Photo Fail....

Photo Fail: This picture cracks me up! It was so windy at the top of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Budapest, Hungary. My hair was going crazy. Also it's funny that we are lined up with the only other part of the Cathedral in view. Some how Leigh looks amazing still! PHOTO FAIL... :)

Budapest, Hungary

 We didn't have much time in Budapest so we had to make the most of our hours. We took a train from Slovakia to Budapest and our first experience in Hungary was a fail. We couldn't find the bus that would take us to our hostel because all of the roads around the train station were under construction and they had made temporary bus stops in new locations. So it really wasn't our fault... We ended up taking a taxi and had a really lovely taxi driver who made sure we were at the right place before dropping us off. Good thing too, because the first location was not the right one. We didn't stay at the hostel that we booked, but were transferred to another one and we got a private room for the misunderstanding. This started a trend for Leigh and I's hostel experience throughout Europe.  The first full day in Budapest we went to St. Stephen's Cathedral and climbed to the top to get a view of the city.

 We went to Dohány street Synagogue after the church. This is said to be the largest synagogue in Europe. The interior was decorated absolutely beautifully! There were frescos and chandeliers and lots of great lights. To view it, you had to be part of a tour. Even though ours was in English, we still struggled to understand one word of it.  Our guide had such a Hungarian accent, I doubt anyone in our group really knew what she was saying.
The area around this synagogue was blocked off and used as the "Jewish Ghetto" during WWII. Many people died on the steps of that synagogue. This memorial below is probably my favorite memorial I have seen to date. How appropriate to have a weeping willow. The leaves have individual names of people who did not survive the Holocaust.

 We walked around and enjoyed the rest of Budapest. We crossed the river into the Buda side really only once to get a good view of the parliament building. We also ate over there. For the most part we stayed on the Pest side. I really loved Budapest and actually strategically planned to not see everything so that I have an excuse to go back!

 We went to a market and tried a langos with sheep's cheese on it. It was really good. Eve had told us to make sure we tried a langos. Good Advice! It was like fried bread with a cream cheese spread on it. All of this good food wasn't helping our waist size any!

 They used hungarian paprika in a lot of the dishes and I thought the food was delicious!

This was another memorial along the Danube River. It honors the Jews who were killed by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. It represents their shoes left behind on the bank.

Kosice and EVE!

 Eve (Eva) was absolutely amazing! I had not seen her for 10 years, and when you coordinate plans from the other side of the world, you always get a little nervous. Reflecting on Slovakia, there was no reason to be nervous! It all worked out so well. We got to see so many beautiful areas of Slovakia. Košice is Eve's home town. It had a really neat historical part of downtown where we ate in some of the restaurants.
Thank you so much to Eve and her mom. You both were absolutely wonderful and made Slovakia one of my summer highlights! :)

Trip to Krakow, Poland

We left for Poland early in the morning thinking it would be around a 5 hour drive or so. We stopped on the way and picked up Dalibor, Eve's friend. Let me just mention that Dalibor didn't speak English, although I'm pretty sure he could understand what we were saying... It was hard to call him "Dali" because I already have a good friend named Dalli and she looks nothing like him! Plus, I had already told myself that I would never meet another Dalli... Luckily we had Eve and Dalibor's constant bickering in Slovakian to keep us company because the trip turned into 8 hours! This was because the people were driving very slow in the rain.
We constantly heard...,"Dalibor- PRESTAN!" Which we soon found out was Eve yelling at Dalibor to stop. Then we would hear, "Eeeeeeeva?" Which was when Eve was going to fast for his liking. We learn a lot of other words on this trip and also played a bit of "zulte auto" on the way. We first went to Auschwitz and stayed the night in Krakow. That night we went out to find some Polish perogies! Unfortunately, the other food items that we ordered were better than our very dry perogies. 
The next day we got up early and walked around Krakow. There was some very interesting architecture and I especially loved the goat playing the flute. Who wouldn't?  We had seen a beautiful church the night before, St. Mary's Basilica, and since we made it a habit of going into many churches we wandered in. I think my breath was actually gone when we walked in. It was absolutely beautiful and painted in a way that I was not used to! Hundreds of painted stars littered the ceiling. It was quite magical...
I definitely could have spent more time in Krakow, and hope to again visit it in the future. You have to leave some things unexplored to get you back!

St. Mary's Basilica...

We had to leave Krakow and Poland to get back to Slovakia to get on a train to go to Hungary. Eve drove us through the Tatra Mountains. We skimmed the high Tatras, but mostly drove through the Low Tatras. They were beautiful. Many of the towns we passed in the Tatras, had "Gypsies" on the sides of the roads with buckets full of blueberries. They were trying to sell them. Gosh, if I knew where they had picked them, I definitely would have raided that place! We stopped one last time on the way back to Kosice to eat more wonderful food. Leigh was needing to try the goat's cheese since she was sick the other night we ate it. Of course she liked it... :) We told our goodbyes to Eve and Dalibor and boarded the train to Hungary...

Poland (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

Auschwitz-Birkenau

by JAMIE BROWN KIRKBY STEPHEN, UK

Hush, my child,
Heaven waits.
Only our Lord decides our fates.
Hold my hand - but not too tight!
Don't let the soldiers see your fright.

Hide those teardrops.
Stand up tall.
Soon you'll hear the angels call.
Huddle close, don't be afraid,
Our memory will never fade.

Do not struggle.
Do not weep.
Dignity is yours to keep.
Yellow star against your heart,
Prepare, my darling, to depart.

We go now to a better place,
Where people are not judged by race.
Flowers may not mark your grave,
But, my child, you must be brave.

The only time that it rained on us throughout or trip (besides England of course) was during the morning at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I actually found it very fitting and was glad that we were not viewing one of the worst places on earth in the bright and wonderful sunshine. 
When the idea of going to Poland was first put on the table, Leigh and I definitely latched on to that one. Both of us had always thought it was necessary to go to this concentration camp, not just us, but everyone.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration and extermination camp established by the Nazi regime and specifically designed to carry the extermination of European Jews but also Poles, Gypsies, Russian POWs and people of other nations. It consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz). A few years after WW2 the Polish government restored Auschwitz and turned it into a museum. 
I had been to Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany, but this was was even worse. It's hard to even explain the things that I saw because it's hard to comprehend them. But I feel I must try for those I know will never get to Poland.

"To implement the Final Solution, the Nazis needed an efficient system for mass extermination. Although trains took valuable track space away, they sped up the scale and duration over which the extermination needed to take place...The trains consisted of formations of either third class passenger carriages, but mainly freight cars or cattle cars—the latter were packed, according to SS regulations, with 50, but sometimes up to 150 occupants. No food or water was provided, while the freight cars were only provided with a bucket latrine. A small barred window provided irregular ventilation, which sometimes resulted in deaths from either suffocation or the exposure to the elements...
Sometimes the Germans did not have enough cars to make it worth their while to do a major shipment of Jews to the camps, so the victims were stuck in a switching yard—'standing room only'—sometimes for days. At other times, the trains had to wait for more important military trains to pass. An average transport took about four and a half days. The longest transport of the war, from Corfu, took 18 days. When the train got to the camps and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead. The armed guards shot anyone trying to escape.
Due to cramped conditions, many deportees died in transit. On 18 August 1940, a Waffen SS officer later wrote that he had witnessed (the arrival of) '45 wagons with 6,700 people of whom 1,450 were already dead on arrival.' To avoid contamination between loads, at times the floor of the freight cars had a layer of quick line, which burned the feet of the human cargo.

50 people in a freight car × 50 cars = 2,500 people in each train.

Since normally the trains were loaded to 150 to 200% capacity, this results in the following:

100 people in a freight car × 50 cars = 5,000 people in each train

 " Between the tenth and eleventh block stood the death wall (reconstructed after the war) where thousands of prisoners were lined up for execution by firing squad."

One of the things that will forever be in my brain, are the different rooms with personal belongings in them. The magnitude of these things are incomprehensible. Considering that over 6 million people died, and over 1 million of them died at Auschwitz-Berkenau, the amount is mind blowing. There was a room with millions of shoes. There was a room with hundreds of suitcases. There was a room with prosthetic limbs and braces. There was a room full of combs and brushes. There was a room with just eye glasses. There was a room full of human hair. I found this one to be the worse. And they say that it is not even a fraction of the hair, because the Nazi's starting making clothing out of the human hair.

Our tour guide was very good. She was a young Polish woman who was very knowledgeable and fair. She carried herself in a very somber, but professional way. I can only imagine how hard it is to work at a place like that and relive the horror all day everyday. 
The speech that she said at the end had me in tears. We must learn from our history so that we do not repeat it in the future. Eve was not wanting to go to the Concentration Camp, but I think in the end that she found it very like we did- something that needs to be seen by everyone...

Beautiful Slovakia

I would be lying if I said that everyone's response was positive when I told them that Leigh and I would be going to Slovakia...
Looking back, I think that those people are quite naive and foolish. I absolutely loved Slovakia and find it a shame that more people don't take the time to go there!
We left Steven & Barbara's flat in London at 5 am to get on the tube to get to Heathrow airport. Unfortunately, Leigh was feeling very sick and was in extreme pain that continued throughout the whole day. We made it through the process of the airport, and given the situation we were in, we really lucked out for much of the day. On the flight over to Budapest, there was an empty seat on our row and the armrests were lift-able, so Leigh was able to lay down. At the Budapest airport we were met by my friend, Eve, who spent a year as an exchange student going to my high school in Peabody- small town USA. Anyways, she was awesome enough to make the 3 hour drive to pick us up and take us back to her hometown Kosice.
The drive through Hungary was absolutely stunning. I only wish Leigh wasn't writhing in pain in the back seat of Eve's car. There were beautiful sunflower fields in full bloom everywhere! I guess Hungarians are famous for their sunflower oil.
Once we got to Moldava, which is actually where Eve's house is, Leigh was in the care of Eve's wonderful mother (who didn't speak English), and Eve and I met up with some of her American friends for dinner, Teresa & Joe.  I guess it wasn't just dinner...IT WAS THE MOST AMAZING MEAL I HAVE EVER HAD! garlic soup, sheep cheese, pig knee...

The next day, Leigh was feeling better so we went out to see some of the countryside. We went to Spiš Castle, which was really beautiful. On the way, I experienced one of the most memorable images that I have acquired in Europe thus far. Slovakia has many "gypsies" living in the smaller villages out in the country. We went by a particular town in the mountains, and although I only had a split second to see this town as I turned my head, the image is there. The whole village was built up into the valley of a mountain and was made basically with sheets of tin and recycled wood. The living conditions were obviously horrendous.

 Spiš Castle was built in the 12th century and it one of the biggest European Castles in the area. It had a great view of a little village from the top and we watched a storm make its way toward us.

 That evening we met up with even more of Eve's American friends from her workplace, US Steel. Again the food was amazing. That night when we got back to Eve's house, her mother strongly encouraged us to eat more and drink all sorts of things. The tea we had was delicious, and we took a shot of something that we never were quite clear if it was medicine or alcohol or what.  That day, talks of going to Poland the next day came up, so we tried to get some sleep for another early rise and drive to Poland...

You didn't think I would leave Slovakia without getting a photo in a sunflower field did you?