Read (kindle): August 2011
I’ve read a few Bill Bryson’s before, probably not as many as I should have though considering I like funny travel writing and this is what Bryson does best! I remember enjoying his Small History of Nearly Everything but then vaguely remember starting Notes on a Small Island at one point and not getting on with it. I decided that it would be a good idea though to read his Lost Continent book in which he travels around Europe, by train, whilst we travel around Europe, by train.
In the book Bryson is travelling around Europe by train, roughly following a route that he and his friend did as teenagers over from the States. The book has three different strands; tales of what he and Katz got up to, comparing what he saw and did 30 years ago with now, and then talking about what he gets up to in the new places he is visiting. I guess our travel logs of our Europe adventure this summer are similar in that we reminisce about the good old days of uni, interrailing and visiting places before stag parties and tourists change them.
Bryson’s is a good read and it definitely gave me ideas of visiting slightly further afield than we made it – he makes it to the eastern reaches of Europe where Istanbul sounds so much like our Middle Eastern experiences and Sofia and Bucharest sound like extensions of our time in the eastern-block. For the rest of this blog though I’m going to compare some of our experiences with Bryson’s and give some general musings on topics that came up time and again on our European summer.
Bryson’s quick gettaway
What is really striking chapter after chapter is that Bryson will arrive somewhere and within half a day of walking around will decide he doesn’t like it. It can be after a quick walk through the town that he is already back at the station, booking himself on the next train out of there. I’m proud to say that we are able stick it out a little longer and in fact nearly got to the end of our trip without even contemplating this…Our final stop in Bratislava bucked this trend and it was the run-down station, clustering of bums and winos and then the poor prospects of public transport to help us leave the station are that was driving us to jump back on the train that would take us all the way to Budapest. I’m happy to say that after getting into the Old Town of Bratislava (and getting out to the wonderful Devin Castle) we reconsidered and were actually really happy to be there. It was something that we were really conscious about when booking our trip; we wanted to actually stay in places and see them properly, not a superficial ‘do the top three things on the tourist list and then leave’ approach, but try and see the real city, real people and things beyond the tourist trail.
Which is best though – travelling far and wide, or spending more time and visiting fewer places? We went for the ‘more time in fewer places’ option; booking three nights everywhere, probably because of the way we have discovered Egypt has been through gradually finding out about the place over time, rather than a quick trip. But then when we think about it, this trip has shown us four countries and five cities – is this enough to call it a “European summer”?
The walking tour
Something that we and Bryson have in common is that we walk. A lot. It was in Amsterdam that we bought a 3-day travel card and almost immediately regretted the decision as we realised that we far prefer to walk than get transport if it’s possible. Walking you get to see more and with this trip we didn’t want to be in a rush (hence booking 3 nights everywhere to give ourselves a good two full days). Walking you get to stop more too – whether it’s to take a photo, grab some food, or just explore another route that grabs your fancy. Bryson very happily trecks all the way up the mountain in Scicily (how he does this with his luggage I don’t know! It’s never clear whether he is being old school and has a rucksack for everything, or is being middle-aged and middle-class like us and has a wheelie case) and while we don’t quite get to that extreme we do manage three castles (Krakow, Bratislava and Devin) in 30C plus humidity.
One thing we didn’t do when exploring cities, but often spoke about, was to cycle. We really enjoyed a holiday in Brugge once where we hired bikes and over the summer I was really missing having my bike in Raynes Park to just pop out quickly and not have to wait for buses etc. In London we noticed that the Boris Bike has really taken off – there are racks of them everywhere and more often than not over half the bikes were out. We also saw lots on the road being ridden by a mixture of locals and tourists. The tourists were easier to spot as they tended to cycle in groups, rather than in a line, and with a general disregard for traffic rules. Travelling around we saw that the idea of renting a public bike that started as a GCSE Geography case study of Amsterdam has extended beyond the Boris Bike and now includes Merkle Cycles (kind works if you say it funny) and Krakow Peddles.
The luggage question
Bryson never speaks about his bag and I remain intrigued as to whether it is a suitcase or rucksack. While rucksack would be the true backpacker option, but we felt there was no point in pretending we were roughing it when actually we were booking first class tickets on train (they weren’t that much more expensive and you get so much more legroom!) so we gave into being a little middle-class and a little middle-aged and took a wheelie case. The cobbles of Amsterdam (our first stop!) soon upset it and create a dodgy wheel that threatens to roll its last during every transfer.
It wasn’t like this in my day
We, like Bryson, find ourselves constantly harking back to the good old days of backpacking and seeing places ‘before all the tourists’. Although Bryson is revisiting places he’s been to before (and tries to find his old haunts), we are going to places that neither of us have visited before. We both though make comments about how things have changed and try to seek out places that mean something to us – such as the dive bars we find in Bratislava and Amsterdam. For us a lot of things ring true about the changing nature of tourism in the countries we visit (more stag parties and discovering that Poland is where all the Spanish tourists are, Jane!) and the changing nature of backpacking / interrailing (cue rants about travelling in groups rather than on your own or in a pair, wearing silly pork pie hats that couldn’t possibly be packed into a rucksack, and not even having a rucksack but a wheelie case instead).
Money, money, money
Bryson was doing his trip a good few years ago so things have changed between then and now in terms of money abroad. He uses travellers cheques which is a real blast from the past where as we have the Post Office MasterCard (no commission!) and a bit of cash for each country. Our trip is made easier in a way because we have the Euro in three places we visit (Amsterdam, Germany and Bratislava) and then a week in Poland on the Zloty (Warsaw then Krakow). Bryson on the other hand spends his time queuing to cash his travellers cheques or queuing to reclaim them after he has been pickpocketed. We just had the one queue – along Victoria at the exchange booth. We found a brilliant place to get currency before our trip which has the best exchange rate around (thanks to MoneySavingExpert) but sods law it seems that we buy just when the exchange rate is at its lowest – doh! I think we lost out to the tune of thirty quid over the whole trip maybe, so not much in the scheme of things.
Because times have a-changed we manage to use our card in most places for the ‘big’ things but then it’s the art of spending the change we’re unlikely to use again in a hurry (we know spending the Euros won’t be a problem). This is truly an art and more by luck than design we get quite good at it; in Poland we have just a handful of Zloty to our name when we leave (after paying for all of our tours with the tonne of cash we had post-Warsaw (where we managed to pay for nearly everything on card) we find ourselves with literally just enough money to pay for dinner on the last night when the bill comes and we find out that they can’t take card. We get ourselves to a supermarket that will take card to buy supplies for the next days train journey) and similarly in Hungary (our last two days on site at Sziget are spent checking the balance of our Sziget card to see that we have enough for a beer or lunch, and then topping up the exact amount we think we need so that at the end of the festival we don’t have to face the prospect of queuing to reclaim cash off the card. This strategy works well leaving us with enough change to buy a coffee at the airport just before getting the second flight out of Budapest that morning).
The Bloc
When planning our trip we just thought of the countries or cities we were interested in visiting. We knew that we wanted to explore eastern Europe a little more as we love Hungary and hoped that in exploring neighbouring countries we would find other places like it. So unintentionally we found a theme of our trip was visiting eastern bloc countries and finding out loads more about this part of history; our hotel and most of the exploring was in East Berlin following the wall and the DDR museum, then we were in Poland where we visited Auschwitz and drove a Trabant, and again saw the remains of communism in Bratislava. What we loved about our trip was learning about this part of history through actually seeing things – the wall, Nowa Huta. Scotty obviously hard a greater base knowledge than me, but it was all fascinating to learn about and see – and each part of our trip reinforced other things we had seen already. Reading Bryson’s final chapter when he visits Sofia and recalls the difference between his visit now and his visit as a youth, totally support what Cuba, our Crazy Guide, was telling us in Krakow and what we read in DDR museum.
Beer
We like our beer and so we wanted to get a taste of different local beers everywhere we went. There was only one evening in Bratislava where we ordered a bottle of wine rather than beer with our meal (as Bratislava is known for its wine, rather than its beer, it seemed right that we should give it a go). Generally there were lagers on tap in restaurants, but we did manage to seek out some ales and some microbreweries that had a little more on offer.
Amsterdam was our first beer experience and here it was lager, and in particular, Heineken, that was being served. We prefer our ales, but we’ll go for the national drink when it’s on offer. What really got us here though was the way in which they served beer. Beer was specifically poured with at least 2 inches of head on top. This was even the case if you ordered a small beer – you would find it 70% beer in your glass and 30% head on top. Yes, the glasses were marked with the correct measure to allow for this ridiculous head, but it just seemed bizarre. We went along to the Heineken Experience (which is more propaganda than brewery tour) and here they explained the huge head as preserving the bubbles in a beer (this doesn’t quite add up as once you have a sip the head fizzes away itself rather quickly). Despite having a huge head on each beer they insisted that you mustn’t drink the head, but should tip the beer back when you drink so that you get down to the beer – as drinking the head gives you a bitter taste (well don’t put so much head on your beer!) They also insisted on describing the beer colour as ‘golden’ rather than any other yellow-based adjective, so we were rather dubious of their science.
Although this head persisted in the beers we tasted over the trip, luckily it seemed to decrease slightly in relative volume the further east we travelled. One thing we noticed as we travelled was that on the drinks menu they would list the beers available (and their price), but then would also list the beer mixes they served and their standard prices. In Germany this was just the price of a beer and sprite a.k.a a shandy, but we did find an '”Orange Beer” listed in one place so thought we’d better give this a go. We’d been hoping that this ‘Orange Beer’ would be a masterful new brewing process, or something like the Blue Moon we fell in love with in the states (wheat beer served with a slice of orange on the side like a cocktail). What it turned out to be though was essentially beer with Fanta – and despite sounding rather dubious it was really quite drinkable and nice! Maybe one to try in Egypt as a way of making Stella more palatable!
There were more beer discoveries in Bratislava – the first being a study on symbols. In the menus of Bratislava each beer was listed with its percentage beside it, but these percentages were scarily high. We’re talking about 8% each beer and some hitting 12% We knew that on the continent they generally had stronger beers (and hence often serving them with a mixer or in smaller glasses than our standard pint and half pint) but this was seriously strong stuff. What was odd though, was that we weren’t feeling it – not feeling as drunk as we should be after a 12% beer! We doubted we were improving our alcohol tolerance and so thoughts back to some confusing beer symbols in Amsterdam. When we were in the Heineken Experience we found that in their brewing room the signs talking about brew temps and heating the wort had percentage signs instead of degrees C after the numbers. We looked around a bit and were quickly about to conclude that they simply had swapped the symbols around (why, we’re not so sure) as the numbers being listed only made sense with this swap. If the Bratislava beers had this symbol swap, then why were they listing the brew temperature? Was it to show that they were real lagers brewed at a cool temp? This couldn’t quite be right still, as a cool temp for lager is far less than 12C. After a few days Scotty got onto the interweb and managed to work it out. The % sign was in the right place, but what they were listing were the % sugars, rather than the % alcohol by volume that we are used to seeing beers described by. Mystery solved.
Our final beer discovery of the trip was the fine art of ordering a drink. In Egypt we’re (getting) used to table service, and we found that table service was the default everywhere we went on this trip. Amsterdam was a wonderful exception where on our first night we stumbled on a local bar with karaoke / sing-a-long bar maids – brilliant. On our first night in Bratislava we decided to visit a dive bar and found a few people sitting at the bar - musician was setting up and so it seemed more like the place in Amsterdam. With no waitress in sight Scotty approaches the bar to order a drink. Two beers are ordered and the barman asks what kind of beer – as we are out to discover new beers on this trip we say “What you recommend?” and with a flourish two small bottles of ginger ale appear on the counter. Erm. OK. We think and Scotty brings these back to our table. A few minutes later a waitress appears all frazzled and says “They don’t have alcohol” “Erm. That’s OK” we say, not wanting to make a fuss, but then ask for two beers from her. A look around the bar tells us that there are two guys sitting with a bottle of vodka waiting for her to bring them two ginger ales. It seems that by speaking to the barman we disrupted the world order of things. We learn that the barman is only capable of serving the drinks that the waitress asks him to – anything else and it all goes to pot. To order a drink in Europe; don’t speak to the barman.
To more things
Everyone in Europe seems to like small dogs. If we passed someone walking their dog, the dog was always small and lots were ‘Jamie dogs’.
The food is rich! We can no longer blame American size portions on our summer waistline. We wanted to try the food of the places we visited, but after having pork every day (and without trying ending up with pork for three meals in one day) we decided that we needed to branch out a bit. The pork was lovely and in Germany I had red cabbage for two nights in a row (it was like Christmas!) then in Bratislava where the national dish is dumplings in a cheese sauce and nothing else (!) we realised that it was OK to diversify. We had some lovely meals though in some lovely restaurants (Dutch Pancakes, the DDR museum and then the old courthouse in Berlin, Five in Warsaw and the brewpub there too, Marmalade in Warsaw and the gorgeous little place we found in Bratislava on our last night).
