I left my heart in Central Europe, part 2

I left you last on top of a mountain in Bieszczady National Park in the Carpathian Mountains. Coming down was much easier! Now, it's on to Slovakia and Hungary. (For part 1, click here.)

Slovakia

We left Lutowiska and headed west toward Hungary, via Slovakia. We timed our trip for arrival in Košice at lunchtime. Turns out, even though I had never heard of it, Košice is the second largest city in Slovakia and was named the 2013 European Capital of Culture. It is a lovely town. We scouted out a nice place for lunch; afterwards Jack and Kasia raced to the top of the gothic Cathedral of St. Elisabeth while Ed and I ambled around the historical centre's pedestrian zone.

View from the top of Kosice's Cathedral of St. Elisabeth, photo courtesy of Jack.

Short and sweet. That was our time in Slovakia. Onward ho to Hungary.

Hungary

We had two unplanned nights in our itinerary and Kasia suggested we consider stopping in Eger, a small town known for its wines, most notably the "Egri Bikavér"(Bull's Blood of Eger). It was a good call. We happily filled the two days with early-morning visits to the produce market, people watching in Dobo Square, climbs to the fortified castle, and wine tastings in wine caves of the Valley of the Beautiful Women.

 

 

Highlights of our time in Eger...

Hotel Romantik: We stayed at this old-fashioned family-run hotel, just a five-minutes walk from the central square. While the rooms were nothing to write home about, it did have a beautiful garden where we would take our breakfast. 

Restaurant Senator-Haz: Located on the main square. One of the best dinners of our trip. Wonderful food, good wine and friendly service. 

Wine Caves: We took a cheesy tourist train out of the city to visit the wine caves. Think pub crawl, but with wine. We only managed to get to four caves; in each we tasted a number of wines. Great fun.

And then we were on to Budapest...

What a beautiful city Budapest is. Truth be told, until 1873 it was two separate cities:  Buda and Pest. We stayed on the quieter Buda side, on the west bank of the Danube River, near the Buda Castle. But we fully explored the Pest side with its beautiful parks, thermal baths, Parliament, Opera House, Heroes' Square, covered market, and the lively ruin bars. 

Highlights of our time in Budapest...

Hotel Balthazar: We stayed at a hip boutique hotel, just minutes from a number of good restaurants and the impressive Matthias Church. 

21 Hungarian Kitchen: Located just around the corner from our hotel, we had a particularly nice dinner alfresco. Finished with a palinka, which is basically fruit-flavored Hungarian moonshine. 

Pierrot: Another fine restaurant within minutes of our hotel. We had dinner here to console ourselves after Jack and Kasia headed home. 

Gazebo along parkway: I don't even know the name of this tiny gazebo that serves drinks to mostly locals, but we found it one evening as the sun was going down. I had a most memorable lambic sour cherry beer. 

Jack and Kasia left to get back to their respective lives in Berlin and Krakow. We moped, and we began our journey homeward, leaving Budapest and heading to Slovenia and then onward to the Vienna airport. 

Slovenia

We had only an afternoon/evening to spend in Bled, which was not nearly enough time to take in the picture-postcard beauty of this tiny town located on the emerald-green Lake Bled. We will just need to come back to do it justice. No doubt about it.

Highlights...

Garni Hotel Berc: We stayed at this 15-room rustic-styled Bed and Breakfast. Perfect for the night. 

Ostarija Peglez'n: We dined outside at this cozy lakeside spot. Also perfect for the night!

Austria

On our final day, we made one last stop before heading to the Vienna airport. We drove through the Alps to the tiny town of Gaming, where we visited our friend Tilmon and three of his six children. We were entertained by his talented children (accordion and zither). After lunch, we hiked the mountain path up to a small chapel, accompanied along the way by the sound of cowbells ringing.

And then it was time to say so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye. We really did hate to say goodbye, but it was time for us to get back home to Farm Dover.

I left my heart in Central Europe, part 1

Ed and I have been back from our latest travel adventure for almost three weeks and I need to fill you in. In truth, I need to fill myself in; if I don't blog about our travels, my memories blur and I have a hard time recalling the details of our trips. And I want to remember every single moment of this one, so bear with me...

We spent 16 days exploring the heart of Europe: Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, countries that stretch from the Baltic to the Mediterranean seas.  And, it appears, I left part of my heart there -- or perhaps a part of "there" is now a part of my heart. I find this often happens when we travel to far-off lands...

Lake Bled, Slovenia

Of course, the best part of the trip was traveling with Jack and his girlfriend, Kasia. Jack is living in Berlin and finishing his master's degree in Global History. Kasia lives in Krakow, Poland and is finishing her Architecture degree. We met up with both of them in Krakow and then traveled together for a week.

Austria

But let me back up and start at the beginning. Ed and I flew to Vienna in late April and spent three days exploring this beautiful and rather fancy imperial city on the Danube. From the hotel where we stayed, to the museums that we explored, to the castles and gardens we covered, to the food we consumed, every moment was delightful.

We stayed at the boutique Hotel Alstadt which features hundreds of pieces of contemporary art in a historical residence in the Spittelberg Quarter, just a 5-minute walk from the Museum Quarter, the subway station, and at least two great restaurants and a bakery-turned-quaint-bar that we checked out. The Hotel Alstadt offered a fabulous breakfast, a cozy library for an after-dinner schnapps, and a most helpful staff.

Hotel Alstadt

I've concluded that whatever Vienna does, it does very well, in many cases, world-class well. Take the Viennese coffee houses. We visited two: quiet Café Spurl and bustling Central Café. Both offered a place "where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee (and pastry) is found on the bill."

I'd put the Schonbrunn Palace and the Belvedere Palace (and art museum) also on a world-class list. We took a train out to Schonbrunn and wandered the gardens of the Habsburg Dynasty's summer residence for the better part of a morning. That afternoon, we headed over to the Belvedere and were taken by its impressive collection of art, including several Klimts. 

The grounds at Schonbrunn Palace.

A picture of a picture of The Kiss, by Gustav Klimt

I'm pretty sure that when Vienna's Natural History Museum opened in 1889, it qualified as world-class. Today, the building is fantastic, but the exhibits are looking a little dusty and decrepit. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a rainy morning inside looking at fossils, dinosaurs, butterflies, birds and mammals of all sorts.

Let's talk meals. We had some great ones. All of Europe seems to celebrate asparagus season and Vienna was no exception. We had big bowls of hot asparagus soup at Gasthaus Zur Eisernen Zeit, the oldest restaurant in Vienna market: the Naschmarkt.  

Gasthaus Zur Eisernen Zeit

Other memorable restaurants: 

Schweizerhaus, the beer garden in Prater Park.

Weiner, traditional Viennese fare.

Glacis Beisl, Viennese and old Austrian cuisine with a modern touch. 

On our fourth morning, we travelled to Krakow, via train. What a pleasant way to get from one place to the next!

Poland

Jack met us at the train station and we made our way to our two-bedroom apartment, Riverside Aparthotel, located just across the bridge to Krakow's Old Town.

Reuniting with Jack was the first great thing about Krakow.

Spending time with Kasia was the second great thing.

Meeting Kasia's mom, dad and brother for dinner was the third great thing.

We spent three days getting to know our way around the charming old town, watching the Wawel dragon breathe fire every few minutes, eating alfresco on the large medieval town square, and strolling through Planty Park to admire the blooming Chestnut trees.

Memorable restaurants in Krakow:
Chimera, located in a 14th-century cellar and featuring a buffet of Polish cuisine.
Goscinna Chata, met Kasia's family for a regional specialties dinner (Lemko cuisine)
Morskie Oko, sat outside on a warm spring night in the Szczepanaki Square. I'm determined to reverse engineer the mountain-style grilled sheep cheese served with cranberry jelly.

I suppose a trip to Krakow is not really complete without a visit to the somber Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camps, where 1.5 million people, among them a great number of Jews, were systematically starved, tortured and murdered. I understand the importance of remembering this cruelty; nevertheless, it was markedly unsettling to see.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

On a brighter note...

We picked up a rental car on our fourth morning, stopped by the village where Kasia lives with her family to pick her up and hit the road for the far southeast region of Poland. We were headed for the Bieszczady National Park in the Carpathian Mountains.

At the Obarzanowskis

Along the way, we stopped at an ethnographic park in Sanok, Poland's largest open air museum (think Shakertown goes to Poland).

Our ultimate destination for the night was the tiny town of Lutowiska where we had reservations at the Stanica Kresowa, a quaint (I believed) agriturismo inn. Instead, we found a very strange, large, newish hotel filled with cheesy and a bit creepy wax figures dressed in traditional Polish warrior attire. Not what we expected, but we made the most of it, heading out for a short hike in the mountains...

Well, it wasn't short, but it was exquisite and definitely worth the effort. We climbed up through pine and then beech forest. The maps said it was 3.5 kms, but it seemed like we were hiking uphill for a very long way. Almost to the top, we slushed through wet snow before arriving at the meadow peak, where we stopped for a picnic. 

The next morning, we were off for Slovakia. But I'm getting tired of writing and I'm pretty sure you must be getting tired of reading, so I'll save the rest of my trip report for another time/another day....

Put a Poem in Your Pocket

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? I'm not sure I would have known if I hadn't been trying to add more poetry into my life.

My favorite part of the month-long celebration is the Poem in Your Pocket Day, celebrated on Thursday, April 26. On this day you are encouraged to select a poem and carry it with you, sharing it with others that you meet. (hashtag #pocketpoem). There is just something I love about handwriting out a poem, tucking it into my pocket and then sharing it with others. It requires some thoughtfulness to select the perfect poem and then some courage to pull it out and share it.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was first celebrated in April 2002 in New York City. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets spread the celebration to all fifty states and in 2016, the League of Canadian Poets joined in.

I've been thinking of what poem I want to tuck in my pocket on Thursday. At first, I was sure I'd pick one from my three favorite living poets: Mary Oliver, Billy Collins or Wendell Berry. I was leaning toward one that I've shared with you before: perhaps Mary Oliver's Green, Green is my Sister's House or maybe Billy Collins' The Lanyard, or maybe Wendell Berry's To Know the Dark.

But instead, I think I'll share one from a poet that I recently discovered: Jeanne Lohmann.

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep

when the sky dies down, consider

your altered state: has this day

changed you? Are the corners

sharper or rounded off? Did you

live with death? Make decisions

that quieted? Find one clear word

that fit? At the sun’s midpoint

did you notice a pitch of absence,

bewilderment that invites

the possible? What did you learn

from things you dropped and picked up

and dropped again? Did you set a straw

parallel to the river, let the flow

carry you downstream?

I love the part about finding one clear word that fits and the one about whether my corners are sharper or rounded off. And of course, the last line reminds my of playing Poohsticks.

So, my question for you is what poem will you pick to put in your pocket?

Something new at fish camp

This spring marked the 20th year that we have gone fishing at The Juniper Club, on the Silver Glen of Lake George, just east of Ocala, FL. I've written about this special place on a number of occasions: here, here, here and here.

And, because almost nothing ever changes (except maybe the weather), I don't have anything new to report. Except for one thing...

Meet Caroline, Juniper's youngest fisherperson. Even though she has red hair, I can't claim her as my own. She is the first granddaughter of our friends, Jackie and Paul; and daughter of Katie and Andrew. I'm pretty sure she had a blast at camp; I know we loved having her there. She fished. She swam at the Boil. She ate cheese grits and blueberries at breakfast. She even peered at fish through the glass-bottom boat at Silver Springs.

Mom and daughter

Reading a book with "Babby" and Ed

Out for a boat ride with Aunt Claire and her dad. 

Getting a ride on mom's shoulders and attention from "Pa"

Constantly in a good mood and happy to be passed from camper to camper, Caroline represents the fourth generation of her family to catch the Juniper Spirit. I'm hoping next year an anticipated sibling and a new cousin will join her at Spring Break camp. Then maybe, just maybe, there will be enough babies to share.