Today we finished off our week in Istanbul with a visit to the Ortaköy neighborhood to try Kumpir – the biggest stuffed potato you can imagine.  The bus ride had us scared for our lives,  but it was a worthwhile trip…

The hotel staff had told us to take bus 25E from the Kabataş distrct to Ortaköy, but when we got on the bus we realized that, unlike on the tram, you have to request your stop so you have to know where you’re going!  Luckily, the person sitting across from us spoke English and helped us out.  We also discovered that bus rides in Istanbul are nerve wracking because bus drivers here don’t find it necessary to obey traffic laws – our bus continuously ran red lights and cut other traffic off!  Making matters worse, the bus was so full that people were seriously squeezed together like sardines in a can.  And the bus didn’t stop at stops for very long so people had to hop on and squeeze themselves in as the bus slowly pulled away from the stop.  I would hate to be standing by the door because it often swings open before the bus reaches the stop and stays open as the bus merges back into traffic!

The Ortaköy neighborhood wasn’t anything spectacular, but Ortaköy pier square is situated right on the Bosphorus strait near the Bosphorus Bridge, so it looks quite pretty.  Walking to the pier, we immediately found the row of kumpir restaurants Ilyas had told us about.  We walked the entire row to check out what kind of toppings they offered, but every stall seemed to have the same thing so we went back to the first one we saw when walking in.  We decided to get one potato each from stall #1 and #2 so we could compare, but ended up picking different toppings so it wasn’t really a fair comparison.  Both potatoes were delicious, but I think my potato filled with everything (olives, pickles, cous cous, corn, cheese, sausage, and some other unknown items) from stall #2 was better than Paul’s which didn’t have any veggie toppings.  If you like stuffed potatoes, you must try a kumpir in Turkey!  But be forewarned, it’s huge – we were both full after half of our potatoes.  Despite how good it tasted, I seriously could not eat more.  I ended up walking around all of Ortaköy trying to find a stray cat to feed my leftover potato to, but the stupid cats ran away from me whenever I approached them!  But having the potato in my hand as we walked around was handy because it prevented restaurant owners from soliciting us as we walked

Our week in Istanbul has flown by, especially since Paul has been so busy with work.  The food has been great, the people have been nice (even the ones who swear we must be Japanese), and it’s been a relatively inexpensive week.  We’ve had to skip some stuff (like going into Topkapi Palace and the Archaeology Museum) because of Paul’s schedule, but we’ll definitely be coming back to Istanbul/Turkey at some point to explore more!

Paul has been swamped with work these last few days so our sightseeing has been limited, but today is a holiday (Remembrance Day) in Canada so we had some free time for a change.  We spent it shopping and eating on Istiklal Street, and in the evening we experienced our first Turkish bath at the Süleymaniye Hamam.   More to come on that later, but first, a look at what we’ve been doing these past couple days…

For us, Istanbul has been all about new experiences that are a bit more foreign than what we’ve encountered so far. Eating wise, we’ve tried a lot of new things.  On Monday we ate at a place called Cennet near our hotel (actual address is Binbirdirek Mh. Divanyolu Cd. No: 31/A).  Here we tried gözleme, a hand made Turkish rolled pastry like a pancake or crepe that is filled with your choice of topping (we tried spinach and meat), and manti, a Turkish dumpling filled with minced meat (I would describe it as a wonton ravioli and I loved it).   They also gave us our first taste of chocolate baklava, which was really really good but a bit too sweet for me.

Yesterday, I made the mistake of trying a Turkish coffee without reading about it first so I drank it totally wrong.  First, I didn’t realize you’re supposed to tell them when you order if you want your coffee sweetened because sugar is added while the coffee is being cooked.  I ended up dropping in a sugar cube, which doesn’t taste right at all!  Also, because Turkish coffee is made so the coffee grounds float freely in the brew (that’s why it’s so strong), you’re supposed to agitate the cup continuously as you drink to re-mix the grounds with the water.  I just sipped from the top and left the inch of “mud” at the bottom, which apparently is where all the strength is!

Today we unknowingly had a very adventurous meal – a kokoreç sandwich at Şampiyon, a restaurant Ilyas recommended.   Kokoreç is minced lamb or goat intestines which are seasoned with lemon, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper.  The seasoning takes away the intestine taste and we didn’t realize it was intestine until we came home and looked it up!  Ilyas had actually forewarned us, but we had forgotten what kind of food was at each restaurant on the list he wrote for us.  If Paul knew it was intestines, I don’t think he would have been so willing to eat it!

Sights wise, we set foot into a mosque for the first time yesterday by going back to Sultan Ahmed Mosque when prayers weren’t happening.  It astonished me to see how big it was inside.  Outside there’s a list of rules for visitation and it says women should cover their head with a scarf so I used a cashmere Burberry scarf I had bought while outlet shopping in Italy (yes, I know, it’s a ridiculous luxury item to carry around when you’re backpacking).  Because the scarf isn’t very wide it didn’t work well for wrapping around my head, but I thought it was better than nothing which is what I saw some other female tourists do.  It seems a little disrespectful to me to just ignore the rules like that.

We also went to the Egyptian Bazaar (spice market) yesterday, which was our first time in a spice market.  Apart from spices, you can find all kinds of sweets, nuts, teas, and the most amazing smelling coffee here.  I desperately wanted to buy some coffee, but it comes already ground and therefore won’t stay fresh until we get home in a month.

On our way to the bath tonight, we almost experienced our first scam – the shoe shine brush drop.  What happens is a shoeshine guy walks by you, dropping his brush as he walks.  Not knowing any better, tourists usually pick up the brush and call out to the guy.  Thankfully, another Turkish man saw us about to do so and rushed over, pushed us out of the way, and told us to keep walking, saying something like “mafia.”  We were confused, but realized he had just saved us from some kind of scam and noticed shoeshine guy go back and pick up his own brush.  Now, after talking to a friend on Facebook,   I’ve learned that what they do is offer you a free shoe shine for helping them, but then insist you give them some money when they’re done.  We probably would have just declined the free shoeshine, but it’s better that we didn’t have to deal with it at all. Lesson learned, sometimes you have to deny your instinct to help people!

And now, in order to keep this blog entry a reasonable length, I’m splitting off our Turkish bath experience into another entry.  Click on the link below to continue reading!

http://www.monkeyandrooster.com/2009/11/11/our-turkish-bath-experience/

In an effort to be more “concise” with my blogging, I’m going to try writing shorter articles and be more brief when I talk about what we’ve been doing.  In the past, I’ve summarized several days into one blog, but this is a little different.  Right now we’re starting to research and plan our next leg – Southeast Asia – and I realize how useful people’s blogs can be when looking up information.  As a result, I’m making sure that I put any relevant and useful information into my blog entries while trying to be more concise.  Here goes attempt # 1….

Yesterday, we checked into Nena Hotel, which we found through TripAdvisor.  Compared to all the hotels we’ve stayed at so far, it’s not bad, but it’s not great.  They let us check in early, but they gave us a room with two separate beds even though we asked for one big bed.  This morning they pushed the two beds together and swapped the two blankets for one big blanket, but I have a feeling the beds will not stay together as we toss and turn and then one of us will fall through the middle!  On the plus side, there is a full buffet breakfast included. 

We went to the famous Grand Bazaar last night, but didn’t stay long.  Unless you’re serious about buying stuff, you can’t stop to look at anything because the shop keepers won’t leave you alone once you show some interest!  Even just walking straight people will come up to you and be like “want a nice carpet?” or “something to drink?”  The Grand Bazaar is a really cool market place, but stiff competition and lots of identical product makes it a really hard place to shop, unless you love to negotiate prices. 

And it’s not just the vendors at the Grand Bazaar that are aggressive – if you look like a tourist you will get harassed to “come try” every restaurant you pass.  From what we’ve seen, a lot of menus look the same so competition is again really stiff.  So far we’ve tried two restaurants that Ilyas recommended – Sultanahmet Köftecisi near our hotel and Konak Kebap on Istiklal street, Istanbul’s main shopping drag.  Sultanahmet Köftecisi specializes in Turkish meatballs and a Köftecisi sandwich with a yogurt drink is a good deal at 5 lira (they’re more like a short minced meat kebabs than meatballs).  There’s actually two restaurants named Sultanahmet Köftecisi on the main street by our hotel and we tried both (one last night and one tonight).  The one next to a restaurant called Pudding Shop was, in our opinion, better.  Konak Kebap was pretty good too, but service sucked. We’ve been getting charged a 10% service fee everywhere, which Ilyas tells me (via Facebook) shouldn’t be the case, but we’re not the type to argue, so I guess we’ll keep paying it and not leave a tip instead.

This morning we tried to go to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (also called the Blue Mosque) but it was prayer time when we showed up so we couldn’t go in.  If you hear singing coming from speakers placed all around the area, it’s the Islamic call to prayer and the Mosque is closed to visitors during that time.  Instead, we went and took the public ferry to Harem, which is on the Asia side of Istanbul. Most people take the Bosphorous Cruise for 20 lira to see the castle ruins at Anadolu Kavağı, but this puts you there for at least 2 hours, and Paul wasn’t up for that.  Going to Harem is kind of pointless, but it only cost 1.50 lira on our Akbil and at least we can say we made it to the Asia side of Istanbul.  After this, we made the mistake of walking across the Galata Bridge on the lower pedestrian only level, which is full of restaurants trying to solicit your business.  Unless you’re looking for somewhere to eat, there’s no reason to walk across the bridge on the lower level.

So far, Istanbul kind of reminds me of Hong Kong – vibrant, crowded, hot even though it’s November, and questionable in terms of hygiene and cleanliness but food tastes good so who cares!  I could do without all the pushy sales pitches, but the people here are so nice you can’t help but smile as you say “no thanks!”

When we got back to Stuttgart after the Sindelfingen Plant tour yesterday, we did some shopping on Königstrasse, Stuttgart’s main shopping street, but by 2:30 we were bored.  We headed to the airport, thinking we could hang out and use their Wi-Fi until our flight at 10:25 pm, but the Wi-Fi at the airport was broken!  Once again, I’m not a fan of airports or flying…

Stuttgart Airport turned out to be surprisingly small and crappy (we didn’t notice when we first landed here on Tuesday).  After you go through security, there’s only one place to get cooked food and they closed at 7, just as we were about to go eat there!  There were 3 places open to buy sandwiches, but the sandwiches looked like they had been sitting out all day and weren’t appetizing at all.  We ended up eating Burger King, which Paul had to go back out of the secured area to get, and drinking an insanely overpriced €5 bottle of water from the sandwich store.  I really hate the fact that they don’t let you take bottled water through security!

Thankfully, our second Germanwings flight was much more pleasant than the first.  The check-in staff didn’t harass us to weigh or size-check our carry-on bags, so we were wearing multiple layers of clothing and carrying ludicrous amounts of stuff in our pockets for no reason.  Also, the flight attendants were very pleasant, unlike on our flight to Stuttgart where they seemed sick of their jobs.  The best part of the flight, though, was meeting the person sitting next to me, a half-Turkish half-Greek guy named Ilyas.  He struck up conversation by asking where we’re from, and for almost the entire flight we had a very pleasant chat getting to know one another.  Once again, we’ve met someone we’ll really keep in touch with after the trip!

To enter Turkey as a tourist, Canadians must to purchase a “90 Days multiple entry sticker type tourist visa” upon arrival for €45.  Our flight landed at 3 am Istanbul time so the visa booth was closed, but a security guy helped us find someone to re-open it.  Interestingly enough, we were the only people on the flight who needed to buy a visa!  By the time we got this sorted out and passed through customs and immigration, it was almost 4 am.  Since it would take another hour by shuttle bus to get to city center, it wasn’t worthwhile to pay for a hotel for the night so we found a comfortable bench in the airport and waited for the morning shuttle today.  Although the Sabiha Gökçen Airport is smaller than Stuttgart Airport, spending 6 hours here was far better than 6 hours at Stuttgart Airport.  Food and drinks are reasonably priced (a bottle of water cost 2 Turkish lira, which is about $1.40 CAD) and places were actually open at 4 am!  More importantly, the Wi-Fi actually worked, but there’s a small charge. 

At 10 am this morning, we caught the HAVAS shuttle bus to Taksim square, a major shopping, tourist and leisure district in the center of Istanbul (bus costs 12 lira per person and actually drops you off about a block from Taksim square).  Outside of the metro station, we picked up Akbil transit passes, which are small stainless steel “buttons” on a plastic holder (similar to a key fob).  You pay a refundable 6 lira deposit for the Akbil and then load whatever amount you want on it (just like London’s Oyster cards).  Contrary to what we read on the Internet, the Akbil doesn’t give you free transfers for 45 minutes, but it does reduce the transfer fare by 50% (e.g. we had to change from the funicular to the tram and instead of paying 1.50 lira per ride, the Akbil deducted 1.50 lira for the first ride and another 0.75 lira when we went through the gates to the tram). 

The last 24 hours have been excruciatingly long with far too much time spent at the airport, but I’m looking forward to exploring Istanbul!  First, though, we are taking a nap at the hotel

Our flight today was not until 5 pm, but since we had to check out of the hotel at noon, we decided to just head to the airport and kill a few hours there instead of wandering around with our backpacks.  Had I known how small the Budapest Ferihegy International Airport is, though, I would have opted to eat lunch somewhere around the hotel before going to the airport because the options there were pathetic and overpriced.  If you’re ever flying in or out of Hungary, be forewarned that the Ferihegy is the largest of the country’s five airports, but it’s the smallest airport I’ve been to and there’s only a handful of places to eat, with only one place serving hot food (although there is a second terminal about 2 km away that we didn’t go to).  Terminal 1 is so small, in fact, that there aren’t even check-in counters for each airline – they share counters so you can only check in 3 hours before your flight when your appropriate airline has taken over a section of counters.

This was our first time flying with German Wings, a low-cost airline similar to Ryan Air.  Everyone harps about how Ryan Air is so strict about carry-on luggage, but today’s experience with German Wings was ten times worse than anytime we’ve taken Ryan Air!  At the check-in counter, they made everyone place their bag (even if it’s just a purse!) on the conveyor belt scale (the one you put your checked luggage on normally) and if you’re under the 8kg limit, they tag your bag as carry-on approved.  With our backpacks, the lady at the check-in counter also asked us to put them in the size checker.  My backpack, the Osprey Aura 35, is fairly small as far as backpacks go, but it has a curved backpanel for ventilation which makes it fit awkwardly into the size checker.  Because I couldn’t slide it in and out of the size checker easily, the check-in lady said it was too big for cabin baggage at first.  But, after a bit of rough shoving and yanking by Paul (accompanied by us snapping at each other) showing that the bag does fit in the checker, she said “ok, it’s too big but it’s ok” and finished checking us in, letting me keep my bag with me but not giving me an approved tag.

Paranoid that we’d get checked again at boarding and maybe have to go back and check my bag (which costs an extra 20 euro and would be a huge hassle), I pulled almost everything out of my bag and tried to re-pack it better once we went through security.  We managed to transfer a bit more stuff to Paul’s bag, but the shape of my bag just doesn’t make it possible to slide it in and out of the size checker easily!  Between the hassle of worrying about the weight and size of your carry-on baggage and the hassle of going through airport security, flying as a method of transport is, for me, the worst possible option.  I’d rather take a bus, train or boat any day, but unfortunately the train ride to Istanbul would have been ridiculously long (over 30 hours) and bus and boat aren’t even an option.  Thankfully, they didn’t check our bags when we boarded and we got through this flight without any further hic-ups.

We fly again on Friday to get from Stuttgart to Istanbul, and I’m not looking forward to the fight that will surely accompany our next packing blitz.  We fight every time we pack about how much stuff we have because I’m a hoarder and Paul doesn’t get the fact that living off a 35-litre backpack with about 11kg of stuff for 9 months is as small as it’s gonna get!  To get down to the 8kg weight limit we already put a lot of stuff in our pockets (it’s hilarious because we look pregnant in a lumpy sort of way) and I don’t know what else I can take out of my bag so we don’t run into problems on Friday.  I guess that Thursday night I’ll have to get creative…

The Danube is the second longest river in Europe, flowing through or forming part of the border of 10 countries.  It flows right through the middle of Budapest, separating the west bank of Buda and Obuda from the east bank of Pest, three cities that were unified in 1873 to form the city of Budapest.  We saw a bit of the Danube during our self-guided walking tour of Bratislava, but hadn’t really walked along its banks so we set out to do so today, starting at the Budapest Parliament building, which is located on the Pest side of the river bank…

The Budapest Parliament is one of the most impressive looking Parliament buildings we have seen on our trip (comparable to the Houses of Parliament in London) and being right on the banks of the Danube makes it look idyllic.  Unlike Westminster, the Hungarian Parliament can be toured year round at certain times for 2520 HUF (about $15 CAD).  Unfortunately we had just missed the 12 o’clock English tour and neither of us felt like waiting until 2 o’clock for the next one, so we carried on with our walking after having a look at the outside of the Parliament building.

We walked south along the river bank, admiring the view from here of the Buda side, until we got past the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, a famous landmark of Budapest because it was the first permanent bridge across the Danube between Buda and Pest.  Since we hadn’t eaten lunch yet and there seemed to be no restaurants along the river bank, we decided to walk back into town, towards St. Stephen’s Basilica, Budapest’s most well known basilica.  Oddly enough, the entire way there we couldn’t find any restaurants either, just a bunch of coffee shops! 

Frustrated and hungry, we decided to eat at one of the restaurants right beside St. Stephen’s (called Bazilika Café & Restaurant), which turned out to be the worst idea we’ve had since the Golema restaurant in Prague.  I tried the “Gypsy style roast pork,” which wasn’t roast pork at all but two tiny pork chops drenched in a ridiculously salty cumin flavored sauce (it was like someone went to shake salt into the sauce and then the lid accidentally fell off).  The rice it came with was dry and stiff, like microwaved Uncle Ben’s, but I had to eat it to counter the saltiness of the meat!  Paul ordered the “Hungarian style goulash soup baked with bread” and it was a bowl of Chef Boyardee style soup with little bits of beef and barley in it and a lump of cold bread on top (there’s no way they baked it with the bread!).  His main dish, paprika chicken, was ok in flavor, but the chicken was really really dry and overcooked and there was no sauce to help with the dryness! 

Making matters worse, when we got the bill a 15% service charge had been added, and it wasn’t specified anywhere beforehand that a service charge would be added.  Because the food was so bad and we know the standard tipping policy in Hungary is 10%, we questioned our server about this service charge, saying it should be stated in the menu if they are going to charge so much (our service charge was 1000 HUF!).  He simply shrugged and said “that’s what all the restaurants around here charge.”  If we had the proper amount of cash on us we might have just paid the total plus 10% and left, but we had to use our credit card so we had no choice but to pay what they wanted.  Lesson learned: don’t eat right next to a tourist attraction and ask what they charge for service in Hungary cuz it seems they don’t have to specify in the menu if they are going to charge you!

Our three hour train ride to Budapest from Bratislava yesterday got us to our hotel (another Ibis) just in time for Paul to start working so we didn’t do much apart from check out the area we’re in and buy stuff at the grocery store to make sandwiches for dinner so we wouldn’t have to eat fast food, which is the only type of food near the hotel.  Today we began our sightseeing at the Holocaust Memorial Center, which was sad but very informative…

On our way to the Memorial Center, we decided to eat lunch at a small self-serve restaurant which we noticed while walking along Üllői Avenue to get from the tram stop to the Memorial Center.  We picked it because it was busy and looked like a local eatery (there wasn’t even a sign outside with it’s name!) and it turned out to be a truly authentic Hungarian fast food place.  Problem was, the menu (posted on a blackboard behind the cashier where you order, pay for and pick up your food) was only in Hungarian, and the girl working there didn’t really speak English.  Paul asked her to pick two dishes for us, and she described something with spinach, bean, and egg and we nodded and said sure!  Then we noticed chicken legs in a buffet-style case near the cash register and asked her to add an order of that as well.  The chicken turned out to be a very good idea because she ordered us two dishes of really thick creamed spinach and bean soup with a fried egg on top which I thought tasted ok, but Paul took one bite and left the rest to me!  Next time, I think we’re better off just blindly pointing at two different menu items

After eating, we found the nearby Holocaust Memorial Center on Páva St.  After a quick security check (just a metal detector), we headed down a set of stairs in the courtyard and paid an entrance fee (1300 HUF – about $7.50 CAD – or 100 HUF for students) before beginning our visit in a room which depicted the lives of Jews and Hungarian Roma in Hungary before the Holocaust.  Being a much faster reader than me, Paul ditched me after about 10 minutes and left me to go through the exhibit at my own pace while he went ahead, which was fine by me because I hate being rushed!

A long corridor full of pictures and the ominous sound of soldiers marching led me to the rest of the exhibit, which is divided into sections relating to different phases of persecution: deprivation of civil rights, property, freedom, human dignity, and existence.  Personally, I liked this better than a chronological presentation because it shows you how it got to the point where Jews were murdered in mass numbers instead of focusing on the period of time when the Nazis killed over a million people just because of their race.  I, for one, did not know that Hungary had its own government party that began taking away the rights of Jews before the Nazi occupation in 1944 and reading about this in the first section helped me understand how they were able to get to the next step, taking property away from Jews and Roma and deporting them to camps.  When you realize how long discriminatory practices went on for before progressing to the mass murders, you really have to wonder why the rest of world didn’t put an end to it sooner…

The exhibit took me over 2 hours to complete, and I had to skip some of the reading because we were running out of time and Paul had finished long before me and was getting tired of waiting.  I probably could have spent the whole day here if I read everything thoroughly!  Before heading back to the hotel, we had a quick look around at the nearby Central Market Hall, which is one of the biggest indoor markets we’ve seen on this trip.  Upstairs you can buy all kinds of souvenirs and trinkets, and downstairs there is an incredible selection of meat, produce, and fruit.  I power shopped through all the fruit stands, picking up pears, plums, oranges, and bananas.  The stuff we got was ripe and fresh, but I’m still not used to the way fruit stands work here and got scolded by one lady for trying to pick my own fruit (here you tell them how much you want and they just grab it at random for you).  It made me buy a lot less than I would have if I was picking my own, but at least it wasn’t like the markets in Italy where we were deliberately sold the bad fruit by vendors because we were tourists!

While planning this leg of the trip, we weren’t sure if we should bother going to Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic.  Most people don’t have much to say about it, other than the fact that it’s really cheap.  If you remember the movie Euro Trip (which totally doesn’t depict Europe correctly at all but was humorous nonetheless), Bratislava is the run down, dump city where they ended up with only $1.83 while trying to hitchhike to Berlin, but managed to live like kings thanks to the conversion rate.  Since it’s only an hour by train from Vienna, we decided to come spend 2 nights and see for ourselves what it’s really like…

So first things first, Bratislava looks nothing like what they show in Euro Trip (granted, that movie was made in 2004, but still…)  The buildings outside of city center are a bit drab (just large square stone structures without any elaborate carving or decoration), but it’s not really run down like in Euro Trip and city center is actually quite pleasant with a medieval feel.  According to Rick Steves, who included a section in his Rick Steves Vienna book about Bratislava since it’s so close by, the City of Bratislava has put painstaking amounts of effort in recent years to restore the buildings of city center back to their pre-communism splendor.  While I can’t say it’s the nicest city center we’ve been to, you can tell that they’ve done some restoration and there are some nice things to see.

Today we followed Rick’s walking guide (I copied the path down from his book before returning it to the hostel in Vienna), and went from St. Michael’s Gate, the last surviving tower of the city wall, to Venturska street to try a restaurant called Flowers he recommended in his book.  Although it was a really pricey for Bratislava (about 20 euros per main course), it was the best food we’ve had in a while, reminiscent of what we would get back home if we went out for a nice meal (I had the Rib Eye steak and Paul got the lamb shank).  Combine this with the yummy meal we had last night at 1 Slovak Pub (authenic Slovak food made with products from the pub’s own farm), where main courses were only 5-10 euros, and we’re glad we stopped in Bratislava just for the food!  Except we’re not a fan of the signature Slovak dish, Bryndzové halušky, small spaetzle-like dumplings made with goat cheese, because we don’t like the taste of the goat cheese…

I won’t bore you by reciting Rick’s walking guide, but I will mention that the highlight for me was seeing the various statues of different characters they have around town.  Each one represents something and I’m glad I read about them all in Rick’s book before I saw them so I knew why they were there.  To walk around all of city center and see the sights Rick highlighted took us about two hours, without going into any museums, churches, or castles.  Considering the fact that Prague castle didn’t really impress us, Bratislava castle didn’t really appeal to us.  The only thing I wish we had a chance to do but couldn’t is see the renowned Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra play. 

Although we enjoyed our time here, I have to agree with Rick that Bratislava is better done as a daytrip from nearby Vienna because our hostel, the Hostel Possonium, wasn’t the greatest.  It was significantly more expensive than the hostel in Vienna (although we got a private room so that’s part of the reason), city center was almost 2 km away and we didn’t understand their tram system so we got lost walking, the walls are quite thin and we heard the guys in the dorm next to us talking all night last night, the Wi-Fi crawled because the guy at reception (who wasn’t very helpful) was streaming video on YouTube all the time, and I was really choked by the fact that I didn’t have hot water when I showered this afternoon!  If you’re thinking about visiting Bratislava, do what Rick says and daytrip from Vienna…

I am excited to report that tonight we officially attended our first real opera and, lucky for us, The Marriage of Figaro was playing so we sort of knew what was going on!  The Don Giovanni marionette show brought out more of an appreciation of opera for me, but tonight took it to a whole new level and I can’t wait till I get a chance to go again.  Paul isn’t quite as enthralled, but he played the part of the good husband and stood through 3/4 of the performance with me, so I can’t complain…

Our day began at the Wiener Prater, a large public park in Vienna’s 2nd district, made up of widespread meadows, an amusement park known as Wurstelprater, and various restaurants & cafes.  The entire park is free to go in, but you pay per ride at the amusement park (ranging from €2-4 each ride).  I had read that you can get great views of Vienna while riding the “Giant Ferris Wheel,” but we decided against it when we got there and saw how run down it looked (the whole place is a bit run down actually).  I love roller coasters and amusement park rides in general, but Paul has recently started to get motion sick so now he refuses to go on them.  Since it’s no fun to do rides alone, we skipped all the rides and walked around eating mini-doughnuts instead

When we got to a stable of mini horses for kids to ride, we noticed an adorable Newfie dog running around off-leash.  Several other people noticed him too and we amusingly watched as one girl and her boyfriend started playing with the dog, who had fixated on a Sid the sloth doll (from the Ice Age movie) she was holding in her hand which I think they had just won at one of those carnie games in the park.   After 10 minutes or so, the girl and her boyfriend started to leave but the dog kept following them wanting the doll!  Eventually they gave in and let the dog have Sid, and he happily trotted over to the horse’s stables to chew on his new toy.  That’s what you get for teasing a dog with a toy!

As we finished at Prater, an email came through on Paul’s Blackberry advising us that the standby tickets we wanted for the Opera weren’t allocated.  When I had looked up the schedule on our second day in Vienna, I was excited to see Le Nozze Di Figaro was playing tonight, but the only tickets left were 200 euro each, which was a lot more than we were prepared to spend on our first opera, so I put our name in for standby tickets in the 10-40 euro price range. Two days ago I would have been disappointed by this email, but yesterday I learned in Rick Steves’ book that 567 dirt cheap (€3-4) standing room tickets are released for sale 80 minutes before show time, so we had a backup plan to get in! 

Since we had 2 hours to kill before we could buy tickets, we headed back to city center to try a restaurant called Reinthalers Beisl that was recommended in Rick Steves’ book.  Everything was quite good, but our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we ordered 3 dishes to share (the schnitzel, brats with sauerkraut, and goulash), which was a ridiculous amount of food.   But the brats, which were our third choice, turned out to be the best dish so I’m glad we got them!

According to Rick Steves, there’s no rush to line up for standing room tickets unless someone special like Plácido Domingo is in town, so we took our time getting to the Opera, arriving 90 minutes before show time.  We were surprised to see a fairly large lineup forming and quickly got in line since Rick’s book also said to try to get tickets in the “parterre” section for a front and center view, directly below the Emperor’s box, if you’re among the first 160 people (see picture above).

We struck up conversation with two guys behind us who were music students from the UK and Germany studying in Vienna, and they helpfully explained how standing room works.  There are three standing room sections (parterre, balcony, and gallery) and each section is made up of steps (sort of like at the movies) with rails in front of you for you to lean on.  On the rail there is a small screen which, during the performance, provides a translation of the opera in either English or German.  After you buy your ticket you go inside, pick a spot at a rail, and secure that spot by tying a scarf to the rail.

Following their good advice, as soon as we got our tickets we rushed to the parterre section to get a spot before checking our coats.  We managed to get one of the last remaining rail spots near the back (still a great view) and secured our place by tying our hats to the  rail since neither of us knew to bring a scarf and you’re not allowed to use your jacket.  Normally you would stand 4 people per rail on each side (right and left), but on a busy night like tonight people were squeezing in wherever they could fit, including in the middle area between the left and right side where there was no rail to lean on.  If you manage to be among the first into the parterre section (you’ll have to line up way earlier), the front row gives you an awesome completely unobstructed view and you lean on wall which separates the parterre standing section from the expensive €200 per ticket seats in front.

After our last experience of standing through Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe, I had to promise Paul I wouldn’t insist on staying through the entire performance in order for him to agree to come with me.  We initially planned to stay for just one act, but having the rail helped and Paul agreed to try to stay for the entire opera.  After act II, though, his feet were tired and he was ready to go.  With some begging and pleading I managed to get him to go back inside for act III after the intermission, but we skipped act IV and left after that. 

While my knowledge of opera isn’t good enough to hear the difference between the professionals singing tonight and the aspiring students we heard back at UBC, I felt like seeing tonight’s opera was a much grander experience because of the setting.  The Vienna State Opera House is beautiful and historic, the orchestra and acoustics sounded wonderful, and the costumes and sets were amazing.  I wish we could have saw the entire performance, but I was very happy that I got to see act III because it has my favorite songs in the opera.  If you’re going to Vienna, definitely go get some standing room tickets to an opera!  Or, as Rick Steves suggested, wait outside and bum tickets off people leaving during the intermission since many don’t stay for the entire performance!

Yesterday, we spent our last day in Prague exploring the Jewish quarter and searching for the eurodog again.  Although we managed to find a stand that sold eurodogs close to our hotel, we ordered the XL hot dogs because I was hungry and wanted to see how big it would be, and they turned out to not be served in the baguette with the hole in it (presumably because it’s too big to fit in the baguette which is tiny).

 This morning, on our way to the train station, we finally got our eurodogs by going back to the same place and pointing at the baguettes to order.  The XL hot dogs actually tasted better (the eurodogs use ordinary Oscar Mayer style wieners), but the baguette with a hole in it makes it easy to hold and eat, unlike with regular hot dog buns where your mustard and ketchup get squeezed out the other end as you bite.  Considering it’s just 15 Czech crowns (about 90 cents Canadian) each eurodog, it’s pretty darn good value!  The only thing I can think of that compares back home is the hot dogs at Ikea, but the eurodog is a bit better.

Like most travel days on this trip, after we found our way to the hostel and checked in, we didn’t do much.  The hostel (Wombats the Base) is close to a fairly large main street called Mariahilfer Straße, which has quite a few places to eat.  We picked a fast food chicken place at random and got a chicken cordon blue (which is apparently a popular dish that’s available almost everywhere in Vienna) and a tasty skewer of meat called Adana with rice.  Compared to the food we had in Prague, the stuff here seems tastier and better value so far!   But it’s only the first night so we’ll see how our dining experiences pan out tomorrow…