Tags

If you are tired of the Habsburgs, museums and imperial palaces while in Vienna, I recommend a walk along the canal which follows the North part of the city and ends up in the Danube (can´t remember the name of this canal but there´s only one).


Every concrete wall or bridge has been decorated... with tags, very nice tags. It is another type of culture which might not appeal to everybody, but it is there big time. Never seem that many tags in my life.

An interesting contrast from the rest of Vienna...

Licence to chill

OK, ok, wasn´t very happy about Vienna the other day. Today I went cycling on an island built on the Danube to prevent the city from floodings (it is narrow and very long). Well, this is a wonderful area. Some parts reminded me slightly of Rio de Janeiro (???)

I´ll explain myself. This island built in the middle of the Danube is all dedicated to nature and sports. People go there to chill, have a good time, take some sun, exercice (runing, roller-blading, cycling, volleyball, football, ski jumping - yes there´s a ramp landing in the Danube - water skiing, rowing, canoeing... you name it). There´s a few beaches as well and they really look like beaches. A part of the island is reserved for bars, they all play good relaxed music, you sit by the river, people smile... you enjoy life. Bars display the same sign: "Licence to chill".


The hedonist island.

Some other parts of the island (most of it actually) seem very remote. You can only ear birds, smell the trees and see the river and green vegetation. It´s like beeing in the countryside far from any kind of human activity. But you are so close to the city.

I cycled straight for about an hour and never reached the end of the island, although I was already so far away from everything, deep in nature. I cycled to the other side and did not get to the end neither. The island which never ends...


The funny thing is that when I asked about this part of Vienna once I was back at the hostel they told me the name it is known as: Copacabrana.

Starbucks

A little story I read in my hostel today.

"The Turks besieged Vienna in 1683 and were fought off at the very last minute, Legend has it that they fled so hastily that they forgot to take their coffee with them, The beans were unknown to the locals, except for one man who know what to do with them. He opened Vienna´s first cafe, from where the black brew started its triumph procession throughout the occident, Many cafes has become legendary meeting places for artists (cafe Central) or for their traditional ambiance (Cafe Central), The Viennese often ridicule German tourists when they simply order `ein Kaffe` not knowing that it comes in dozens of flavours and sizes, The arrival of Starbucks to Vienna a few years back is still widely regarded as a sacrilege"

And I confirm, there are quiet a few Starbucks around. Shame, shame, shame...

Back in Vienna

Vienna. The last stop of my little trip.
Vienna. It took me 6h on an hydrofoil to get here from Budapest (don´t think I have ever been that fast on water. Nice but long)

Vienna. It took me 10 years to come back. I spent New Year 1997-1998 here. The only thing I remember from this week is the club we went to on New Year´s Eve, SofienSale. It has brunt down since then.

Today I really wonder why I travel as I forgot 95% of the Vienna I saw 10 years ago. Been walking around the city today and it seems all new to me. Why do I travel really, as my memory is the one of a gold fish.


Anyway, nice city, magnificent, superb, grandiose.... but it does not do it for me. It is too big, to show off. As well, tourism has plagued Vienna like so many other cities. I cannot stand all these groups moving together anymore. And here they are everywhere. Call me intolerant, call me anti-social... but they are a pain in the ass. Best time to visit the city, before 11am. After this time, the city turns into a zoo and the best thing to do is to leave for a park or a walk along the Danube outside the old town...

Danube bends

Spent the last 2 days traveling up and down the Danube Bends, a real nice curvy stretch of the river north of Budapest. I went to Visegrad, what used to be the last Eastern corner of the Roman empire, the last outpost, the last citadel. The latter is perched 350m high on a hill above the Danube. The scenery from up there can blow your mind (see pix below).


I then went trekking in the hills behind and found the perfect spot with another fantastic view, no tourist whatsoever, a picnic and a little sleep. Peace...

I went back to Budapest on a boat from where I admired the Danube bends from the Danube itself. Green hills, little villages here and there, superb houses with probably superb views. This made me think that Hungary is very different to its neighbors Romania and Bulgaria: here, everything is clean, looks nice, people seem more respectful and open. Hungary is definitely more German... And also, they did not have the same type of communism... but I digress.

The following day I visited the enchanting Szentendre, a town which doesn't seem to have changed much for the past 2 centuries. The slow rythm of life in the tiny cobbled streets was the best thing Icould do to recover from the previous night... I got my bearings, walked around and almost fell asleep after lunch on the banks of the Danube.


How exhausting my holiday turns out to be!!!

Tomorrow I am moving on to Vienna. A 6 hours cruise on the Danube through the Danube bends again, Gyors and Bratislava in Slovakia. I am not a happy bunny to be leaving Budapest, such a fantastic city (see below)...

On my bike

Do you know the best way to discover Budapest? It is not by boat on the Danube, it is not flying over the city, it is certainly not by joining a group following the lady with a red flag in front.. it is simply by riding a bicycle.

I did this today. Cycling around Margaret Island, along the embankment of Buda (see video at the end of this post) or going up the hills overlooking the city is fantastic. Margaret Island is a heaven of peace. Lie down in the grass, watch the Danube flow by, check out the very-London looking Parliament or the Castle opposite... Going up Castle hill is a bit of a challenge on a bicycle as the road is really steep but when you get up there, what a view (see pix below).


I also got lost in some kind of dodgy areas where people were looking into bins and were checking me out in a weird way. To understand a city you cannot stick to the tourists parts, can you?

Anyway, Budapest is beautiful for those of you who haven't been. Great crazy architecture, large avenues Vienna-style, a castle on a hill like Prague, a little Montmartre-like area which reminded me of the original one, baths (which I tried yesterday) everywhere and a great thing: very few tourists. And this makes a big difference to the experience. Ah, I should not forget the kindness of the people and the quality of the ladies...

Wash in Budapest

I had a good wash yesterday. It poured down the whole day so I walked around Budapest under the rain with obviously no umbrella or coat for 3 hours. This morning the weather was much better so I decided to have another wash.. but another kind of a wash.

As you may know Budapest is built on a fault. This means that warm water between 21 to 76 degres is available from hundreds of natural springs: you have Turkish style baths, modern ones, gothic ones... I chose the largest, in the middle of the city's main Park, the Szechenyi Baths.

I tried the 28 degrees, the 35 and 38 degrees pools. I also went to the outside area where 3 main pools allow you to try various types of bubbles, currents and massage-types mini-pools. I saw some old men running out the saunas and jumping into 20 degrees pools. I have to admint I did not try these ones... In all, I think the place has about 12 indoors thermal pools and 3 outside pools. Average customer's age 75, so no chatting up there (-:

You can check out a small video I took of the outside area:

The dog's bollocks

I am now in a night train heading to Budapest. I had breakfast this morning in Bulgaria, lunch in Romania and will be having breakfast tomorrow in Hungary. I struggle a bit with mastering the various currencies and exchange rates and with the various ways of saying 'hello', 'thank you', 'please'... in these weird languages.

Tac tac, tac tac, tac tac, every moment takes me away from Bucharest and closer to Budapest. Another world.

So. Just spent 3 days in Varna, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea coast... the dog's bollocks. From what I have seen, Bulgaria is a superbe country in terms of scenery and people.

In a bar on Friday night we started talking to Boris, a wine producer from Sofia. After a few minutes talking he left for his car and came back with one of his bottles. He just wanted us to try his wine so he offered it to us (????). We drank it together with Guergan, the shy and friendly waitress. The wine was weird (a rasberry and Merlot sweet wine) but we were in good company. Would a stranger offer you a bottle of wine in Western Europe?

A bit later we met two girls in the street (Aurelia and Mirela) who quickly accompanied us to the club Boris had recommended. When we got there, house music was full on and the crowd was the friendly-est ever. The whole night people kept coming at us to jike, dance, talk... this was amazing. At some point i went to congratulate the DJ for the music he was givin'us. He seemded touched and offered me one of his CDs. Would this happen anywhere else...?

All this to say that I was very very surprised with Bulgaria. People are the most welcoming. Everybody we met was friendly, smiley and ready for a good joke. A country I strongly recommend, a country where I shall return.

Below are 2 pix taken with my mates, Lili and Juliano. The 1st one was taken on the beach by the black sea; the 2nd one in our cold-communist tower block hotel.

Peles castle

Back in Bucharest. Went to a small party last night and met loads of Frenchies who settled in Bucharest. They love it because it is full of opportunities which you cannot find anymore in Western Europe. Most of them of created their own company and work in the estates business. Anyway, I had loads of interesting stories and points of view which I cannot cover here.

Below is a pix of Peles (pronounce ´Pelech´) castle which I visited yesterday. It is located in Sinaia, a fairytale little town in the Romanian Alps full of weird-shaped pointed-roof houses. Peles is the town ´masterpiece´.


I am now off to Varna (Bulgaria) where we are gonna spend 3 days of intense partying. I might not be blogging for some time.

Tourism in Romania

Romania joined Europe in 2007. That's good. Romania is growing real fast apparently. But there are still loads of little things which make the country seem like it is still ruled by the 'Commies'.

Last night I sat at a restaurant and got ready to order when the waitress showed up and told me she could not cook for me because she had a group coming (what the f*** I thought, if you have a group you cannot serve single travelers???). I moved to another restaurant: out of the 20 dishes listed on the menu, only half was available. I got up this morning to find out there was no hot water for the shower; when I enquired at reception I was told 'the pump don't work' until further notice. Right! To warm up a bit I went down to the breakfast room and ordered a coffee: I could not get a coffee because something was wrong with the machine, or it had to be cleaned up or whatever... This afternoon, after a long long day walking I tried the shower in my new hotel in Brasov; well the shower handle was not working! So I had to bend under the bathtub tap to wash. And I can tell you it wasn't that easy to wash my hair, especially with sore legs and feet.

Maybe the nice thing about Romania is precisely all these little things. The country is not really ready for tourism (certainly not for mass-tourism) so not many tourists are around (although I took the train this morning with 2 Chinese girls which made me wonder...).


OK, well I am in Brasov, a super nice Saxon town looking like a postcard of a small German village. Streets, squares, churches, pointed roofs... it's all nice. Pix above is the view from the top of the mountain overlooking Brasov, after a nice little trek. Pix below is from the city looking up at the same moutain.

Who am I?

I am a real bad ass. I was born in the XVth century in Sighisoara. I love killing and torture people. My favourite is to insert a wooden stick up the ass of my victims, stick which emerges below their opposite shoulder and makes them suffer for 48h. But I also like to boil and burry alive. My nickname is the 'impaler'. I also inspired the legend of a bloodsucking vampire who has put Transylvania on the map, in books and in movies. I am dead by the way. Who am I?


Anyway, I crossed the Romanian Alps this morning and am now in the middle of Transylvania. Just the name sounds spooky, doesn't it? I am staying in the citadel of Sighisoara, would-be birth place of Dracula and a beautiful little fortified town. Tiny cobbled streets built on a hill, alleyways zigzagging around old churches... and a bit crippy at night.

I am now off for a beer with my new friend Vlad...

Bucharest from the inside

My mate has lived in Bucharest since 2003, when he fell in love with the city. He told me why he loved it so much.

“How could I describe Bucharest? Street kids and stray dogs? Tastefully dilapidated interbellic villas with washing hung out in the courtyard? Rows of faceless communist blocks? Perhaps the toppled statue of Lenin at Mogosoaia park? This is all cliche isn´t it?

To put it briefly, Bucharest is a horrible city. Its arteries are constantly clogged with traffic. The roads are abysmal. The infrastrucure is visibly crumbling. The vast majority of its resident live in grim, grey blocks. Public transport is terrible. House prices are inexplicably comparable to those in Vienna and Rome. Anything imported is hugely expensive. In the words of some backpackers I recently met, ´I can´t see why anyone would ever want to live here´.

It´s perhaps the fact that, on paper, Bucharest is such an unappealing place to live, which is one of its biggest advantages. It will never, ever become a tourist city like Prague or Budapest, which already feel like artificial cities entirely arranged for the benefits of wealthy Americans. It will never become the new Berlin, a hub for cultural creativity - house prices have already risen far too much for that to happen. I am not even sure that it will turn into a dystopian center for sex tourism, like Talin, a magnet for gangs of drunken lads on budget airlines. It still feels far too off-the-map, too instinctively tourist-unfriendly for all that.

Come here with a guidebook and a rucksack, and you will leave disappointed. Come with a friend who knows the right people, and you won´t want to leave. All the bad things about Bucharest might just be the reason that so many people love living here. Bucharest is, and might remain for some time, a genuinely hidden corner of Europe. It does not give up its secrets easily“.

Bucharest - day 1

We got off the taxi in front of my friend´s place, a former communist social appartment building. In Bucharest, these are called “blocks“. Two stray dogs were guarding the entrance, dirty but chilled. The city is known for its many stray dogs which had to be abandonned when the communists started destroying thousands of houses to make space for their huge buildings and palaces. The entrance hall was dark and grey, the lift small and a bit claustrophobic.


The contrast was striking when I got into my friend´s reformed flat, full of light and with a view on Stirbei Voda boulevard. To the left more communist type blocks and the Piata Revolutionar, to the right a modern glass and aluminium building. People in Bucharest are getting used to these style differences as more and more Western companies are settling in the capital.


We had an easy Saturday night as the capital is empty these days, we did not find a single restaurant open. It is Orthodox Easter this WE and most people in the city have left for the coutryside. 90% of Romanians are Christian Orthodox. At midnight, we joined the few remaining people in the neighborhood outside the local church. A service was sung and everybody was carrying a candle.

Today we walked around the city and I saw some pretty amazing buildings, avenues, squares and parks, communist style. I asked my friend to explain why he decided, 5 years ago, to settle here as the city is not what you could call a beautiful city. He had loads of reasons (see next post).

Why East?

When you think about South America, the tropics, warm weather, sea, sports...etc come to mind. When you think about Eastern Europe, what images comes to mind? Soviet tanks, cold, grey, war, poor, corruption?

My last 3 trips were in South America. This time, I thought about doing something different and opted for Eastern-Central Europe: I am not particularly attracted by this part of the world but I want to see what is there, to see how different people are (are they any different?) and to break the mystery surrounding these countries. I decided to start my trip in Bucharest, Romania, where a real good friend of mine has been living for 5 years. I though about Vienna - Austria - to pay a visit to another friend of mine I haven't seen in ages.... and Vienna is a great city I have only seen in Winter.

So here you go, I decided to join the dots and try this: a 19 days trip from the Romanian capital to Vienna, via Budapest in Hungary. Do not really know where and how I will travel between the 3 capitals but I am sure I will find my way...