Six dollars for orange juice, eight for a slice of pizza, no one can decide where they’re going on the sidewalks, and I can’t help loving you.
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Posted 31 May 2008
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The country is called Hungary, but the primary ethnic group in Hungary is the Magyar. They seem to be a warm, fun loving people who just happen to have an incomprehensible language. Hungarian (Magyar) is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family, which means that the only language Magyar resembles is Finnish. If you know [...]
So today I took my first steps train in a long while. There is a lot more western movement in my immediate future. And I am very happy. I´m at a hostel in Munich tonight after having spent four nights in Budapest. And Budapest may be my new favorite continental European city. It was just [...]
Before coming to Budapest, I had never been farther east in the world than the Czech Republic. But when I was in Prague, they told me all the action was in Hungary. So I came, knowing far less than I am comfortable knowing about my host culture. The old and the new are colliding here [...]
Vienna was the first city I had ever seen in Europe way back in 1996 and it left a big enough impression on me to come back. Unfortunately, after spending so much time around European buildings, Vienna loses some of its grandeur and one starts to yearn for something with a bit more grit. The [...]
It’s actually a circle. Literally, there is a ring road around the central city here. It’s full of immaculately clean, dramatic stone buildings. But this seems to be the only city where everything has that kind of immaculate design. Changing lines in the subway is accomplished with a kind of efficiency that makes the Tube [...]
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Posted 23 May 2008
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Rome, the Eternal City. The guidebooks say that nothing will prepare you for the chaos that is Roma. That is completely ridiculous. It also happens to be completely true. See, what they don’t tell you is that the crowds are tolerable if you are prepared and rested and that the city is safe to walk [...]
Judging by the long, steep grades in their massive gardens, the Medicis were bad ass walkers in addition to being badass about pretty much everything else.
Florence has been a great time, but you really do see a lot more Americans over here (dutifully carrying one of about four travel guides) than seems possible for an Italian town. So it’s time to go smaller. I’m off to Perugia tomorrow with a side trip to Assissi (which I don’t know how to [...]
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Posted 15 May 2008
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My favorite city so far is Berlin. I think I visited it at the absolute perfection of Spring: warm days, chilly nights, children playing giddily in the streets of what was not so long ago an emotionally destitute part of the fall of Communism. People relaxed on the balconies of their newly renovated apartments. And [...]
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