So I checked in a couple times along the way while I was backpacking, but I didn’t give any details of what I was up to. What a time it was! So so much fun, totally different than I ever would have expected in terms of how we traveled and things we did and the overall feel of the vacation. After I spontaneously decided three days in Krakow was too much and I wanted to see how comfortable the London Stansted airport was, I flew out the next morning and met up with Kristin and Alli at our couch surfers house in Krakow. For that day, we toured around the city with another man staying at her house, seeing some of his favorites and some of the big monuments in the city. At the end, we came across this awesome festival and learned that we were there on the day of their independence, like our Fourth of July, so it was a big celebration and there would be a concert and dance show at night. Our next move was obviously to get perogis and polish kielbasa and watch the dancers and then check out the concert, which we washed down with some lody (Polish ice cream, everyone only eats vanilla, and it’s a more icey vanilla taste but very awesome).
That was day one. Coming into this trip, we had shelter figured out in each destination and where we would be on each day, but we had no plans in the cities, and that’s what made the trip so awesome. We spent some time talking about what travel is all about and how different people travel and how to approach this trip. What was nice about no plans was that there were no disappointments. If we got lost, it was an adventure, if we stumbled across a festival or sweet exhibition, we did it without worrying about sacrificing something else. We slept if we were becoming exhausted. We got into so many random activities that totally defined the trip. Ultimately, it was exactly as if the three of us were just hanging out in a new awesome place, but just like we would back home. It wasn’t as much about getting to these cities and trying to get everything done that we should have; it was a vacation, and it was relaxing, and it helped me realize how I need to travel and it really helped me find my niche, which I had felt disconnected to at times on other trips this semester.
The next day we went to Auschwitz. We visited the Birkenau concentration camp, which was left in its exact state and you’re free to just walk around. The barracks, railroad, gas chambers, cremation areas, holding cells, ponds with ashes, and many other things were there to see, and it was a very odd experience, very emotional. Afterwards we visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was turned into more of a museum. All the buildings and the layout of the camp were preserved, but inside the buildings were exhibitions. The exhibitions though were powerful and informative and went a long way to putting things into perspective – like the room filled with human hair from when prisoners were shaved upon arrival, the room of everyone’s shoes, of their luggage, things like that. It was amazing how the regime wasn’t doing this out of pure anger and hatred (to an extent). Obviously, Hitler hated the Jews, but he more so was purely convinced that they were poison to human nature and needed to be exterminated, more of the hate for termites than for an enemy. The gas chambers were used to kill people by the hundreds. People were totally stripped of their identities upon arrival by being shaved and clothed in a striped suit like all the others. Someone could have been walking next to their brother and have no idea. A lot of our reason to start up in Poland was to be able to see Auschwitz, and its something I’m extremely happy I can say I’ve seen for the massive historical implications and totally powerful experience.
That night we boarded a night train to Prague and found ourselves there the next morning. We spent our first day in Prague finding the hostel, doing our general walk-around/acclamation with the city, going crazy over eating Subway, and checking in early due to dreary weather. Day two of Prague found us up and out early for an extremely long, but extremely awesome, free walking tour of the city. Followed by some Czech beers and goulash, we went to a drama theatre performance, and allow it was in Czech it rocked. It was fun to try and guess what was going on, and it was extremely cheap so it was a nice thing to do to change it up a little bit. Day three of Prague found us out early again to explore the market and Prague castle. Following that, we went to a park and were hanging out walking around when we got lost beyond all belief. The park swallowed us up just in time for the start of a storm and we literally for the life of us could not find the way out of this park. Hours later, we were back in town, and on our way to check out a Salvador Dali exhibit. Prague finished with some laundry and another night train to Budapest, which was delayed five hours but we had nowhere else to go but the station!
Prague was by far my favorite place, and easily one of the best places I’ve been this semester. It was a combination of so many things – compact, walkable city, great exchange rate for cheap food and crazy cheap awesome beer, a hip mix of eastern European culture and western European modernity, and of course cake architecture. No other city will ever be as much fun to walk through as Prague. The architecture rocks, it has tons of these big elegant Victorian buildings that look like cakes, and with different colors and decorations we kept exclaiming at how it felt like we were in cake world. The one bad part: we got scammed on the subway. We didn’t validate our tickets and got off and these guys pulled us aside, asked for passports, and made us pay a fine. Looking back, it was definitely a scam, but we were not in a position to argue at the time. There were so many parks within the city and we spent tons of time just exploring them and hanging out, another reason Prague was just a great place. I really cant describe its feel, but here goes an analogy – Prague knows it is the place to be in Eastern Europe, but it also knows that it is still not Western Europe, and it accepts and flourishes in that role.
Next was Budapest, and talk about a random three-day visit to a city. After arriving so much later than expected because of the train delay, we met up with Feri our couch surfing host and he gave us a tour of the Buda side of the river and some interesting things to see there. He was having a house party at night for his roommate’s birthday, so we spent hours and hours drinking Hungarian drinks and chatting with everyone and getting way too hammered because they just kept giving the interesting foreigners free booze. The next day, we went to check out a set of natural caves in the Buda hills, an adventure that turned into an afternoon long excursion. It was far out of the city and hard to find with public transit, but after about four hours combined travel time there and back, the caves were totally worth it. We came back into the city and went to the Pest side of the river, checked out some sights, bought ballet tickets for the next day, walked around a park, and finished off the day with one of the best meals I’ve ever had: a falafel pita.
The ballet the next morning was insanely good. First time I’ve ever seen a ballet and now I totally need to see more. Once again, it was pretty cheap, and by far worth so much more than what we paid. We walked around the local flea market afterwards for a while, and then had to go get bus tickets to Vienna which turned into another classic three-hour adventure because of bad public transit. Afterwards, we came back to the Pest area and went to a bar to get Absinth because Ali and I had never had it. I loved it, and it was prepared in the classic way, which is by melting sugar into it and pouring water over it all to stir. After chatting there for three hours, we met up with Feri, got another falafel pita, and called it our last day in Budapest. Budapest was an interesting place because the city itself was not overly stimulating in the fact that it appeared very much like a normal city, but there was more to do there than any other city I’ve been to. It had amazing museums, baths, and music scene but we didn’t even get to touch that.
The next morning we headed out to Vienna and met our couch surfers. We stayed with a group of six female students and it rocked. They had this totally awesome homely lifestyle – they cooked and ate together and had an awesome atmosphere in their flat. They invited us to eat with them and they cooked amazing food. They lent us their bikes that first day to get around the city better which was amazing, no better way to tour a city. It was a beautiful day and we were cruising around Vienna, stopping in parks to climb trees, locking up the bikes when there was an interesting area to check out. That ended when we got caught in a hailstorm and were stranded in a gelato shop for two hours because we didn’t have umbrellas before we decided to make a run for it. We got absolutely soaked on the ride home which strongly motivated us to eat, change into warm clothes, and call it a night. The next day we headed out on the town to get them a gift, go to a hookah bar, and go to the opera! The opera was absolutely fantastic, and a great way to close out the trip.
Vienna was a gorgeous place, but the total opposite of Budapest. The city itself was fascinating with its layout and it was incredibly gorgeous, but there wasn’t much to do. It definitely was a place to relax and hang out, which we let ourselves do. Plus, we were back on the Euro for the first time, and we were all running out of money, so our options were cut. It was a really nice way to end the trip though, with some great couch surfers and in a gorgeous place. We ate wiener schnitzel, which apparently is just a phrase referring to how the meat is prepared, which is flattened, breaded, and fried, but it rocked. Vienna was covered in parks and beautiful little areas, but it was also more of a swanky, expensive, upscale city.
The next day found me flying back to Rome through Bratislava, and hanging out with my couch surfer and his other guests at night. I was psyched for the next day because I had time to do things in Rome that I had been wanting to do one last time – check out the Avantine hill, eat Old Bridge gelato, spend a ton of time in St Peter’s square and basilica, get apertivo with a huge group of Roman couch surfers, and go to a Beatles cover band at Big Mama. Then things started to get interesting after the concert because I lacked a place to sleep, so I wandered the streets till 6 AM. I took some awesome night photos as I literally walked around the entire city and ended up back in Monte Mario near our school in a nature observatory falling sleep and watching the sunrise over the city. That day, I did something I’ve been looking forward to for a while…one last picnic in Villa Borghese. I splurged and got a lot of supplies at the market, went to the park and found my perfect spot, and caught up on sleep and finished my book while eating bread, cheeses, salami, strawberries, olives, and wine. After the day there, I went to JFRC and repacked my bags, went to the airport for the night, and here I am now on a plane to London on the first leg of my trip back home.
We perused through Poland, played in Prague, bopped in Budapest, and viener-schnitzeled in Vienna. We saw a drama in Prague, ballet in Budapest, and opera in Vienna. We ate perogis, kielbasa, and schnitzel; we drank Czech beers and Hungarian pilanka. I had my European backpacking adventure that everyone talks about and hopes they get to do at some point in their lives. I learned how I need to travel: I cant treat it like a mission, I need to treat it like vacation, because I’m too relaxed to try and force things in just because a book tells me its important. I prefer to see the nuances and the people of an area than all the famous sights, and traveling with no plans lends itself to so many more random stories.
This was a trip that I was not overly excited for coming in. It was hard to plan, I was looking forward to going home, and I was running out of money. It turned out to be the most spectacular way to end my adventure abroad and start my summer, and since it was so relaxing and so much fun and hanging out it became the perfect transition between the two. I’m ecstatic at how it turned out, how much fun it was, and all the stories I’ll have from such an adventure.
I know this was a pretty straightforward depiction of what happened, but it was too much information to remember a lot of the little oddities and insights. Either way, hope it was a good recap of my European backpacking adventure ☺
Zach
PS – was anyone else around when airplane food got awesome? It may be just me, but the meals I’ve had on a plane this semester were fantastic…
Perogis in Krakow
Cake architecture in Prague
Grabbing a beer before the theatre in Prague
Sun setting over Budapest
First Absinth - awesome!
Soaked after biking through Vienna
Why are the words so long?!
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