Retroactive Blogging - Getting Hungary

Hey Blog readers! I know that I haven't posted anything in a while, but I have been pretty busy with vacations, finishing jobs, moving to other continents, finding a place to live....well, you get the picture!


But I did want to capture my last few trips here and share them with you too. So here are some retroactive blogs that I hope you will enjoy about my last few trips around Eastern Europe.

Getting Hungary

When I left Prague, life got pretty crazy.  My friend G came back to Belgrade with me, and I showed him around the city in between going to work, packing, having the movers come, and getting my apartment deep cleaned in preparation of moving out.  We had a good time though, and I was glad that I got to share this amazing city with another one of my friends.

Here is a shot near sunset of the confluence of the Sava at the Danube in Belgrade.

On Friday, G left, and I headed to Budapest with some of the Belgrade Hashers for the 1000th Budapest Hash Run Weekend.  S was kind enough to drive, and so 2 Americans and 2 Serbians headed north after work to begin the weekend.  We practiced our hashing songs on the way up, and crossed into Hungary and the European Union with no trouble.  For those of you not familiar with hashing, the songs tend to be bawdy, and S and I had to explain some of the English slang to the two Serbian guys. Trying to translate some dirty words was....well, embarrassing and interesting and funny.

We met the other Hashers at a pub in Pest and got our hash gear.  It was my first hash gear (shorts and a bandanna!) and I was pretty excited about my first "interhash".  Friday was a party, and we got settled into our cabin and met a lot of cool people.  There were people there from Vienna, London, Turkey, USA, Serbia, and even Texas.  Yes, I'm including Texas as a separate country.  Have you been there?  Then you understand.

The 1000th hash on Saturday was what they call a ball buster.  That means that it is very tough.  It was 13km through woods and lots of shiggy (mud, burrs, stinging nettles, ticks), but the check point was at a beautiful hilltop with views of Buda and Pest.  The Danube was flooded through the city, but everything looked peaceful from our vantage point.  Unfortunately, I didn't snap any pictures.  But trust me, it was very beautiful.

The group headed back to camp and then we had our circle.  The RA's that lead the circle did a great job, with a real sense of theatre and made sure that everyone was included. 

S and I were unlucky in our cabin choice, because our cabin kept alternatively losing power and then water.  I managed a very cold shower, and was reasonably presentable for dinner. 

On Sunday, it was the 1001th Hash through Buda.  It was a toga theme.  Trust me, you get a lot of stares as a group of 30 people wearing togas running and walking through a major city on Sunday morning.

S let me borrow a sarong that she fashioned into a toga for me.  I thought it was a good fashion statement.

Part of the tour was supposed to be on the river, but as mentioned, it was flooded.

You may recall my post about Budapest from December.  It was my first Eastern European city outside of Belgrade during this assignment.  But going to Budapest in December vs June was very different.  The sun was up until about 10pm, which was great (compared to going down at 4pm in December).  This was also the trip in which I shed my cloudy and cold curse!  It was warm and sunny and I even got a little sun burnt (and freckled).

Budapest has a lot of statues, and here are some that I didn't see during my first trip:

This is Peter Mansfield.  He was a young boy that was a hero during WWII.

This is a statue commemorating car crash victims.  It lists the number of people killed by car crashes for the last 20-30 years.  The numbers drop dramatically as Hungary has implemented new strict drunk driving laws.

These are statues of whores.  Even whores get their own statues in Budapest!  Notice the togas too. 

As an American, I'm still amazed and impressed by the history in Europe.  Here are some Roman ruins that they didn't want to disturb.  So they just built the highway over the ruins.

We ended the weekend with a final circle which was supposed to be held at an amphitheatre, but it was flooded.

As our kennel headed south, I was both happy and sad because this was my last time to see the Belgrade Hashers and S, who became a very good friend.  I got home late on Sunday, and had to pack because I was leaving my apartment the next day forever.   This experience (the weekend and the last 7 months) was so much fun, and just as I was starting to make friends and feel like I belong, it is time go to back to the USA. 

When my landlord's mother showed up at 8:30am on Monday morning with pastry and coffee, it hit home that I was really leaving this wonderful city and that my experience was quickly drawing to a close.  I suppose you could say that I was hungry (Hungary) for more adventures and definitely not ready to head back to TX yet.

Retroactive Blogging - Czeching out

Hey Blog readers!  I know that I haven't posted anything in a while, but I have been pretty busy with vacations, finishing jobs, moving to other continents, finding a place to live....well, you get the picture!

But I did want to capture my last few trips here and share them with you too.  So here are some retroactive blogs that I hope you will enjoy about my last few trips around Eastern Europe.

Czeching out

Back in late April, some of my good friends from the USA mentioned that they were going to be going to Prague for Memorial Day weekend and wanted to know if I could come.  At this point, I had seen none of my American friends since I left, and I was ready to see them again!  So I booked my flight, and a month later, headed to Prague.

I had been to Prague before for a conference in 2004.  During the conference, I did have some free time , but I didn't get to see everything I wanted.  Also, Prague (and the Czech Republic in general) is known for their great Pilsners and Lagers and I hoped that I would be able to try some of these on this trip.

I arrived on Saturday morning, and my friends were just waking up.  We were staying in some great apartments about a 10 minute walk from the Old Town Square on the other side of the river.  It was a great location.  Nice, quiet, and convenient.

True to form, though it was nearly June, it was grey and cold in Prague.  I rarely saw the sun during my Eastern European adventures!

Gothic Church near Old Town Square

Statue made of keys.  We wished that it would shake so we could hear the jangling of the keys!

Old Town Square.  It really reminded me of a bigger version of Timisoara in Romania.

Saturday we walked around town and it was very crowded.  We saw the Astronomical Clock.  It goes off every hour, but is very crowded and I really don't recommend wasting your time looking at it. 

We had a great lunch of goulash and a great dinner of fish from the river.  We went to a pub near our apartment with a water mill and had some Czech beers.  My friend R nearly got into an argument with a guy in the bathroom line because as R was waiting, a large dog came up to the door and started jiggling the handle with his paws.  The dog then ran away, and when the guy came out, he thought it was R that was being impatient. Apparently he wasn't very happy and R tried to explain in English about the dog, but the guy just walked away.

On Sunday we went to Karlstein castle.  I had been there before (as I realized when we got there), but it was nice to get out into the countryside.  Our tour guide was a bit robotic, and we thought maybe she was not human.  Nonetheless, it was an informative tour, though not that interesting. 

Monday we went to the Jewish quarter.  That was one part of Prague that I had not seen before.  We went on a guided tour, and once again I was shocked at the treatment of the Jews in Eastern Europe during WWII (and before).

The "regular" clock and a clock that runs backwards with Hebrew numbers.

The Jewish cemetery.  There are about 10-20 feet of bodies stacked up under the grass.

All in all, it was a great trip and I got to catch up with R&J and G from the UK.  We drank many good Czech beers and saw some historical sights.  It also made my 14th country in 6 months!  There is nothing like old friends when you have been isolated and I had a great trip.

Another great week in Istanbul

Last week I was in Istanbul to finalize some transition details of my assignment, for a team meeting on a sea island, and to meet with the VP of Europe to discuss my assignment and update him on our regional activities and new product launches.

Getting to Istanbul from Belgrade is always a pain.  There are two flights per day from Belgrade.  One leaves at 14:25 and one leaves at 14:40.  Go figure that one out!  I worked from home on Monday morning, and headed to the airport around 12:45.  The Belgrade airport is so small and easy to maneuver.  Therefore even a long wait isn't ever too long.  Saying that, last Monday was the busiest that I have ever seen the BG airport, and it took about 20-30 minutes to get checked in for the flight.

We took off about 30 minutes late (which is typical). I was travelling with my Serbian coworker, and as we got off the plane in Istanbul and got up to the customs area, we noticed it was ridiculous crowded.  After our 1h45m flight, we waited 1h30min to go through passport control.  After finally getting out to our car, it was almost 7pm.  We then began the long drive to the Anatolian side of Istanbul.  This drive took about 1h30min.  The driver took us to the wrong hotel.  Finally, around 8:30pm, we got to the hotel.  We were tired and starving.  It was a long day of travel, especially considering that Istanbul is only 500miles away from Belgrade and it was a direct flight.  Total travel time was 7h30min.

The next day we spent in the office, but the best day was Wednesday.  Wednesday was the day of our Q2 Team Offsite.  It was planned for one of the Princess Islands in the Marmara Sea.  We met around 7:15am, and headed to the Sea Taxi.

View of Island from the Mainland

Our Taxi

We took the taxi for about 20 minutes, and disembarked.  The island was very quiet and beautiful.  Cars are not permitted (for the most part), so the pace of life is much slower.  We had our meeting at an old hotel.

Amazing View from the top where we had coffee prior to starting the meeting.  Not a bad way to start the day.

Lunch time!  What a view.

The morning and early afternoon was filled with meetings.  I got to give a short presentation about my experience, and I think that people really liked my pictures and info.

The second part of the afternoon was a team building activity.  We had been warned to wear "active" clothes, and many of us were curious and/or nervous about this activity.  As you can see from the above pictures, it was very nice weather.  The activity was orienteering/corporate adventure race.  We were divided up into teams and given maps and a compass and told we had 2 hours to collect stamps from different locations around the island and to complete activities.  We were bushwhacking and hiking around the island.  It was very hot and we were all sweating.

Umm, I think we should go that way.

An old house that was a Bonus Question.  We had to figure out what was the Arabic number on the front.  We didn't know, so we just took a photo.

At the end of the race, we were running behind, so we ended up asking the local children for help.

We were running late, so we had to take a carriage.  Notice the cool hats and bibs.  We attracted a lot of attention on the island.

Our team didn't win, but it was a lot of fun anyway.  Afterwards, we walked around the island and then took the sea ferry back to Istanbul for a seaside dinner.

Our team after the event.  We were all quite hot and tired, but everyone had fun.

View of Island.  Apparently, all of Istanbul looked like this 60 years ago.  Too bad the city is so crowded now.

Our Taxi awaits

The next day was supposed to be our presentation with the VP, but his trip was postponed.  So it was just more meetings in the office.  But the nice thing was that my friend S and I won an award for some of the work that we have been doing.  I've been working here for 4 1/2 years and have never gotten an award.  It was pretty cool.

Thursday night we went out in the Old City and took some nice photos.

Aya Sofia

Fountains at Sultanahmet

Blue Mosque

We ended the evening having dinner on the Galata Bridge.  There were just a few of us, and one of my friends made everyone say how they would miss me after I left.  It was very sweet and made me feel great about this trip, the friends I have made, and it really makes me want to come back soon!

It was a good fish restaurant.  However, at the end of the meal, it looked like it was raining, but it wasn't.  We realized that they were sweeping the top of the bridge off and people spend all day fishing, so it was raining fish scales.  On top of our dessert plates. YUCK.

GROSS!

It was a great send-off for me from my team.  I have really enjoyed working with this group, and I will miss them a lot when I move back.  Serefe!

A drop of Latin...

After a long day in the factory on last Friday, I took off for Timisoara, Romania.  As I drove east, I hoped that I wouldn't have any trouble at the border.  I crossed with no issues, and entered my thirteenth country in the past 6 1/2 months.  I have mentioned before that the area where our factory is located reminds me of NE IN.  It is flat, fertile farmland.  This extends into Romania and Hungary, so there wasn't a lot of interesting scenery on the drive there.  I arrived in Timisoara late on Friday, and just went to sleep.  I was staying at this hotel near the city center, and I made a real connection with the older guy working the desk and he let me park my car behind the hotel in a locked lot.  

I awoke on Saturday and went out to explore the city.  The weather was warm and it was a perfect day to explore.  I walked around the city center.

I walked all around the city, and one observation is that Romanians really like to paint their homes bright colors.  Here are some examples.

I even got to see a Romanian prison (from the outside, luckily!)

I stopped back in the square for some lunch, and then walked around for a few more hours.  


I wasn't in the Transylvania area of Romania, but I did see something truly frightening:

It was a cross of a crow and a pigeon.  Pure Evil.  

I then decided that I wasn't ready to go back to Belgrade, so I started driving south.  I wanted to see some mountains.  I drove towards Caransebes, which is at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.  This is a very rural part of Romania.  I drove through many villages in which people were just sitting on their front steps watching the cars drive by.  There were lots of old women selling fruit, vegetables, and some yellowish liquid in used plastic bottles, which I have to assume was either gasoline or homemade wine (or both!).  The roads were not good; there were a lot of potholes and some parts of the road were only gravel or one lane.

Here is what I encountered at one point:

But as I drove south, the mountains were beautiful.  It reminded me of where North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee come together.  The mountains were green and lush, and there were farms dotting the landscape with cows, horses, sheep, and goats.

Finally, I got to the Danube.  It was like when you are driving to the sea, and you get your first glimpse.  I had this sense of excitement and wonderment about the water.  I have seen the Danube in Belgrade, in Novi Sad, and in Budapest.  But this was farther downstream, and wasn't spread out on the Vojvodina Plain, but was carving itself through the mountains.  It was so beautiful.  At this point, it was nearly dark, so I decided to try to find a hotel.  I found one that was right on the river.  I checked in and snapped a few shots from my balcony.

The Danube here is the border between Serbia and Romania.  I was thinking about when Romania was behind the Iron Curtain.  I asked the hotel manager if people tried to escape to Yugoslavia.  He said that they did and many people drowned.  But now Romania is part of the European Union, so the river represents a different kind of border.  The manager said that now people are coming from Serbia into Romania.  It is interesting to think about the changes in this region within the last 20 years.

I went down and ate at the hotel restaurant.  There were not many people staying here.  It was very remote and not in a town.  I had river fish that was caught from the Danube.  It was a nice meal.  

On Sunday morning, I got up early, because I had a long drive back to Belgrade, and wanted to make sure I would be back in time for the Hash at 16:00.  I went down to the restaurant to pay for my room and I was told that they couldn't accept my card because it wasn't issued from a Romania bank.  I only had about 1/4 enough cash in local currency, and apparently the nearest bank was 30km away, and the roads are so bad that it would have taken me 45-60 min to get to the bank and then 45-60 min to get back.  I also had 20 Euros and some dinars.  So the friendly hotel manager let me pay my bill in all three currencies.  I was very nervous and my hands were shaking, but I didn't know what else to do.  Thankfully, everything worked out ok.

I started driving along the river, snapping photos and enjoying the scenery.  The roads here were very bad, and I had to drive so slowly.  I had my GPS, but I was a little nervous about getting fuel, since there were no gas stations, and I had no local currency.  I was driving through these small villages and everyone was starting at me.  Finally, I got to a point in which the road just ended.  The GPS and my map disagreed, but it was clear that the road was a dead end.  I randomly took another road, and this road was not on my GPS.  As I was driving along this road, there was a roadblock by the police.  I stopped and they asked to see my documents.  I gave my US passport to them, and they talked to each other for about 5 minutes.  Then the guy just comes back and says something in Romanian and lets me drive away.  At this point, I was very nervous that this road would end, and I would have to go back the way I came, which was about 5 hours to Timisoara and then another 3 hours to Belgrade.  I would run out of fuel, I would miss the hash and I was lost in very rural Romania.  My phone wasn't working because I was so far in the sticks.

Then, magically, the GPS found the road I was on and I was very near the Serbian border crossing.  Whew!  Once I was back in Serbia, I knew that I could get home easily.  Plus I had Serbia money and I know many people in Serbia that I can call if I have a problem.  This border crossing was very small.  It was a place called Naidas.  As I tried to leave the EU in my Serbian car that is covered with Marbo stickers, they did not want me to leave.  The border guards didn't believe that this was my car.  Never mind the fact that it is a Serbian car and I was trying to drive into Serbia.  So they took my documents and I waited for about 20 minutes.  As I was waiting in my car, about 10 guys came outside to look at me.  They were just standing there smoking cigarettes and looking at me in my car.  It was wholly annoying and unnerving.  Finally, a woman comes over and says "you are ok, have a safe trip.".  As I crossed the no-man's land between the EU and Serbia, I was both angry and relieved.  As I went to Serbia, the guard was friendly and didn't ask me anything.  Just a satisfying stamp and I was free to go.  

I passed by some interesting churches on the way home.

I made it back to Belgrade by 13:00, so I had time to clean my apartment a little and do some laundry before it was time for the Hash.  The Hash was a lot of fun, as usual, and I was glad to be back in my apartment and my bed.

They say that Romania is a drop of Latin in an ocean of Slavs.  I only saw a small part of Romania, but it is a very beautiful country.  I had both good and bad luck, but the people were very friendly.  I would like to take more time to travel along the Danube all the way to the Black Sea.  This was the first solo car trip I have taken.  I was thinking of the adage "if a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound".  If I see all of these cool things but don't have anyone to share the experience, does it diminish the experience?  I guess that is why I have this blog.