Winter Break: Part 2

My six-week winter break ended at the last week of January. So by the time late February rolled around, I was understandably exhausted. A month of work? I didn't sign up for that when I came to Europe.

Unfortunately, having just planned a trip to Italy, I was pretty lax when it came to figuring out my travel plans for the week-long February break. Fortunately two friends had already planned a low-budget, low-stress trip through Central Europe and invited me to tag along. The plan: two days in Bratislava, and two-and-a-half days each in Vienna and Prague. It was a very different vacation, much less expensive and, for that reason, much less touristy than most of the prior trips that I had taken.

Bratislava, Slovakia

Before arriving in Bratislava, I associated it with exactly three things. So the bar was not set super high.

Our first day started with a hike up to the city's castle, though I almost hesitate to call it that. The site has been occupied for thousands of years, but the current castle was reconstructed--after fire, military occupation and decades of neglect--in 1953. It's currently undergoing more reconstruction, so it doesn't have the ancient look of a typical European castle. But it does offer some great views of the city.



We spent the rest of the day exploring the city center, sitting in cafes and eating some delicious (and, after Paris, dirt-cheap) dinner.

The next day we decided to explore the outskirts of the city. We'd been told that there trails in the woods above the city where we could hike and eat a picnic lunch. After a quick food run at a local market we started walking, having received no direction but "Head for the TV tower on the hill." Within minutes of leaving the city center we found ourselves wandering amidst Communist-era concrete block housing and huge piles of trash. A lot of trash.

At first we assumed that the city must not have any garbage disposal system. But then we saw some homeless people lighting trash fires across the train tracks, and we were reassured.

When we finally escaped the trash wasteland we thought the rest of the hike would be easy. But Bratislava had other plans. During the next two hours we found ourselves walking along overgrown railroad tracks, nearly being hit by a train, sprinting across a narrow bridge before a car could drive around the blind curve at the end, walking until the sidewalk disappeared and finally breaking out a portion of our picnic for sustenance. You know you've hit rock bottom when you find yourself gnawing on a hunk of garlic bread by a Slovakian roadside.

The payoff for all of this was a sensation of absolute euphoria when we finally saw trees up ahead. We collapsed on the first bench in sight, and dug into our long-awaited picnic. The hardest-won meal I've ever eaten.


After our triumph, there wasn't much more to do in Bratislava. So we dragged our bags over to the bus station and waited for the coach that would take us on to Vienna...and waited...and waited some more. 90 minutes later, a Bratislava-Vienna bus drove up. We thrust our tickets at the driver, who sadly shook his head for approximately two hours before breaking the bad news. Evidently Bratislava is such a travel hub that it has two international bus stations. And we were at the wrong one. Our options were to buy a new ticket or stay in Bratislava for the night. I'm sure you can guess what choice we made. We were pretty much ready to hijack the bus, but settled for springing the seven euros.

It might sound like we had a horrible time in Bratislava, but that really wasn't the case. True, it's one of the few places I've visited that I have no desire to return to. But we had fun. It was different. Sometimes it's nice to visit a city that doesn't look like a giant postcard. And hey, at least everyone arrived in Vienna with their Achilles tendons intact.

Vienna, Austria

Even after our bus station mishap, we managed to arrive in Vienna at a decent hour, but not early enough to do much on our first night.

Vienna was my favorite city of the three we visited, and one of my favorite destinations of the year. The first day we just did a lot of wandering. We browsed markets, sat in parks, sampled Viennese pastries and admired the city's architecture. One of our first sights upon arrival the previous night was this smoke stack, which looked like something straight out of Willy Wonka's factory.



We learned that it's a garbage incinerator designed by a guy named Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser, who called straight lines "the devil's tools." So you know he was awesome. Several of the houses he designed can be visited in Vienna. They're all colorful and unexpected, with undulating lines (even the floors are curved) and plants growing from the walls. Take a look:



On our second day we headed to the outskirts of the city to explore the Zentralfriedhof. I've visited a lot of cemeteries this year, but this was one of the most impressive. In terms of people buried, it's the biggest in Europe. And these aren't ordinary dead people. Well, a lot of them are. But the cemetery also boasts possibly the greatest concentration of musical genius in the world. It took some wandering, but we finally stumbled upon the graves of Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Schubert and Mozart. I know.

(That's all of them together).

The main portion of the cemetery is well-kept, with manicured graves and polished headstones. But there's a large Jewish section that was largely neglected during WWII and hasn't been restored.


It's a little eerie but it's also very pretty, and so quiet that we saw a few unexpected visitors.

Our last notable experience in Vienna was a museum visit. The city had the cool idea to convert the royal stables into a museum compound. It's a beautiful space with several great museums. We visited the Leopold Museum, then hung around to attend an opening at the modern art museum. It all sounds very sophisticated, but we were enticed by the prospect of free sausages and beer. A bunch of Viennese residents showed up and we met a few friendly students. There were also several large-scale art installations set up for the event, including a woman's bikini-clad torso, a blue tadpole-like structure (hint: It was not actually a tadpole) and an extremely large rendering of a certain body part. Because this is a family blog I will omit the gory details. Let's just say that it's a body part one should never enter and certainly not one you should eat sausages in. Oh, and it rhymes with "blectum."

Anyway, the opening was a lot of fun. Free food, free beer, free posters, good music, great museums and a chance to interact with the locals--what better way to say goodbye to Vienna?

Prague, Czech Republic

I had high expectations for Prague after my program director--a Parisian--told me that it was the most beautiful city she had ever seen. It was a little difficult to fully appreciate the city's aesthetics when my ears were about to snap off, Jungle-style, from the cold. But my first glimpses of the city only went towards proving her theory.

That's a view of the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle across the water on the first night we were there. As I mentioned, it was freezing during our visit. So we didn't explore the city as much as we'd have liked. Instead we took advantage of our three days in the city to sample the local cuisine from inside conveniently-heated restaurants. That's an important cultural experience, right? I thought so.

We did manage to get up to Prague Castle, which is situated inside a beautiful and extensive complex. There are about 50 separate areas that you can pay to tour, but we stuck to wandering around near the cathedral and ducking into bathrooms to save our fingers from frostbite.

We braved the long cold walk back from the castle to the main square. It wasn't the most comfortable 90 minutes, but we did get to see more of the city up close, including some of the elaborate statues on the Charles Bridge.



I was sad to leave Prague; hopefully I'll come back some day when the temperatures are above Antarctic levels. It's one of the most colorful, ornate cities I've ever visited and I'd love to see more.

And with that, it was time to board a bus back to Paris. It was a whirlwind trip, but one where I met lots of locals, spent time with good friends and got some great stories. Mission accomplished.