Florence!

But first...

Goodbye to Slovenia: kiddos on a field trip to the train station (I was always the one in the big, pink, puffy coat).





First look at the Duomo:




















A little closer:

Day trip to Bohinj

Apparently it's pronounced "boe-heen." Anyway, it's a small mountain town a short distance from Bled. You can ride a gondola up to Vogel Mountain to get a nice view of the Alps (see cables at left).

Bled, Slovenia

After Ljubljiana I went to Bled which, as you can see, is near the mountains, and on a lake. Oh yeah, there's also a cute little island on the lake with a church on it. Pretty! And Peaceful!
Basically, the thing to do in Bled is stroll around, take in the scenery, and eat. Oh darn. Bled has a special dessert called Kremna Rezina, which is a big poof of vanilla custard, whipped cream, and pastry dough.

Photos: 1. Bled lake with church on island, mountain behind pink cloud, and castle on cliff (Guess I forgot to mention the castle earlier. There's a castle. It's on a cliff...overlooking the lake...and the island church...and pretty much the whole town).
2. I just like this picture for some reason. I think it's sublime. Slovenia is predominately Catholic. Many homes in Bled have a Virgin Mary shrine or a crucifix in the front yard.
3. View of Bled from the castle.
4. Kremna Rezina and coffee. I also like this picture for obvious, yummy reasons.

Slovenia: I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit rock and roll

Ljubljana. That's loob-lee-ah-nah for you non Slovenian speakers.
Slovenia was great! Well, at least the parts I saw were nice. It's kind of like a cross between Germany and Italy, although I guess that describing a country soley by comparing it to other countries is kind of lazy so suffice it to say that Slovenia has Alps, good gelato, good coffee, and things are fairly clean and well-organized. It's a land of hay racks, bee keeping, and Donald Trump's wife.
Now folks, I think that my hometown is pretty great, and you probably think yours is, too. And we may be right, but let me ask you this: does your hometown have a chandelier in its main intersection? (And no, old Christmas lights left over from last year do not count)







Above: Chandelier in intersection; houses on the river; Dragon Bridge; cat in restaurant (we had a lovely candle-lit dinner but I haven't heard from him since. Typical.)

And then I found out how early I had to get up to catch the train.

Buda (not the chubby, smiley guy)

Pictures: Parliment Building; Matthias church from the inside and from the backside





The Parliment building is actually in Pest, but I took this picture standing across the river in Buda.
What did I do in Buda besides take pictures of nice buildings and visit a church? Well, for one thing, I had fish soup. Fish soup has never really sounded super appetizing to me, but I tried it and it was pretty tastey! Yes, I can imagine what parts of a fish they use to make fish soup. But in this instance I decided to feign ignorance for the sake of lunch.

Pest

Buda has the castle, a couple cool churches, and a nice view of the city, but Pest has everything else worth seeing, plus better ambience and most of the good places to eat. So I spent most of my time in Pest.







Pictures:St. Istvan's (St. Stephen's Basilica); House of Terror Museum (museum of Nazi and Communist occupation housed in a former prison building); Violin and Clarinet duet on the square.

Budapest

Monica's scientific approach to sightseeing in Budapest.
Day 1: Wander around Pest taking pictures of various nifty-looking buildings.

Day Trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Krakow

Heeeere's Krakow! I love the Old Town square in Krakow. It's got two churches, a bugler, horse and buggy rides, break-dancing kids, a folk band, a massive market hall, several dozen restaurants, two billion pigeons, and ice cream. What more could you want?

Well, if you want a change of pace, you take a 20 minute walk from the Old Town to the old Jewish district, Kazimierz. Before World War II 80% of the World's Jewish popluation lived in Poland (I didn't realize it was that high). Now there are only a couple hundred Jews living in Krakow. Understandably, the Kazimierz neighborhood feels a little empty and pretty neglected, but it seems like they're working to rejuvenate the Jewish heritage in the area. I stayed in a hotel in Kazimierz and it kind of grew on me. It's very blue collar, lots of convenience stores and coffee shops/bars. The non-touristy part of Krakow is full of small stores that sell crazy combinations of things. Like leather goods and shampoo, for instance. I can't imagine that most of these places are able to stay in business very long, but OK. Lots of entreprenuers taking advantage of capitalism, I guess.

Top to Bottom: Wawel Cathedral (kind of an architectural hodgepodge); Market Square with St. Mary's Church and Cloth Hall; street in Kazimierz; Tempel Synagogue in Kazimierz

War Saw

From Vilnius, I took the overnight bus to Warsaw, Poland. But we won't dwell on that crime against humanity.

Warsaw was the first city that I visited the first time I went to Europe, so it was kind of neat to go back and take another look. The Old Town square in Warsaw is cool to me because it's a 20th century rebuild (Hitler had it destroyed as punishment for the Warsaw uprising), but it feels pretty authentic. Not really much else interesting to report about my time in Warsaw, except that I went to a Catholic mass on Sunday morning in one of the churches in the Old Town. And the place was packed! I'm not talking all the pews were full, I'm talking people were standing shoulder to shoulder in the center aisle and overflowing the narthex onto the street. Not tourists, mostly Polish people. And did everybody still attempt to kneel and stand at all the appropriate places? You better believe they did. Later that day I went to the Church of the Holy Cross, where Frederick Chopin's heart is encased in one of the pillars of the sanctuary. That was cool, but not quite as dramatic as church with the Poles.

Oh yes, another Warsaw landmark is the ever-visible "Stalin's Palace of Culture and Science." It was a present To: Warsaw. Much Love, J. Stalin in the 50s. Nowadays it houses a museum and some theaters. The Poles (also not big fans of the Soviet occupation) nicknamed it after part of Stalin's anatomy. I'm sure you can guess which part.

Above: Old Town Square; Stalin's Palace

Vilnius 2

I should probably say that I didn't really have a guidebook going into Riga or Vilnius, so I just kind of figured things out on my own. It was a fun adventure, mostly because there were a lot of times (especially in Vilnius) where I strolled up to something and thought, "What is going on here?" Case in point: the church in the previous post. I was just walking down this really narrow, quiet sidestreet when all of a sudden this big tower of a building appears, all boarded up, sitting in what looks like somebody's unmowed backyard.

A couple interesting tidbits about Lithuania: They have one of the oldest spoken languages and they have an important anniversay coming up in 2009. It will apparently mark 1000 years since the name "Lithuania" first appeared in written record. Party on.

Vilnius is a soup of construction right now. The Old Town is packed with churches and old buildings of all sorts that weren't exactly given any TLC during the communist era. So now it's fix up time. Even with all the jackhammers, though, this was one of my favorite Old Towns so far. The entrance to Vilnius' Old Town is called the "Gates of Dawn." How can you not have a good time after going through the "Gates of Dawn?"

Two museums that I went to here were the Genocide Museum and the Holocaust Museum. The Genocide Museum is actually a former KGB prison/headquarters that the Lithuanians have turned into a museum about the Soviet Occupation. The fact that they call it the Genocide Museum should give you a pretty good indication of how they feel about said Soviet Occupation.
The Holocaust Museum only takes up a few rooms in a little house, but it's pretty moving. Especially considering that 94% (over 200,000) of Lithuania's Jews died in the Holocaust, many of them mass-execution style in the woods outside Vilnius.

There's much, much more to be said about the Holocaust in Lithuania and Vilnius in general, but I think I'll leave it at that.

Pictures: Top to Bottom: A somewhat rare example of a mint condition church in Vilnius; Vilnius Cathedral (and scaffolding); this spot on the Cathedral Square is where the 1989 Vilnius-Tallin human chain started.

Vilnuis, Lithuania: Rebuilding

No sunlight on your window

No movement on your wall

Strip away these sad old curtains

And hear me call

-Dan Messe

Marijos Ramintojos-Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Riga, Latvia

Many opportunities for entertainment in Riga. First off, I got an excellent seat for a performance of The Marriage of Figaro (opera) for about $10! Wahoo! Second, I stayed at this hostel called Friendly Fun Frank's, run by this Australian guy named-what else-Frank. When you walk in the door at Frank's they promptly offer you a free bottle of Latvian beer and then ask if you would be interested in a) going bobsledding on the Riga bobsled track, b) learning how to shoot an AK-47 in an old soviet bunker, or c) going out for a night on the town with Frank and his staff of enthusiastic, young Latvians. Due to a variety of circumstances and personal preferences, I didn't join Frank for any of his friendly fun this time around (except the beer-I didn't want to be rude). However, if I ever go back to Riga on a weekend with the appropriate level of craziness, I will for sure be joining the bobsled team.



Above: Dom Cathedral and square; guard and construction workers at the Royal Palace; Orthodox Cathedral (used as a planetarium during the Soviet era)-still rather celestial, don't you think?; the House of Blackheads at night

Tallin, Estonia

Aaaah, Estonia.










I remember fondly the days when I strolled thy cobbled streets... Seriously, I did have a fun time here. Met some nice people at the hostel, bopped around town for a couple of days, had dinner at a touristy medieval restaurant complete with costumed waiters and "wild boar" on the menu. Hostel-friend Ned asked if the boar was really wild, and we were assured that it most certainly was. Good times.

I'd never really heard much about Estonia as a popular travel destination in the US, but this town is definitely a gem. The medieval old town is incredibly well-preserved, and the city as a whole is modern, stylish, and fairly friendly.

I've been trying to decide how best to talk about the recent history of the next few countries that I visited (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). I knew almost next to nothing about them when I started this trip, and I can't exactly fancy myself an expert based on the information from museums and travel books that I have recently crammed into my brain. But I can't just talk about visiting these countries without referencing their experiences during the last century...so here goes.

August 23, 1939. Visit just about any national museum in Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, and you'll quickly learn all about this infamous day. That's because on this date, Stalin and Hitler signed a secret agreement known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that divided Europe into areas to be controlled by either Germany or the USSR. Among the USSR's portion were Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and part of Lithuania. When the Soviets came in to set up shop, only Finland was able to fight them off. (Think lots of Finnish ski troopers in white snowsuits in the Winter. Victory: Finland). But in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania the Soviets gained control (although there were resistance fighters in each country). Want to try to resist the Soviet occupation? No problem; they've got a spot reserved for you and your family on the next train to a nice gulag in Siberia.
Next up: World War II. The Nazis invaded, and the Soviets were forced out. The Nazis declared they were "liberating" people from the Soviets. At the end of World Ward II the Soveits "liberated" everybody from the Nazis and were back in control. Many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians were deported. Many Russians were moved into these countries to work. The Soviet occupation lasted until 1990/91 when the countries were able to reclaim their independence after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
On August 23, 1989, two million Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians joined hands and formed a 600 km human chain that stretched from Tallin to Vilnius (Lithuania) to mark and protest the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. If you're curious about the personality of people in this region, this should give you a pretty good general impression.
Since the fall of communism, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have done a lot to clean up and rebuild (infrastructure and buildings-especially churches-fell into disrepair during the occupation). Estonia seems to be the furthest along, followed by Latvia, then Lithuania (but this is just my personal observation). All have joined the EU, all are definitely worth visiting if you get the chance.

Pictures: top-old town wall (classic red cone roofs) and Eastern Orthodox church
middle-more old wall
bottom- Tallin by night

Helsinki: East meets West (or a least scopes her out from a few blocks away)

Top: Helsinki Lutheran Cathedral-not yer mom's Lutheran Church (unless your mom lives in Helsinki, then maybe it is). In fact, I probably couldn't have guessed that this was a Lutheran church just by glancing at the outside. The statues of Luther and Melancthon in the sanctuary kind of give it away, though.

Next: Uspenski Russian Orthodox Cathedral facing the Lutheran Church in the West. Poetic, no?


Above: Temppeliaukio Lutheran Church. It's not Swedish, Russian, or Art Nouveau. It was built in 1969 by blasting into solid rock and topping the whole thing off with a copper coil roof. It's quite something to see and has really cool acoustics (they like to play a recording of Finlandia in the sanctuary when there's not a visiting choir performing).

Helsinki: Reindeer and Art Nouveau

Well, I opted out of taking a pricey sidetrip to what the Finns call the "official home of Santa" in Lapland, so I'm afraid the only reindeer picture I have is the one above. (Pause for wincing and gasps of horror) Yes, poor Rudolph, it seems as though the Finnish like their reindeer the way the Australians like their kangaroo: well-done. This picture is of a "game fry" stand in the Market Square.

Before this visit I wasn't aware that Helsinki is a fairly young city (as far as European cities go). Apparently the Swedes (Finland was part of Sweden for a looooong time) built a fortress on the harbor in 1746 and then founded the town of Helisinki to supply the fortress. Finland was then part of the Russian Empire in the 1800s, resulting in quite a few Russian-style buildings, and had a period of expansion starting in the mid-1800's, resulting in heaps of Art Nouveau buildings. The photo above is of a typical Helsinki side-street. If you don't care about Art Nouveau or architecture or when Sweden or Russia was in control of x, y, and z, then I'm sure your eyes are already glazed over and I won't bother apologizing for this paragraph.

Sea Legs

I took an overnight cruise to get from Stockholm to Helsinki. Some notable features of this cruise include a huge smorgasbord dinner with approximately 129 different types of herring, lots of Swedes and Finns doing an inhuman amount of onboard Duty Free shopping, and the glorious fact that I had my own cabin (!)
Oh yeah, there was also a sunset...






Above: View out the dining room window and views from the deck