29th October - Vilnius, Lithuania
We arrived in Vilnius in the morning after a long bus ride, and realized that we had arrived in the Baltic States because of the blustery cold that greeted us when we stepped off the bus. We were tired and not quite awake when we arrived, but we quickly woke up when we stepped out into the zero degree (Celsius) weather. We quickly retreated into the bus station to escape the cold where we arranged to stay in another apartment and gathered information about our next train to Riga, Latvia.
Vilnius, and all of Lithuania, have a bit of a hippie feeling, with a wacky counter culture population. For those who remember, the Grateful Dead had some ties to Lithuania, and sponsored their very good National basketball team that won a Silver medal in the Olympics while wearing tie-dyed jerseys. One of their best players played for the Warriors in Oakland for awhile too. This culture is evident in the part of town called Uzupius (possibly meaning utopia). This part of town, that is just across the river from the main downtown district, is actually a self declared independent republic with its own bill of rights. Hippies of an older generation, squatters, artists and drunks decided to break from Lithuania, and have formed their own community. They posted the Constitution on a wall inside their borders, and some of the 41 points included things like the right to make mistakes, to idle, to love, to be unique, to die (but this is not an obligation), to not be loved (but not necessarily), to hot water, to heating in winter & to a tiled roof, to be undistinguished and unknown, to love and take care of the cat. Their independent status is humored by the rest of Lithuania. We walked around the district for awhile, and didn't see anything that really held a candle to Haight Ashbury, but it was fun anyway. The district is a bit run down, so maybe they are contemplating a reunification effort with Lithuania soon.
Lithuanians are said to be flamboyant and overly dramatic, but we only saw evidence of this in their dress. The women wore knee high boots with jeans tucked in, fur rimmed hooded jackets, wild colors, styles and fabrics.
One third of Lithuania's population was killed either during the Nazi occupation or during the Soviet occupation. The former KGB HQ and prison in Vilnius serves as a museum and memorial to Lithuanians who were shot dead or tortured and then sent to Siberia during the late 1940s. Each stone in the building's walls contains a carved name of these victims. Meanwhile just a few blocks from here is the Zaliasis Tiltas (Green Bridge) where statues of Lithuania's Red Army comrades stand in tribute to the Communist past, and because the locals love these statues, they weren't torn down like the rest of the Lenins and other famous historical figure's statues in the rest of Vilnius.
Overall Vilnius is quaint and the architectural style that reigns here is Baroque. For the Baltics, Vilnius is very well priced. We had an excellent meal in one of the numerous cafes in the old city area. It consisted of fried rye bread served with a cheesy garlic dipping sauce, Cepelinai (meat balls served inside a potato pancake with mushroom sauce), and a really good beef stew. All the food they serve everywhere is hearty, but it all tastes great and is perfect for refueling on cold days. Since we were only in town for one full day, so we did not have the time to see much more than the old town and surrounding areas. Besides the strange story behind Uzupio, it was nothing much to write home about. We were expecting more counter culture and cafes, and they really weren't there in the numbers we expected. We couldn't even find the Frank Zappa monument, which was erected by his fan club in 1995 and is the only one of its kind in the world. However, it is a cheap place to eat good food and would probably be quite pleasant along the river during summer.
27th of October - Warsaw, Poland
We made a quick journey through Warsaw on our way up towards Moscow. The people in Krakow told us that Warsaw was no fun, too big, too expensive, and basically nothing compared to Krakow, so why bother going at all? It seems that there is quite a rivalry between the two cities, which we are learning is typical for two cities like Krakow and Warsaw. Krakow was the seat of royalty and the medieval capital of Poland until 1596, and now Warsaw is the political and economic heart of Poland. People in Krakow make less money and have all the fun, while people in Warsaw work harder and live more cosmopolitan lives. After dissuading words from the local Krakowians, we did not expect much from Warsaw, except for an overpopulated city with little to do. Something we have learned on our trip, and continue to learn, is that expectations can be everything when traveling. Whenever we are told something is fantastic, we are often a little disappointed, and when something is said to be totally avoidable, we usually like something about it and are glad we went. Warsaw falls into the category of glad we went, we did not expect much, but liked what we saw during our brief stay.
We were able to have the Tourist Info booth at the train station call around town and find us a good deal on an apartment to rent. They gave us perfect directions on how to take the bus and then which little alleys in the old town to wind down and find the apartment rental office. We ended up with a great place looking over the old walled city, a fantastic view in a fully equipped apartment. We got in at night, and went shopping for food and could not find any good markets in the old town. We were then sent out by some locals to Carrefour, which is a European supermarket mega store (a lot like Wal Mart). We were totally overwhelmed trying to shop there, and it took us almost 2 hours trying to get food for 4 meals. After we finally found where the food was, a map was required to find the wine section and then the check out counter. It was way more than we signed up for when we went to get some groceries. We then walked home with all of our groceries, freezing cold, and exhausted from the effort of Wal Mart style shopping. It occurred to us that part of the shock of going back to the States will be reintroduction to huge retail stores like Costco and other shopping centers, as we have not been conventional consumers at places like these very frequently over the past 10 months.
That night we made the specialties that Agi taught us to cook in Budapest, and we made hot spiced wine, another trick we have picked up along the way. The next morning we explored almost all of Warsaw. It has a very nice old town, which just about every European city has, but this one is different because it was completely devastated during WWII, so it has been almost totally restored from rubble to look exactly the way it did before the war. Warsaw was under siege for much of WWII, and the Jewish ghetto was the largest and worst in Europe. There are monuments and statues to the Polish resistance efforts and the Jewish Ghetto, but not much more than that. There are few museums, because they were all totally destroyed, with the exception of the Pawiak Prison Museum. A small portion of the prison still stands where the Gestapo killed tens of thousands of Polish people, and it is now a museum. After the Jewish ghetto uprising, the entire place was bombed and burnt down, literally leveled. It once was the most beautiful old city in Europe, and that is what they have recreated in Warsaw today, from memory.
At the location of the Warsaw Resistance Monument, there were some very interesting facts and different takes on the eventual liberation of Warsaw at the end of the war. All the writings they have posted at this monument tell how the Red Army advanced to sit just 1 mile outside of Warsaw, but they waited for 4 critical nights before they came to the rescue of the quickly diminishing number of Polish resistance fighters. It was not said, but very strongly implied, that the Red Army sat out the final days of the resistance so that when they finally came to liberate Warsaw, they would have a much easier time occupying the land because the Nazis would have killed off the Polish resistance fighters, so there were less people able to resist their occupation. That made the subsequent years of Soviet occupation much easier, and the Poles are clearly still very disillusioned about it. It is hard to say who they hate more, the Nazis or the Russians.
We also found some beautiful parks that were covered in bright yellows and reds with the fallen leaves of the changing colors of the trees. Although it was chilly, the colors created a warm feeling, and the parks and squares were beautiful with all the fall colors on the trees and on the ground. We made a bus journey to the Poster Museum, which was in the former royal stables in Wilanow Park to see some of Poland's famous poster art. The country's graphic designers have made a name for themselves with edgy and creative concepts for advertising posters for French theater and Japanese art.
Our journey in Poland ended the next day at the bus/train station where we were taking an overnight bus to Lithuania. The train/bus station was very seedy, and not a place we felt comfortable for very long. Our safest bet was to spend our last Zlotys on one hour of internet away from the strange characters lurking in the station, but next to the strange vodka drenched characters perusing porn sites next to us. We made the bus and slept all the way to Lithuania.
23rd of October - Aushwitz & Birkenau, Poland
Billy's dad asked us in Berlin whether we had ever thought about how the Jews sent to concentration camps must have felt...and we have been haunted by that question ever since. As a Jewish man who lost family members to the Holocaust and escaped the same fate because his father immigrated to the States, I suppose that he thinks about this more often than most people do today. Truly, we have been having nightmares since we visited Aushwitz. The whole day we spent between Aushwitz and Birkenau was horrifically overwhelming. I think we both were on the verge of crying most of the time we were there. It's difficult to even put into words. We knew all the facts and had seen some of the photos, films and documentaries that recreate the historic events of the Holocaust, but it is another thing to go to this place where millions of people suffered and were killed. 1.5 to 2 million people were murdered at these two concentration camps. They do not have an exact number of deaths, as many people didn't survive long enough to be registered in the records, but 90 percent of the victims were Jewish and were brought to Poland from countries as far as Italy and the Netherlands.
The most intense parts of the museum at Aushwitz were the films, the photos, and the rooms that they labeled "material evidence of crimes." In these rooms were displayed personal affects that were either taken from the people when they arrived at the camps or belongings that were surrendered as they disrobed just before they stepped into the gas chambers. There were thousands of pairs of shoes all piled up behind glass in these rooms, piles of combs, shaving brushes, shoe polish tins, baby clothes, tons of human hair, pots and pans. The Germans were so disgustingly clever and greedy about every detail of this genocide. They found a way to profit off of the murders in every possible way. They sold all of these valuables that were taken from the Jews...even hair that they shaved off of the women's heads was sold in the German textile industry and gold teeth were extracted after the victims were gassed and before the bodies were incinerated. We walked around in a daze wondering how Hitler and his henchmen came up with this plan and if it was all premeditated or if each step of the process just coincidentally happened to lead up to this maniacal and systematic mass murder of a people. It all seemed to work into a carefully crafted masterplan. How could people be so frighteningly cruel and inhumane?
First the Jews were branded with armbands, then they were moved into the ghettos where they were unable to work and earn money, so they started to starve and become ill because they were living in poverty and filth. Then they were so weak when they were "relocated" to the concentration camps that some didn't survive the trip there (as they were crammed into trains like animals, standing sometimes for 10 days if they were being transported far distances and without food or water). They were always given false hope, so there were rarely revolts or uprisings except on a handful of occasions in the ghettos and in the camps. They were told that if they volunteered to be relocated (by paying a fee and cooperating) that they would be given work and the means to lead normal lives again. When they arrived at these concentration camps they were separated by physicians into two groups: healthy and unfit for work. The unfit were sent directly to the gas chambers, but they were told they were going to be showering in these rooms that looked like showers and even had dummy showerheads mounted to the ceiling, so they went quietly to their deaths. Can you imagine the terror they must have felt during the last moments of their lifes when they realized that they were being poisoned?
The film we saw at Aushwitz was a post WWII Soviet film about Soviet troops liberating the Jews from Aushwitz and arriving there to find emaciated, frozen, naked bodies lying dead in the snow, sets of twins that were barely alive because they were used in biological experiments, men who were sterilized or exposed to diseases and chemicals in other experiments. Some of the women and men that survived the camps were so thin and weak that they couldn't even walk out of the gates when they were finally freed. Birkenau was so expansive that it was difficult to cover the grounds by foot in the 2 to 3 hours we spent there. Being there really made us understand the scale of the atrocity. The strangest thing about Birkenau is that its setting is so peaceful. The camp is located in a serene, natural setting and as we walked around the grounds we couldn't help but comment on the incongruousness of the physical beauty of the green grass, clusters of trees, afternoon sunlight and the quiet isolation of a place that was engineered to torture and murder people.
There was a somber feeling despite the fact that there were crowds of visitors. Many groups of young kids who must have been visiting as part of a school field trip and many other groups of tourists were crowded into the museum, which was distracting, but we felt that it was a positive sign that the site of these crimes is now used as an educational tool. There was one German guy in the museum that we felt sorry for. We could tell that he felt pained by and guilty about the crimes his country committed.
We went to the records office and asked about Nandor's wife and two children (members of the Blau family) who were most likely sent to one of these concentration camps, but we needed to have a date of birth to search the archives effectively because their names are commonly found in the records. The administrators in the records department said that in many cases the only records they have are of names, sometimes there is information about age, and sometimes country of origin. She apologetically told us that if a woman arrived at the camp with two young children, they most likely would have been sent directly to their deaths.
The worst part of it is that all of the surviving family members of these victims of the Holocaust have nowhere to grieve and because the records that the Germans kept are so poor and many of the Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers without even being registered, there is no way to know exactly what happened to many people. People brought flowers and placed them in the gas chambers and crematoria or at the wall where many of the victims were executed. There was a feeling of unresolved anger and incomprehensible sadness among the visitors at Aushwitz.
22nd of October - Krakow, Poland
We arrived in Krakow by train from Berlin and we were somewhat concerned about theft and personal safety on the train because our guide book warns of cases of train passengers on this route being gassed and robbed while sleeping in their compartments on overnight trains. For this reason we didn't want to let our backpacks out of our sight, so when there wasn't enough space for our bags on the luggage rack above our heads, we put them in the seat behind us instead of in a storage area in the next car. For nine hours on this train, every time someone new boarded and tried to sit in the seats behind us a Polish woman across the aisle from us fended them off. It was obvious that we didn't speak Polish, so she did all the talking for us. She smiled and winked at us each time and was so kind to help us.
The attendant came around with the refreshment cart to offer drinks or sweets and we declined as we always do because treats on the train are too expensive, but he insisted that we take something and then whispered that it was free of charge. He must have sized us up and known exactly the type of backpackers that we are...he spoke our language.
When we arrived in Krakow we took a taxi to our hostel and tried to negotiate the fare from 15 zlotys to 10. The taxi driver insisted on his price and we were freezing outside the station in the dark so we settled on it. When we arrived at the hostel he only asked for 10 zlotys. This was a true gesture of generosity and honesty, and in months of traveling we have never had an exchange like this one with a taxi driver. The time we spent in Krakow showed us that Polish people are some of the kindest that we have encountered in Europe.
Krakow is a beautiful city that was completely spared by the destruction of WWII that reduced Warsaw to rubble, so the old town looks very much like it has for hundreds of years. Krakow dates back to the 7th century. It boasts the largest medieval town square in all of Europe, which is surrounded by interestingly designed buildings that make for a unique skyline, a clock tower and spires of churches. Krakow similar to Prague, but there are very few tourists and there is a presence of an underground artist community in dark and tucked away jazz clubs, cafes and bars that we poked our heads into. Krakow seems to be the hipper, more cultured little sister to Warsaw. Wawel Castle is one of the main attractions of the city and it sits atop a small hill near a bend in the river.
We spent a day walking around Kazimierez (the old Jewish quarter) and visited synagogues, museums, and cafes there. The Jewish community in Krakow were forced out of the city and relegated to Kazimierez long before WWII. Then during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the Jewish ghettos of Krakow were set up in this area. The movie Schindler's List was filmed here, and this part of Krakow has become a popular center for tourism and education about Jewish culture and the Holocaust. It makes sense that this historic area functions this way because of its proximity to Aushwitz. We went into a Jewish museum housed in the oldest synagogue in Poland to learn about traditions, rituals, customs, holidays, sects and the history of the Jewish population in Krakow. We went to a synagogue that was screening documentary films of life in the ghettos in Krakow and in Warsaw. The films were created from footage recorded by the occupying German forces. The most moving film we saw was called Requiem for 500,000. It was difficult to watch. We went to a traditional Jewish restaurant and ate chicken knedly, farfala, latkes, and sabbath soup for lunch and then had coffee and a yummy cookie that was flat, chewy and made with nuts, toffee, chocolate...Billy's mom makes these, but we can't remember what they're called.
On Saturday it was sunny and warm, so we spent the day outside getting lost in the backstreets away from the square. Most of the action takes place on this square, where restaurants and cafes set up outdoor seating and locals hang out in the sun. We walked into bakeries to take a whiff of all the fresh baked goods, popped into cafes and bars in search of the perfect pierogi, wandered around parks crowded with people and bright with fall colored leaves in the trees and green grass all around. We saw two weddings taking place at two different churches around town. One was a very traditional event with some attendees in traditional peasant dress. There were baskets of flowers and fruit and a very elegantly dressed bride in a white fur coat and a 40s style hat with netting. The bridesmaids were wearing crimson, floor length dresses and the flowers were rich fall colors.
On the train leaving Krakow for Warsaw we had difficulty again finding a place to store our luggage, and this train was so cramped and crowded that it was almost impossible to maneuver around inside the cars with our huge backpacks. Luckily the compartment next door was full of nuns without any baggage. They looked trustworthy enough to watch over our backpacks for the short trip to Warsaw.
19th of October - Berlin, Germany
The three of us (Jen, Billy and Billy's mom) left Prague by train to make it to Berlin in time to meet Billy's Dad who was flying in from San Francisco. The train ride was fun, and we made it with no problems with the help of a very kind stranger. We went to the wrong train station and asked a guy for directions and he insisted on walking with us to the correct train station which was a 10 minute trip by foot. He waited while we purchased our tickets and even walked us directly to the gate to see us off. We were so impressed with this random act of kindness. Being jaded Americans we were sure that he wanted something from us, and we were even suspicious of him at first, but by the end of the experience he changed our minds. It is Fall in Europe, and seeing the rolling hills with all the leaves changing colors pass by was a nice treat for those of us from San Francisco who never see real seasons anymore. We took a few pictures out of the window of the train and arrived in Berlin exactly on time.
Berlin is another city that has that feeling of being part of the elite cities in the world club. It is orderly, has a great transportation system, and is very clean and nice looking in the city center as well as in the neighborhoods outside the center. They do, however, have a bit of a problem with graffiti, but that is exactly what we imagined when we envisioned East Berlin of old.
Our first couple nights were spent at the very chic and historic Adlon Hotel. The hotel is where Hitler stayed at periods while in Berlin during the war and along with much history it is beautifully restored. All of its current beauty comes with a big price tag, so in typical Blau fashion we had one room where all four of us were staying, under the radar of the hotel management, who have a strict policy of two people per room. We were very careful never to be seen together, and had worked out a strategy where those who were allowed to be seen together (Billy and his Mom, Jen and Billy's Dad) would go down stairs, walk around suspiciously, then wait in the back of the hotel for the next pair to come down. Hand signs and head nods were used as signals across the lobby as we would all then sneak out the back door so the guards in front would not catch on. We thought we were very slick in this endeavor, but we think the hotel management just let us get away with it out of pity. They must have had fun watching this charade every morning and evening.
The problem was compounded by the fact that the hotel bellman broke one of our cheap backpack handles while carrying it up to our room (they wouldn't allow us to take them ourselves, even though we tried). Once they re-examined the dirty and fraying backpacks, they knew they had intruders on the premises. One of the guys at the front desk was good humored and told us that they sure don't get too many backpackers in the hotel. That being said, we really enjoyed the hotel, to get a chance to sleep luxuriously on the floor in a very nice room. We even went to the spa in shifts, which was the height of luxury for the two of us who have had no exposure to spas, fancy hotels, or bellman for 10 months.
Billy's Dad arrived the following day, and after a 3 hour delay in New Jersey. He looked and felt great and hit the ground running. Our first adventure was to go to the newly built Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The museum was underground, and had a very artfully designed series of zinc clad coffins rising from the cement shell of the museum (all at staggered heights), meant to memorialize the deaths of Jews under the Nazi regime. This covered about an acre or two of ground in the heart of Berlin. Inside the museum there were powerful pieces of writings, historical notes, and statistics from the Holocaust. It was another somber reminder of what happened right here in Europe not all that long ago, but it was good to see such a thing in Germany where it all started. It was a moving and sad few hours in the museum, but also was impressive and something that everyone who visits Berlin should see. The stories of the many families they highlighted that were wiped out completely had the most powerful effects.
That afternoon we also took a tour of the city by bus, as it is quite big and would be very hard to see it all just walking around. We were shown many important and interesting historical sights, including Check Point Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the last remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall, the university where Marx and Engels taught, and most of the glorious old government buildings.
After being terrified of our own shadows in the Adlon Hotel, we moved to an apartment in a quaint part of town that was right next to the river. We could go in and out as we pleased without having to go two at a time, and instantly became much more relaxed. Days were mostly spent walking to different parts of town and just perusing. Berlin has some very nice neighborhoods that are off the tourist circuit, and we could tell that most of what used to be East Berlin was quickly being renovated and upgraded for the more flashy and artsy Berlin crowd of today. The neighborhood of Prenzlaurberg was our favorite. There were little shops and cafes everywhere, with people eating outside despite the fall temperatures. It looked very livable and lively, probably a good place to live for anyone considering a move to Berlin.
Most of all, we enjoyed spending good time with Billy's parents. Hearing about everything that is happening and not happening at home, relaxing while cooking dinners, and drinking wine in the afternoon. It was all really invigorating for us. We realized how much we miss home, family and friends, and that we do not have that much time before we are back in the States, so we should take advantage of what time we have left. We were both nervous to see all our family members, fearing that they might look different than we remembered them, but that turned out to be an unfounded fear. We left Berlin a little sad to have the past two weeks of pampering by our parents over, but very happy to have had the opportunity to share our adventure with them.
8th of October - Prague, Czech Republic
We arrived in the afternoon the day our moms were scheduled to fly in to Prague. We were so impressed with the modern, luxurious and artsy hotel Linda (Jen's mom) booked. It was decorated in classic Art Nouveau style inside and out. It was once a historical theater that staged anti-Communist plays, so it was left to decay for a few decades during Soviet occupation. It was recently purchased by K + K Hotels and completely restored. Linda did extensive research to find this hotel. She went to a travel agent and told the lady that her daughter was a graphic designer and asked her to recommend the artsiest boutique hotel in Prague for her daughter's 30th birthday. The hotel's luxurious facilities were a welcome change of scenery for us, because we have only splurged on one other nice hotel in the past 10 months. It was like emerging from the desert and entering a lush, tropical oasis. The buffet breakfasts at the hotel consisted of an amazing spread, so we didn't hesitate to stuff ourselves each morning with the plethora of gourmet delights on offer (including mimosas). The hotel was situated near the Powder Tower and the Municipal House, which is a concert hall elaborately decorated by 20th century artists in Art Nouveau style. It was easy to find our way back to the hotel, as we would just look for the "powder keg" as Meredith (Billy's mom) renamed it.
We had not seen our families for 9 months and we wanted to impress and welcome our moms, so we picked up nosegays, Czech beer and deli snacks to surprise them with and we set everything up in their room before they arrived. As we got ready that evening, we joked about feeling as if we were preparing for a first date. We wanted everything to be perfect for their arrival. We waited for them in the hotel lobby and rushed through the entrance to greet them with big hugs. They were tired after a long trip, but we kept them up talking for much of the night. We sent a list of items that we wanted from home and Linda brought the reinforcements. Meredith brought a framed collage of some of our photos from South America, which we kept with us and displayed in our room.
The next morning we rushed to the Russian embassy to apply for visas. As an American citizen, Russian visas must be among the hardest to obtain. Russian visas rank up there with visas for Iran and Afghanistan. We tried to apply in several Eastern European cities, but were denied each time. Our applications were finally accepted in Prague, but in the end, we had to bribe the embassy official to get our passports back in a timely manner. The application itself was a five page questionnaire which asked us to provide details about our last four employers and to list every city we have been to in the past ten years. This is information we had to struggle to remember. We also had to purchase invitations before we could even take our paperwork to a Russian embassy to apply for visas. When we finally arrive in Russia we are required to register as tourists, or pay huge fines when we leave the country. The Russians are thorough when it comes to admitting and keeping tabs on tourists of the Yankee variety.
Once we completed that task, we were free to spend the rest of the day walking around the old town and browsing the farmer's market. We went to see Charles Bridge around sunset when the golden autumn afternoon light illuminated the brightly painted buildings on the opposite side of the Moldau river. Everything was hazy and there were many other tourists meandering across the bridge and enjoying the sights and sounds of musicians playing. After our ritual afternoon Pilsner Urquell that night we ate a traditional Czech dinner at a touristy basement restaurant complete with a traditional dance performance. There were hundreds of Dutch soccer fans clad in bright orange hanging out in the main square because there was a football match in Prague that weekend.
On Jen's birthday we visited the Alfons Mucha museum. Mucha is famous for pioneering the Art Nouveau movement in Paris, but he was born in Prague. Most of his original paintings are in Florida, in the home of a famous athlete. The museum housed a nice collection of Mucha's poster prints. Jen and Linda went clothes shopping at H&M to pick up some winter clothes. We all met for lunch at a quaint cafe across the street from our hotel, where they served soup in a bread bowl that was sculpted like a work of art. We had a few glasses of champagne in our rooms before heading out to a really nice dinner at a French restaurant. The evening was like a dream as Jen relished the attention and made Linda recount the story of her birth (and all the gory details). In the Old Town Square outside the restaurant the rowdy Dutch soccer fans were lighting fire crackers and climbing the walls in celebration of their win.
Over the next few days, we kept busy. One day we picked up sandwiches and salads and had a picnic in the park in Mala Strana to escape the crowds of tourists in the Old Town area. It was sunny and warm (especially at mid-day) every day we were in Prague, so we took advantage of the nice weather and spent time wandering around outside in the Jewish Quarter and along the river. We accidentally discovered the John Lennon wall on one of these walks, which is a colorfully spray painted, ever-changing homage and portrait of the rock star that first appeared in Prague after his death. We visited the Kafka museum and emerged from the dark and spooky museum with a better understanding of the term "Kafkaesque." We walked to the castle on the hill and wandered around its expansive grounds. Linda marched up to a castle guard and asked for directions, but he could only nod in response, as it appears that they are not allowed to speak to the tourists. We stared up at the impressive stained glass windows inside the immense St Vitus Cathedral and hiked up the spiral staircase inside one of the Cathedral's towers to get a better view of Prague.
We moved to an apartment on Wenceslas Square where we could all be together in a cozy pseudo home and cook meals. The apartment was not as nice as we hoped it would be, but it was still much nicer than the types of places that we normally frequent. The place was stocked with almost everything we needed, except for a knife to chop veggies with. Linda and Jen went around to the nearby restaurants with a broken kitchen knife to ask to borrow a functioning knife. The two of them scared a waitress at a nearby pizza place when they walked in brandishing a huge blade. This poor waitress didn't speak English and accidentally poured beer all over herself as she tried to remain calm while being confronted by two potentially dangerous Americans wielding a foot long knife. Once we had a knife we were able to whip up a few great meals, croque monsieurs and bananas flambe.
We went to the opera one night to see Carmen at the National Theater. The tickets cost $3.20 each for seats at the back of the house on the top level. It was Linda's first opera and we all loved it because we knew the music and it was more of a lively theater production than a stuffy classical opera. The National Theater was beautifully decorated in gold and marble, and there was a Dvorak bust proudly displayed in the lobby among the other famous Czech musical personalities. Glasses of champagne at intermission were a bargain too at $2 per glass. The view of the castle at night from the balcony was the best part. For the rest of our lives every time we hear Dvorak's Moldau or any of the music from Carmen we will think of Prague.
4th of October - Vienna, Austria
We had exactly two days in Vienna before we planned to meet our
moms in Prague for Jen's 30th birthday. Vienna is an expensive city,
and we wanted to see as much as we could without blowing our budget.
We ended up staying at a hostel that was quite interesting, it was just an old
apartment, with one room that had mattresses strewn about the room. The
price was reasonable, so we decided that two nights there would be OK,
despite the lack of privacy of any kind or any organization to the
place. It worked out fine, except for the second night when the
Aussie's staying there decided it was OK to stay up all night playing
drinking games just outside of our sleeping area.
We had a very rigorous schedule of visits to museums, operas, palaces, churches,
cafes, and other sites to see in our two days there. We had to split up one
afternoon just to make sure we got them all in. Vienna is a beautiful
and immaculate city, with an amazing amount of old architecture that is perfectly
restored. It's flawless compared to many of the Eastern European
cities we have visited, which is impressive, but it seems a bit
unnatural. Every building is either in perfect condition or is
undergoing repairs and there are so many historical treasures
everywhere you look. The streets are very orderly, and we noticed that
people did not dare cross the street when the Don't Walk sign was lit, even if
there were no cars anywhere to be found. The entire city also has ample bike
lanes, and cyclists get very upset if you accidentally intrude on
their bicycling space. So, after we got the hang of the rules, we set
out with a map and a plan.
We saw the Hapsburg's summer and winter home, we saw three art
museums, we saw Parliament, Parks, small neighborhoods, the city
center, and just about every part of the city that you could walk to
from our hostel. We were exhausted both nights we were there, which
made sleeping through the drinking games that much easier. The
highlight for us was making it to see an Opera. The Opera House in
Vienna is world famous, and costs 10 Euros to see during the day on a
tour of the interior, but we found out that it is possible to buy
standing room only tickets for Operas the night of certain
performances for 2 Euros. We went to see Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. It
was such a fantastic place, with 6 levels of seating, busts of all the
famous Viennese musicians like Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert, and a
grand entrance where people loitered for intermission. Even in the
standing room only section each person had their own personal super
title screen, which allowed us to choose the language we wanted to
read the words in. We only stayed for half the Opera, as standing room only after walking around for 10 hours was a little too much and it was really hot in the nose bleed section, but it was a great experience. We also didn't want to be seen
at intermission, as people were all dressed up, and we were looking
like tattered backpackers.
We went to the Belvedere Museum to see Gustav Klimt's famous painting
The Kiss, and caught an informative and innovative exhibit on
Austria's history (good and bad moments in the country's past). The
museums in Europe are much more engaging than the museums in the
States, they incorporate technology, art and interactive design to
provide an enveloping experience for visitors. We went to
Hundertwasser's KunstHaus (thanks to a recommendation by our friend
Agi in Budapest), which is a shrine to this architect/graphic artist
and we were both impressed by this man's accomplishments and
progressive ideas. We had to have a Weiner Schnitzel and giant beers
in Vienna, so we went out of our way to find a typical Wein style
restaurant that served up enormous portions of this world famous
Viennese dish. Jen was interested in Viennese cafe culture, so she
found a traditional cafe where she could sip a very expensive coffee
(3.5 Euros) one afternoon in order to hang out with the arty crowd and
admire the 19th century fittings and decor inside one of these temples
dedicated to the worship of caffeine. We walked all over the ring and
the inner city to see St Stephen's Cathedral, the Hofburg, Otto
Wagner's Art Nouveau buildings. We went to the Leopold Museum to see
an exhibit from Musee D'Orsey of Impressionist paintings, but even
more impressive was the Egon Schiele permanent collection. Finally,
Jen just couldn't get enough of Klimt, so she went to the Seccession
Building, where his Beethoven Frieze is displayed in the basement to
get a look at his larger than life tribute to the arts.
The city is full of so much history, it was the center of the world
not all that long ago. The Hapsburg summer palace was another mind
blowing experience, to see how much wealth was amassed and lavishly
spent on nothing in particular, besides showing off to the rest of the
world. It was interesting to learn that Marie Antoinette was a
Hapsburg daughter married off to the French to help ease tensions
between the two empires, as well as to help expand the Hapsburg
horizons. It is no surprise that someone brought up like she was in
Vienna would utter those famous last words "let them eat cake." Also
learning about how Mozart played in front of the queen at age 4, and
was internationally known at age 6 brings the whole concept of child
prodigy into focus. We were very impressed by the amount of history to
be learned, and the culture to be experienced in Vienna. Although a
little too orderly for us, it was the first city we've visited on the
trip that felt like a true world class city. From the easy to use
subway, to the Indian, Thai, and Vietnamese restaurants, to the
shopping districts filled with styles from haute couture to The Gap,
to it's high price tag on everything, it is a top flight destination.
1st of October - Budapest, Hungary
Billy's brother Scott studied in Budapest and has connections there, so he suggested that we get in touch with his old friend Agi. Agi insisted that we stay in her flat while we were in Budapest for a few days, as she had space for us in her daughters newly rebuilt room and they were away at university in the States. She was such a wonderful host and she opened her home to us as if we were family. She showed us Hungarian hospitality, which is a combination of gourmet homecooked specialties and warm company. She cooked incredible dinners for us each night and always insisted that we eat more of everything she prepared. She even packed lunches for us to take during the day while we were out sight seeing in the city. It was so nice to be cared for, to sleep in comfortable beds, to have a place to call home with all of the creature comforts that we have missed over the past ten months.
Because of infrequent buses from Romania to Hungary, we arrived at Agi's doorstep at 4am. She had breakfast prepared for us and we all went back to sleep after eating something. When we woke up later that morning we did laundry and ate constantly throughout the day while Agi cooked and gave us lessons on how to make palincsintas (crepes filled with milk curd, sour cream and sugar) and celery root soup. We lazed around the house talking with Agi and getting to know her. That night her boyfriend Janush drove us all to the citadella atop the hill so that we could see Budapest lit up at night, which is spectacular. It is a stunning city and it is especially dramatic at night. We stared down at the Danube River and its bridges and all the old buildings on the banks of the river. We went for a midnight stroll around Castle Hill, St Stephen's Cathedral, government buildings and the ornately decorated buildings that house the National Art Museum.
We went to the Terror Museum, which we were both impressed with. The subjects explored in the museum were the occupation of German Nazis and then later the occupation of Soviet Communists and how each regime terrorized Hungarians. We visited the Jewish synagogue and went to the very artful memorial constructed on the grounds of the synagogue. The memorial was a metal sculpture in the shape of a tree and each leaf had a Holocaust victim's name engraved on it. It was a very touching monument. We poked our heads into the Four Seasons hotel, because it is really opulent and we were curious to see how they justify charging 700 Euros per night for a room. We walked around the park, Heroes Square, Parliament, the Opera House. We went to Hungarian thermal baths to experience this pastime among men and women who like to torture themselves with hot and cold temperatures in saunas, steam rooms and pools. It was relaxing and the setting was like a Roman bathhouse.
We hopped on a metro train with tickets that Agi advised us to purchase and we thought that we were abiding by the rules until we were stopped by transit police as we exited the train. They asked for our tickets, which we produced, but they claimed weren't valid because we didn't get them stamped before entering the train. There were no instructions posted anywhere and it didn't seem like a very logical system, so we just didn't understand how to use the tickets we purchased in advance. We tried pleading our case, but in the end we were faced with the choice of accompanying the officer to the police station or paying a fine. We paid the fine, but we weren't happy about it. As we were leaving, we noticed that other tourists were being pulled off of trains and subjected to the same treatment and heavy fines. We have no complaints about Budapest other than this one. In fact, we loved Budapest, but this experience left us with a sour taste in our mouths. From what we could see they were taxing unsuspecting tourists on the metro and we didn't think that this was fair treatment.
Back at Agi's house, many more delicious meals awaited us, so there wasn't much time to fret over the metro debacle. We feasted on Porkolt, which is a paprika stew made with pork and Galuska, which is a homemade pasta (like spatzle) to soak up the sauce with. We also sampled Hungary's well known Egri Bikaver (Bull's Blood) red wine, which lived up to its reputation. Agi made us a vegetarian pasta one night that we have cooked for ourselves since. We also tried Hungarian Dobos Torte at a cafe one afternoon that was very rich and tasty, but it wasn't as good as the one that Billy's mom makes. We also had to try Hungarian goulash soup, which was flavored with paprika and warmed us up on a cold afternoon. We basically ate non-stop the entire time we were in Budapest and loved every minute of it.
After 3 days in Agi's home, we really didn't want to leave. We were just starting to get used to eating like kings and lapping up all of her special treatment. Our memories of Budapest are fond because of Agi's spirit, warmth, generousity and hospitality.
28th of September - Sighetu Marmatiei, Maramures - Romania
The train ride from Sighisoara to the Maramures region of Romania is a beautiful ride through rolling hills, old farms with people driving horse pulled wooden carts full of hay, and hay bails dotting the hillside. Maramures is in the North, bordering the Ukraine, and is known for its old world way of living, not much has changed there in the last 200 years. Many people still wear traditional peasant clothing, and agriculture is the way of life for almost everyone living there.
We arrived after a long train ride that literally stopped every 3 minutes in the middle of nowhere to allow someone to hop on or off near a hay bail or small road that might lead to where they live. We went to a hotel that was in our guide book, and entered this enormous Soviet style hotel that had 25 foot ceilings, hallways that went as far as the eye could see, and we were pretty sure it still had holes in the wall where listening devices were once been covertly hidden to monitor any anti-Communist murmurs. The place seemed so out of place in this remote little area, but it was actually a good deal and our room was three times bigger than any place we have stayed to date.
There is a lot of history in the town of Sighetu (it is about 3 miles from the Ukrainian border), as there used to be a large Jewish community there before WWII, there is a museum where the old Communist prison for political prisoners was during the 1950s, and Sigheti is also where Eli Wiesel, the Nobel Laureate and holocaust survivor, who actually coined the term "holocaust" was born. We went to Eli's old house which is now a museum. It was incredible to see the statistics they have tracked of the diminishing Jewish population of the city and region over the past 60 years. In 1939 there were 37,000 Jews in Maramures, today there are 147. The Wiesel museum touted many of his life achievements, and showed pictures of him in Kosovo and Bosnia with Clinton and Madeline Albright. He has dedicated much of his life to making sure that more genocides to not take place in other parts of the world, and it was interesting to see how prominent he was in the Clinton administration, able to push them into support for the Bosnian Muslims and the Kosovar Albanians. He says that indifference is as bad as committing the crimes themselves.
The next day we went to the Communist museum which used to be a very brutal and secret prison for political prisoners after WWII and during the beginning of the Communist regime in Romania. It was very interesting to see the brutality of the Communists towards their own people, and how the Romanians took to the streets and fought to overthrow the government by force not all that long ago. The museum is dubbed one of the three most important museums in Europe by the EU, the other two being Auschwitz and the WWII Museum in Normandy, France. We saw that many of the prisoners were old politicians that ran the country before Communism, many over 60 years old, and most did not survive more than a year in the prison.
Just outside Sighetu is a town called Sapanta where there is an old cemetery that we really wanted to see. We wanted to rent bikes to get there, but there were no bikes to be rented in town, we even tried to bribe people at the bike shop who sold bikes, but they wouldn't have it. So, we did the next best thing, which was to hitchhike. It is actually the only way people really get around there. You just stand on a designated corner, and passing cars stop and you get in, and pay them about $1 for the ride in and out of town, it works well for everyone.
We got our ride to Sapanta, which if you aren't paying very close attention you will drive by it in a second. We wanted to see what they call the "Merry Cemetery." This place is an old cemetery built around a church where all the headstones are made of wood, and painted in bright colors. What is even more incredible than seeing all these beautifully colorful tombstones against the green hills behind them, is that each one has a personalized painting of the life of the person that is buried beneath it. Some people have paintings of their vocation on their decorative headstones, like the farmer with his cows, or the welder with a blow torch mending a fence. Others have family portraits, so you see the deceased with all their kids, or the deceased holding hands with their husband or wife. Others have silly pictures, the deceased drinking and smoking, or gambling. The strangest of these cartoon-like paintings were the ones that illustrated how they died, a person being hit by a car, or a person drowning in a river. Each one also had a little story written about the person, and we were told they are always happy and lively stories, although we could not read them ourselves. This place was really inspirational, we have never seen death treated in such an uplifting way. We spent almost three hours looking at every possible headstone, we found the whole place to be a great idea, and a great tradition that has been carried down for over a hundred years in this little village in the middle of nowhere. We wondered what we would put on our tombstones, and decided that each of us in front of a computer screen would not do.
After we spent so much time in the merry cemetery, we walked up the hills behind the town and found a nice orchard to sit in where we could look out over the valley. Life is so slow there. People walked by, or rode on the back of horse drawn carts, always saying hello and moving at a very tenable pace. We really felt like we had traveled back in time a hundred years or so in Maramures, and no more so than in Sapanta. Every home we passed had a huge pile of maze drying, some pumpkins, hay bails, a horse or two, and little kids and dogs running around the yard. It was also the second day of sunshine we had seen in almost 10 days, so the experience was extra special. Afterwards we went back to the main road and hitched a ride into town, and had our favorite ciorba soup and hot wine to warm up, and then back to the Communist Hotel to sleep in our giant room.
22nd of September - Sighisoara, Romania
Sighisoara is a modern day tourist destination in Transylvania, and it just so happens to be where the Blaus lived for hundreds of years. Billy visited Sighisoara over two decades ago when some of his great aunts and great uncles were still alive and living together in what was the old Blau family home for hundreds of years located just outside the citadel. Billy remembers playing soccer in the streets with neighborhood kids, the trees on the hill in the backyard that his great aunts picked fruit and nuts from to bake cakes and pies every morning, the love and attention the whole family lavished upon him, the handmade goose down duvet one of his great aunts stuffed for him to sleep underneath on cold nights. His mom remembers the sound of horse pulled carts passing by on the street out in front of the old house and the affectionate family members greeting each other with hugs and kisses each morning. Today you can still see horse drawn carts outside of the citadel, but they share the road with cars, taxis, souvenir stands and throngs of tourists. It's easy to understand why a city like Sighisoara attracts tourists. It is majestically built inside a fortress perched on a hill, and it is as breathtaking from the inside of the citadel walls as it is from afar as seen when arriving by train.
Inside the citadel walls the streets are paved with cobblestone and the churches, clock tower, artillery bastions, and homes look as if they haven't changed since they were built somewhere between the 13th and 15th centuries. Sighisoara is peaceful and the pace of life is slow. The clock tower is the icon of the town, it sits atop the entrance to the citadel with its colorful ceramic roof tiles and fanciful parade of characters that dance in a circle at the stroke of the hour like a cuckoo clock. The spooky cemetery at the top of the hill is Gothic with its old tombstones and creepy trees. This is where Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) was born and the plaza in the citadel was once the site of impalings conducted by this legendary figure in Romania's history. We all know Vlad Tepes as the character that Bram Stoker's infamous Dracula is based on.
We went to Sighisoara in search of traces of the Blau family. We started out by visiting the old Blau family home on Illarie Chendi. As soon as we found a hostel and dropped off our backpacks, we walked directly there to see what had become of the old house. Sadly, it was the only house of the entire street that had recently been remodeled. The cement was still wet and the house hadn't even been painted yet. The edifice of the place was unrecognizable to Billy. Strangely enough in this small, quaint town on this old historic street a "night club" had been built a few doors down from the old Blau family home. At this point we realized that time had changed this place and as the old saying goes, "There's no going home."
Seeing the torn down and reconstructed Blau house was anticlimactic, so we decided to start looking for the graves of Billy's great aunts, great uncles, great grandmother and great grandfather at the Jewish cemetery. The first day we went to the main cemetery on the hill inside the citadel and searched hundreds of headstones for the name Blau, but didn't find any Blaus there.
We asked a local kid where we could find the Jewish cemetery and he didn't know the meaning of the word "Jewish" despite his fluent English. This was not the first time we got a blank look from a Romanian when we uttered the word "Jewish." We started to wonder why no one knew what Jewish meant. Was it because it is still a taboo subject or is there so little knowledge about Jews because they were exterminated from Romania in the hundreds of thousands over 60 years ago? Miriam, a friend of the Blau family who grew up in Sighisoara and now lives in Chicago, suggested that people might be pretending not to understand the word "Jewish." We saw swastikas spray painted in graffiti in various parts of Romania and we wondered how antisemitism can still exist without Jews in Romania.
The local kid told us about a Hungarian cemetery on the hill opposite the citadel, behind the post office. We thought that they may be buried there since this part of Romania once belonged to Hungary, and Billy's family called themselves Hungarian Jews. So, on our second day in Sighisoara we walked to that cemetery and searched each headstone with no luck. We were directed to yet another cemetery outside of town by the concierge at Hotel Sighisoara, and the next day we visited that cemetery, but again failed to find any Blaus there. We finally sprung for a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the Jewish cemetery, but even he had to call in for the location. When we finally arrived there, we found it locked up behind a chain link fence with barbed wire all around. One of the groundskeepers at the larger Christian cemetery nearby showed us how to sneak in under the fence around the back. We crept through bramble bush and into the cemetery and finally found the Blaus graves. It was an emotionally cathartic experience for Billy as he read the names of his family members buried there. At the lower end of the cemetery we discovered a monument to the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, and we found 3 members of the Blau family's initials engraved there. We placed stones on each of the Blau headstones, as is the tradition. Nandor, Billy's great uncle, was shipped to a Nazi work camp in the early 1940s and at the end of WWII he walked all the way back to Sighisoara from the Ukraine to find his wife and two children missing. His family was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.
Leaving the cemetery as we walked back to the citadel we passed a small hospital clinic, out of which a new father exited and yelped with glee about his newborn baby. The proud dad with family in tow crossed the street and hopped into a horse drawn wooden cart and sped home. It was a poignant and uplifting symbol of life, which we appreciated after our solemn visit to the cemetery.
We spent some time trying to track down one of the neighbor kids that Billy once played with when his family was in Sighisoara. We had her name and her photo, which we showed to everyone we met to inquire about her. No one recognized her or knew her name. We went to the German "Gymnasium" school on the hill where Billy's family attended high school to ask if they had a register of names of former students, but we came up empty handed there also.
After we had exhausted all possibilities of tracking down ghosts of the Blau family in Sighisoara, we spent our last afternoon there on a park bench out in front of the house we rented a room in. It was a sunny day, the first of its kind in weeks, as it had been raining almost everyday since we arrived in Romania. We sat there drinking homemade red wine that Marius gave us and watching the routines of the neighbors. One neighbor was passing time chatting with other neighborhood folks while his ducks were feeding on seeds in the grass and bathing in a small tub of water outside of his home. Another neighbor let his chickens out of his yard to feed, and we giggled as they sprinted out of the gate as if they were running in a race.
Before long an old lady named Berta came and sat next to us on the bench. Neither Berta nor her young companion spoke English, but we assessed the old lady's age (94) and we figured that she may have attended school with some of Billy's relatives. We asked if she knew the name Nandor Blau and it seemed to sound familiar to her as her young companion shouted it into her one good ear. In a town as small as Sighisoara, everyone knows everyone that lives here, as we were told by a cafe owner in the citadel. It was a stretch, but we had finally found someone who remembered the Blaus, right there on that park bench completely by chance. Unfortunately all we could exchange with this link to the past were smiles, small talk about the chicken and ducks, the plane that delivered us to Romania from America, and the phone she uses to call faraway places like San Francisco to say "halo."
With that stroke of luck we were off to our next destination in northern Romania. The countryside in this part of the world is so attractive, especially between Sighisoara and Dej. We took in the scenic view through the train window on another sunny day in Fall. There were green sloping hills and golden corn fields growing so high that you can just barely see the silhouettes of horses or men's heads poking out through their rows. We tried to memorize the images of Hershey Kiss shaped haystacks as big as houses and muddy dirt roads with massive puddles children were chasing each other around and men on bicycles were trying to avoid. We saw dozens of small villages of red tile roofs with the ubiquitous church steeple rising from their centers in perfect valleys. Many of these scenes could have been witnessed by a train passenger 50 or even 100 years ago. Romanian countryside is like a timeless illustration in a romantic storybook.
20th of September - Sinaia and Brasov, Romania
We arrived in Sinaia, a little ski town not far from Bucharest in the middle of a total downpour, and the rain did not stop until we left many days later. Sinaia is a very idyllic town, not too much different from Tahoe in California, catering to a ski crowd in winter and is mostly sleepy off season. We went there to go to Peles Castle, which we heard was a can't miss from the folks we met at the wedding in Bucharest.
We decided not to brave the out and out downpour our first day there, so we stayed in our cold and damp hotel room and skipped dinner so we would not catch a cold venturing back into the rain. The next morning we woke up to more rain, but it was not as intense, so we put all of our rain gear on and started up towards the grand Peles Castle. After a 30 minute walk we were drenched, and found out that the castle was closed, so we had to come back the next day. We bought some food and some wine that they poured directly into our old water bottle from the barrel at the grocery store and ate dinner at the hostel, and watched all the news stories of flooding all over Romania on TV. We thought we might be trapped there for a long time.
We did finally make it to the castle the next morning, and we were not disappointed at all. It is set in an incredibly picturesque valley with mountains extending in all directions. The castle itself looks like a Tudor Mansion on steroids, as it was originally built by the German Archduke of the Transylvanian region in the 1880's. Inside each room was incredibly well decorated, with over the top wood work, paintings (some done by hand on the walls by Gustav Klimt), tapestries, statues, chandeliers, and anything else that would be fit for a King at that time. One amazing part was that each room had a different theme, and was decorated from top to bottom in that theme. There was a Turkish room, an Italian Rococo room, a Moorish room, a German room, and a French theatre and armory rooms for both Asian collections and a European collection. The house was the first of its kind to have electricity, central heating, and a central vacuum system. This was one place that we were in awe of every room, it was spectacular. After visiting Peles castle, we knew that no other castle in Romania would hold a candle to this one, so we skipped the more famous castles in the touristy parts of Transylvania.
From Sinaia we took the train to Brasov, which is a good sized city another 2 hours into Transylvania. Brasov has an old square in the middle of town, but it was being used for the annual music festival when we were in town. The music festival is quite famous, and a lot of big name acts have played at the same festival in previous years, but they are usually a couple years out of their prime when they hit Brasov, and this year was no exception with Joe Cocker headlining the show. We figured out how to sneak in to the concert, instead of paying for a ticket, we could go early to the center and get a cup of coffee at one of the cafes within the concert area. At 6:00 PM the police sweep through and kick everyone out of the square that does not have a ticket, or is not patronizing one of the local establishments. So, we sat for 4 hours in a cafe nursing two coffees to see the concert and we could see all the action pretty well from their outdoor seating area. The cold chased us out before it was over, but we had fun watching different acts from around the world get their 2-3 songs each. The audience was not what we would call enthusiastic, as after each one they stopped talking long enough to give a half hearted round of applause, then go back to talking to each other again. It almost seemed like they were being forced to clap, but didn't really want to.
The next day we went took off for Billy's family hometown of Sighisoara.
