I had a wonderful weekend. I went up to Massachusetts and saw a play and went to a craft show and checked out some galleries and ate some lovely food, it was just delightful. Then my father drove me to Wassaic, which is about a third of the way back home, to catch the train back to White Plains. I caught the train, all was well, but two towns later, the train stopped. And now we weren’t going anywhere. I figured there’s a signal problem or something and continued listening to my iPod. The conductor got on and informed us there was a fire on the tracks in Patterson and as soon as he got more information, he would inform us. Time passed, the earth rotated a bit more, and then the nice conductor man informed us that no trains were moving above Southeast and we should look for alternative modes of transportation to get where we were going. Armed with that little nugget of knowledge, I called Cricket and asked him what he would do in this circumstance. He said to get a cab to take me to Southeast where I could continue on my merry way. So I called a local cab company and got a guy to come. The cab-guy didn’t have any cabs available that evening, but he realized we were in a bind, so he came to pick us up in his own car. Oh, and then there was drama. I offered to take a bunch of people with me and there was pushing and shoving and yelling. Two hippie artists who were on the train with me came with, as well as three older women. In order to avoid a fight, I offered to sit in the trunk area of this hatchback cab, where there was something like nail polish remover leaking all over the floor and it soaked my pants. At one point the male irritating artist hippie said, “We can all ride together, but we all have to be on the same page, man. We can’t be quibbling over little pieces of leather, man.” I wanted to punch him in his little hippie mouth. Oh, and his girlfriend took the front seat without offering it to any of the older women riding with us, like it was owed to her, because, you know, they make documentaries, man, not like us status-quo squares. Anyway, we started on our fifty-minute journey to Brewster, and the driver, who is a nice 55-year-old man, says, “I’m sorry for your tough trip. I’m going to try to make you all laugh,” and we’re all thinking NOOOOOOOO please don’t. Let’s all sit in silence and think about life and its vicisitudes. But we said nothing, so he told us he used to be a pilot for TWA and proceeded to dictate every moment of the remaining trip as if it was a flight (“Hello everyone, welcome to flight 703 to Phoenix, we’re just starting our assent…”), taking breaks periodically to say driving instructions to himself (“Go, go, make the left…. NOW!”).

Oh no, there’s more. He also spoke like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd to us (we were all apparently wascally wabbits, who knew), and after we stopped at a local Mobil station, he told us he liked to make sounds like a cymbals and drums with his mouth. He then put on ABBA’s Greatest Hits and both beatboxed and made rocket-taking-off-noises (“Fwoochsh!”) to three, count ‘em, three songs, until the crappy hippies yelled that they hated ABBA and he needed to turn it off, which I think hurt his feelings a little bit. The he informed us that he could smell anything, like a beagle, and howled like a beagle (“Barrooooo!”). Finally, we arrived at the Brewster station and got comfortable to wait for the next train. Not five minutes after we arrived, a train rolled into the station. OUR train. The train we were JUST ON. I guess they had cleared up the fire situation shortly after the cab left. The whole cab trip was for nothing. We all just dejectedly boarded the train again and sat back down. So my one-and-a-half-hour trip took three-and-a-half-hours and involved a mentally ill cab driver, two arrogant young hipster snotbags, and three tightly wound older women who I had to calm repeatedly. I now reek of acetone and my pants are ruined. Good times, good times.

Addendum: Snorth has informed me that I was not riding with hippies, I was riding with hipsters. It’s a subtle but important difference. I stand corrected. So, for your information, hippies = dirty, friendly pot-smoking free-lovers. Hipsters = the ass-weasels that rode in the car with me.

Before I show you the pictures, let me tell you the backstory: There was monestary. The monestary has a little graveyard. In the 13th century, a monk went to the holy land and when he came back, he sprinkled holy land dirt in the graveyard. Suddenly, EVERYBODY wanted to be buried there. During the Black Death, thousands of people were buried there. A chapel was built in the center of the graveyard, many graves were exhumed and bones put in the ossuary/basement. In 1870, the Schwartzenburg family, who owned the property, asked Frantisek Rint, a woodcarver, to put the large piles of bones in some kind of order. And hoo boy, did he ever.

It’s a small building. You walk in, and there are stairs right in front of you.

The temperature drops dramatically as you go down the fifteen or so steps, so much that you can see your breath. As soon as that happened, I couldn’t not quote Sixth Sense. I said, “I see dead people”, and it was true. Approximately 40,000 dead people, to be exact.

Is this not the greatest thing EVER? The chandelier is rumored to have at least one of every bone in the body. And that’s the Schwartzenburg family crest. I know this doesn’t look like that many deceased people, and that’s because there are four ginormous piles of bones in each corner of the room. Note my mother laughing at me because I was so ecstatic about being there.

I was in heaven. I wanted to stay there forever. Check it out: Rint even signed his name in bones.

I held up the whole bus because I didn’t want to leave. But there were other things to see in the town. And a lovely town it was.

There was their cathedral that was built during the Great Competition with Prague. This one is called St. Barbara.

St. Barbara wasn’t as high or as breathtaking inside as St. Vitus, but it did have a few beautiful and unique qualities. One was the paintings on the vaulted ceiling.

The other thing I loved about this cathedral was the turn of the century windows. I took pictures of all of them. Here’s a sample.

That pretty much covers my nine-day trip to Prague and Budapest. It was great, really really great.

I learned a few days into my trip that “y” at the end of a word makes it plural (sort of like our “s”). I walked past a store that had a big sign outside that said DARKY and inside was a plethora of things from Africa, and I was all, “THAT IS SO NOT OKAY,” and then I learned that “darky” meant “gifts” and I felt stupid for gettin’ my racism hackles up. But it still threw me for the rest of the trip.

This was amusing: I walked past a building and it was gorgeous like every other building and – is that a sculpture of Darth Vader at the bottom?!

Alas, it was not. But I had to cross the street to check for myself.

One of my favorite architectural details was on an Art Nouveau building. Tell me if I’m wrong: It is a chicken on a woman’s head, yes? I’m not misinterpreting this, right?

This is an important window. I will summarize why. In 1617, there was drama between the monarchy, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants involving land and whatnot. On May 23, 1618, a bunch of riled-up Protestants stormed the castle and threw two aristocrats and a secretary out this window. They fell thirty meters, but luckily a moat filled with dung broke their fall, and they lived. In fact, the secretary was later made a noble by the emperor and given the name “von Hohenfall” (Highfall). The turfing of these people out this window started the Thirty Years War. My favorite quote from the Wikipedia page on the Defenestration of Prague, as it is called:

Roman Catholic Imperial officials claimed that the three men survived due to the mercy of angels assisting the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphleteers asserted that their survival had more to do with the horse excrement in which they landed than the benevolent acts of the angels.

I will now delve into one two major high points on my trip: St. Vitus’ Cathedral. I love me some good old French Gothic buildings. Notre Dame is a big favorite of mine. So I was delighted when I learned that the Frenchies has built one in Prague. The Cathedral was started in 1344 and because of wars, funds running out and a fire, it was not completed until the 1890s. Given that it took forever and a day to build this thing, I was really impressed by the cohesiveness of the design. It’s quite the example of Gothic architecture.

The building itself is very lovely, but the clincher for me was the Mucha window. Since the Cathedral wasn’t finished until the turn of the century, there is a wide variety of styles to the windows. The Mucha window is definitely the best. Alphonse Mucha is a famous graphic artist who is often credited with starting the Art Nouveau movement, so for me to see one of his works like this was a big, big deal.

See how it’s dark blues and purples around the edge, and then it’s golden yellow towards the center, with that woman and the young boy (St. Ludmilla and St. Wencenclas)? The man was a genius.

There are other beautiful windows in there as well, don’t get me wrong. I liked this one with the rainbow ribbons as well.

And this one was also very beautiful.

But you see how the Mucha one is like, really breathtaking and super-special, right? It’s more than just color placement and design, it’s also really evocative.

It’s not all airy lightness and delicate stone tracery, oh no. On one side of the cathedral is the most overdone, garish tomb/casket thing I have ever seen aside from Versailles. This thing was… eye-catching.

Not subtle. You can’t even really see the giant silver angels holding up the red velvet curtains. It be TACKAY. You know my “If it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it” quote from Beauty and the Beast? Yeah, this is broke. They should fix it.

One of the coolest things in both Budapest and Prague was the signs that stick out from the buildings. Each one was unique and special and I took a gazillion pictures of all of them.

The last one is, yes, a giant bullet. Huntin’ and fishin’ is a big thing in the Czech Republic. The best one I saw was this one:

Because it moved. I will put up an animated gif of that later today.

To finish up, I want to show one of the coolest houses I have ever seen in my life. Ever. You know those people who fall in love with inanimate objects, like bridges or the Eiffel Tower? I might have that going on with this building.

Tomorrow, Kutna Hora and the place I dreamt of going to for thirteen years.

Addendum: Animated Gif!

The architecture was NUTS. It was like being in a fairy tale, with dragons and princesses and everything. My heart actually hurt a little.

Even our generic hotel couldn’t avoid the Grimm’s fairy tales vibe. This was the picture that was over my bed.

“In Czech Republic after woman has been defiled in the middle of the road she chops off man’s head. Enjoy your stay in Prague.”

Also in my hotel bathroom? This.

Beer Capital of the World, indeed.

The great thing about visiting a primarily Catholic country is that there are festivals and celebrations all the time. Every saint needs to be venerated in some way, so the main square usually has something going on. When we were there it was Easter. And the Renaissance Fair thing that Europe does so well (being that they had the Renaissance, of course) was out in force.

First, you see that church there, the white one with the greenish turrets? The Czech Republic is known for glass, specifically lead crystal glass, and they had a GORGEOUS chandelier in that church. My picture totally doesn’t do it justice.

Okay, back to the Easter festival. First of all, there is a clear color scheme for Easter in the Czech Republic, and that is yellow, green and orange. So everything was decorated in those colors.

There was also an eight-foot-tall easter egg made from twigs covered with those ribbons. And the best thing was people were taking pride in the crafts and traditions that they have been doing for centuries. There were people selling small glass and ceramic things and painted blown goose eggs and this forger? Pumping up the heat on his forging station with his foot, like a Singer sewing machine.

And then there was the food. For both Budapest and Prague, the food is pretty much the same. It’s stick-to-your-ribs, meat and potatoes stuff. There were people selling gingerbread cookies that they had decorated with fine lines of white glaze, and tons of sausages, and this baked good that I called a turtleneck because apparently vowels were in short supply the day they named this thing.

How it works: You wrap a strip of raw dough around a wooden dowel, and then the wooden dowel rotates over a roasty-toasty fire. I think they may sprinkle sugar on there too. Then, they slide it off the wooden dowel and you eat it. Along with this, there was what I considered the piece de resistance: The pig roasting on a spit.

I didn’t include a picture of the pig from the front because, frankly, it was kind of gross and wee bit barbaric-looking, but the cool thing was that it was run on wood. And when the roaster ran out of wood, he chopped some more. With that axe can see. Oh my God, it’s so medieval and authentic.

On one of the sides of the square is one of the hot sights in Prague, the astrological clock. I’m not really sure how it works, but it does work and it sure does look complicated.

At the top of each hour, one of the four figures next to the clock, Death, rings his bell and shakes his hourglass. And those two windows open and the twelve apostles swing by. It’s great. Here’s a close-up of Death.

The four figures around the clock are the most-hated things they could think of: Death, Greed, Vanity and a Turk. That’s a whole lotta hate for Turkey. I guess the Czech Republic did not particularly enjoy being ruled by Turkey when this clock was made.

But wait! This is not the only cool clock in Prague. Prague has one of the finest Jewish Quarters of any European city. That’s mainly because Hitler wanted to preserve it exactly as it was as a museum of an extinct race. So it is relatively untouched. In the Jewish Quarter there is a clock that runs backwards because it has hebrew letters on it.

The Jewish Quarter has the really cool cemetery as well. The Jews were allotted only a small amount of space to bury their dead, so it’s a really dense cemetery. Let me explain: when the Jews ran out of room, they put another layer of soil over the graves, moved the pre-existing gravestones up, and buried another group of people. In some places it is twelve people deep. The cemetery was in use from the 1500s to the end of the 1700s, so up to 100,000 people may be buried there.

Another thing about the Jewish Quarter is that throughout the ages, Jews have had to wear identifying garments when out and about with Christians. At one point it was a yellow sash. For a long time, it was a yellow pointed hat. The Jews took this hat and incorporated it into their architecture, so one can see it all over that part of town.

My mom and I partook in the local ethnic cuisine throughout our stay in both Prague and Budapest, and one of the places we ended up in was something between a mad scientist’s laboratory and Applebee’s. It was covered with alchemy symbols and gurgling, lit-up giant fake Bunsen burners and well, you can see for yourself.

And, in keeping with the Crapplebee’s design motif, they also had musical instruments on the wall. No skis or fake-o vintage team photos.

They served green beer. Really. Green beer. I don’t drink beer, but my mother does, so of course I forced the green beer on her. She said it tastes like ear wax, but more bitter. So as tempting as it might be, don’t drink the green beer.

This building is kind of special because apparently Hungary has a ceramics factory that was very big during the turn of the century. Szolnay made the ceramic tiles for the roofs mentioned previously. They were also known for having a particular iridescent glaze they called Eosin. And this building is the only example I saw with Eosin on it.

It also had completely deranged-looking fish holding up the balconies.

Two totally unrelated-to-anything-else things I saw in or near the Danube River: One, a bus that also goes in the water, which was just disconcerting-looking. I kept wanting to call for help, “There’s a bus in the river! Save the women and children!”  Two, a cute bit of graffiti on a pylon near the water.

We saw one of the finest sights Budapest has to offer, and it was Jewish, which is unusual. Judaism is not known for having rockin’ awesome art or architecture. But the Budapest Synagogue is pretty terrific. It’s an excellent example of Moorish architecture.

One of the three days I was in Budapest, we went off on a little jaunt to the neighboring villages. One of the villages we visited was a castle on a hill. It was charming and there was a beautiful view and all that, but the two things that really caught my fancy were the collection of medieval weapons:

And the delightful taxidermy collection of local fauna. As a child, I read a lot of Asterix and Obelix, which is a French comic series taking place in Roman-era Gaul, and the characters eat a great deal of wild boar. So I felt obligated to take this picture.

And because I love owls so very much, I took a picture of these little fellas.

There were people in there dusting up. I assumed it must be the Annual Clean the Dead Things Day at the castle.

After the castle, we toddled off to an adorable picturesque village. It was seriously photogenic.

The village housed several marzipan stores, and my mother and I stopped at one for cake and Viennese coffee. I wanted to buy some marzipan creatures for my friends back home, and they had charming bunnies and kitties and hippos, but if you bought the white elephant, you could sign the giant white fiberglass elephant near the door. That sealed the deal for me. I bought several little white elephants and they handed me a Sharpie. So if you go to some cute little village outside of Budapest and they have a marzipan store with a large fiberglass elephant near the door, look for my signature on the rump.

On our last day in Budapest, my mother and I decided to try the spa. Budapest is known for having thermal springs, so there are several spas in the city. I went to the one near the zoo. The Budapest Zoo is a marvelous semi-Art Nouveau zoo inside a park that totally reminded me of the Central Park Zoo. This is the entrance.

And this is one of the panels of the fence. I think that’s supposed to be a stag.

Across the street is the spa. It is Baroque and yellow and ornate and I just loved it.

There is a enormous central court with three large pools filled with warm chlorinated water, like a public pool, but so much more cool. There were fountains and jets that shot up from underneath and from the side – it was swell, I tell you.

But clearly these were regular chlorinated pools. I walked into one of the giant yellow buildings and caught a whiff of egg and burnt ash and I knew I was in the presence of the healing waters I sought out. Here is a list of the healthful mineral properties, in case you are interested.

And the thermal baths were positively Roman-looking. People were soaking, people were doing Sudoku puzzles, people were holding business meetings in the pools. It was amazing. I had never experienced a culture like this before. I have been meaning to go to the Russian baths in Brighton Beach, and I imagine they must be something like this.

Okay, I think that covers all of Budapest. Tomorrow we delve into Prague.

Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, that are separated by the Danube River. It is a very photogenic city and wasn’t really messed up by copious amounts of crappity Communist apartment complexes and the like. Here’s a nice shot from the top of a hill. See that building on the left? We’re going to get more into detail of that one later.

This is a picture from a similar spot. What’s cool about this shot is that in the foreground, you can see the unique ceramic tile roofs one finds in Budapest. In the background you can see the Parliament building, which was built in the high-gothic style exactly like the Parliament building in London. Although Gothic was from the 12th century to the 16th century, both Parliaments were built in the 1800s. The way you can tell the difference is London has Big Ben, and the Budapest Parliament has a large central dome. You can see a bit of it there.

I loved the look of Budapest. There were a lot of Baroque* houses that were slightly worse-for-wear, it made it look like a fairy book to me, or maybe something out of Harry Potter.

Here’s a combination of baroque and tile roof. The thing in the foreground is a pillar in the center of a small square done in classic baroque style. I can always tell baroque because there’s a whole lotta clouds and cherubs and more clouds and then some gold and silver if possible and maybe an church organ stuffed in there. “Restraint” is not really a baroque thing. Also, you can clearly see the neato tile roof on the church in the background.

After WWII, Budapest went into a flurry of repairs to get the buildings back into some kind of shape. They did leave one building in terrible condition as a reminder of the way the city looked after being bombed and shot at. You can really appreciate how mangled it looks. Also take into consideration there was another floor above the ones you see that was completely demolished in an air attack.

One of the things I love about Europe is that it’s like perpetual RenFaire there, all the time. It was more obvious in Prague, but Budapest had it going on as well. One of my favorite moments of the trip was seeing:
- a man with male patterned baldness and dreadlocks simultaneously
- in medieval garb
- reading the paper
- with a hawk and an eagle sitting next to him.
It was such a weird grouping of things, I had to take a picture. One cannot make these things up.

So, the building I mentioned earlier. My favorite period of design has to be Art Nouveau (also known as Jugendstil, Secession or Liberty), which was a very short international style from 1890 to 1905. The reason I like it so much is because it incorporated a great deal of the patterns and formations one finds in nature and, if done well, has a tension to it like a rubber band or a whip. It is often done in a way I am not terribly fond of, with lots of morose-looking women in togas draped over things like ragdoll cats. But when it’s done in a simple, clean non-excessive manner, it can’t be beat. And the exterior of this building in Budapest, the Four Seasons hotel, is one of the finest examples of this I’ve ever seen. The combination of the matte stone and the occasional touches of gold is perfect.

One of the nice things that Budapest is doing to make themselves more cosmopolitan is to light up their city á la Paris from dusk until midnight. I took this picture right next to a large monument called Liberty.

This is the Liberty monument. I can’t tell you much about it because the entire time the guide was talking, I was freaking out with delight because BATS! There were bats all around! Eating moths! Wheee! So I’m sure this is a very important site with a great deal of significance, but I can’t tell you anything about it. Bats!

I took a night boat ride down the Danube and saw some lovely lit-up sites. I took a sweet picture of the famous Chain Bridge from the shore – look at the cute couple on the park bench.

There’s my Four Seasons hotel at night. Sigh.

And here’s the Parliament. You can truly appreciate the dome the way it has been illuminated.

This is a Greek Orthodox church. You see how it only has one tower? The other one was destroyed by a bombing in the war. The church didn’t have money to repair it, and by the time the money had been raised, everyone was used to only having one tower. So that’s how the church remains.

This is the Freedom Bridge. It’s a nice contrast to the equally lovely Chain Bridge.

Lest you think that Budapest is only old buildings, there is quite a bit of good modern architecture. Here’s an example.

Tomorrow, more of Budapest and maybe we get started on Prague.

*”And if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it! A ha ha, ha ha!” I quoted this, oh, about a million times on this trip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_BvkVvOvEs

Also, I just booked tickets to go to Prague and Budapest at the end of March. Mainly Prague, but I’ll be hittin’ up Budapest for a couple of days, which will be a cool additional bit on my trip. I’ve wanted to go to the Sedlec Ossuary located right outside Prague for about fifteen years, and now finally I’m going to get my chance. Decorating with the local dead people, how can I not? I mean. really.

Then, so pictures sent to Cricket from the morning walk where they saw the rhino and conveniently didn’t die:

And another thing I didn’t mention is that a big thing in Africa is vibrantly printed cloth.

It is common to print political leaders on them.

I saw these fabulous cloths with Obama on them while I was in Africa. The best part of them was the artist had put a star on his lip, as if he was wearing lip gloss. So fabu. And, lest you thought I was kidding, I found a shot of it.

This is the view from the about a quarter-way up the mountain.

This is the view from the top of the mountain.

And this is me at the top of the mountain, where I was all sweaty and miserable. Take in the unhappiness, people.

And here’s a rock painting painted by a San medicine man. The paintings are between 3000 and 200 years old, and the reason that the dates are so far apart is because the San would paint over old paintings, so anthropologists can’t date the older stuff without scraping off the newer stuff, which they’re not going to do.

It was extremely interesting, and I probably would have found it fascinating if there was a cable car, but there was not, so I spent the whole time looking at the paintings while grumbling with a thundercloud drawn over my head, like a Charlie Brown character.

Eventually we trekked back to the surface of earth, where the foliage is amazing. If I was doing another Lord of the Rings, I would do it there. It’s very cinematic.

Two other things that were interesting KwaZulu Natal:

Outside our cottage there was a tree. I learned in Africa that lichen only grows on the north side of a tree (I forgot the reason, though), so if you’re lost, you can look at the trees and figure which way north is. On this particular tree the delineation is very apparent.

Since he was doing all the driving, Cricket HATED signs like this. There are all over KZN. This might have been his favorite.

Here are some random pics from Africa that didn’t fit into any other categories. The first bunch is a random collection of bug pictures. The insects there can be enormous. Like, if they fly around and land on you, they are heavy and you go “uh” from the surprise of the weight. It’s astonishing. This is cricket in Kruger on a ranger’s fingers.

This is a millipede on my arm. I like the way their tiny feetsies feel, little hooklike toes moving like synchronized swimmers.

A praying mantis I saw in a restroom. I tried to pick it up and move it outside to take a picture of it, but it started chewing on me, so I dropped it and screamed. Apparently, a man came running out of the men’s room all concerned and asked one of our traveling companions what was wrong. Our companion said, “She’s American,” and the man said, “Oh, it figures,” like all Americans go into the bathroom and shriek. No mention of the mammoth bug chowing down on my finger. No, no, us Americans, we’re all fat and stupid and scream when we pee. It’s just how we are.

This is a female golden orb spider. She’s a big lady, about three inches. See that small brown thing? That’s her husband. She’ll eat him eventually. I walked face-first into one of those webs (about two feet across), and then flailed around like an alien was trying to emerge from my chest while clawing at my hair for giant freaky spiders. Me and nature, we don’t get along so well.

And here’s one eating a big grasshopper. They have no mouth to speak of, so they fill their food with an acid that turns it into soup, then they drink their kill. Mmmm. Slurpy pre-digested grasshopper.

Three other miscellaneous monster insects.

This is a license plate that I liked. It has a baobab tree on it. I heart baobabs. And British-Empire-looking crests. Also, note that this is a BMW. South Africa makes all the wrong-side-of-the-car BMWs for the rest of the world. All the heads of state in Africa drive around in them. They’re all over the place.

Okay, a holdover from the British is a deep love of all things chutney. They have chutney-flavored chips and meat products and everything. They also make a chutney powder for your popcorn. I do not know what Aromat is. I’m guessing it’s like Mrs. Dash, a festive mixture of random herbs and spices.

Has anyone been following the news? Did anyone hear how the Dalai Lama was not allowed to come to South Africa for a peace conference because South Africa has a big love affair going on with China? Really smooth, South Africa. Excellent PR on your part. Anyway, shortly after that news broke, I saw this worker in the airport.

Yeah, whatever. If you were so enlightened you would have let the freakin’ Dalai Lama in. BTW, does anyone know what “enlightened security” even means? Do they prevent terrorist attacks by flying off the walls and treading on the tops of bamboo like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? I’m curious about this.

And finally, South Africa is gearing up for the FIFA world soccor/footbal thingie. It’s a great big hairy deal, like the Olympics. They’re building stadiums in a bunch of cities. There are billboards all over. And these clocks scattered here and there:

Cricket found these fabulous. Every time we had some downtime, he would say, “Hey, we could go watch the FIFA countdown clocks. They might have changed since the last time we saw them.” Me thinks perhaps he pokes fun at the FIFA people.

Alright, there’s my whole Africa trip. Hope you enjoyed it.