Beyond BUDA-PEsht

​The night after our beer tasting, we upped our classiness a little bit.  Not that beer tasting isn’t civil and enlightening! We had met two awesome people from ​Sweden and discussed tourism, politics, and television (specifically; Burning wooden goat in Gävle, the Canadian election, and Rick and Morty), t’was lovely.

So by classy, I mean attending a symphony performance by the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum, one of the most historic venues for classical performances that exists.

Unfortunately, since Lindy and I have been wearing the same tattered rags for over a month now, we figured I should at least by some pants that aren’t jeans to wear to the event.

20 euros later I have some Euro fitting H&M pants that are about 0.5 class units better than jeans. However it didn’t compare all that well to the ball gowns and tuxedos at the event.

Earlier we had learned an interesting story about the Rudolfinum. During WW2, the #3 Nazi in command and classical music aficionado, Reinhard Heydrich decides to make his office in the historic building. Unfortuantely for him, one of the many statues of famous composers adorning the roof is a Jewish Felix Mendelson (The current Queen of England’s favourite composer). 

Richard Heydrich.

As he was a main orchestrator behind the holocaust, this simply wouldn't do.

He orders two men to have the statue taken down, unfortunately for them, they have no idea which one is Mendelson. So they devise a simple (?) method to figure it out, they get the statue with the biggest nose…

​Too bad that the very German, and very not-Jewish Richard Wagner had the biggest nose, needless to say Heydrich wasn’t pleased. 

Thankfully, there was a small Prague uprising which resulted in a somewhat successful plan to have Heydrich assassinated. After the war was over all statues we’re safely returned to their original spot.

The performance at the Rudolfinum was nice, there was a few pieces I recognized, namely an absolutely EPIC rendition of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It knocked our socks off.

I mean this in all seriousness, a trip covering as much of Europe as we are, is not complete without visiting a concentration or death camp. There is simply no better way to grasp and feel the atrocities that humans are capable of, than to visit the hallowed grounds in which they occurred.

We spent the next day on a full day tour outside of the city, to Terezin interment camp, a unique establishment among the Nazi’s terrible variety of camps. It was used mainly as a gathering point for Jews coming from all over Europe, to be held temporarily before being trained off for execution. 

It was a moving day altogether and not enough words available to discuss here. One story in particular which got me was of a young boy, Petr Ginz.

In order to maintain a façade for the visiting Swiss Red Cross personnel to deem the facilities habitable, art was “encouraged” from officers to prisoners. Much of the art was done by children, and is pretty gut wrenching to look at.

Historically a fort, an arial view of Terezin.

​Petr Ginz worked with some other boys to run a small magazine, Petr did the Sci-fi section. One of his illustrations was a completely hypothetical drawing of what Earth would look like from the moon.

This reminded me of a condition astronauts feel called The Overview Effect, when they see the Earth as a whole for the first time from space.

The Effect occurs when you can no longer distinguish borders between countries; conflicts based on our differences transition from justified to petty. 

​I can’t help but wonder if Petr Ginz was trying to accomplish the same Overview ​feeling through illustration… Unfortunately Petr was on one of the last transports to Auschwitz and died just before the war ended aged 16.

Overview Effect

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Ruin bar?

There really is no Segway from holocaust stories.... but next thing you know we’re leaving Prague for Budapest on the train at 9:00AM. The nice Asian man sitting across from Lindy and I offers me a beer? I didn’t want to be rude, so the earliest beer yet was on this train, with an old man who didn’t speak English.

As we approach Budapest, our expectations lower. The sides of the tracks are covered in trash, there are dilapidated and collapsing buildings, and just not good vibes. Thankfully as soon as we actually ARRIVED in the city, it was really nice.

​Our first day we did a big walk around, crossing over to the Buda side of the river to see the palace and old fort. In the old town there is a church named after one of Budapest’s most popular former kings, St. Mattias. From pictures and statues, he was one mean lookin’ mug, but I guess he kept invaders out of Hungary so he was well liked.

​St. Mattias church was a relatively colourful and unique looking church, polar opposite of the stereotypical cathedral/castle we saw in Cologne, my favourite of the trip so far.

Lindy read about a cool place where they do wine tastings in a cellar, cliff side wine vault. We tried our luck without reservation, and succeeded! Thankfully two other people cancelled that night.

We tried two whites, a rose, and two reds, all Hungarian. I’m sad that Hungary produces wine in such small batches, because none makes it to Canada. We both thought this wine was great. The two people running it were also stellar; very friendly and knowledgeable. Faust Wine Cellar, we recommend.

The low light ambiance did not photograph well.

Lindy wasn’t feeling well the next day (unrelated to wine) and laid low for most of it. Since I was now free and easy, I got some booze and went to the nearest gentleman’s club!

Just kidding, I went to an art gallery.

I'll give you the 5 cent breakdown, uninformed, uneducated Mike Sime review of the Budapest National Gallery contents:

It seems you can categorize all time periods of paintings of people into 4 different periods:

• The typical religious type of painting ?-1500
• Moving towards realism but messing key things up 1700-1800 (My favourite section)
• Very realistic 1800-1900
• Screw realism 1900-?

I’ll give a few examples of each.

I really thought the two paintings above were hilarious. They seem to be getting better at painting people, but they really botch one or two human features which makes the whole thing just funny.

And then people improved at painting! The paintings actually look realistic! Faces of people look good enough to be used for a successful police sketching. But then as the twentieth century approached, artists apparently grew restless.

Artists everywhere collectively said screw it.

And that's everything you need to know about art!

The next night was our last night in Budapest, so we went out with a bang. We went on a Pub Tour (Tour, not Crawl) to take us around and see the unique places on the Pest side of the Danube. We had two Hungarian group leaders, four cool Aussies, and us.

The main draw of Budapest’s night life is the very unique, highly replicable, but still strangely unique Ruin bar.

Basically they were abandoned buildings of one kind or another, schools, meat markets, factories, that have been converted to bars and clubs. They provide a VERY cool and unique atmosphere.

​Overall we had a great night and met some cool people. It was a nice punctuation to a good time in Budapest.

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United kingdom

Just a wee stopover in London before our Scottish adventure.
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We didn’t do a ton in London, on account of everything being so expensive. We walked around a little bit, met a friend of Lindy’s, Kyra, for a Dim Sum lunch which was delicious. We did pick up some cheap tickets at the TKTS booth and saw the play Wicked, which was really good. We were sitting pretty far back so we couldn’t make out the faces, but still good.

The next day we take the overnight bus to Edinburgh, I revert to a kid in a candy store behaviour with the overwhelming Scotch choices, and we begin our 8 day car rental through Scotland.

​You just have to be constantly reminding yourself… drive on the left side of the road, Mike, left side of the road…..

Lindy overlooking her city of Edinburgh