Every trip we've shared since 2011—filter by where we went, when we traveled, or what we explored.
Showing 6 of 236 posts
HungaryBudapest gave us the warmest ending we could have asked for behind the Iron Curtain, because we had Hal. Our friend from an Alaska trip kept a flat in the city and arranged to be there for our visit, and he gave us two days of what he called his forced march: Heroes' Square, the Opera, St. Stephen's and its strange holy relic, a ruin pub, Langos at the great market, and Castle Hill by day and by lights. This post is for him.
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PolandOf everything we saw in ten weeks across Europe, one morning stands apart. From Krakow we were driven out to Auschwitz, and what we found there was beyond anything a history book had prepared us for. This is a short, plain account of what we witnessed, and of the guide's parting words, that the world knew, and that we must stay watchful.
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PolandKrakow was the warm stop before the hard one. We talked Soviet times with a forthright Polish woman on the train, ate kielbasa for six dollars in the square, slipped into St. Mary's Church the moment a bomb scare cleared, and toasted the city with freezer vodka poured by a barkeep named Ania. The next day took us deep into the Wieliczka salt mine, hundreds of steps down to chapels, a chandelier and a Last Supper all carved from salt. That same day took us to Auschwitz, which we give a page of its own.
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PolandWe reached Warsaw on an overnight train that turned out to be a private room with bunk beds, rolling worse than any ship. Our Airbnb host Ada met us at the station and led us up five flights to a lovely flat in the Old Town, a quarter the Germans leveled in 1944 and the Poles rebuilt brick by salvaged brick. We met the Warsaw Mermaid and the story of Solidarity, and stood at the edge of the old Jewish Ghetto, a place John had carried in his head since reading John Hersey's The Wall as a young man.
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Czech RepublicPrague was our first taste of how far a dollar goes in Eastern Europe, and our introduction to its beauty. We settled into our first Airbnb, found our way to the Old Town Square and its famous Orloj clock, crossed the Charles Bridge, and climbed a long flight of steps to Prague Castle and the magnificent interior of St. Vitus Cathedral. We also learned to mind the taxi meter, and ate two meals and an appetizer for about twenty-five dollars.
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GermanyThe overland half of our trip began behind what we grew up calling the Iron Curtain, and our first stop was Berlin, where we spent nearly all our time on the old East side. We rode the public buses and subways, bought a new lens to finish off our 'International' camera, and shared a table and a few fiery plum snaps with two German businessmen, one of whom asked us to make sure America takes care of them. We walked from the Brandenburg Gate to the stelae of the Holocaust memorial, to the parking lot over Hitler's bunker, to the matched cathedrals of Gendarmenmarkt. It was a day of seeing, up close, the things that were off limits when we were young.
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