Traveling to former communist countries

A few notes about a couple of recent business trips to former communist countries.

Try looking at slides like this all day!

Two weeks ago I traveled to Poznan, Poland to deliver a keynote address at a Logistics Congress (the European term for conferences).  It was a thrill to be selected to give the keynote and there were about 400 folks in the audience, which may be the largest group I've ever spoken to at one time.  Also, as most of the audience spoke Polish, but not all, they had translators for folks like me that didn't understand Polish and for the few folks that didn't understand English so that presenters could present in the language they preferred.  And for the two keynote talks they translated our slides into the other language because there were two screens in the room.  I should get a copy of my translated presentation, just for kicks.

As many of you know, I grew up in a town that was heavily Polish.  The way I illustrated this to the folks in Ponzan is that growing up we used to sing "Happy Birthday" in English and Polish at my school.  And just fyi, my hosts said that although my pronunciation wasn't great, I had the tune down :-)  (And for my family, the words mean, "wishing you 100 years, etc.").

The town was getting ready to host the Euro World Cup (soccer) in a month.  It was amazing to see so much construction.  I bet London looks a bit like that now getting ready for the Olympics this summer.  One of the projects I liked was this reconstruction of a main castle.  Overall, although Poland has a long way to go to catch up to western Europe, at least their GDP grew last year (unlike the rest of Europe).  With that and the investment of the EU, you can see some signs of hope.

After coming home on Friday in time to greet Sarah and Beth (our next post), I left the following Tuesday to attend a conference in Bucharest, Romania.  It was a quick trip, arriving at 6p and departing at 10a on Thursday and I really don't have any good pictures.  Just as well.  My impression was that while Poland (and Budapest, Hungary) is on the upswing, Romania REALLY has a ways to go.  I was very impressed with the "greenness" of the city (parks and trees everywhere), but everything seemed to be crumbling.  But I will say that I've never had such good wine for so cheap as in Romania, so maybe that's the silver lining ... a good exchange rate if you visit.

Russ

More fun right in our backyard ...

A lot of our posts, well mine anyway, are about trips to some of the great cities of Europe.  I'm afraid that we are giving the impression that there isn't all that much to do here.  But in light of how much fun we've had over the past month exploring things right in our backyard (with the help, mostly, of our great friends, Loulou, Renato, and Carlo), it is time to correct the record.

And I'm not sure where to begin, but maybe just a list of things/places that we've visited recently:

1. The wine region and visits to a Buschenschank:  The area south of Graz towards Slovenia (45-60 minutes) is filled with small wineries and their associated Buschenschanks (guest houses that serve cold meals along with wine).  Loulou took us to one overlooking the Slovenia foothills with a Spielplatz (playground).  The kids were entertained, playing for hours without interruption, and the adults, including Loulou's great parents, enjoyed wine and conversation.  It was magic, I tell you.
2. The Graz Armory:  The armory used to store the weapons to defend Graz was basically abandoned in the early 1800's.  It is now an usual museum in that it only has weapons from one era, but a lot of them!  We spent a rainy afternoon there with a family we met here.  The tour was in English and we went to our favorite pizza place off Hauptplatz for dinner.
3. Zotter Chocolate:  In any Graz store you can buy local "handmade" candy.  We went to the factory, which is about 45 minutes away.  We passed on the 1.5-hour tour (not very kid friendly, which is surprising), but stood alongside a conveyor upon which many varieties of chocolate bars would pass.  All you can eat for 3 euros.  That's a deal.  And, yes, we bought our favorites on the way out!
4. The Schloss Riegersburg:  I must say, this is one striking castle (Schloss), perched up on top of a volcanic rock outcropping.  We never made it into the castle, but enjoyed walking around the grounds and stopping enjoy a local beverage while the kids did, what else, enjoyed their time at a Spielplatz.  But my absolute favorite part of this castle is that it has two moats and one of them are filled with ferocious animals instead of water to deter would-be attackers.  And for all of you Monty Python fans out there, yes, the animals are rabbits!  
5. Bird show at Schloss Riegersburg:  The bird show consisted of two handlers that retrieved a variety of large birds (owls, buzzards, eagles) and had the birds fly from one handler to the other. The fun part is that the handlers would stand right behind an audience member and the birds would fly RIGHT AT the audience members (see video below, which will not do this justice, I can tell you!).  
6. A local Buschenschank:  Who knew there was a Buschenschank right here in Graz?  That's right, there is on about 2 km from our apartment, up on one of the two residential hills.  You might guess that they have a great Spielplatz there, with a really long zipline.  You'd be right and you'd also be right that our friends, Loulou, Renato and Carlo introduced us to this place as well. Another night of kids playing and adults enjoying each others' company.  And the bonus (besides the proximity) is that this Buschenschank served hot dishes as well as cold (and fresh, hot out of the oven, Bretzels!).  Interesting fact:  we actually came here 8 years ago when we first visited Graz, so says Sue, who remembers these kinds of things!  So, when I said, "who knew?" we did, but didn't remember.

And although there's probably more that we haven't discovered, that's probably enough!  Some pics (but not nearly enough) below.

Russ

This is what happens when you wait too long to take the picture of the beautiful Slovenian countryside while enjoying yourself at a Buschenschank :-(

Grace getting ready for battle at the Graz Armory!

Is this not just a beautiful castle (Schloss)?

Schloss Riegersburg on a beautiful day!

Don't mess with these rabbits (actually, they are hares and huge, some 20 pounds I'd guess)!

Kids striking a pose at Schloss Riegersburg :-)

What's a bald eagle doing here in Austria?

Spielplatz at the local Buschenschank right under our table.  Grace, Henry and Carlo are on the "merry go round."

From 2004:  Russ with colleagues and Grace (look at the camera, sweetie!) at the re-discovered Buschenschank :-)

Budapest Rocks!

Budapest was formed from two cities:  Buda (shown here) and Pest (below).

Pest:  Parliament Building

Budapest Basilica

The end of April gave us another holiday weekend because May 1 (May Day) is a National Holiday.  And May 1 fell on a Tuesday, which meant that school children were out Monday and Tuesday (they call the Monday a "Sandwich Holiday").  Anyway, with a 4-day weekend, and a still long list of places we wanted to visit, we needed to make a choice.  The contenders were Northern Italy, Prague (Czech Republic) and Budapest (Hungary).  So, why did Budapest win out?  It all came down to getting there ... it is very hard to get to Italy (the favorite in this contest) by train and really easy to get to Budapest (and those that have been to both Prague and Budapest said that Budapest was just as pretty as Prague).  Also, we felt like we'd want more time in Italy (if we drove we would only have two full days there).

The other benefit of Budapest over Italy was the idea of taking the kids to a country with a different currency and especially one with an outrageous exchange rate.  Hungary, although in the EU is not in the Euro Zone (good thing for them, by the way), and their currency (the Forint, or FT) is trading at about 211 FT to $1.  So, for every price we had to basically divide by 200 to get it to dollars and then think about how much that was in euros.  I really like seeing Grace have fun with that.  And I also gave them their money for souvenirs in FT and waited for them to complain that a 1,000 FT bill was cool to look at, but it was only $5!  Here are some other receipt amounts for your conversion pleasure:  3,850 FT (3-day transportation pass), 5,000 Ft (Duck Ride -- see below), 2,906 Ft (grocery store), and 278,173 Ft (our hotel bill!! -- we splurged).

So, Friday saw us collecting the kids from school, heading home for lunch and then we were off to the train station.  We took the 1:30p train from Graz to Vienna and had a 10-minute connection there, having us arrive in Budapest at 7p.  Here was another advantage to Hungary over Italy -- we were visiting a former communist country and I was curious as to how different it would seem versus its rich neighbor, Austria.  And the train station upon arrival communicated that right off the start.  It seemed really old, in need of some repairs (which they were making) and had some really old trains on the tracks (the train we took was very modern).  It was like that feeling of, "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

We did our best to get some food for dinner at the train station (we've found that once you get the kids to a new hotel room, it's hard to get them back out for dinner!), we splurged on a taxi to our hotel.  I'm glad we did.  We had this great conversation with the taxi driver who spoke German well, some English, and, of course, Hungarian.  He kept mixing them together and we were never quite sure what he was trying to point out as he drove us to the hotel, but we appreciated him trying.  The rest of the weekend we kept seeing things that he had pointed out, and by then we had a little more context.

Ok, so we're now in Budapest and have three full days before we head back on a Tuesday-morning train.  What did we do?  By the way, our Budapest trip marked our return to great travel weather.  Not a cloud was seen during our visit, but it did get quite hot (upper 20's, think mid to upper 80's).

Saturday:  We decided to hit what we felt would be the most fun first ... Margaret Island.  And what would make the island so much fun?  Well, that would be that you can rent Bringóhintós there, these pedal cars that look kind of like Model-T cars.  We spent the morning and afternoon tooling around the island visiting a small zoo, the ruins of a church, etc.  In between hour rentals we checked out a fabulous playground (tell me again why we can't have interesting playgrounds in the US?).

Bad parent alert:  letting your child play on this toy (see how long you can stay on this and how high you can ride up the rail) when she has a cast on her leg!

We first rented a "car" that Mom and Dad pedaled and the kids sat passively.  But then the kids spotted the child-size ones and spent their time driving them while Mom and Dad walked.  They had a great, great time with this!  When Mom and Dad tired of walking (and were running out of FT!), we spend an hour or so down by the Danube, relaxing and watching the boat traffic.

Grace and Henry go on their Bringóhintó!

On the Danube, looking through a bridge to the Parliament Building. 

Sunday:  Was a "kids' choice day."  Henry picked a ride on a "duck boat" and Grace picked going back to Margaret Island for another ride in a Bringóhintó!

A duck boat is a boat that is a bus when on land (or a bus that is a boat in the water).  We first experienced a duck boat in Branson, MO a few years ago and the splash down into the water made quite an impression.  Apparently, Budapest is the only place in Europe where you can ride in a duck boat.  Also, because the bus ride went by all the significant landmarks in the city, this also satisfied Mom and Dad's desire to see the cool sights.  And there are many.  Budapest is a beautiful city filled with cool architecture and lots of trees in the city and neighborhoods.

Henry looks out of the duck boat onto Margaret Island, where we would spend most of the afternoon.

Grace and Henry finally get their cotton candy on Margaret Island, Day 2.

And the comical highlight of the day was certainly back at the hotel that afternoon.  The hotel we were staying at had a fitness center with a treadmill, an elliptical trainer, an exercise bike, and a set of dumbbells.  Grace and Henry came with me and proceeded to try out all of the equipment.  Grace limited herself to walking (vs. running) on the treadmill due to her cast, but Henry pushed it up to 7.0 kph.  He liked experimenting with the "kill switch" to see if he would or wouldn't fly off the back of the treadmill at various speeds!  But by far the best was when they got onto the elliptical trainer at the same time.  You'll have to watch the video for yourself to see what I mean!

A church in the Castle District.

Monday:  On the surface, this was "parents' choice day," but I don't think either parent wants to take credit for this day!  It wasn't that bad upon reflection, we went to the Castle District and saw some interesting sights.  It was also our first official trip over to the Buda (hilly) side of the city (we spent most of our time on the Pest side of the city).

Grace finds a feathered friend in the Castle District.

The view:  The Castle District is up in the Buda Hills.

But it was hot and the locations were busy with tourists.  There was also a food battle involved.  And then to make matters worse, we spent a good chunk of the afternoon (and a long walk) getting to the Budapest Museum of Transport, only to find it closed.  This was double distressing to Henry as he was not only looking forward to visiting the museum, but was saving his souvenir money to spend there.  And if you know Henry, who usually begs for a souvenir when we arrive to any city/attraction, and cannot wait until you've completed your tour to buy a souvenir, this was a major sacrifice.  It's always a pity when you can't reward good behavior with a positive outcome!  And another good outcome of Monday (I'm in silver lining mode now; not so much then!) is that we found a Thai restaurant for dinner and the kids, Grace in particular, were good sports about trying new food.

Tuesday morning we headed to the train station and Henry (with Grace's help) finally found a souvenir to take back -- a replica cannon that we had seen at one of the castles.  It was plastic and cheap.  But hey, what can you expect to find for under 1,000 FT?

Russ

p.s.  Being in Budapest also made me realize how much my comfort, if not my ability, with German has increased.  I spent the trip never quite being able to grasp street names, directions, or subway stops when i heard them.  I mean, I would hear the words, but there would be nothing in my brain for them to attach themselves to -- they were just too different.  That almost never happens anymore in Austria.