Budapest

Last weekend, I had a 4-day weekend because Thursday was a holiday (Ascension Day) and I didn't have class on Friday, so I joined a group of 7 others going to Budapest.  I chose the location because I was trying to figure out if there was anyone I could travel with, and one of my friends mentioned that she was going there and that there plans were at an early enough point that I could join.

The trip started with an overnight bus ride.  I was intending to do some reading and a lot of sleeping, but the bus had movies, so I ended up watching them instead (I did eventually get to sleep).

The first thing we did that afternoon was go to the Castle Hill in the Buda part of the city (the hilly part to the west of the Danube).  We went saw the Matthias Church (one of the few white Gothic-style churches).

We then went to the Labyrinth, a collection of tunnels in the hill that had formerly been used as a prison, and currently is a quite cheesy tourist attraction focusing on the fact that the person Dracula was based on had been imprisoned there.  Then, we went to get a good view of the city.

After that, we went to the Gellert baths.  It is a Turkish bath house/spa with a lot of nice hot tubs and pools.  It was fun and relaxing, although there was a mildly terrifying moment when we were in the wave pool and it became really strong, sucking one of my friends who can't swim well into the deeper part of the pool.

After we left, we wandered over to the Pest side of the city (the plains on the eastern side of the river) to go get dinner.

The next morning, we went to visit some caves outside of the city.  The first one, Pál-völgyi, had a bunch of wonderful formations.

The second cave, Szemlő-hegyi, also was cool.  It has many crystal formations, rather than stalactites.  Unfortunately, the tour was not great (the tour guide would speak in Hungarian for a few minutes, then say 1 or 2 sentences in English).

After that, we went to the top of Janos Hill, the highest point in Budapest.  There was an amazing view from the top ( I apologize for the slight blurriness at high zoom/translucent flags that resulted from not taking every picture from the exact same spot).

After descending from the hill, we went to the Széchenyi baths, a bathhouse in more of a Baroque style.  It had several large outdoor heated pools.  I kind of felt that its "cold" pools (for when you leave the sauna) were probably warmer than the water I swim in over the summer.

After that we went to dinner nearby, then had a look around Heroes Square.

The next morning, I went with the part of the group staying in the same house as me to explore the city.  We started off by going to the market, which had a large range of food and souvenir stands.  I ended up getting a cool box that you need to manipulate in a certain way to be able to open.

After that, we walked along the river, then went to the St. Stephen's Basilica.  Supposedly, it has a mummified hand of one of the kings as a holy relic, although I wasn't able to see that (it looked like they were preparing for a wedding).  Needless to say, it was gorgeous inside.

After that, and a brief trip back to Castle Hill, we went to Gellert Hill, generally considered to be one of the best views in Budapest.

The joys of taking pictures of your friends without them realizing

After going back down the hill, most of my friends went back to the house, while I went with one of them to the opera.  I had heard that the building was amazing, and was not disappointed.  However, the opera (The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky) was a little …odd.  Then again, I was expecting that, given that this was the composer who wrote a piece that caused a riot at its premiere.  The opera was in English, but I still felt a need to look at the English supertitles, and to read its description on Wikipedia when I got back.  However, the tickets that I got were only 1500 HUF (about $5.50).

I have to say, the trip was very nice, even though Budapest's public transportation system makes the MBTA look good.  Budapest is one of those cities with lovely old buildings all over the place, and the hills and caves are also very interesting.  It was also the first time in a while that I had spent the majority of my time while traveling with other people.  I definitely enjoyed being social.

München (Munich)

I'm sorry that I forgot to do this earlier.  I was …(mumble mumble)…um, yeah.

On the weekend of May 1-3, I went on a trip to Munich because I had a 3-day weekend and I heard that several other people were going.  It turned out that everyone else decided to go because of Frühlingsfest, a much smaller spring version of Munich's famous Oktoberfest (as in only 2 beer tents instead of 14).  Unfortunately, I joined kind of late, so I had to find a different hostel, but it worked out fine.

We got in at around 3:30, and after checking into the hostels we went to the Theresienwiese, the area where Oktoberfest and Frühlingsfest happen.

However, we decided to to wait until the next day to partake in the rides and various other attractions there, and I went with a subset of the group to the Augustiner Keller, a beer garden associated with the oldest brewery in Munich.  It was an interesting experience, particularly because the default beer size is the Maß, or 1 liter, and because we were surrounded by several tables where people had people had clearly had multiple ones.

The next morning, I went on a free (+tips) walking tour of the city.  It started in the Marienplatz, next to the town hall.  The town hall has a glockenspiel with animatronics that the tour guide referred to as "the second-most overrated tourist attraction in Europe."

I was not surprised to learn that most of the best stories from Munich's history involve beer.  For example, the statue of Mary was added after the people of Munich got the king of Sweden to leave during the 30 Years War by paying him with 600,000 barrels of beer.

One interesting thing I saw was a memorial dedicated to Michael Jackson that had commandeered a statue for some composer.  Apparently he has a loyal fan base there?

At one point, we were shown a memorial dedicated to the people punished by the Gestapo for using an alley to avoid walking past a 

Of course, one of the most important buildings that I saw was the Hofbräuhaus, the restaurant for one of the largest breweries in Munich.  In the fall, it regularly gets 35,000 visitors a day.  I was somewhat amused to hear that while he lived in Munich, Mozart once got so drunk there that he was banned from it, especially in light of how drunk many people were.

In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa . . .

I think one of my favorite stories was related to the St. Peter's Church.  One time, one of the crosses fell down during a storm.  Two drunk men saw it and decided to go climb the tower during the storm to reinstall it.  They did that, but installed it facing the wrong direction, where it has stayed to this day.  Naturally, they decided to celebrate their success with more beer, while still on top of the tower in the rain.  Unsurprisingly, one of them fell, but he was able to grab on and avoid dying.  His dropped beer stein fell to the street below, but did not break.  One of the priests saw this and decided it was a miracle, so the beer stein was on display in the church for 15 years.

Of course, I also learned about Munich's darker history.  It was the place where the Nazi party was founded, and the location where the failed Beer Hall Putsch happened.  The first concentration camp, Dachau, was located nearby.  Munich was heavily bombed during World War II, and still occasionally has disastrous episodes with the thousands of unexploded bombs buried underground.  However, it seems like the city (along with the rest of Germany) has done a lot to try to reconcile with its past.  There are something like 30 memorials around the city, including this one commemorating people who were punished by the Gestapo for avoiding a memorial to the Beer Hall Putsch.

After the tour finished, I wandered around for a little while trying to decide what to do, then went to the Residenz museum (the former royal family's home in Munich).  It is quite a lovely place.

I think something that quite clearly demonstrates the wealth of the Wittelsbach family is that they built an entire new, quite grand, wing when one of them was elected Holy Roman Emperor that even included a bedroom just for show.

After going through the Residenz, I went to the tower of the St. Peter's Church to get a good view of the city.  I would want to attach pictures of the entire view, but my panorama software has started crashing whenever I attempt to load any pictures, and the Google+ auto feature apparently has decided that when I uploaded something like 20 pictures shifted slightly from each other, I really wanted 3 picture series and not a panorama.  So here are some things I saw.

• The Theresienweise.  There's also a ferris wheel behind the church tower.
  
• The Viktualienmarkt, with the Maypole.  Apparently, it was successfully stolen a few years ago by a group that wanted a designated table at Oktoberfest as ransom.  I'm not sure there has ever been an answer to the question of how they got something that large out of the city without being noticed.
  
• The cathedral.  It was one of the few buildings not damaged or destroyed by bombers during World War II, largely because it was a very good way to identify Munich for subsequent bombing runs.
  
• The English Garden, one of the largest urban parks in the world.  In front of it is the theater, which was once saved from a fire using beer because the water was all frozen.
  

After that, I joined the rest of my group at Springfest, and went on a lot of rides.

Sunday morning, I was intending to get up early to go on a bike ride at the English Garden and then go to the Deutsches Museum, but part one of that plan fell through when I woke up 2.5 hours later than planned due to one of my roommates sounding like he had a chainsaw with him, and due to the fact that it was raining.  On my way to the Deutsches Museum, I discovered that Munich residents might laugh if I said, "Ich bin ein Amerikaner," because there is apparently some pastry called an Amerikaner.

The Deutsches Museum is kind of like a combination of Museum of Science in Boston and the Smithsonian Institute (especially the Air and Space Museum).  Its collection includes things like electrical equipment, airplanes, and musical instruments.  The 2-3 hours I spent there was nowhere near enough time, but I had to leave earlier than I liked to get to the bus on time.

Obligatory picture of string instruments