Days 139-140: Island Hopping

Stockholm has very interesting geography. I knew there were a few islands involved before getting here, but when you look at a map and wander around you realize just what a jumble it is. The central city spreads over 14 islands, and instead of a central river or bay like most cities it's just a mix of waterways and islands that eventually work their way out to the Baltic Sea. 30% of the city is water, and another 30% parks, so there's a lot of open space.

My hostel is on a big island south of the bulk of the city, connected to it by the small but important island of Gamla Stan. Gamla Stan is the historic "old city", which still looks much like it did 600 years ago in many places. It is also where the Royal Palace is located.

Many of the small islands are covered in parks, museums and restaurants. Yesterday I spent much of the day on the island of Skansen, which is largely parks and woodland, but which also has an amusement park and numerous museums.

The museum I checked out on the island was the very unique Vasa Museum. The story of the Vasa is an eventful but brief one. It was a massive warship that the king of Sweden ordered built in 1626. It was one of the largest and most heavily armed ships of the time, and it was covered with ornate painted carvings to show how rich and powerful Sweden was. Unfortunately the master ship builder who was in charge died before the ship was completed, and the person that took over was used to a wider design. All the canons made the ship top-heavy, and it is suspected there was insufficient ballast to stabilize it, and the result was that the new ship, which was to be the star of the navy in Sweden's war against Poland, tipped over and sank in the harbor 20 minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628.

As is often the case with archaeology - their misfortune led to a wonderful treasure of history. The brackish water of the harbor didn't have enough salt to make a good environment for the worms that eat through the wood of most shipwrecks, so when the ship was found and carefully raised over 300 years later the hull was in extremely good condition. The entire process of retrieving the ship, treating it for preservation and slowly reconstructing it from the pieces found was an elaborate undertaking, and as no ship this size had ever been preserved it was a lot of trial and error. As impressive as the ship itself is, all of the preserved items found on and around the ship are just as important at providing a detailed snapshot of that period.

Old ships isn't exactly a passion of mine, and the fact I've written this much already is an indication of just how impressive the setup of the museum was. It's 6 floors, built around the ship itself. The floors contain a cinema, information on the history surrounding the ship, the items found on board, models, reconstructions, and pretty much anything else you can think of relating to the ship. All together, probably the best organized and most detailed museum I've ever been to.

Today I visited another interesting museum - the Nobel museum. It has history on the founding and information on the modern process for Nobel prizes. It also has lots of information and displays on different prize winners and the work they did to win the award. My favourite part was an exhibition they had where a photographer had past recipients of medicine, physics and chemistry awards come in and unexpectedly got them to draw a big picture relating to their winning work and hold it for their photo. The range of pictures is huge as some would draw elaborate diagrams with complex equations, some would draw a few squiggles, one ignored the science entirely and drew a picture of himself drinking at the afterparty. Additionally, you can listen to audio of each scientiest explaining the drawing and their work, and it becomes clear pretty fast that a lot of the most brilliant scientists are also incredibly characters. Also - one of the cooler museum gift shops you'll run into, at least if you're a bit of a science nerd like me.

My other big destination was Millesgarden - an art gallery and sculpture park created by sculptors Carl and Olga Milles. The park is more than 10km from where my hostel is, but I'm being incredibly cheap in Sweden - partly out of principle since everything is so ridiculously expensive - so I decided to walk there (and back again afterwards). 20km isn't that unusual for me, but that was just one part of the day, and most of it was in a persistent drizzle, so overall not the most pleasant walk.
The park itself was nice, but probably not worth the walk and the cost to get in. The gardens contained sculptures by both Milles (though mostly Carl) and casts of other famous sculptures by other artists. You could also wander around their old home and studio and see more art they had made and collected, and visit an attached gallery showing other artists' work. Carl Milles had a pretty whimsical style, and although his sculptures are pretty interesting, artistically I generally prefer more realistic looking figures.

Day 120: Train to Krakow

Today was probably my most complicated train journey so far, and the fact it went so smoothly is a testament to how much I've improved with the train system. I got to the train station in Brno around 8:15am, got a reservation for the second stage (of 3) of my trip, and got onto the train shortly after. The wait between trains along the way was pretty minimal, and by 3:30pm I was safely in Krakow.

The hostel I'm staying at in Krakow is mere steps away from the central square, and after checking in and spending a few minutes to relax I decided to wander around and see what was going on. The square is huge and full of interesting buildings and cafes.

I started wandering towards the castle and was recognized by a Finnish girl who was on the last leg of my train ride and we hung out for the remainder of the evening. We checked out the castle, which looked a bit dull from outside the walls but inside was a gorgeous gothic construction of spires and towers.

The legends say that the area was ravaged by a dragon, and at the base of the castle hill they have an unimpressive dragon statue that periodically breathes fire, but infrequently enough that it's hard to get a good picture of.

We went for drinks in a quiet little bar in a basement that was full of incense and pillows. I think we were the only ones there for most of the evening, but it was a pretty cool little place.

The night was a bit rough as the people in my room got in at 4:30am and were very loud for at least half an hour, and then at 8:00am I got kicked out of the room because they were replacing the bunks in it. I'm just going to hang out in town today, and then check out a few things nearby tomorrow.

Day 116: Prague Castle

I started a bit late today as I slept in some and then wrote the post for yesterday. I crossed through the old town again to check out the castle and the big St. Vitus Cathedral next to it. They had a few different admissions that gave you access to different parts, and I just did that 'Quick Tour' one which covered the cathedral, old castle, St. George's Chapel and a row of buildings called the 'Golden Row'.

The cathedral was my favourite of the stops. It's a large gothic cathedral with a few nice silver statues in it. It also contains a stained glass window designed by the previously mentioned Alphonse Mucha. I'm not a big aficionado of stained-glass, but it is, by a good margin, the most beautiful stained glass window I've seen. I'm probably a bit biased since I like Mucha, but the colour and design of it seem so much nicer than the others I've seen.

Next was the old part of the castle. Photos weren't allowed, but honestly there wasn't much interesting to really take pictures of. The most interesting part was the signs with history and information, especially about the 30 years war and lead up to it. The basilica wasn't too spectacular either. The Golden Lane was a bit more interesting. It's a street of little colourful cottages within that city walls. Their quaint style combined with the location made them popular places in the last couple centuries, so artists and writers would sometimes rent them out. Franz Kafka lived in one of them for a stretch, but now they are all either shops or dislplays of old craft houses and shops. The displays were an interesting snapshot, and included a gold smiths shop, an herbalist, a tavern, a seamstress and maybe a couple others.

The last point of note in the castle area is a semi-famous statue of a boy. Somehow a story got started that rubbing the penis of this statue gives a person good luck, so now the penis of the otherwise black statue is gold from all the polishing.

How do you make rubbing the penis of a teenaged boy statue for luck even creepier? Stick it in front of the Toy Museum. Ah, Prague.

Due to some miscalculations on my part the next few days will be a bit weird. I'll explain more tomorrow, but it's looking like I'll be going to another Czech city with nothing to do in tomorrow for a couple days, then continuing on to Krakow.

Day 107: The Buda Side of the Danube

The switch from my hostel of last night to my place for the next 3 days went relatively smoothly. The place I'm in now is a private room in an apartment with 4 privated rented bedrooms and a shared washroom and kitchen. I'm on the Pest (east) side of the river, but a lot of the highlights of the city are along the west bank of the Danube on the Buda side, so I decided to focus on that for the day. On my way there I stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Menza that the guy who set me up in the apartment recommended. They have a fixed menu lunch for 990 HUF (about $4) that changes each day. I couldn't read the lunch description but ordered anyway since it's a pretty great price at a pretty upscale restaurant. It turned out lunch was two courses - a raspberry soup followed by mashed potatoes and chicken with a vegetable and rice stuffing. Probably one of the best meals I've had all trip, and can't really argue with $4 for it.

I also walked down Vaci St which is a big pedestrian shopping street, but I didn't really look into things in too much detail there yet. At the end of the street I crossed over the bridge to the west side of the river and hiked up the hill through the Jeubelumi Park to see the citadel and Liberty statue at the top (and the view of course, you know me and views).



I descended the hill on the opposite side and started hiking up the next hill over, which is the real interesting one. It contains the Budai castle (which now holds a museum and art gallery), some beautiful churches and a stretch of towers and walls known, for some reason, as the Fisherman's Bastion. The hill itself is also full of a warren of underground tunnels and chambers and a secret underground hospital. I was told that the tunnels are empty and not really worth buying a ticket to see, but if I have time I might check them out before I leave. Likewise I wasn't in too much rush for the gallery and museum since I'll be seeing much larger and more famous ones in Prague, Vienna and Berlin fairly soon. The castle had some beautiful fountains and sculptures around it though.




Further north on the hill was the Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion, which also gave another nice view down across the river to the Parliament buildings.





I meandered my way back through the city and picked up some simple food at a grocery store for dinner. I'm going to start my day tomorrow in the opposite direction, but I'm not sure what all I'll cover.

Day 103: Bran and Rasnov

The plan for the day was to take a pretty straight forward bus ride out to Bran and stop at Rasnov (which is along the way) on the way back. I took a local bus from the city center to the regional bus station where buses do loops through nearby towns. Getting on the correct bus was pretty straight forward, but the bus wasn't terribly comfortable. Everything was covered in brown and maroon carpeting and their idea of environmental control wasn't air conditioning, but instead hanging 30 air fresheners from the bus ceiling to combat the inevitable smell of a carpeted bus without AC full of people.

I wasn't really sure what I was looking for to know when to get off the bus. My reason for going to Bran was to visit the castle there, but I didn't know if the bus went straight to the castle, or if it was tucked away somewhere. I knew Bran was the next town after Rasnov, so after Rasnov when we reached a cluster of buildings and about a quarter of the bus stood up to get off I figured that was it. Once off, I quickly realized that it definitely wasn't Bran, and the only reason so many people got off together is because they were all travelling together. I knew I was fairly close to Bran, but I wasn't sure if fairly close meant 2km or 20km, but not wanting to sit around for an hour waiting for the next bus I started walking. Luckily it was on the smaller side of that range, probably 3 or 4km to Bran and than another 1 or 2 of walking for me to finally find the castle. On the plus side, if you're going to have to walk along a highway in the heat in the middle of nowhere, a rural mountain valley in central Romania is a pretty nice nowhere to do it.



Bran Castle is marketed as "Dracula's Castle", but in reality it has a pretty loose connection to Vlad Tepes. It's still an interesting piece of gothic architecture from the 1400s and the inside is a sort of museum covering everything from Dracula to Romanian royalty. There isn't too much exploring to be done since ropes and locked doors lead people on a one way path through the building, but the "secret stairway" and balconies looking down into the courtyard were the most interesting bits for me.



Next it was off to Rasnov. The two things I'd been told were worth checking out were the fortifications on top of the overlooking hill and a cave a few kilometers out of town in the woods. I went to visit the fortifications first, and since I didn't know how long it would take and it was already getting into the afternoon I decided to take transportation up. Transportation up in Rasnov consists of a tractor with a big cart 5 times the size of the tractor tied to the back. Going up wasn't too bad, but going down a sleep slope behind a tractor when you're in a massive cart without independent steering or breaks is a bit tense.


The fortifications at the top weren't terribly exciting. Mostly it was just a wall with ruìns in it, and the buildings that were still standing were used for very touristy shops and snack bars. It did have a nice view of the town below and the surrounding forested hills though.




The cave was a few more km out of town, but in the same direction, so I just kept on walking once I was back down. From the parking there was another walk through the woods to get to the cave.

The cave itself consisted of a fairly long tunnel and then one big chamber at the end. We had to go in as a group with a guide who talked about the cave, but it was all in Romanian, so I didn't understand much of it. The central chamber was pretty impressive though, and you could see the stalagtite/stalagmites process in action.



After the cave I walked back to Rasnov. I waited for the bus for 20 minutes and ultimately ended up taking a ride from a local heading to Brasnov for the same price as the bus would have cost. Where he dropped me off wasn't the most convenient, but it wasn't too far to walk once I figured out a route over the hill between where I was and where I was going. I eventually made it back, but a lot of wear on my feet.

Day 91: Cappadocia from Alternate Perspectives

I'd already seen some of the interesting underground bits of Cappadocia - now it was time to see things from higher up. I got up at 3:00am for a 4am pickup that took me to Goreme, about half an hour away, in preparation for a hot air balloon ride. The balloon ride isn't part of the tour, and it is a bit pricey, but it was the one thing that other travellers had told me I should not miss. One of the others from my group was also doing the balloon ride, so I had some company as we headed to the meetup spot. The company we were going with is the largest in the area, and the breakfast with the others was quite crowded. After eating we were shuttled out to fields outside of town in our different groups for different balloons. We got the Mercedes Benz balloon and a pilot (Andrew) from New Zealand. We took off shortly after sunrise and the trip was about an hour over which we varied in altitude between several thousand feet and close enough to the rock that I could almost reach out and touch it. We drifted slowly over the most interesting of the Cappadocia landscape, getting a good look at the sandstone formations and the windows and pigeon holes carved out of the rock. Cappadocia is the most popular ballooning location in the world, and being surrounded by dozens of other balloons just added to the experience.







Once we rejoined the rest of the group we headed back to the Goreme area for a hike through Goreme Valley. Now I got to see the formations up close as we walked along the valley floor. The valley had lots of wild fruit trees - at least plum, cherry, apple and oranges that I saw, as well as small tended farm plots. In the middle of the valley a guy had set up a small rest stop where he sold fresh orange juice - probably from oranges picked in the valley. It was a neat place to chill out. There were also numerous pigeon holes carved into the rock. The pigeon holes are made to attract pigeons, and then the droppings left behind are used as fertilizer.




At the end of the hike we came out in a small village that had this amazing cliff full of dug out rooms. As the others waited for the bus I immediately took off and found a route up to the cliff, and eventually managed to climb up to the top level of rooms. Everything is abandoned now, and the interiors are pretty barren, but when it was inhabited it must have been such a unique place. Even empty I find it gorgeous.



All this, and it wasn't even noon yet. Through the rest of the day we visited the Fairy Chimneys, a handful of Christian churches (again carved into the stone) with frescoes painted on the walls and ceilings near Goreme, Uchisar castle - which is a town around a big hill of sandstone - more rooms carved out on the top, and probably a few other minor stops I'm forgetting.








We finally got back to the hotel, and the remaining 3 others in my group headed off to fly home a few days early to go get back to work - leaving me as the only person left on the tour along with the guide and driver. Even more awkward, not only was I the only person left on the tour, but also we were the only people left in the entire hotel. I have no idea how many rooms the hotel had, but the dining room sat 250 at the same time, so having an entire hotel basically just supporting me felt a bit strange.