Days Three and Four (Catchy Titles Inside)

As I'm sticking with vow to actually blog this whole vacation before the next one, dangnabit, I decided to combine these two.  Hope you don't mind too much.

2/12/2012

Day Three: It’s Better in the Summer

After a leisurely-ish morning tip-toeing around my freezing hotel room, I checked out from Le Petit Trianon and, after seeing the closed bakery (rats, there goes breakfast), headed over to the train station to scrounge up a pain au chocolat and check on my train to Stuttgart.  Pain au chocolat: check.  Train: running ten minutes late.  What, I said to myself; the Germans are never late!  Jenny would be horrified!  Then the overhead SNCF lady announce where it was coming from: the Paris Est train station, and they had had problems with frozen tracks along the way.

Ah.  Okay.  Then Fourth Rule: I’ll Deal.  I expect lateness from the French.  And an inability to deal with cold.

I wish cold were visible.  There'd be a lot of it here.

When I boarded the train, I had to wake up the person next to me in order to take my seat.  She had spread her belongings (and herself) across both seats and probably passed out around the outskirts of the Paris banlieue.  Since I was on a train, of course there would be a family with screaming children right in front of me!  I’m beginning to think this trip is cursed transportation-wise.  However, they were an interesting case study in how to raise your kids bilingual: the mom was Spanish (or at least from a Hispanic country) while the father was German, so the parents would speak in their respective languages.  Their German grandparents sat next to me across the aisle and occupied them from time to time as well, but they were still cooped-up children, and they still screamed at the drop of a hat.

I arrived in Stuttgart a total of 25 minutes late and hoping that Jenny wouldn’t want to kill me too much.  She must have gotten impatient because she met me halfway down the platform at a run, and we collided in a mass of squeals and hugs and squeals.  She kept repeating, “I can’t believe you’re in Stuttgart!” — a running theme for the less than 24-hour visit with her.  She laid out the plan as follows: “we’ll drop your backpack in my gym locker; I’ll show you around Stuttgart; then we’ll eat lunch; then we’ll walk around some more; then we’ll have cocktails; then we’ll have dinner; and then we’ll go to bed.”

And that’s the end of that chapter.

Okay, fine, I’ll give you details.

While we were dropping off my stuff in her gym locker, André called to make sure I got back to Strasbourg okay, and when I said yes and that I had actually moved on to Stuttgart by now, he seemed rather surprised (despite the fact that I’d told him about it the day before), and we ended the call rather quickly.

Jenny began taking me on a whirlwind tour of her hometown, all the while making equivalencies between Stuttgart and Chicago.  The pedestrian shopping boulevard was the Mag Mile; the U-bahn was the CTA; the suburban trains were the Metra.  I began laughing on the inside and finished on the outside.  Stuttgart is a cute city, more modern than most other German cities I’ve visited.  German traditional charm still remains, but it’s squished up against glass and metal and “modern” architecture.  After walking down a particularly eclectic street, I remarked as such to Jenny, and she supposed the hodge-podge-yness had to do with the war: when buildings were destroyed, they built modern ones in their places.  But other German towns were bombed out, and their residents replaced them with imitation German traditional architectures, so . . . In conclusion, Stuttgart is diverse.

The "Mag Mile."

Jenny readily admitted that she knew next to nothing about Stuttgart history, so any information I impart will be retroactively added from the Interwebz and Wikipedia.  She showed me both castles, one which looked rather 19^th century and the other more 17^th-18^th, and we supposed that some “duke dude” lived there at some point.  Two out of three ain’t bad, right?  The first castle in the very middle of the city, named Neues Schloss or New Castle, was built in over the course of the 18^th-19^th centuries by Duke Carl Eugen von Wuerttemberg when the dukes of Wuerttemberg wanted to live in Stuttgart: score.  And, fun fact, it’s modeled after Versailles just like every other major castle built after the 17^th century.  The Altes Schloss/Old Castle, however, dates from the 10^th century and was a water fortress built to protect the stud garden (hence Stuttgart!), but it’s clearly gone through a number of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition episodes.  It was overhauled in the 16^th century, but after the court grew too large for the building in the 18^th century, “duke dude” von Wuerttemberg built his New Castle.  Now the old castle houses the Wuerttemberg State Museum, but we didn’t go in.  Obviously.  (There you go, Jenny: now you don’t have to research on your own!)

New Castle. Why hello, Versailles knock-off!

This is as close as I'll get to visual cold.

Exterior of the Old Castle.

Courtyard of the Old Castle.

Back of the New Castle.

Then Jenny interrupted out tour with lunch, a “real kebab” lunch, to be exact.  I will admit: it was light-years better than any French kebab I’ve ever had, although it was light-years more expensive as well.  Jenny attributes it to all the Turkish immigrants that flood Germany, but I counter with the fact that Algerian immigrants flood France, so nyah.  But there were a ton of vegetables, identifiable meat, and real white sauce!  Ugh, beyond delicious — so much so that I didn’t even think to take a picture.

Upon continuing our tour, she showed me the “lake” in the center of town behind the New Castle.  It was frozen over and nearly covered with people ice skating or falling.  I wanted to just walk on the ice a bit, but Jenny hesitated.

“But there’s a sign on the ice.  It must be fine!” I said, gingerly stepping out.

Jenny looked closer.  “The sign says, ‘keep off the ice.’”

Whoops.

And so she took my picture while I stood on the ice next to the sign and locals gawked at me openly.

(The sign had a point: there were two large holes near where we stepped onto the ice, and in two of the corners, it had melted clear away and ducks were swimming.)

"Lake."

It's a frozen Slip 'N Slide!

Yup, not worrying at all.

Add the opera house and the top of the Mercedes tower at the train station, and our tour was complete.

Mercedes-Benz sign!

View from the top of the Mercedes-Benz tower/train station. Best part? It was free!

Jenny half-heartedly defended her city with a “it’s better in the summer,” and we both laughed: that’s something a lot of Chicagoans say.  And a lot of Europeans, come to think of it.  Maybe that’s just the go-to defense.

We picked up my stuff from her gym (I successfully contained my jealousy at its awesomeness) and headed for the suburban apartment she shares with her mother and father.  She warned me about how religious her mom was, and how tiny her room was, and how lame her apartment was, and I merely reassured her that none of the above bothered me.  As long as her mom didn’t shove a Bible down my throat, I could move around her room, and her apartment, I don’t know, existed I would be more than happy.

Of course, she downplayed the good and exaggerated the bad.  Her mother had a remembrance shrine for Jenny’s brother who had died in 2004: entirely understandable.  Her room was small but cozy, and entirely suitable for an apartment.  Also, her view: ridiculously amazing!  She has a corner room that looks out over the Stuttgart valley and hills around her town.  ‘Floored’ wouldn’t even begin to describe me when I looked out her window.

“Yeah, I guess,” Jenny conceded.  “But I’ve been looking at it for 28 years.”

Damn.  Cry me a river.

We tooled around on the Internet for a while (Jenny: “are you sure you don’t want to check your email?”  Me: “I just did 10 minutes ago. . . !”) and wished one of my friends with a particularly German name a happy birthday before heading out again to an “American” cocktail bar.  No idea why they called it American, as it looked rather generic to me.

Those wasabi things were beyond delicious!

Jenny informed me that we’d be having dinner with one of her friends, and I asked what languages she spoke, as the prospect of conversing through Jenny the Translator didn’t particularly appeal to me.

“French and English, though her French is stronger,” she replied, and I clapped internally.  Yay common languages!  I had no problem speaking in French, which surprised me a little, though as none of us were native speakers, we were all on an even keel; if we conversed in English, I’d have the upper hand, followed by Jenny, and her friend would probably feel left out; German goes without saying.

After Jenny not-so-subtly complained about how unGerman/unefficient our waiter was at the “American” bar, we made our way over to the restaurant for dinner.  Decorated in dark woods and warm lighting, it felt like stepping into a German grandma’s (busy) eat-in kitchen.  “It’s more Bavarian-style, but the food’s still good!” she told me as we headed for our table.  Jenny’s friend met us there, and our French kicked off, but eventually Jenny shifted the language to a mixture of English and German.  For her, English is way easier than French, but I felt guilty: her friend was lost a nice chunk of the time, and so Jenny had to translate, which then slowed the convo flow and delayed any attempt at humor.  But we all took it in stride: no one became bitter or angry at not understanding or being included right away.

That’s just one of the many reasons I love Jenny: she’s the best kind of social lubricant.  She innately knows how to keep a conversation going while making sure no one feels left out.  She’s full of energy and opinions and has absolutely no filter: probably her best attribute.  When talking about her American visa problems she said, “No offense to you, but you Americans let in all those Mexicans, but you won’t let in an educated, employed, adorable little German like me!”

Heart!

I ate Jenny’s suggested kӓsespӓetzle, or German version of mac and cheese, and it came with a trip to the salad bar!  That feature alone sold me on the germanisized meal.

OMG yum.

Also, throughout our meal, we kept tabs on a woman and man who were both originally dining alone but ended up conversing and getting physically closer and closer throughout the meal.  The guy looked like he had a wedding ring on, and she looked like she was made up to within an inch of her life, as well as too old for him.  In fact, Jenny’s friend said she was old enough to be his “tante” — which, when pronounced correctly, is the French word for “aunt,” but when pronounced how Jenny’s friend did, it sounds like you put a ‘t’ in front of how most Americans say “aunt.”  We about rolled out of the booth, we were laughing so hard.

Dinner could have been a disaster or, at the very least, super uncomfortable, but with Jenny the Human Social Lubricant, her friend’s good humor, and . . . well, I don’t know what I brought to the party, but anyway, with all those ingredients, we had a blast.

On the way home, Jenny and I stopped off at a lookout point that surveyed Stuttgart valley.  Despite anything Jenny could say, her little town?  Thumbs up.

Stuttgart valley at night.

2/13/2012

Day Four: Transportation Gods Must Hate Me, Hungarian Edition

Jenny woke me at an ungodly hour in the morning so I could enjoy a “real” shower and even (gasp) use a hairdryer before nearly two weeks in hostels.  I checked my email for the last time and noted weather conditions in Budapest, Prague, and Bratislava before her brother came and picked us up, our chauffer to the airport.  I’d met her brother when Jenny had her internship in Chicago and he stayed with her for the first week, and even though he isn’t fluent in English, he tries and is more than willing to get by with hand gestures and silly facial expressions.  So I thanked him profusely before he drove off to work.

I checked into my Germanwings flight early (“Take the aisle, take the aisle, take the aisle!  I can’t stand crawling over people when I have to pee!”), and we scoped out places to have breakfast.  After rejecting actual restaurants because their “typical German breakfast sandwiches” of just meat and cheese cost 7€, we climbed two escalators to a Burger King only to be met with a team of German athletes: male German athletes.  She didn’t even bother to make her disparaging remarks under her breath, and I was eternally grateful that they didn’t seem to speak English.  As I wanted to carry my backpack on my back as little as possible, I dictated my order to Jenny (“no coffee?  How can you live in France and not drink coffee?!”) and grabbed a table by the window to watch the snow.

Flakes had begun falling this morning while Jenny and I waited for her brother, and now it looked like a veritable storm, but the departure boards had yet to post a delay, so I placed my faith in the famed German efficiency to clear the tarmacs and . . . whatever else one needs to fly a plane.

We ate and chatted as usual, Jenny completely blasé about how far her English carried, so I let go of my normal English-speaking-in-a-foreign-land reticence, and it felt good.  But we had to part, and like tearing off a Band-Aid, it had to be quick.  Otherwise tears would flow, snot bubbles would blow, and we would become a generally unattractive mess.  After promising to try to visit her again before I leave Europe, and definitely Skyping when I got back, we separated, and I went through security.

And into an hour delay, of which they only informed us 20 minutes before departure.  Apparently our airplane couldn’t lift off from Dresden because of the same snowstorm.  Didn’t they know this, I don’t know, ten minutes ago when I hadn’t gone through security?  So I sat in the airport for an extra hour.

The flight itself was fine, as was getting through the Budapest airport afterwards (God bless moving from European Union country to European Union country), and my only confusion came at the train station connecting the airport to the city center.  Even though stops were vocally announced in both Hungarian and English, the Hungarian names looked nothing like how they were apparently pronounced, so I craned my neck every time we stopped in order to read the name of the station.

I needn’t have worried: Nyugati was the last stop, so I bounded down the steps into the city’s “western” train station.

Public transportation in Budapest — and most facilities in general — look like they date from about 1972.  Or earlier.  Pastel colors, orange, mustard yellow, metal instead of plastic, leather hand straps, paper signs, boxy cars, and a certain something else, a weariness borne from hunkering down through one too many harsh, long winters.  I’ll hazard a guess and say that most trams or buses or metros were probably relics from Budapest’s communist days.

As surprisingly I do not speak Hungarian, I began looking for an ‘M’ sign, the universal indicator of a metro.  The first sign I found lead me into a wall.  Huh.  Okay.  So I wandered a bit more, completely unwilling to ask a station manager and get even more confused with broken English, and I eventually found stairs leading underground and my goal.  Trying to look as least touristy as possible with my giant backpack, I public transported it to Maverick Hostel.

Verity and I had chosen well.  Housed in a large building that included both a bank and a 24-hour supermarket (!), the hostel’s three floors could each respectively be its own hostel, complete with its own bathrooms, kitchen, and common room.  As our dorm was completely empty, the receptionist allowed me my choice of bed, and I chose one up in the loft so that, theoretically, we would be bothered by the least amount of people.  The hostel boasts that they have no bunk beds which, while not necessarily the most comfortable things in the world, are handy for airing everything out and hanging things in general.  With the loft beds, the railings could be used to the same effect.

Yes, I’m patting myself on the back.

Hostel entrance. Yeah, be jealous.

The receptionist capped off the tour with a peek in the “best” bathroom — a spacious room with a towel warmer and heated floors! — before she left me to my own devices.  Even though I was over an hour late, Verity’s plane had yet to touch down, so I asked for a late lunch recommendation and headed off to Bonnie for some warm Hungarian food.  I tried goulash soup for the first time, and besides staining my mouth orangey red, it was exactly what I needed.  In order to kill more time (and to spoil myself a bit), I ordered a chocolate soufflé for dessert: my first ever.  Yes, I know soufflés are French, and yes, I know I was in Hungary.  No, I didn’t care.

Near the end of my meal, Verity texted me to say that she’d touched down, so I paid and decided to wander around the area until she got nearer to the hostel.  When the check came, and I did the math to convert it from Hungarian forints to Euros, my jaw dropped.  I’d ordered a bowl of soup, Sprite, and a dessert for less than 8€/$10.60!  I love the Hungarian forint!

Apparently Hungary has been suffering through some massive-style inflation, so the exchange rate for most of the trip hovered around 280 HUF to 1€, making everything from public transportation to admissions fees to gum seem super inexpensive in comparison to France.  Not necessarily a good thing: that meant my wallet could afford dessert while my waistline could not.

During my wandering, I assessed how I would describe Budapest in this blog and came to the conclusion that it’s like Vienna but not: not even Vienna-light, but Vienna with a twist.  If you’ve seen my pictures of Vienna, you know what I’m talking about, and even if you haven’t, the comparison makes sense.  Half of Hungary became a part of the Hapsburg Empire in the 17^th century with the other half dallying with the Ottoman Empire, but in 1699, the entirety of the country settled under the Austrian flag.  In 1867, Emperor Franz Josef elevated Hungary to the status of Really Cool Place, so cool in fact, that he included Hungary in the name of his empire (Austro-Hungarian Empire), united the until-then separate cities of Buda and Pest, and made Budapest the western capital and second only to Vienna in the empire.  Up until that Serbian rebel assassinated Franz Ferdinand (not the musical group, fortunately), Hungary blossomed economically and socially and structurally, but back-to-back wars sandwiching the dissolution of the empire followed by a lengthy U.S.S.R. occupation ground the country back to square one.  Though I’m sure it was damaged in the Second World War, and communist architecture had its say, a lot of original buildings still remain from that period of national whoo-hooing: buildings with tall, vertical façades and small, minimally-decorated balconies.  Of course, Hungarian architecture sneaks in: can’t not be a little rebellious, right?

Hungarian architecture.

Looks Viennese, right?

More Hungarian-ness.

So unabashedly eclectic!

I walked to the nearest bridge over the Danube and marveled at the giant ice floes gliding underneath.  If you haven’t heard, the entirety of Europe has been hit with a particularly hard cold snap for the past couple weeks, and here was the tangible, measurable proof.  If a river as big and fast as the Danube had frozen in parts, imagine the state of my toes!  I snapped a couple of pictures of the Citadel and Buda Castle across the river before I picked up Verity at the nearest tram stop, and we checked her into our hostel, receiving free towels in the process.

It’s the small things, I tell ya.

View down the street from our hostel. Location, location, location, ladies and gents!

View of Buda Castle from the bridge.

View of the Citadel from the bridge.

Just a little bit of ice, right?

Buda Castle from the Pest side of the river.

Thought I'd add some tram lines in this time.

Newest bridge in Budapest. And more ice.

For dinner, I took Verity to Bonnie again, and I had pumpkin soup and then cottage cheese dumplings for dessert while Verity had marinated steak and then a soufflé. Over dinner, we began our discussion of just what the hell we planned to do and in what order we would do it in, and we continued that discussion in the 24-hour supermarket (where the prices were still awesome, and I found Dr. Pepper!) and on a brief visit to that same bridge for a view of both Buda and Pest at night.

Buda Castle at night.

Citadel at night.

The Danube at night.

When we arrived back at the hostel, we asked which thermal water baths were recommended, and then stood in front of a map for a half hour before finally nailing everything down.

Tomorrow: Communist Statue Park, followed by sights in the Széchenyi/“sashimi” area (I shouldn’t be left alone around other languages) like Heroes Square and the House of Terror Museum followed by St. Stephen’s Basilica.  Basically the Pest side.

Wednesday: SPA DAY!

Thursday: everything we didn’t get to see, including Buda Castle, Fisherman’s Bastion, and the Citadel.  Basically, the Buda side.

Good plans are good.  And meant to be broken.