Jedi language.

Anyway here are some sightings from our explorations. We did look around after the tour as well.

Chain bridge from a hill on the Buda side.

Last time I was in Budapest this was our ride, Viking River Cruises...so not thinking about how awesome it was...and with no heavy backpack...during the cool Christmastime.....

As weird as this is to say...I'm pretty sure I've seen this before.

A far-away view of one of my favorite buildings I've ever seen. It's the third largest Parliament building in the world. I think it's London, Brazil, and then this one.

Tessa tends to find cool graffiti.

:)

Yellow watermelon. What.

This is possibly the best and cheapest ice cream I've ever had. Tessa got: dark chocolate, hazelnut and vanilla and I got: peach, pear, and hazelnut. We went twice within the day and a half we were there.

The view from my bed, looking up.

Famous hourglass that's turned around every new year.

Mushroom ceiling on the Metro.

Also. I tried to discreetly get pictures of this awesome phenomenon. This is the first city we've seen so far, that the advertisements are placed diagonal like the Metro escalators...you see where I'm going with this. Once you tip your head and look at it one way, you can't un-see it. We love this.

Prague Pt. 1

We made it to Prague, Czech Republic! Again without any mishaps! Wow I don't want to jinx anything here, but if this could continue for the rest of the trip? That'd be great. Of course, that means fewer crazy stories for you guys, but less freaking out on our part.

Our hostel is right next to Charles Bridge, so we can pretty much walk anywhere and there is no need for Metro navigating. (Though the Metro has A/C and the hostel doesn't, which is rather irritating.)

It's super super hot outside, so we will try to get a semi-early start in the morning. Old Town Square is only a 15 minute walk anyway. Free walking tours are in abundance here!

It's hard to see, but these funky looking leaves caught my eye.

Our hostel is in the building right in front here, with the red/brown roof. This is coming back from the supermarket at about 8pm.

Tessa has this thing for her spices. To the extent of hiding the rest of our precious basil, in plastic wrap, in the curry powder container, in order to keep it from getting lost in the food bag. Which of course is not what it looks like.

Budapest

Is it really arrogant to say I've been here before? Well I have. And it's a beautiful city so I'm glad to be back. In our original plans, (wow "original plans" we had no idea what we were getting into....) Budapest, Hungary was not on our list. But since it's halfway between where we were in Romania, and Prague, we figured it wouldn't hurt to look around for a day.

For the first time in weeks, we did not get lost at all on our way from the airport to the hostel. We even made a run, backpacks and all, to our favorite grocery store, Tesco. We missed you Tesco, and your Wally-World-type qualities. Mostly Tesco stores are in Western Europe, because we certainly didn't spot any in Romania.

The hostel we are staying at is called the Black Apple. There are stencils of black apples painted on the walls, but they really look like funky shaped cherries. It's a nice place, but the kitchen is smaller than one in a New York apartment; we're just glad it has one. Even if the stove is built into the top of the toaster oven.

We booked a dorm with five beds, since it was cheapest. And we had some nice roomies, a French girl who was going out for her birthday, and the Aussie dude. 

We talked a lot to Aussie dude when we arrived (but never got his name) since it was way too hot to actually leave the place. Oh, and this hostel doesn't have A/C. This hasn't really been a problem in the trip until now, but you just need more than a standing fan for 93 degree weather in a city. Also these ceilings are 14 feet high. Which is sort of eerie.

I got off topic. Aussie dude has a guitar with him, which gets him points on the backpacker scale of coolness, along with his green roll of duct tape, another point. But he also put on deodorant half a dozen times during our conversations that evening, so that may lose him points. (Note to self: I will write a post soon with our Backpacking Scale: Rules and Regulations. You guys will like it.) 

Despite the cool room and people...we changed rooms. The whole place had lots of windows, but it also faced the main street. And with ambulances screaming by every ten minutes sounding like an alien space ship, (I really worry for the health of this city's people) we knew there would be no sleeping that night. Our new room faces a slightly less busy street.

Well, we are off to take advantage of the free city walking tour like we did in Bucharest. We have our bottles of mineral water to fend off the heat, no worries.

~~~~~~

I forgot, a few pics from our last day in Targu Mures, Romania:

We got pizza!!!!! It helped with the homesick a little. But it also had corn on it, which was new.

Tessa broke the room.

One of the foods we will both miss are "cocoa shells" which are about ten times more awesome than cocoa puffs. And on this particular bag had the ingredients listed in no fewer than 20 languages. That is a record for this trip.

Thrifting

While venturing out to the train station today we stumbled upon a huge flea market thing. It was along a whole block, and about five rows. I didn't really take pictures because its not touristy at all and  I didn't want to bring attention to myself, but I have a couple on my camera. Tessa has a few on her iPhone that I'll post below. From silverware to used socks to watches to a bucket of nails, and don't forget the vintage My Little Pony thing, we were entertained for hours walking along and looking at everything.

So if the 80s went to Estonia (hm I don't think I ended up blogging about that before.) well then the 70s moved to Moldova. Talk about vintage clothes and stuff from that era. Tessa found a billion things she could potentially sell on her Etsy shop and it's all so cheap.

We haggled this down a bit with broken Russian and English. Was about $6. Now I'll really fit in when we get to Romania. People might think I'm the gypsy! 

And I also couldn't help but get some old paper money. Two of them are old Soviet Russian and one is Moldovan.  All for about $1.20. They're not in good condition or anything, but I collect it all the same. And bank notes are light, which is a bonus.

We wanted to buy everything. Tessa and I figured we could live off this place...not that we would want to live here. But it's so cheap for us, it's almost sad. 

Tessa thinks there will be huge garage sales/flea markets like this in Romania as well. Now we regret bringing any clothes at all, so we could authenticate our wardrobe here...alas...not enough room on our backs!

You can get the gist of it pretty well from those two pictures, actually.

~~

Also! Slightly related. We're finally at a hostel that's legit, and there are books here! We found the only two English ones (as opposed to none before this) and grabbed them for the road. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and a collection of essays by Umberto Eco. It's been a month since I've read a paper book...I need my fix!! :)