There are times that you make good life decisions.  And there are times when you pay 1,200 whatever the hell the Hungarian currency is to go to a rock concert in Budapest on a Friday night.  

Relaxed and rejuvenated from our time at the baths, and with the recent good news that our planned train was finally running again, we decided we needed to celebrate that we would be able to sleep in the next day and have a comfortable 2 hour train ride to Vienna instead of 9 hours crossing (possibly illegal) borders on buses!  When we arrived in Budapest, we asked the nice hotel receptionist to recommend a place to walk to lunch.   She sent us in a great direction where we enjoyed $3 goulash in a cute kettle and $1 large pints, so we decided to check out what else she had randomly circled upon the city map.

The rain had let up a bit, so we decided to take the 10 minute walk to the large area she indicated as the “ruin pubs”.   We didn’t bother to first find out what a ruin pub was.   I think my husband just assumed it was bars in the old and crumbly buildings of Budapest and we all know by know how willing he is to seek out old and crumbly… Unfortunately as we get into the area of town and start looking at menus, it’s clear that ruin pub really means “expensive area we send the tourist to eat”.   The goulash here was triple the cost!  The area was bopping though, so there had to be more to it than this.   We decided to stick it out and grabbed dinner from a food truck while we searched to see what else was going on (yay phone with data for Google…)

It turns out, the ruin pub district is an area of town with gastropubs, bars known for cheap microbrews, and music.   Cheap beer?  Well we had to stay now!  We started to walk down the street to find a place to have a drink…on my right was a lively spot that claimed to be a “Klub”…inside we went!  We pointed to a Hungarian draft at random and found a corner to sip our pints.   And then my husband saw people with wristbands going downstairs and our interest peaked.   A concert?  In the Klub?  I had to know more.   I walked up to the large bouncer and greeted him in English with a big smile and a hope he understood.   He did…a little.   “Yes, rock concert.  You pay.  1,200.”   I went back to report the findings…and my husband hesitated.   Did we really want to spent 1,200 whatever to see a rock show in Budapest?  Was it worth the money?  I started to agree with him and then I did the math…it was about $4.  I grabbed his wallet and left him behind, decision made. [Ed. note: I followed.]

Downstairs the band was warming up…3 guitarist, a drummer with no cymbals, and a trumpeter.   I’m not sure what kind of rock they were playing with that combo, but there was no way I was leaving before we heard a few songs!   [Ed. note: the drummer finished setting up his kit…with cymbals.]  As they started playing, we were shocked how all the fans knew every word!   These guys must be pretty popular and we got to see them for only $4—hooray for Eastern Europe prices!   The type of music was eclectic and led to some fans swing dancing to one song while a very dedicated man in front created his very own solo mosh pit for the next.   

Suddenly, a few familiar chords rung out and we glanced at each other in shock…Could it be?  Is this even possible?   It made sense finally, this was a cover band and while they had so far only played songs which probably were originally Hungarian, they were playing an American classic now…we got ready to sing along and as we piped up with the well known lyrics, we realized that they were saying something much different.   The tune was the same, but this Budapest rock concert was playing “Sweet Home Alabama” with the lyrics 100% in Hungarian!

Eastern Europe was just about everything I imagined it to be.  The overcast skies only enhanced the bleak image as our train rolled through the worn down country of Slovakia.   The only color around me was from the graffiti on the broken down train cars littering the industrial train yards.  Even the toilet paper on the train felt like  leftover basic from the communist era.

As we rolled into Budapest for either 12 or 24 hours to visit (at this point we were still debating how we would be able to leave Hungary and get into Austria…the migrant crisis had stopped all trains last we heard and the massive fence was being built—our back up plan of regional buses to Bratislava involved a very early wake up call…) and the rain was pouring down.  We knew there was some beautiful old castles and buildings to go wander around, but this was a very cold rain. Since we only had such a short and undetermined time in the city, we were determined not to let the Paris weather crisis affect us here also.  It was time for random indoor Plan B number 2 of the trip: 16th century thermal bath houses.

Does anything sound stranger to an American than paying money to spend several hours soaking in community baths filled with sulfur water?  Apparently, these are a huge thing here.  The bath we found (after my husband rejected 3 built in the 1800’s for not being old enough…) was a slightly renovated one from the Ottoman empire.  [Ed. note: Seriously people. It was built in the 16th century. The original clay pipes are still being used!] It had 4 baths in varying temperatures from 26 to 40 degrees (Celsius conversions are almost as hard as currency, so I’m not even going to try…) and 2 saunas.   

Once inside, the people watching was probably worth as least half the cost of admission.   You had the overweight old men in speedos who’s belly almost covered the small patch of swimsuit and left you with a mental image beyond repair.   There was the German 20-somethings on a bachelor party.  And you had the couples.   Lots and lots of young couples…who probably should have paid the extra $10 for the private sauna, but instead they just gave everyone else in the pool quite a free show. 

We spent an hour alternating between cooking ourselves and freezing ourselves as we moved around the 4 pools and then decided to try the sauna.   As we walked inside, there was a printed sign on the door that I now suspect was telling us the sauna was broken.   But it was in Hungarian so we just went inside.   There wasn’t much steam so I pulled a cord…and set off the alarm.   Yup, I sounded the emergency alarm for the entire Hungarian bath house.   Oops?   My husband and I looked at each other and then around the baths.   No one seemed to be concerned or be moving, so we decided it was time to leave and scurried away to find the showers…

[Here’s a little something from the Boy…and I’m not even going to add in his trademark editor notes beyond this because I still cannot believe I agreed to pay money to go to this…]

I was last in Prague in 2006.  While there, wandering about, I stumbled upon a magical place. Deep, in the heart of Prague, right off the main avenue, hidden around a corner and up some stairs, is one of the best museums in the world.  The Museum of Communism.

The production values aren’t the best, and the signage to find it is lacking, but if you can find this place, you are transported into an incredibly informative museum full of artifacts and relics from the Communist era of Prague. It walks you through the various aspects of Communism, from education, to propaganda, to labor, to arts, to the secret police. Whenever you’re in Prague, make it a point to go.

Side note: the main signs on the street pointing to the museum were missing, so I couldn’t quite find the entrance at first. We walked up and down the street for 10 minutes to no avail, finally turning down an alley, past a casino, past some meeting hall, and into a courtyard of sorts. From there, we wandered around a corner, saw something on a sign that looked like “museum” in Czech, went inside past another casino sign, up some stairs, and finally found it.  I could’ve sworn it was a lot easier to find in 2006…

Real talk — the museum is a mix of hilarious, awesome, and actually informative. Machine-gun toting bears as the logo? Amazing. Cool old Communist stuff? Awesome. Production values that haven’t gone up since the museum was created right after the U.S.S.R. collapsed? Oh yeah. It’s like one of those “history” museums you see signs for randomly in a town, but instead of lame wax figures “talking” to you, you get badass Stalin statues and a side exhibit on how North Korea is still communist. And then you get anti-USA propaganda. Best…I was gonna say 10 dollars, or 10 Euro, but in Czech they use weird Czech money so I actually don’t know how much it cost to go in. It wasn’t a lot…I don’t think.

After an exhausting day of travel and walking, we arrived in Prague.   We trekked off the train looking for a taxi and for the first time started to consider that the Czech actually use a currency other than Euro.   I took a quick peek into the rail station hope and confirmed my suspicions as nothing had the Euro symbol and the large number of zeros after each small item amount gave me pause…

No problem, there’s an ATM, we can just withdraw the local currency.   Only once we were on the amount selection screen of the ATM did we consider that didn’t actually realize what the conversion factor was.   So we guessed.   Or rather, my husband hit a button.   And took out 10,000.   Yup, no 100 or 1,000—numbers that aren’t completely astronomical and possibly unlikely to be part of the current balance of our travel debit account, but a whopping 10,000.   

It wasn’t until we were back in the hotel that his brain registered what he did and he started to panic a little.  He told me in all seriousness that it was possible he took out $2,500 but it might have only be $25.  In reality, it was $400…[Ed. note: I was sleepy, and the math was right but wrong at the same time. 1:25 factor = $4 to 100 Czech, but I flipped the #’s, and thus the $2,500 or $25 guess. Small things…]

We still have 2 months left before we’re spending USD again…we better figure this out quickly…and not tell anyone I work in finance!  

Oh, and the taxi only took Euro…

Leaving Amsterdam at 4:30 am is not a good life plan.   Leaving Amsterdam at 4:30 am when you were at a fancy dinner with really surprisingly delicious Dutch wine until 11 pm the night before is an even worse idea.   Leaving Amsterdam at 4:30 am when you had to walk down a street in the Red Light district after dinner the night before because your husband didn’t believe they actually had red lights in the window giving it the name is still a worse idea.   And yet the idea that won out over all of them was the one made several months prior…

As I said previously, we had no real desire to see anything between London and Prague, but we wanted to stay on the trains and that would have been a long trip….so we broke it up with a few stops.   And since we were already doing a random jaunt in Brussels and Amsterdam, our brains told us it would be fine to book our train with a 5 hour layover in Berlin where we could just rent a locker for our backpacks and explore the city for a bit before getting to Prague late that night.

So I found myself in a scene from Eurotrip, trying to sleep in 6 person enclosed train car with a shoeless German man turning on and off the lights and the loud Dutch businessmen obviously having enjoyed their morning coffee very much before entering our cabin.   And unlike our lovely ride to Amsterdam where we were served a surprise 3 course lunch with wine, the little snack car available here only provided water and soggy croissants.   

Enter Berlin:  I’m exhausted, hungry, and severely under-caffeinated.  We know even less about this city than our last 2 stops (yup, research fail on my part, but 88 days is a lot to plan and something had to give…).  Oh, and it was supposed to start pouring rain at any moment.  Germany, you never had a chance.

My husband assessed the situation and realized that he didn’t have long before this 5 hour layover crumbled into a very long and uncomfortable wait on the train platform. First rule: find food.   Which we did, along with beer.   And then we wandered…

I have no clue what we saw honestly, I was too tired to focus my eyes on the historical markers to read the long information pages in 4 languages, so apologies to all my history buffs…But if you want to take a stop for a REALLY good lunch, I can tell you where to find amazing currywurst!

[ed. note: We ate lunch at a divine cafe just next to the Brandenburg gate. We got there by walking past the magnificent German Parliament building – where they handed us a 45 page English booklet about how the German government is formed and operates. From there, we meandered towards the giant square surrounding the beautiful Berlin Concert Hall. Then it was a quick .75 km over to Checkpoint Charlie. ProTip – the shack is stupid, but there is a lot of good history about the splitting of Berlin by the Allies and the eventual reunification of the City after the wall came down. All in all, I found it delightful. Maybe 6 or 7km roundtrip from the train station? And it didn’t rain on us!]

Amsterdam…the city of pot brownies and sex shops.  Every frat boy’s dream vacation and a maybe unlikely stop for some 30 year old vacationers.  We didn’t really make plans for the city, so when our train arrived, we did what we were doing best in Europe…we wandered.   

The hotel had highlighted a few destinations on a city map and the one item that struck our fancy was the flower market.   It was definitely time for my monthly flower delivery at work, so I thought we could pick up some happy tulips to take to our hotel in Prague the next day and cheer up the place (living out of packing cubes and travel sized toiletries was starting to lose it’s luster…)

So we dodged the bikes (the bike lanes are wider than the car lanes here…) and the postcard stands selling very risqué packs of playing cards, and stopped to gaze at the beautiful Grand Palace…(that later we learned was actually just the local shopping mall and the Palace was one block over.)

And suddenly we were in the market…the fraud market.  

Here’s a little piece of tourist advise to anyone heading to Amsterdam because I never want you to feel the level of disappointment that we could only fix with a liter of wine.  The Amsterdam Flower Market does not sell flowers.  Not a single bloom and we went to every blasted stall floating on that canal.   We even stopped halfway up (for said liter of wine) to reassess and try again, wondering what we were missing.   The flower market sells tulip bulbs…by the gross.   You can get 100 bulbs for €6 and tulip bulbs planted in little wooden shoes.   But you cannot buy a live tulip. 

I feel duped.  

[Ed. note: maybe it wasn’t flower season?]

We spent one night in Brussels.   I know nothing about Brussels.   We didn’t really have a burning desire to visit Brussels (Bruges yes, thanks to the excellent Colin Farrell movie…), but the Eurostar train already took us from Paris to London and we didn’t want to leave London on the same route or by plane, so our only option was the other Eurostar route from London to Brussels!   Since our next desired city was Prague, we decided to take a couple days to get there and break up the potentially VERY LONG train ride (which still ended up being a very long train ride…every day for 3 days..)

We got to the city with some very different goals.  My husband was on a quest for the only 2 things he knew about it: beer and waffles.   Both excellent ambitions and delicious, so I fully supported those plans.   However, first I needed to find the Irish pub.

Mock all you want about the Irish because we probably deserve a lot of it.   Every Irish person I know will seek out at least one Irish pub as they travel abroad.  We had an excellent lunch several years ago at Fidel Murphy’s on the Cayman Islands (logo complete with a Cuban cigar smoking leprechaun…)  This time was special though, it was the All Ireland Championships for Gaelic Football and I needed to cheer on my team (Kerry-Up the Kingdom!)  

The game was…messy.   My team was not playing very well and the table we joined was full of Dubs shamelessly mocking our efforts.   I got into a small debate with the fan beside me at one point.   He mentioned that this was the 40th anniversary of when he met his wife—they had met in 1975 when Kerry also played Dublin and at that meet up, Kerry triumphed.   I pointed out that we needed to all cheer them on to have another Kerry victory to promise 40 more years of love for them…and in typical Irishman fashion he told me that no, he was cheering for the Dubs in hopes that they could right this wrong finally and get him out of it!

In the end, the better team won and it wasn’t mine.   While it was a sad result, I have to say that it was hard to stay down for long.   If we had been back home, we would have been with my family in the local pub watching this match sober, because Bible Belt and all that…instead we drown our sorrows in a few delicious Belgium pints during the game and wandered the city until we found some chocolate and whip cream covered waffles to enjoy as our dinner!  

The Boy is chiming in again today with some extra photos and thoughts as we finish up the first half of Europe…

Quick points:

• Italy
  • Nights in Rome were awesome. Roaming about on windy cobblestone streets, small cafes and shops and places to eat everywhere, fun squares, delicious food, cheap yet delicious wine…I like Rome.
  • Aperitif at 5 or 6pm with some wine, wander, dinner at 9 with more wine. Seriously. Rome knows what’s up.
  • Rome is also sweet because of all of old ancient stuff. It really is amazing to know everything is ~2,000 years old and carved by hand.
  • The Colosseum is honestly more badass than pictures show.
  • The Pantheon is a legitimate ancient building. Still in use.
  • Everywhere you go, guys with selfie sticks and laser lights and noise making things are trying to sell their wares. But they never, not once, try to sell a selfie stick to a person who is actively taking a selfie. They walk right by.
  • The Pope was cool. I’m glad we got “good seats”.
  • Pompeii was epic. They dug up this city from under the volcanic ash covered dirt, and there are whole buildings and streets. It’s an entire CITY. It’s crazy. And the streets have curbs. And are paved. And were used for 600 years like that before being covered. 600 years. Almost 3x older than the USA, in use as a city. And then buried for 2,000 years. Crazy.
  • One thing though – all of their buildings seemed to be made of stones of very distinctly volcanic origin. I don’t know how no one – no citizens of the city, no visitors, no one – for 600 years, no one ever realized that all the building material was volcanic rock. No one looked up at the volcano shaped lonely mountain and thought “hey, maybe this is a volcano”.  But nope. Neither thought entered their heads. They didn’t know it was a volcano until it exploded.
• Monaco was neat. Tiny city country full of rich people with more money than sense. One night was enough. I gambled, won money, cashed out.
• Paris
  • Not gonna lie. After 2 weeks of amazing weather, the rain in Paris was a bummer. But it was probably good we had a lot of time there. We needed some R&R and to be off our feet some, and the rain was the perfect excuse.
  • Having entire wings of the Louvre be empty for over an hour was so cool.
  • I kind of think my wife is going to kill me after all the stairs. Yay tall things.
  • I will say that the soccer match we went to was super fun. Crazy. But fun.
  • The rain closed the third floor of the Eiffel Tower the night we had tickets – our final night in Paris was 20 mph winds and rainy. Super bummer, but kind of summed up our time in Paris. Oh well.
• London
  • Hearing your native language being spoken is an amazing feeling after almost 3 weeks of having no idea what anyone is chatting about.
  • Reading your native language on signs is awesome.
  • They don’t let you take pictures in Westminster Abbey or the Crown Jewels. One dude tried and the guard had him erase the photos in front of her. I turned on my GoPro, strapped it to my backpack, and voila.
  • Inhaling alcohol vapor was a very unique experience, probably not to be allowed in the USA.
  • Having a night out with someone we knew was also a good call. Mixed things up a bit.
  • We saw The Lion King on the West End. Gotta add some live culture to this trip, it can’t all be old stuff.