Travel Blog Posts
August 5th 2006
Okay, first things first. We're sorry for dropping our last blog entry after we got back. However, when we returned from Ireland to our new home in Boston first things were also first, and those first things were things like moving and weddings and unfortunately not wrapping up our last blog entry. Anyway, when last you heard, we were about to leave Germany for Ireland... We loved Ireland. Loved, loved, loved it. It may have been the friendliest, most beautiful place we visited. The fact that the Irish speak English helped, but the green, sheep-studded landscapes, thousand foot sea cliffs, delicious Guiness, and world's greatest bed-and-breakfasts made us want to overstay our visas. It was almost not-that-great, however. Our plan, formulated in an Istanbul Internet cafe, was to land in Dublin at night, rent a car ... read more
July 30th 2006
We've really been looking forward to Germany. Perhaps Brian felt some sort of draw to his ancestral land (or at least the half of him that is German), and Alissa was definitely looking forward to staying at the Marriott in Berlin (Thanks entirely to Lisa Rooney and her employee discount). Berlin also turned out to be a totally appropriate place to transition between the formerly Communist eastern and central European countries and the unadulteratedly capitalist havens of Frankfurt, Dublin, and finally back to Boston. The Marriott, in fact, was 5 meters from the (former) Berlin Wall. To start off, Berlin is enormous. Over four and a half days we were able to visit only a handful of the city's dozens of distinct neighborhoods, and wish that we'd had another month to fully feel the place out. ... read more
July 25th 2006
Greetings from Prague. Actually Berlin, but we're backdating this entry. A few caveats. 1. Prague is the most expensive place we have visited so far. We had to pay $15 to have our laundry done. Beer was cheaper than water, which meant that drunk britons spent the early morning hours screaming outside our bedroom window. 2. Our hostel was disgusting. Group showers are gross and group showers that don't drain are even worse. 3. We visited Prague in the height of the summer tourist season, which happed to fall during a European heat wave. Keep these elements in mind when reading our thoughts of this city. We were really looking forward to Prague. Since that early '90s Levis commercial ("In Prague, you can trade them for a car") this city has embodied in our minds the ... read more
July 20th 2006
Quick word of advice for traveling in the part of the world (everywhere but America) that uses 24 hour time format and the dd.mm.yy date format. Dates such as "17.07" can be easily mistaken for times like "19.10" on train tickets. For example, if you believe your ticket says your train leaves at 5:07 p.m. on July 17, double check that departure time. Otherwise you might (hypothetically) spend two hours twiddling your thumbs in the Budapest train station. So we left Budapest on a Polish night train and (for the first time during all of our European train travels) arrived on time in Krakow at 5:45 a.m. Our visit to Krakow was nearly cut short (or made much longer) after a small mix-up that ended in our high-tailing it away from a tram conductor/scam artist who ... read more
July 19th 2006
Budapest is an incredible city. Elegant, composed, and vibrant--qualities we found remarkable as the place has been out from under the stifling Soviet influence for less than 15 years. Budapest's refinement seemed all the more remarkable after a thorough education into the terror that reigned the nation during successive Nazi and Stalinist governments. We had no idea until visiting the city's world-class "Terror House" museum exactly how difficult Hungarians of our parents' and grandparents' generations had it. First the city. As we said briefly in our last installment, Budapest somehow avoided erecting the monstrous and dull Communist buildings that stand on every Bucharest street corner like gulag comendants. (see picture). Budapest feels more like "Old Europe" than just about anywhere we've been, including most of Old Europe. While we lack the architectural jargon to describ... read more
Back in the (former satellites of the) USSR
Published: July 14th 2006Europe » Hungary » Central Hungary » Budapest
July 14th 2006
Since we last wrote from Istanbul we've travelled back in time through Romania and Hungary to an era when Billy Idol, White Snake and Boy George, rollerblading and mullets were all extremely fashionable. For anyone eager for a dose of 80's nostalgia should certainly pay a visit to a the former Communist bloc. We bid farewell to our lovely Turkish hotel (and its crazy owner who repeatedly, but unsucessfully, requested that Alissa help him put his contact lenses in his eyes) and spent a full 24 hours (scheduled for 16 hours) twiddling our thumbs in a sleeper car through Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. Our first impression, made upon our arrival at 10pm, was that the city seemed quiet. Not busy with traffic, not full of people, not lit up with restaurants and cafes. We thought that ... read more
July 8th 2006
So as we saıd, we made ıt out of Indıa relatıvely unscathed and wıth a much-ımproved opınıon of the place. Flyıng through Bahraın to Athens we got a peek at the modern Bahraın/Emerıtes urban plannıng style (gıant gleamıng buıldıngs burstıng out of desolate sandy desert) and also of the enormous oılfıelds dottıng the Arabıan penınsula. The Mıdeast’s oılfıelds look from the aır lıke the exact opposıte of the Mıdwest’s agrıcultural fıelds. Gıant evenly spaced dark cırcles on a background of whıte sand, rather than gıant evenly spaced green cırcles on a background of dark Brown. We soon arrıved ın Athens. We were expectıng a bıt of post-olympıc afterglow, but were surprısed to be greeted by one of the cleanest and most charmıng cıtıes we’ve ever seen. And we’re not just sayıng that because ıt was a ... read more
July 2nd 2006
India is definitely growing on us. We've made our way to Jaipur, which is a very different city from Agra and (what we saw of) New Delhi. First, it seems to have a middle class, driving around town in regular cars and shopping among the sari stalls at the bazaar. They are marketed to by billboards advertizing condos, clothing, and brand new shopping centers, just like any other city. The old part of the city, laid out by Maharaja Jai Singh 400 years ago, is by far the most organized (not to be confused with orderly) place we've been in India--a 4 by 8 grid of streets, with vendors loosely grouped by product. All in all, a walk around Jaipur's old city made for teriffic sightseeing and gift shopping--and plenty of haggling experience--and we seemed to ... read more
June 29th 2006
We were not prepared for India. The first inkling of this fact came on our Indian Airways flight from Bangkok to New Delhi. Our fellow travelers clearly had a different concept of personal space from our own. The man sitting behind Alissa, for example, felt perfectly comfortable draping his arm over the top of her seat, brushing her head with gesticulations, and emphasizing conversation points by pounding his tray table and, as a result, violently jarring Alissa. He was immune to our dirty looks. That was nothing. Upon arrival to Indira Ghandi International Airport it became clear that we were totally out of our depth. Our guidebook had told us to look for a government-run tourist information booth, so coming across an official looking booth branded “government tourist information” we trusted its occupants to help us ... read more
June 24th 2006
So we leave for New Delhi in the morning it's time to sum-up Thailand. Words like "exotic" or even "delicious" don't accurately capture the vastly foreign experience that this country has yielded, so to stall for time we'll outline our last several days. When last we spoke, Brian and Alissa were relaxing by the pool and bicycling among the ruins in sleepy (and even sunny) rural Sukothai, Thailand. Now picture the exact opposite. That’s Bangkok. The city is vast, blanketed by traffic and smog and is about as modern a city as any. We won’t bore you with all the ins and outs of our days spent exploring this madness, but here are the highlights. One of our first nights here, Brian somehow managed to get us onto a nighttime sightseeing tour of Bangkok, for free ... read more
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.003s; cc: 13; qc: 93; dbt: 0.0818s; 1; s:notus w:www (50.28.60.10); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.8mb
