Eger to Vienna

Getting a late start tonight so we'll we how far I get.

We got up early so we would have time to visit the castle and take care of some housekeeping before checkout at 11. It's a pretty impressive ramparts, dating from the 1700s. Not much left of the palace or Cathedral, but the views of Eger are great.

 

We had just about enough time to scoot down to the Bibliothek - who knows how to spell library in Hungarian? This is another really old building Someone wanted to build a school for teachers in Eger. The Bishop was not keen on it, but somehow it got built. Currently being used as a teachers college and library.We did not get a chance to see the library, but we did climb up 10 flights of stairs to see a camera obscura that dates from the 1700s and is mounted on the roof. Unfortunately, the demonstration made Michael dizzy. It's done in a dark room and when they rotate the mechanism the image swings around on the table. With no visual reference(we're in the dark), there is a tendency to lose your balance. Pretty cool. Hard to take pictures in the dark and all you see in the light is the 3 rods that control the pan and tilt and the cover on the lens.THe also has some old telescopes. And a Foucault pendulum.

We left Eger at about 11. Only a couple of wrong turns before we decided to put our faith in the GPS - at least one of the wrong turns took us to the minaret in town. 40 m. high and the farthest north in Europe. After they defeated the Ottomans, they tried to destroy it, but were unsuccessful.

We also decided to trust the GPS to get us back through Budapest. As Americans, we are used to being able to bypass big cities, but it does not work that way in Budapest. All the E/W traffic has to go through the city - on city streets. Once again google maps and the GPS did not agree, but we figured the GPS should be able to find Vienna so we followed it. No wrong turns - yay. Even got us to the hotel here in Vienna with no problem.

The day started out sunny and warm in Eger, but we hit some rain showers west of Budapest and here in Vienna. Hoping it will not be too bad tomorrow so we can walk around. We had dinner at the Palmenhouse and wandered over to the Hotel Sacher for their famous Sachertort. Yum.

The Hotel Sacher is next to the Opera House and there were at least 100 people sitting or standing out front watching a jumbo screen with tonight's performance. Free. Pretty cool. Good tenor.










And off course, we need to end up with another picture of Mozart. I thought about a closeup, but then you would miss the G clef out of flowers in front.

Let's hope for some sun tomorrow.

Sighet to Eger

It's not raining at the moment, but who knows how long that will last. We're off to Eger in Hungary. Then 2 days in Vienna and hit Munich Monday night. Michael has decided I am going to drive the mountains today back to Baia Mare. ooookay. We'll see how that goes. He did do screen captures of Satu Mare so we can avoid wrong turns there - I hope.

I hope those of you who are following along are enjoying the trip as much as we are. Feel free to post comments of ask questions.  More later from Eger.

Here  are a few pictures I took on the road. As you can see, they are still using the fences with the "roofs". Note the bright red house.Oh, and it did start raining again as we left.
I'm not sure what denomination the tall spire is, except is it not Eastern Orthodox. Probably Catholic. These tall spires are very typical and the "witches hat" shapes.

I chickened out on driving the mountain road from Sighet to Baia Mare. Turned out there was no fog on the other side and not a lot of traffics so it was not too bad a drive. As Michael said, it was hard to believe we had done it in the dark in the fog. So many hairpin turns. In this photo you can see the road below as we start to make the turn. 50 km takes an hour to an hour and a half.

And here are a few Romanian haystacks. Shot through the car window so not the greatest photo.

The road from Baia Mare to Satu Mare is a string of small towns. You have to slow down to 70 kph or even 50 in town - unless you own an Audi, in which case you use the towns as a means to pass those of us obeying the speed limit. I was scared to death someone would try to cross the street while these crazy people were zooming around us. I found the towns much more interesting than driving on the motorways. Oh and we did make another wrong turn in Satu Mare following the GPS instead of the google map. Ugh.
The sun fiinally came out this afternoon and we actually had the a/c on in the car. We crossed back into Hungary with minimal hassle - the Romanians waved us through. The Hungarians took a little longer. I'm convinced it's the car.
The Hungarian homes are arranged similarly to the Romanian with beautiful front gardens. As I think I noted before, the Hungarians appear to really like iris as many of the homes had a lot of them planted in front of their walls and they are in full bloom.  No where to pull over and take a picture!
Google has been underestimating the time required to get from place to place, but we picked up an hour traveling west. We got to Eger about 5. GPS got us close, but Michael ended up walking down the very narrow street to verify we were in the right place. The street they are on is even narrower. Old town where the local hero held off the Turks in 1552. Popular school trip - there are a lot of kids on the plaza.
For those of you who are getting tired of the synagogue pictures, there is a very nice Basilca in Eger. Built 1831 to 1838. Here's a couple of pictures of the inside. The columns are 3 different colors of marble - gold, brown and red. The second picture is the ceiling. The first was taken halfway down the aisle - which should give you some idea of the size.  

We're staying at another Rick Steves hotel. 11 rooms. Ours is a good sized room on the corner. It's in an old townhouse, but with all the modern "conveniences". This is the first night we have been able to eat outside. Enjoying watching the locals stop for a glass of wine or a beer before heading home for dinner. Here's a picture of my trout dinner. (I know you foodies have been waiting for a picture of the food I've been describing). Oh and it started raining again just as we finished the apple crepe we had for dessert. 

some thoughts

somehow i had not processed that the places my ancestors came from would not look the same 100 years later. i had visualized shetls, whereas we saw much more modern, if poor, towns...we could see thqt there were still peasants driving horse drawn carts, but also cars and trucks and tv antennas...about the only thing that one could visualize as it was a hundred years ago were the old synagogues...and of course the old cemeteries...we did see some old photos...the ones about the deportation as they call it were depressing.

Sighet

Still raining. Trying to decide what to do today. We are a day ahead of schedule thanks to the trip to Sapinta on Tuesday. There are things to do here in Sighet, if the weather were better. We thought about taking a different road back to Satu Mare, but the woman at the desk assured me that that road was worse than the one over the mountains, so it looks like we have another hair raising trip down the far side in the fog. And this time we have to drive.

We're thinking about a stop in Eger in Hungary. Another recreational area that Rick Steves recommended, but if it's going to keep raining, it will make it hard to take advantage.

OK, we're going to hang out in Sighet today. Do laundry and visit the Elie Wiesel Museum. Maybe check out the Jewish Cemetery, which we have been told is in rough shape. Michael has found a few other things we can do and detailed maps!

Here's a picture of the hotel - and the horses grazing on the front lawn.

We walked to the Jewish Cemetery, which is behind a wall and locked. A man across the street says to try the Synagogue, so we walk over there -also locked. Tried one of the phone numbers, but did not get connected. So we walk over to the Elie Wiesel Museum, figuring someone should be there who can maybe contact someone. The museum is in the home of the Wiesel family before the War. Although the furniture did not belong to the family, they have made a nice arrangement.

The young man who took us through the museum did tell us how to get to the Community Center where we can get access to the synagogue. We met the president of the Community and another man who has moved back to Sighet from Israel. He gives us a bit of history of the Jewish community in Sighet. Before WWII, the Jewish population was half the population of Sighet. There were 10 synagogues in town. One survives. It's a Sephardic design. One of the guys claimed it is the same design as the synagogue in Cordova, Spain. Maybe, maybe not.

Marcus lets us into the synagogue, which is very pretty. As in Budapest, they are using a small synagogue next door for services. They don't have a Rabbi, so one of the older men leads the service. We are invited to attend Shavout services tonight. I would have to sit behind the curtain. Not sure we are up for this.

Two of the men are willing to try to find any death records for Salomons, but unfortunately, these records are like the cemetery at Sapinta. First names only - and probably Hebrew names - Samuel son of Meyer. So if you don't already know the parent names, this is not going to help. One of them also assured us we would not be able to find this information in the cemetery, which he characterized as a "jungle" of tall grass and some stones are fallen. He says he is working to try to get the Community to start mowing, at least.

We also stroll through the open market - vegetables and live chicks. There are other markets around the town for animals and other, non edible produce (whatever that means). I get a few photos. Some of the women are in traditional dress. There are lots of horse-drawn carts in town as it is the country people who bring their produce in for the market.

Back to the hotel for lunch. We miss Dan's ability to translate the menu in the smaller cafes. Michael get's stuffed cabbage, which is good, evenif it is not like his mother's. I get polenta with cheese and sausage. Can you say cholesterol? It's good, but very rich. Maybe a salad for dinner.




The sun came out before our morning adventure and it's warmed up so we decide to head over to the outdoor cultural museum where they have collected a number of old houses from various towns in the Maramures district. Similar to our log cabins. Some date back 300 years. Most are probably 150 years old. Very high pitched roofs. Some have been restored.

One or two have plaster/stucco walls rather than the wood. It felt a bit like Plimoth Plantation. We wandered around for about an hour before kaboom! Thunderstorm and we headed back to the car. I knew a whole day without rain was too much to expect.

The woven fence is about 2.5 ft high and has either a wood, or a thatch "roof". Perhaps to keep the rain off the woven material.

Each of the houses has a gate with carved gate posts. All different.

I also took several shots of the wrought iron fences in the neighborhood near the hotel. Here's a sample. The second one is a concrete wall. See the grapes?

I like the "Kilroy" image in the third one.

And just to show I was not kidding about the horse carts. Here's one we were trying to get around on the way to the museum.

Oh, and dinner was very nice. Michael had a pan fried trout and I had chicken paillards coated with almonds. "Pancakes with fruit" for dessert - read crepes with oranges, kiwi, and apple filling. We've had the same waitress all day - she works 7 AM to 11 PM and have had fun chatting with her. She brings us each a small sample of the local plum aperitif. Potent stuff.

Ukraine

So if yesterday was a bit hectic, today was even more crazy. We left Baia Mare at about 10 and headed for the border at Halmeu. This is a large border crossing and we thought it would be better. Hah. The Romanian side was easy. Touriste? Right this way. Done in 5 minutes. Then we tried to enter the Ukraine. Passports went fairly quickly, but customs, not so much. We think that the rental car was problematic. It took at least 30-45 minutes to get through.

Now we are faced with the Cyrillic alphabet and no GPS to help. Michael grabbed screen shots of the google maps from here to Vonihovo and these maps have the Cyrillic spelling, but we are working small scale and the signs are working 70 km away. Oops. The iPad is helpful, along with a map of the Ukraine and one for Romania. They all have the the same big towns, but different small ones.

We make one wrong turn very soon after the border, but I catch it in about 5 km. Rather than go back we take the connecting road. Aiiieeee. Talk about potholes. Some places there are more holes than road. We drove at about 15 kph for 5 km. OK, we won't do that again. The roads in the Ukraine are pretty bad.

We manage to get to the next large town. Go right- but about a km down the road I have second thoughts and we go back and take the other road, which seems to be the right one - M-23. Then I notice that we are traveling west - yes there is a bit of sun - and we want to be heading east. Oops. So back to town where we find a kiosk with a nice woman who speaks a little English and the woman in the kiosk has a MAP that will get us out of town on the right road. Yay. We even stop at a bank to get some cash to get lunch - which we never do manage to get. Oh well.

On to Khust. Another large town where we are not exactly sure where to go at a T intersection. Two women help us out and we are off to Bustyna. Fortunately this is what passes for a "main road" in the Ukraine. 2 lanes, but few potholes. Just stay on this road!

At Bustyna we make a left for Vonihove - former home of Michael's grandparents. We find the town, but the location of the cemetery is not obvious and it is now 5 PM. Rather than try to retrace our steps, we decide to head for the border crossing we checked out Tuesday night at Sighet. After a few queries, we manage to find it. We get special treatment when we show the US passports - a guard who speaks English! I neglected to mention that when we crossed at Halmeu, there was a very long line of cars waiting to cross into Romania - one of the reasons we decided to try Sighet. Fears of spending the night in line at the border. I now understand why some people told us this was only a pedestrian crossing. It's a one-lane bridge.

Rather than try to make it to Satu Mare, we ask the border guard for a hotel recommendation. So here we are at a very nice old hotel - the building is supposed to be over 100 years old. Nice dinner and a large room for 60 E, breakfast included. Whew. Michael has made a vow that we are not going to any more countries with a non-Western alphabet. (I think that lets out Israel)

Here's picture of a church in Sighet from Tuesday.

And below it a picture of a house for sale in the Ukraine.
Many of the houses are painted really wild colors - bright pink, orange, red, bright green. Today in the Ukraine, many of the houses had grape arbors over the front yard. Most have some sort of vegetable garden. Still struggling with wanting to photograph without feeling that I am exploiting these people.

Bicycles are a popular form of transport in this part of the world. Most of the cars are small and old. The Kia really sticks out.

An example of one of the wooden gates and a wrought iron fence next to it. Manyof these fences and walls are very ornate. But they are on narrow, 2-lane roads, which makes it hard to stop and photograph.

Between Bustyna and Salinta there is a stretch of road with a lot of very large - for this part of the world - houses. Many are still under contruction. They feel very strange, compared to what we have been used to seeing - small bungalows crammed together with front and back gardens. Some people have small stands where they sell the vegetables.

Here is a view of the mountains we crossed on Tuesday - see the clouds? That's fog on the other side. Reminds me of the Santa Cruz mountains that act as a barrier to the fog off the Pacific.

Baia Mare to Sapinta and back -update

Updated from this morning with pictures.

If you think we have a lot of paperwork in the US, you have not been to Romania. First a stop to get permission to photograph records. There is a fee and we have to both hand over our passports.

Next stop the archives. More forms and the passports again to get access to the building and obtain researcher cards. More forms to request the books we want - and there are more of them than we can get access to in a single day. The limit is 5 per person so we can get 15. We get all the books for Sapinta and 10 more for Sighet. We are disappointed that the more recent records for Vonihove and Bustyna do not appear to be available here. No one knows where they might be. We fill out more forms - one for each book saying we have used it and a list of the pages that we have photographed.

Fortunately, we meet a man who speaks Hungarian and English who is able to tell us what the pages we are looking at mean. Always a good thing to study the words for Father, Mother, Location, etc. before you start. Lesson relearned.

At 3:30 we have gone through all our books and Dan has made photos of the pages with names that might connect. What next?

We stop for a quick bite at Dan's hostel and decide to make the run to Sighet and maybe Sapinta. Dan has been to Sapinta, but not via this route so he is interested to try it. And we want to see if we can go to the Ukraine this way so we will stop at the border and ask.

The road to Sighet goes up and over the mountains. It is narrow, two lanes and not a lot of guard rails. As we climb, we get into the low clouds and visibility is bad. Good thing Dan is driving, but he is trying to avoid the pot holes, of which there are a lot. Good thing neither of us gets car sick. Going down the other side, the road is better and there is no fog. Still the 50 km trip takes us about an hour.

The other side we are really in Maramures. Horse-drawn carts, cows in the streets, and all the women in black skirts and kerchiefs. While I would love to take pictures, I feel it's a bit intrusive and again, we are trying to get to Sighet. We do see some more stork nests on top of the light poles - with storks. Here's one we saw on the way back.

We do manage to find the border and Dan and Michael chat with the guards. They seem to think we could cross here if we paid the guards on the Ukraine side. Having done the over the moutain trip once, we're not sure we want to do it again. So we press on to Sapinta to see the Merry Cemetry and see if we can find the Jewish cemetery.

We stopped at the Merry Cemetery and I have several pictures.

We also visited the monastery with the highest wooden steeple in Europe.

We make a brief stop at the Jewish cemetery, which has been partially mowed, but is locked. I take a few pictures of the stones near the fence. A man at the archves told us earlier that these stone do not have any surnames, so finding a family is going to be difficult even after they get them photographed.

Here's a picture of one of the numerous wooden gates we saw. Some are quite elaborate with more carving on the posts.  

The trip back over the mountain is a bit hair raising as it is now getting dark and the fog is now thicker. We are crawling along at 30 km in many places. Dan has the GPS map magnified to the point that he can see which way the road turns next. There's one hairpin turn after another. We are really glad he's doing the driving.

We get back to Baia Mare at 10 PM and get a pizza at Dan's hostel.

Long day, but very interesting and I'll try to get pictures up later today. Based on what we found at Sighet, we've decided to use the more official border crossing, so we're headed back to Satu Mare to get to Vonihove. Cyrillic should be fun.

For usability geeks - and fans of sustainability

We've come across a few interesting usability issues. I've already mentioned the GPS, but here's a picture of the "driving" display. The E71 is the road we were on. The lower line of icons are labels for the buttons below. The large arrow indicates we are to go straight for 201 km. The 130 is the speed limit and 16:34 is our ETA.




Romania is not on the Euro. Here are examples of 2 Romanian bills. Note the different colors. One bill is also slightly larger than the other and each has a clear cut-out in a different shape so that the bills can be distinguished by touch. No wonder Europeans have trouble with our money. (The cut out in the 50 is to the right of the eagle and the same shape. The cut-out on the 10 is to the left and is the same shape as an image on the reverse of the bill.)





In many European hotels, the room key controls the lights. You put your key in a slot by the door in order to activate the light switches. When you remove your key on your way out, all the lights are turned off. Good way to save energy. Here in Baia Mare, the outlets are always on, but that was not the case in Salzburg.

















Also in the hotel in Salzburg - note the two buttons to flush the toilet. Big flush or little flush. Your choice.

Here's a room key example. We have a card and are looking for the slot. Nope. This system is called "Wave" and you just wave the card at the dot on the door plate. No more trying to figure out which end of the card to insert. Assuming you figure out what to do with the card.












Two things today. We have discovered 2 hotels that use motion detectors for the lights in the hallways - the one in Salzburg and the one in Sighet. As soon as you open your door, the lights come on, but they're off if no one is in the hall. Remember both of these hotels had key access to the light switches as well.

And today I should have had Kath and her iPhone to take a picture of the WC system at this restaurant/rest stop we stopped at. Lots of posters about these clean restrooms - and that they will cost you 100 HUF (Hungarian Forints - about 40 cents). Access to the WC is controlled by a turnstile. You put in your coin and it spits out a ticket - which can be redeemed for food or anything else in the restaurant upstairs. WC area has sliding doors - which I think are controlled by the turnstile - just in case you try to duck under. I didn't spend a lot of time testing the system. There were also signs showing how you could take some TP, and some disinfectant? in each stall to clean the seat. So now I am paying for the privilege of cleaning the restroom? Not sure about this.
UPDATE: We found another one of these Sanair stops - this one cost 70 cents, but only gave a voucher for 50 cents. So someone has figured out how to make money from this.

WCs at the Munich airport don't have two buttons for flushing, but if you press the button again, it stops the water. So in principle, you can control the amount of water used, but I think the 2 buttons are clearer and work better. Sorry about all this focus on the WC, but they are different in Europe and I think we could learn something about water conservation in public restrooms, (besides the auto-faucets). I think the auto-flush usually uses more water.

The ticket counter agents for Air Canada in Munich have a "swiper" for passports, but it doesn't work for non-Canadian passports, and sometimes, not even for Canadian ones. So they have to type in all the info by hand. Can you say long lines?

Budapest to Baia Mare

Greetings from Baia Mare, Romania. (Get out your atlas). We overslept and ended up dashing out of Budapest - with no wrong turns this time. We did have to go back to the Exchange to get more Forints to get the car out of hock. The parking was about double what the hotel told us. Don't ask.

We spent about half the day on the main highways, but then had to transition to the 2-lane roads in the Hungarian countryside. We passed through a succession of small towns. Kind of like driving Rt 1 through Maine - or California. Speed up to 100 kph between towns, and slow down to 60 kph in town. Zipping around the lorries. eek.

I would love to show pictures of the charming Hungarian towns/villages, but we were trying to make up for the late start and the loss of an hour traveling East. I'm hoping we can stop on the way back. Each of the houses has a fence or low brick wall and a fence. Most are made of wrought iron - and they are all different. Some have fences instead. The iris are in bloom and many of the houses had banks of variegated leaved iris. Really pretty. And we saw 3 horse-drawn carts, sheep, goats. But no cows.

When we left Budapest, we tried to set up the GPS to get us to the hotel, but apparently, the streets in Baia Mare are not in the database. So we said just get us to the city center. That was fine until we lost the signal part way across Hungary. I think the divided highway has been extended since the database was created. We managed to get to Satu Mare, but lost track of the street names. We did find signs for Baia Mare and followed them. Not the shortest route, but probably the fastest. Romanian towns look less prosperous than those in Hungary.

There was an official border crossing between Hungary and Romania. Stamped passports and everything. We saw one of the customs officials confiscate a bag of fresh fruit from one car, then procede to eat one of the pears. Perks of the job.

The countryside we traveled through is like home - corn is just coming up and the wheat is getting beaten down by all the rain. Many fields had some flooded areas.

BTW, they still pump gas for you in Hungary and Romania.

We got in at about 7:30 with the time change. We were able to contact our researcher, Dan, and invite him for dinner. We hope to spend tomorrow in the Archives, with maybe a trip to Sighet or Sapinta tomorrow. Dan has graciously given us copies of all of the records he has photographed. Some are in Hungarian, some German and some Latin. Should be fun.

Sunday in Budapest

Sunday

Still raining, but not as hard. Weather has turned a bit colder and windy. But the synagogue is not a long walk. There is a long line for tickets – this must be the thing to do on Sunday morning. 

This synagogue is the largest in Europe, second in size only to the one in NY. The outside looks a bit like mosque and the inside definitely looks like a church. It was finished in 1859 during a period when Jews were trying to “fit in”. They had just transitioned from a nation apart to considering themselves Hungarian first and Jewish second. 

The central chandeliers are part of the recent remodeling that was done in 1998, after the fall of the Communist regime. In winter it was too dark. The synagogue seats 3000 people, 1500 on the first floor and another 1500 in the 2 balconies that surround the main floor. In early times the women sat upstairs. Now they sit on the sides while the men sit in the middle area. The guide called this congregation a “neuelog”, meaning new dialogue. It fits somewhere between the Orthodox and Conservative movements and started back when the synagogue was built.

The tour includes the memorial garden where 2500 Jews who perished during the Nazi occupation are buried in a group of mass graves. Normally, Jewish cemeteries are not located next to a synagogue, but they really had no other option. There is a beautiful willow tree sculpture in the courtyard that was donated by Tony Curtis. The leaves contain the names of people who died in the Holocaust. And a memorial stone for Raul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved 2000 Hungarian Jews by providing them with Swedish passports.

Willow Tree

There is also a small museum next door with artifacts from the 1800s and earlier grouped by Jewish holiday. Mainly silver. Fortunately for us, the tags are in English as well as Hungarian and Hebrew.

On the way back we noticed this Cafe

We went back to the Garlosky Café for lunch. I finally got to try the goulash – which is a soup, not a stew. It’s got beef, potatoes and carrots in a red broth. Pretty good along with the ciabatta with olives that is made on the premises. We passed up the crepes – again – and headed back to the hotel to decide whether to go back out in the rain and go up to the castle. It’s nice and warm in here. Maybe on the way back?  And we finally got nthe pictures to behave. More or less.