Arriving in the lobby of my hotel, there was nothing I wanted more than to get into a shower with water pressure and lay in a comfortable bed. I imagine that’s what motivated to say “No worries… I can carry my own bags” when the desk clerk informed me it would just be a minute for the bellhop to return & take me to my room. In my defense, she never said he’d show me how to turn on the lights too.

Entering my pitch black room, I used the pocket flashlight I had brought along (hey, never know what you might need on a train) found the light switch, and pressed it to make the room come alive with light.

A few minutes into unpacking, the room goes dark. Huh. That’s weird. I walk over to wall, push the button, and light returns. More unpacking and a few minutes latter, the lights go out again. WTF, I wonder.

Imagine six or seven more iterations of this and you can visualize me standing in the middle of dark room wondering what the hell is going on. I wanted to call the front desk, but there’s no way in hell I was going to be the stupid American who figure out how to turn on the damn lights. (Besides, I’m supposed to be good with electronics, dammit!)

I figure there’s got to be something else I have to do and odds are they’d make it easy for tourists to find in the dark. I notice a couple of green LEDs on one of the walls, part of angular plastic device, just above the light-switch. But you can’t push it in, turn it, or do anything. I’m stumped. With my flashlight I notice there’s a credit card slot. Hmmm… maybe stick my room key in there?

It’s actually a fairly clever idea. You have your card in the slot when you’re in the room and the lights automatically go off a few minutes after you take it out. You never loose your room key, you conserve energy by automatically turning off the lights, and room service knows without knocking if someone’s in the room or not.

The light-problem resolved, I was then able to fully appreciate how my room just dripped with Euro-hip. Check out my sink — it’s a rectangle!

Instead of a little plastic “Do Not Disturb” door-hanger, you got a few little foam balls on chains to hang outside you door for similar purpose.

And, of course, as this was Europe, next to the toilet was the midget’s bathroom sink. Never really understood that; Midgets must be more common in Europe.

First step, the Spanish Steps…

Ceauşescu wasn’t satisfied there either. As communist dictator of Romania, he ruled the country with an iron-first. With his people starving, but wanting to maintain face to the world, Ceauşescu exported his country’s harvests.

We even passed through Brasov, home to Bran Castle, or, as it’s pitched to tourists, Dracula’s Castle. Dan said that Vlad the Impaler might have actually stayed there for a single night, but even that’s questionable. However it was the model Bram Stoker used for Dracula’s castle, so the label sticks.

The contrast between the countryside and the city of Bucharest was total. In particular, unlike Bucharest, the countryside seemed like a place one might actually want to visit. Be that as it may, there we were. In Bucharest.

It was interesting seeing the Soviet-era apartment complexes. The mix of the city’s older architecture and these concrete monstrosities. Growing up in the 80s, you’d see images of them on TV, but I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes. At least not without carrying a rifle.

Architecture aside, there were a couple of other things that took me by surprise:

• Vendors don’t like to make change. Given a 100,000 Lei (a little over $3.00) for a 20,000 Lei item, the vendor would rather not make the sale than give you 80,000 change.
  
• Privacy. Eastern Europe has a very, very different sense of what privacy means. When walking into a store, it’s not uncommon for several men to follow you closely, obviously watching you. Talking with a local, it’s not unique to us as Westerns, it’s just something the people expect.
  

He’d been in Moldova for the Peace Corp for a few months, when the city police came by his home raising a fuss that he hadn’t registered with them when he arrived. After things were straightened out, his host family asked why he hadn’t registered with the police when he first arrived? How could he have forgotten? Explaining it’s not something done in the West, their surprised reply was “Well, how do the police know where you are!?” Exactly, was Dan’s response.

Leaving Budapest, we took an overnight 14-hour train ride to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Dan got us a private 2-person car, which ended up being a really good call. I was really worried about this part of the trip – I could see it being an utter fiasco, especially after the experience on the trip from Vienna to Budapest. I could see getting our luggage stolen, uncomfortable seats, etc. but all that concern for naught. It was a decent sized room, maybe the size of a small dorm room.

About two hours into the trip, somewhere after midnight, we were officially in Romania. The train stops at the first station for customs agents to come on board & do an inspection. Going room to room, he arrives at ours, enters, says something in Romanian, which only Dan understands. He says a few more things and points to a couple of bags overhead, which Dan pulls down for him. There’s an additional bay with our bags over above the door, so not wanting it to look like we’re hiding anything, I start pulling bags down from there for him. He stares at me suspiciously while I do so, and then, when I’m done, looks at me with a stone scowl on his face. Not sure what to make of it, I look at Dan who’s glaring at me.

Not sure what I did wrong, I watch from the top bunk as he starts to go through our bags. He finds some Kellog’s breakfast bars in mine. A concerned/confused look on his face, he holds it closely to his face as he slowly turns it around, sniffs it. He says something curt to Dan, at which point I’m having visions of Midnight Express in my head. While wondering how for how long I’ll have to pimp Dan out in a Romanian prison in order to get enough money for a bribe, Dan says a one word answer back to the customs agent. He puts the breakfast bar back into my bag, digs deeper, and pulls out some chocolates I had bought in Vienna.

He seems surprised by this as well, holds it to his face and starts to examine it very closely. Thinking he doesn’t know what it is, I look at him and say, loudly and slowly, “Chocolate”, making a gesture of one taking & eating a piece of chocolate. Staying completely silent, he looks at me for what felt like an eternity, then puts the box back in my bag. Confused again, I look at Dan, who’s glaring at me again. What the fuck?

The inspector asks some more questions, apparently about who we are and why we’re visiting. He finds two bottles of alcohol in Dan’s bag, a problem since you’re only allowed one. Dan takes one out puts it in my bag, saying we’re each bringing in one. Seems good enough for the agent, and without a word, he leaves the room.

Door shut, I ask Dan what I did wrong. “Ssshh…” he says, “just wait for the train to start moving again.”

15 minutes or so latter, train underway, I ask Dan again.

Bill: What was wrong will pulling the bags over the door? He wanted them.
Dan: No, he only wanted the ones he pointed at.
Bill: I figured if he saw the others he might think we were hiding them.
Dan: It’s the opposite. People who are smuggling things try to be friendly by offering the bags they want the inspectors to look at. Like, “Here, here. Check out this bag” in hopes they don’t look at the others.
Bill: Ahh… so what was the deal with chocolate?
Dan: You were acting like he was moron, you dumbass. The thing has chocolate written on it in fucking 14 different languages and here you are saying “chocolate”, like he wouldn’t know because he’s not as smart as Americans. He knew what it was; he was making sure it wasn’t drugs.
Bill: Ahhh…
Dan: Yeah… ‘night Bill.
Bill: ‘night Dan

Prelude

Deep Thought by Jack Handy:

If you met two guys named Flipper & Hambone, which would you think liked dolphins more? I’d say Flipper, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong though — it’s Hambone.

Before traveling with Dan, I knew the following facts:

• While stationed in Moldova, during his two years in the Peace Corp, Dan traveled to many cities independently, requiring an ability to get around in unfamiliar terrain.
  
• Having previously visited several of our destinations, Dan would already be familiar with at least some aspects of the city.
  
• As a Marine who did two tours in Iraq, Dan had to execute several operations that required a good deal of planning , and had to find his way from point A to B until fairly difficult circumstances.
  

You’d be wrong though, it’s Hambone.

“I’m not lost, I’m just disorientated.”

The breaking point was somewhere the second night in Vienna, walking back from the symphony:

Bill: Dan, where are we?
Dan: Hotel’s just up ahead.
Bill: Far?
Dan: Naw, according the map just a few more blocks.
Bill: Okay, I really need to use the bathroom.
<Ten minutes later…>
Bill: Dan, I really gotta go.
Dan: It’s not far… gesturing… it’s behind that building.
<Ten minutes later…>
Bill: Dan, where the fuck is the hotel.

After a few more interactions, including me eventually staging a mutiny by grabbing the map and eventually figuring out we were in an entirely different part of the city than Dan thought, I more or less forced issue of getting a cab and having him take us back to our hotel, overriding Dan’s protests of “But now we know where we are!” and “That’s giving up and admitting defeat!” Defeat, schmeat. I needed to go.

That one incident is a microcosm of traveling with Dan.

Dan got us lost. A lot. Some of the times that I still remember:

Finding our hotel from the London Underground stop. (“It’s just two blocks from the tube stop.” After walking about a mile and half, and a lot of “it must be the next block”, no help from locals, we got a cab and found the reason we missed the street “two blocks from the tube stop” was because it was one block from the tube stop. We had gone right past it and proceed to walk an extra mile.)

Finding Piccadilly Circus

Getting from Piccadilly Circus back to the tube stop.

Walking back to the hotel the first night in Vienna

Walking back to the hotel the second night in Vienna

Finding out hotel in Budapest

The Boat (or lack thereof)

Now getting to Budapest in of itself was interesting. It’s a 3 hour train ride, or you take a boat ride down the river. It’s about 5 hours, but sounds a lot nicer. At dinner, the night before, we had the following conversations:

Dan: Hey, so if we’re going to do this boat thing, we’ve got to wake up early.
Bill: What time?
Dan: Like 8, since the boat leaves at 9.
Bill: That’s not too bad.
Dan: Yeah, but you’re not a morning person.
Bill: I know, I’ll back tonight & just make sure I wake up to take a shower & we’re set.

Dan summarily set the alarm on his watch for the next morning and would wake me after he showered.

Next morning:

Dan: *shake* *shake* Wake up… I over slept a little.
Bill: What time is it?
Dan: 8:30. Shower fast.
Bill: Okay…

Ten minutes later we’re checking out the front desk. Not bad.

Dan: We’re not going to make it if we take the metro, so maybe we should get a cab.
Bill: Okay. (To front-desk clerk) How long does it take for a cab to get here?
Clerk: Just a minute or two, sir.
Bill: Can you call one for us please?
Clerk: Right away, sir.
Dan: Hey, actually, do you have breakfast?
Bill: What?
Dan: Well, we’re going to do a cab instead of metro, we got like 5 minutes.
Bill: Shouldn’t we just go & get there to make sure we get on the boat?
Dan: Naw, let’s get some breakfast.

So what happens? Yep, we show up at the boat station right as the boat is pulling away from the dock.

Dan: Fuck, we missed it.
Bill: Damnit! Why did you want to go to breakfest?
Dan: The cab wasn’t supposed to be that slow! I think he went the long way. I bet he screwed us. Where’s the map. I want to see if –
Bill: Well, when’s the next one?
Dan: Tomorrow.
Bill: Fuck.
Dan: Yeah.

So now, having paid a cab driver to take us to an utterly pointless part of the city, we haul all our stuff to the nearest metro step (up a hill) and take the subway to the train station.

Dan: At least we’re here early, so we’ll be able to get good seats, you know, the ones that face each other with a table.
Bill: Nice.

The train arrives, we board. The seats are quiet nice and despite our car being empty except for us, a lot of people walk past our car & get on further down the train.

Bill: Hey Dan, are we in first class or something?
Dan: Naw, this is were we’re supposed to be.
Bill: Are you sure?
Dan: Pretty sure.
Bill: There’s a lot of people going further to go to other cars. Why would that do that otherwise?
Dan: Might be a commuter thing, they know which cars are closer to the exits… maybe they have a private car and are going past Budapest or something. I dunno know.

After about 10 more minutes of nobody getting on our car & a lot of people best, I pester Dan enough to go ask someone. (He speaks some German, I only know Farfignuggen, schietze, achtung, and various bits from World War II movies. Bits that might be helpful when hailing victory, but not when dealing with trains.)

Dan goes to find out & in Dan fashion, he disappears for 20 minutes.

I close my eyes to take a nap and in the middle of drifting off, I’m woken up by a loud bang. I open my eyes and a small group of Japanese people are taking the seating area in front of ours. In trying to lift their bags into the overhead, the two men must have dropped it. One of the women of the group says in mildly broken “Sorry”, clearly concerned that they have woken Godzilla sprawled out on the seats behind them.

The bags they were trying to lift where roughly the size of a grown child, and the men are muttering about the heaviest one, now fallen on the floor. I start to gather what was going on as they lift it again, get to about stomach level, stall, watch one of the women try to push up before the bag falls to the ground again. I get up and make some gestures towards the bag & motion it going into the overhead. The friendly woman who said sorry smiles & nods. The bag ends up not being that heavy, so I pick it up and place it overhead, causing a slight commotion. After a few seconds of buzzing Japanese that I don’t understand, I look at friendly woman & point at their other bags & she nods.

Friendly woman smiles & says “thank you” and I return to my seat. The men have a perplexed look of “A friendly Godzilla! Will Tokyo believe such a thing?”

About then, Dan returns saying he couldn’t find anyone. When asked where the hell he’s been, I get some mumbling that I decide is less important to try to understand than getting back to my nap.

Ten minutes into the voyage, the inspector comes through, punching tickets. And, yes, we are in first class. Coach (or whatever it’s called on trains) starts 5 cars back. We get our bags, wind our way to the significantly more crowed cars, and spend the next 3 hours listening to kids screaming, and running up & down the aisle.

Meanwhile, another Jack Handy quote came to mind:

If you ever go crazy, don’t go on a murderous rampage like a lot of others do. Instead, try to get some gardening done, because afterwards, you’d really be surprised.

I could do a lot of gardening.

Kinda hard not when you’re in the city of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart.

We got, what we thought were, excellent seats: front row, center. Apparently that’s not the best place to sit at a symphony – it’s too close to the orchestra – but I thought it was great.

The picture is from where we sat, watching the Tokyo symphony orchestra warm up. It was an odd combination –- being in Austria, watching a Japanese orchestra, lead by a Russian conductor.

Representatives of World War I, II, and III.

Playing music for us, two Americans.

From antagonism to acoustics.

Thank you, Private Ryan.

Walking around at Vienna at night, having just arrived, we ran into a unique element of Vienna’s public transportation system: bicycles.

The bikes you see aren’t for rent – they’re for free. Anyone’s who registered can check one out.

To register, all you have to do is insert an ATM card (to verify your identity) and you get a little plastic card, much like a modern library card. You use the card to check bikes in & out at each location, and you don’t even have to return the bike to the same spot you checked it out from.

If you ever had to transfer from a train to a bus line a few blocks away, that has to make it a heck of a lot easier. Likewise, if you just needed to go down, run a few errands, and then head back home.

To borrow from my freshly departed British brethren, that’s bloody brilliant.

The facility was left as-is after the war, and for a while, forgotten. Maps used to track vital shipments still hang on the walls. Pinholes on the maps, left from the thumbtacks used to track each vessel, show the major routes, crisscrossing the Atlantic to and from the United States. Further on, in the intelligence gathering room, an officer’s log details the stress and day-by-day-by-day concern that if that morning would be the morning of an inevitable German invasion.

Today, of course, we know that not only does the invasion never come, but that the Allies ultimately prevail. Yet, walking through the bunker, you feel what it must have it must have been to not know either, the outcome of the war very much in question, German bombs overhead laying waste to the city, the daily battle with fear.

Like most museums, there’s a glass box at the end for donations. Donations for a museum dedicated to the man who personified the perseverance of a nation, the perseverance that was needed to win the war. A war that that returned freedom the European mainland – to France, to Czechlovokia, to Norway, to Poland – and thwarted quite possibly the greatest evil our planet has known.

So what filled this box?

Pounds? Euros from a grateful population?

Nope. It was neither.

It was American dollars.

I have to admit, if I lived in London, there’s a good chance you find me there every Sunday. Not that I could throw down on how the name of Mohammend is somehow tied to the Biblical name for the devil, but hell, for that, I’m willing to go back and do my homework. It reminded me a lot of college, with people staying up to 4am, debating & trying to defend absurd positions or playing devil’s advocate simply to see how well they could defend it or how the argument would shake out. A bit of mental masturbation, but pparently there was good reason to place the U of C in Chicago’s Hyde Park.

Yes, it’s beautiful, without a doubt it’s amazing, and it’s certainly it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but who doesn’t know that already? And having heard it all before & seen it now, I can tell you, there is nothing — nothing — anyone can say that will compare to standing in the middle of that chapel and looking up at that beautiful ceiling. Even detailed photos pale in comparison to the real thing.

So what good is another post telling you more of the same?

For that reason, rather than give a blow-by-blow summary of my trip, and subjecting you to modern day vacation slide torture, I thought I’d do something different. For each day of the trip, I’ll pick a photo or event from that day and describe just that. I’ll try to pick things off the beaten path — things you can readily find on Yahoo Image Search by just typing in a few keywords. Vacations are often like a series of small vignettes strung together, so by giving some of the pieces you’ll get a sense of the whole.

(They also don’t allow photographs inside the Sistine Chapel, so yeah, this kinda solves two problems at once.)