Global Tales from Two Young Travelers

Budapest, Bratislava, Krakow

By Emily Reisch and Jon Minor

Budapest, Hungary, was the city where we finally got a bit tired of traveling and the effort that it sometimes requires.

For two days, we tried in vain to catch a bus to Statue Park and meet up with a walking tour. Neither the bus nor the tour materialized either day, despite many flyers and ads for them.

We decided that Budapest, a city well-known for its thermal baths that rise from hot sulfur springs, was the perfect place to relax a bit.
We spent one afternoon at the luxurious Gellért baths. Elegant mosaic tiling and marble surrounded the great halls and many fountains pouring into pools.

The next day we went to the less-expensive city baths and indulged – Emily in a massage and Jon in a much needed pedicure.

We walked along the brown Danube River, and to Margit Island. The Danube surrounds the island, which is a huge city park.

We were also fortunate to meet up with our friend Andras Sosti and his girlfriend for dinner. Andras was also an exchange student in Sweden while we were there and it was nice to see him in his homeland.

Bratislava, in the Slovak Republic, was our next stop. Bratislava had a more Western Europe feel to it. Creative sculptures adorned the streets – one man was peeking out of a “manhole” in the cobblestones, while a photographer peered through his camera lens from around a corner outside of a restaurant called Paparazzi.

We walked around the city and ate at a place called the KGB. It was in a dark basement with a Communist theme. KGB actually stands for the name of the restaurant which translates into “Bratislava’s Best Gourmet.”

A “spaceship” we’d hoped to visit looked like it had been closed a long time. Built atop a bridge during the Communist era, it was meant to balance out the ancient castle on the other side of the water with a futuristic theme. Instead of having dessert at the top of the spaceship, we enjoyed eight flavors of gelato and a park.

Our time in Bratislava was cut a bit short as we encountered some time conflicts with the trains. It took eight hours on a slow train to Krakow, Poland. Our guidebook warned us to avoid certain, painfully slow trains – they stop anywhere, even if it “is only inhabited by goats.”

One of the only major Polish cities to survive WWII, Krakow is a wonderful city with a lot of history, both beautiful and ugly.

We toured Kazimierz (the Old Jewish Quarter) where most of the Jewish population lived before the onset of WWII. Several synagogues and museums illustrated the Polish Jews’ lives before, during and after the war.

We were again fortunate to meet with our friend Robert, with whom we had become very close to in Sweden. We met with some of his friends and visited some pubs he normally frequents. The colorful, cobble-stoned square is popular with natives and tourists alike.

A short trip to the small city of Wieliczka yielded one of Poland’s most popular attractions. A 1000-year-old salt mine, with nine different levels covering 300 km, is adorned with sculptures created out of the salt by miners who used to work there. The mine is listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list as one of the world’s 12 most priceless monuments. Our tour took us 135 meters (443 feet) below the surface where we were able to wander through the world’s largest subterranean chapel, which was complete with a 3-D sculpture of the famous “The Last Supper” painting. We only saw about one percent of the mine, yet we saw hundreds of figures.

On another daytrip from Krakow, we visited the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. A rainy, dreary day was the perfect setting for visiting the somber location where the Nazis murdered thousands of people during WWII. Everybody has seen images of the travesties that the Nazi war machine committed, but to actually visit the sites where such atrocities were carried out carries much more impact for visitors.

We celebrated the 4th of July our last day in Krakow. We took time to visit one of Poland’s finest castles. Wawel Castle is home to a massive cathedral that houses the tombs of Poland’s royalty. Roaming the castle led us on a trip through the Dragon’s Den, a cave where a seven-headed dragon was said to once live underneath the castle. Upon exiting the subterranean chasm, we found a real fire breathing dragon still waiting for those who dare to enter his realm.

The last leg of our journey took us on a long bus ride across Germany on our way to Belgium and Holland. We’ll tell you more about our experiences there next time.