Word tidal wave before the picture storm

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― Saint Augustine of Hippo

and from on of my favorite authors, of whom I have an exceptional collection of 100 year old copies,

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

11 Days on the road, traveling through central Europe. Wow. Normally I take my paper journal with me and record my thoughts and impressions each day. This time I brought the journal and never cracked it open. I wonder what that means....?

Treating my blog as a dry erase board I'm now just going to blog out some of my thoughts, feelings and impressions from the trip in hopes of being both accurate, entertaining and thorough. Enjoy the view, especially if it is a new one to you.

-travel by train is fairly easy. even if you don't speak the language. traveling by bus is horrid and i'd rather endure many unpleasant things than ride the bus. the metro is just fine as well. continuing with trains, if you are taking a regional trip and don't purchase your ticket at least 3 days in advance do not be surprised when you are sold what is essentially a standing room only ticket. unless you purchase a 1st class ticket, even same day.

-i like German airports. i've been to 5 different ones of them and they are considerably easier to navigate and deal with issues over many other countries I've been to. now anything that requires common courtesy or dealing with large groups of people, not so fun for me in Germany in my experience. but enough bashing of stereotypes.

-Strasbourg France lays claim to the largest Christmas market in Europe. They're right, truly the capital de Noel. ANYTHING you'd connect with a traditional European Christmas is there, on display and for sale. At night, on a small street, in the falling snow with the lights, ancient cathedrals in the background and holding hands with your loved one. Well, it is hard not to feel jubilant.

-Each place had something nice about it, even in winter that you just knew would be spectacular in the spring or summer. Winter really is the off season for cities. I was mildly surprised to never experience snow the whole time either. I saw it in the distance, countryside or lightly dust in the evening. But no snow ever on the ground where I was.

-I do not get lost in the outdoors. I do get lost in cities. Or even the mall. Vienna was like the Bermuda Triangle for me as I never was able to get my bearings or reach my destination without effort following a period of confusion. I don't do this in Robe, London, Oslo or other large US cities but I do in Vienna.

-Age. Culture. Cathedrals. Nothing in the US that is "American" is really more than a few hundred years old. I can't count how many cathedrals, palaces, battlefields, monuments, bridges and buildings I saw that dated from the first century CE to 1800 CE. (roughly, the new definitions, AD is now CE and BC is now BCE) Dark ages, middle ages, Renaissance, Victorian, industrial revolution... You really can see the progress of Western Civilization in these strategic and historic European cities.

-Bread in Hungary is delicious. Goulash in Austria and Hungary is delicious. Cheese and chocolate in France were great. Their attempts at pizza and Mexican food are laughable. Drinks are tiny. At the Christmas markets the three drinks are 'vin chaud', which is a hot mulled wine. Hot chocolate, but it is made by giving you a cup of steaming hot milk and then a bar of whichever flavor chocolate you want to melt into it. And finally 'jus d'orange' which is a hot orange juice with a generous amount of honey in it. Let me tell you, when it is overcast, 0 C outside and you've been outside for 4 hours a big (relatively) cup of hot orange juice and honey is delicious!!

-Nothing seems expensive after Norway. Nothing. And on the money topic my coin collection is really getting awesome. I need to spend some significant work getting it all in a book and labeled. Who wants to help?? It's also fun to go to a ATM in like Hungary where you can pull out 20,000 HUF and it's not even $100 US. (Vietnam still wins with being able to withdraw a million dong from the atm. hahaha)

-Smoke. Cigarette smoke is seemingly fresh air to a large part of the central European population. Disgusting. I stank like it for weeks and all my clothes need a serious washing to rid them of it. No one knows what a wash rag is for the shower or bath. No one seemingly used deodorant. What a cacophony of smells if there ever could be.

-Other than one of the central train stations in Pest, I always felt totally safe and was never in jeopardy of being pick pocketed or anything. Though I did see incidents around us. I felt bad for the couple times people asked in halting English, "do you speak English?" and for me to be stand offish about it and gruffly deal with them only to find they had a simple legitimate question.

-Do I look like I'm from here? I remember when I was in Morocco and to deal with the hordes of street kids I would just say, "J'habite ici." Meaning, 'i live here' and with that they stopped bugging me. There were enough expat frenchies around it was totally plausible. Well for the most part no one ever asked if I was American or spoke to me initially in English. Yes I was wearing clothes I'd bought in other countries and I was dressed 'American' in general so it always was surprising for both parties when a discussion would begin in french, German or Hungarian and i had to grapple with the words until just going to English. I felt confused and they looked quizzically like, "oh, you speak English?" Like they were surprised. It seems to happen a lot more to me now that in used to.......

-Communism. I've seen pictures of what the Austro-Hungarian empire was like before its dissolution at the end of WW1. I've seen pictures of what each place looked like at the end of WW2. Then Austria becomes neutral like Switzerland and Sweden and Hungary has the 56 revolution to Communism. Well it's been over 20 years since the end of Communism in Hungary and you can see it in their infrastructure, buildings and anything physical that huge damage was done. The cities of Buda and Pest were "living" proof to me of the failure and abject 'wrongness' of Communism.