The Eastern Block

We just recently got back from a weekend in Slovakia. You might be asking, why Slovakia? Generally I would be asking myself the same question, given all of the places we haven’t been to, but there were special circumstances on this trip.

To make a long story short, my best friend, Brent, works for a manufacturing company. An Italian company who happened to have a plant in Slovakia bought out the old company and they decided to send a few people over to fill some gaps in their Slovakian work force. Brent was one of the lucky few to be chosen (in the end he was the only one that went over for more than a week). In theory, Brent was to help improve the efficiency and productivity in the Slovakian plant, but ended up just doing the same job he was doing back home, which seemed a little nonsensical considering the distance he had traveled and the cost involved (I’ll let Brent fill in the inner workings if he so chooses on this one), but it is a really good deal for him, so hard to complain.

As it turns out, he was only there for 10 weeks (the limit of his stay without major paperwork) and leaves for home September 7th. Originally I thought he was going to there until the end of September, so our trip ended up being a bit last minute (a note on last minute travel: significantly more expensive…). In any case, we got our tickets and our time off and we were on our way.

The trip started off a little rocky. Have I mentioned I hate the 24-hour clock? Well, I messed up the time slightly in my translation and, where I thought we were leaving at 9:50pm in the evening, we were really leaving at 7:50pm. Fortunately, as I was leaving work to leisurely walk home, have some dinner, and then grab the bus to the airport, I realized the error of my ways. So instead, I called Mariah, walked home a top speed, grabbed luggage (fortunately we had already packed, but we did manage to forget a good few things) and half run to the airport bus (no dinner was eaten). We got on the bus at around 6:20pm, which seemed like a reasonable amount of time, and then…traffic… There was a forty-minute cut off for checking into the flight, which meant we had to get there by 7:10pm. I spent most of the buss ride begging, in a general manner, whichever governing divine powers that would listen, to allow us to make our flight. A constant repetition of “Please let us make our flight” rattled through my head as we stopped and then lurched on through the after work traffic.

We arrived at the airport at 7:08pm and literally ran to the check in desk. We were fine, I begged just enough. We made it!

Our flight was delayed fifty minutes and then another hour. I begged too hard…

We arrived in Bratislava at about 1:00am in the morning (it’s just over a two hour flight with a one hour time difference – we were supposed to arrive just after 11:00pm). Brent had a car available to him, so he picked us up. Bratislava is the main city in Slovakia, but Brent was staying just to the east in a large town called Trnava. We arrived at the hotel (the company put Brent up in a hotel for his whole trip, so we just stayed at the same place) at about 2:00am. The hotel was really nice with a comfy bed…ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Not for long though. Brent is a pretty big World War II history buff (I am as well, though on a much smaller scale) and he really wanted to see the Auschwitz death camps while he was over here, so we had decided to drive to Poland Saturday morning to see it. The drive was a long one (about 5 hours) so we wanted to leave early so we would have plenty of time to see it and then get back that evening. (Yes, 10 hours of driving in one day…Brent did the driving and took it like a champ.)

So, on only a few hours sleep we rolled out of bed, jumped in the car, and headed for the border. One of Brent’s work mates, Matej (pronounced Matay), came along, which was key to our travels. Not only was he a great guy, but he also acted as our pathfinder when we quickly found ourselves off the main track and lost.

Who closes a freeway for the weekend? In multiple different spots no less… I know, it happens, but it didn’t exactly help us out both going and coming back. With Matej’s skillful asking of directions to the random guy on the side of the road in the random town that the closed freeway dumped us in, we made it into Poland. Poland was a slightly different story in relation to language. It is just different enough not to be the same, but just similar enough for two people to understand each other in passing along directions…fortunately… Matej is also fearless in this regard, so we really had no troubles the whole way there, aside from a little wrong turn here and there.

Auschwitz is broken into three different camps, built at different times given increase in capacity. We saw two of them. Normally you go on vacation to do something up beat and happy, to forget the troubles of your everyday life. This was not happy…but it was really, really interesting! I’m not going to go into a great deal on the camps (hopefully we all know the basic history here); suffice it to say it was a humbling experience and one not easily forgotten. The first Auschwitz camp was just filled with museums. Each brick building, once used as sleeping quarters for Jewish prisoners and other prisoners of war (typically Russian) alike, had a small museum in it with a different focus.

One of the many, which I found most gripping, was dedicated to evidence of the atrocities and held rooms filled with remnants of the people who died here. Huge rooms just filled with shoes, or piles of eye, suitcases, and pots. One room was filled with tons and tons of human hair. It seems the Nazis, after the killing, would take the hair from their victims to be used in making cloth for internment clothing, or just sold. Hitler…ever the entrepreneur… This was decidedly the most horrifying thing I have ever witnessed.

And now that I have shared it with you we can move on to happier topics…

Well…not just yet. About three miles from Auschwitz sits Auschwitz II: Birkenau. We walked from one to the other, likely a walk that many prisoners had taken in the past. The sequel was significantly bigger than its predecessor, likely more efficient, and more cheaply constructed. Huge fields were filled with bunkhouses and we were only able to cover a small piece of the camp since time was growing short. The Germans tried to cover their tracks as they retreated at the end of the war and destroyed most of the camp, specifically the Crematoriums (the facilities used for gassing and burning prisoners). All that was left of these was rubble, so we didn’t get to see much of how these worked aside from pictures.

All said it was depressing, but in a good way…

Our trip back was long, but fairly uneventful. I’m pretty sure we got lost at one point, but it was dark, so we couldn’t really tell, and we eventually made it to where we were heading. The freeway was still closed in a few different places so we got sent on more than one detour. Fortunately the detours were marked with signs this time, so we only felt half lost. We made it back to the hotel at around 12:30am and fell into bed, this time for a significantly longer stretch. In fact we didn’t really roll out of bed until about 1:00pm. Making up for lost time…

That day, Sunday, we pretty much just sat around with Brent and had a chat. We ate here and there, played a little Badminton (the hotel we were staying at was also a sports center for tennis and it seems Badminton is a relatively popular pastime in Slovakia), but otherwise we just sat around and shot the s***. That evening we ventured into downtown Trnava to meet some more of Brent’s coworkers. Only some of them spoke English, so there was a lot of segregation in the conversations and a lot of repetition in one language or the other, but it was definitely a good time.

Monday Brent took off work and we headed into Bratislava for the day. It is a pretty interesting place with some really great artistic features. They have even become icons for the city. Specifically the one pictured here of a man poking out from under a manhole cover was really great. The old part of their city center that we saw was really interesting and supposedly there is a great nightlife there, though we weren’t in the city for that part. It seemed more stark than other cities I had seen, more plain, but still very cool.

That evening we had some more time for BSing, got to say goodbye to Matej, and then headed off to bed. Again after only a few hours sleep we had to roll out of bed Tuesday morning to get to the airport at 5:00am. Brent had to go to work afterwards and we had to take our flight home…and then go to work… This part I would not choose to do again. Recuperation time after a trip is imperative, even if it’s only a weekend. I don’t know how business guys do it traveling constantly and heading straight into meetings. I suppose you get used to it. In any case, I don’t want to and will be taking the extra day off, assuming I haven’t used them all up.

All of the trip pictures have been added to my Picasa site, so you can check them out at your leisure.

BACK TO WORK!

4 Countries in 14 Days….Part IV: El España Siestas

Just as we leave France they hit us for one last toll and of course as we got into Spain, they hit us with the first toll. We paid about 100 Euro in tolls along the way with the most expensive one 28 Euro. Does make sense, since you are only taxing the people who use it, but still.

We drove into San Sebastian and after some frantic phone calls, since our mobiles did not work until we got into Spain to call Spain, we finally found a hostle in the center of the old district. This is where Ben pulled out some of the most amazing Spanish I have ever seen him speak, he was even making jokes with the lady telling how we were so lost! San Sebastian is right off the bay so it is quite a calm beach without ridiculously huge waves. There were so many little shops and restaurants just a stones throw from our place. This is where we stayed for the next three nights. No trying to cram in tons of things to do, just focus on eating, shopping and lying on the beach. It was not that hot so none of us got sunburned, but was still very enjoyable. The water was cool, but once you got in, it was very pleasant. We drank copious amounts of wine and ate way too much gelato, but hey, we are on holiday!

When we woke up the last morning in San Sebastian, we knew it was time to move on since it was cloudy and cold. After a quick yet yummy breakfast we headed to Bilboa which was only about an hour away. We went to check out Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum. We are not particularly Gehry fans, but to be so close and not go see it would be an architectural crime. We took a nice long walk around the museum, took just a peek inside since we did not have enough time to go see the exhibits and as we left we even caught a glimpse of Santiago Calatrava’s suspension bridge. The large flower dog was strange, I am not sure what it was all about, but then again I guess it is art and it was pretty.

With the temperature rising, we got in the car for our 4+ hour drive to Barcelona. It was such a diverse countryside to drive through, Pyrenees Mountains with lush vegetation, then it opened up to desert that reminded us of Bend. Small little towns with the church as the city centre, and small farm ruins could be seen from the freeway. Just a wide variety of vernacular architecture to be quickly seen as it flashed before us going 130 kph. We got into Barcelona and there was a large hill that we thought had to have the strangest architectural forms we had ever seen. As we drove closer the reflection off all the windows was blinding and as we passed right up next to it, we realized that is was not strangely formed buildings, but the largest cemetery I had ever laid eyes on carved out of a rocky hillside, the Cementiri del Sud-Oest cemetery on Montjuïc Hill. It reminded Tauna of a Jewel called Barcelona where she said, “…And the churches don't have windows but the graveyards do...”

We crashed at the hotel right on the main strip of La Ramblas after a long days driving. We had finally found the sun! After maneuvering around some of the most complex roundabouts that I have ever seen, Ben said he was ready to take on Irish driving since he survived that. The next morning we got up early and after a great breakfast we hit the sights. The first stop was Richard Meier’s Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, again, another architect we were not psyched about but could not miss since it was only a five minute walk from our hotel. But we were on to an architect that I personally have loved, Antoni Gaudi, since he was one of the most innovative architects of the 20th century . We saw one of his earliest apartments, Casa Batlló, and an apartment building that even non-architects would recognize, Casa Milà. And then we went on to a cathedral that has been under contraction for well over 100 years and still will take another 30 more to finish, La Sagrada Família. It began in 1882 and is projected to finish 2030 but in architect la-la-land, that means about 2040. Hopefully I will be able to see it completed in my lifetime. After that we headed for the Barcelona Subway, which has to be the best Subway systems I have ever been on. It was even air-conditioned! Which is a bonus since it was about 90+ degrees out. It also was very easy to find your way around it. We got to the Olympic site and check out some of it in passing but went straight to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavillion for the 1929 International Exposition held in Barcelona. Ben had had a college architectural studio based on this site, so it was great for him to finally see it first hand. He never thought he would actually see it, so it was a pretty cool moment! After all that excitement we were ready for some dinner, wine, gelato and a good nights sleep before heading back home early the next morning. We had some of the best gelato I have ever had, it was Crème Catalan, which can only be found in Spain. I need to figure out how to make Catalan Custard which the French ripped off of them to make their own crème brule. After 2300+ kilometers of driving and who knows how many miles of flying and train rides, we all eventually made it home in one piece, got all our luggage and did not kill eachother, so in my book that is a very successful trip!

4 Countries in 14 Days….Part III: Le Frenchy Expériences

Like London, Paris was to be the only place that we actually had reservations in a hotel for. After navigating the complex Metro, we finally got to our hotel, cleaned up quickly and went out to explore Paris. We caught our first sight of the Eiffel Tower, and it was so much bigger that I ever imagined. The Arc de Triomphe was huge and sat amid one of the craziest roundabouts I have ever seen where most Parisian car insurance ceases to exist once you enter it. There was shopping galore along Champs-Élysées and for very good prices. So many beautiful clothes! The styles were gorgeous! We walked up the original “Rodeo Drive”, Avenue Montaigne, and saw the original Chanel designs, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Dior. The shops were closing but we were to return the next day for Chanel! That night we ate a wonderful dinner and the best crème brule I have ever had and on our way home we picked up a bottle of wine and drank it in our room to watch the Eiffel Tower lights twinkle in the window reflection across from us.

We awoke to sunshine, although not hot, it was a pleasant day to try and see all of Paris in. We grabbed some croissants and fresh fruit with what little French I could muster and enjoyed breakfast in the Champ de Mars in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. While Mike and Tauna were walking to come join Ben and I they spotted John Malkovich having his cappuccino in a small café. Mike is good with those celebrity sightings! With one full day to see most of Paris in, the trip to the top of the Tower was not to be. That we can save for next time. We started the day at the Peace Monument at one end of the Champ de Mars and worked our way towards this river. We walked up the boardwalk along the River Seine and took in the sights before veering off to hit the Louvre Palace-Museum. With being short on time, we just passed though the exterior gardens, fountains, courtyards and continued onto the Obelisk at Concorde Square. After regaining our energy with lunch and more gelato, we climbed all 422 stairs up to the top of Notre-Dame to get some of the most breathtaking views of Paris and were able to hear a proper Catholic Sunday Mass with the organs eerily filling the entire cavernous Cathedral. Small winding streets with chic boutiques, small cafes, and coffee shops led us back to our hotel for more wine consumption, another wonderful meal and good company. As we wandered the streets we happened upon the Eiffel Tower as it did its twinkling show right at midnight. It lasted for 10 minutes and was a good ending to another day.

During our last day in Paris we hit Chanel on our way out since the shops are closed on Sundays and just happened to walk past the tunnel that Princess Diana died in. We were then on our way to Versailles. This was to be the start of another wet day. When we arrived at Château de Versailles where King Louis XIV had his summer home at, all it did was dump copious amounts of rain on us. Since most of the palace was closed for renovations, the clouds were hiding most of the extensive views of the gardens, we cut our losses and headed on to Caen. We got there shortly before nightfall, found a close hotel after splitting up to search and headed out for a meal. We went to a very Normandicly French restaurant where we dined on Escargo, French wines, Normandy Veal, and of course more crème brule. Some of the best food and a very charismatic waiter that enjoyed practicing his stated horrible English, which actually was quite good!

We got up early the next morning and headed to the WWII sites. We zigzagged along the coast seeing the Beaches of Normandy. We stopped along the road to see where some of the large British concrete boat things were anchored to create a base that is still there. We also toured the Washington Cemetery and paid tribute to those many soldiers that lost their lives there. It was an area that Ben would like to go back to someday with Brent to explore since you need more than one day to view it all in and discover. This was to be our longest day of driving as well. We left Normany and were finally heading south hoping for better weather.

We stopped for lunch in Le Mont Saint Michel, which is an ancient Tidal Island with an Abbey perched on the top of the island. In modern times they have paved a road that permanently goes out there now. You twist and curve up the tight pedestrian streets passing small shops, hotels, boutiques, until it leads up to the breathtaking views from the Abbey.

We all piled back in the car and headed to Boudreaux. After a long day of driving we finally arrived at our hotel and had another spectacular dinner. About this time we were all craving some veg since we had had our fair share of bread, bread and more bread. The next morning we got an early start of hitting the vineyards. The first vineyard was Château Siran, which was recommended by one of Tauna’s coworkers. We drove past their rows of grapes before arriving at a stucco compound painted a pastel pink. I was not going to let the pink detour me, and headed inside. We got a great tour of their wine museum and where the hold their wines. They even gave us a play by play on how they exactly make the wine, how long it takes, and how much of each grape types goes into a wine. We tasted three different types and each one got better. Each one should be ages 8-15 years and I could not resist buying a few bottles to save for a celebration later on, which was the Margaux. We also bought extra bottles to drink along the rest of the trip. The next winery, Château Lanessan, was amidst two large Châteaus that still own the vineyard and reside in them. We got a tour of the grounds and gardens, which had some of the nicest horse stalls I have ever seen. They were marble with wrought iron bars and mahogany stalls with the only running water in that barn at the time of construction at the whole compound. We picked up a few more bottles of Delbos-Bouteiller and were on our way to Spain and sunshine!

4 Countries in 14 Days….Part II: Even Soggier English Summer

We arrived right on time at the airport, grabbed some quick eats, and then realized that our plane was delayed. Ouch! We got into London about 11pm and finally got to our very nice hotel by midnight. We got a super cheap rate at a very nice hotel since we made the reservations hours before arriving. After a hectic day we all slept well, but then sadly we woke up to rain. Now, when I say rain, I don’t mean rain, I mean sheets and buckets of water gushing down all over London. We held out most of the time under a bridge, but inevitably just got drenched. We made our way to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels, at which point the sun came out and shined for the rest of the day. We then moved on to see London Bridge and we went up into the London Eye. After the birds eye view we continued on to see the Parliament building, Big Ben, as well as Buckingham Palace. Many miles were covered in one day to see most of the important sites while soaking wet. We did eventually dry out though. I was in denial that it could rain during our Holiday.

As we headed back to the hotel we realized that the Underground Subway was not functioning all that well due to the drastic amounts of rain that had been falling. Mike and Ben’s great sense of directions and understating of the Underground got us eventually back to the hotel to rest our tired feet and get some good food. We were to find out later, this was just a start of the floods that plagued England in the following wells. As we boarded the Chunnel the following morning, we were so happy to being taking the train since with all the rain, the airport was completely swamped with flights delayed or cancelled. As I closed my eyes for a quickly little catnap, we left London and were to soon arrive in Paris.

4 Countries in 14 Days….Part I: Wet Irish Summer

Mike and Tauna, our dedicated travel friends came all the way from the US to travel the globe with us. They arrived here quite early on a Tuesday morning after 24 hours on a plane or in an airport seat with all their baggage in one piece. I met them at the airport and was super excited to see them since I got used to seeing them on an almost daily basis before I moved here, and they are the first guests to see our new home. We all had a great breakfast to get their day going, left them with some good maps and we were off to work. We made sure that they stayed awake that whole first day so they could get onto our time somewhat painlessly. They navigated the city with ease and we met them after work for some good eats and some dessert at our favorite gelato place.

The next night Bruno (Ben’s good friend from work) was gracious enough to open his house to us since his can actually hold a fair amount of people, so we made a dinner for Mike and Tauna to meet all of our international friends. A simple dinner with the wine flowing made for some good times.

The following day I woke Mike and Tauna right before leaving for work and we had a nice night planned, but about 10am it dawned on me that our flight was not leaving early Friday morning. Instead it was leaving that night! Oops! I called Ben to let him know the somewhat bad news and ran home during my lunch break to pack. I got ahold of our travel companions, let them know that really our flight was that night and they would be home in time for us all to get to the airport. After a super brisk jog/walk home from work, we grabbed the suitcases and were off to the airport. It is about a five-minute walk to the Aircoach bus to the airport and while walking down the street there was Land Rover that came blasting its music down the street, and it was none other than Ireland’s finest, Colin Farrell. That was a good sign that this was going to be a Great trip!

Hey Man, Nice Tan!

As a preview to our full Barcelona post, I would like to share this one special moment we had walking back to the hotel after a long day of sight seeing. This is highly inappropriate, but much too funny to ignore.

If you would like to know why the guy in the foreground of this picture (our buddy Mike) is laughing so hard go to this image and zoom in on the tan guy in the background (click on the image and then click on the magnifying glass in the upper right above the picture, then click and drag on the picture to pan over to the little tan guy). For those of you with pristine mental imagery or weak bladders you may want to skip this one. Everyone else, it’s not to be missed.

I don’t want to give it away, so we will deal with queries and explanations in the comments section on this one. Suffice it to say it was the most bizarre thing we saw on our trip by a long shot.

“That wasn’t real?!...was it?” Mike said, in utter disbelief…

NEWS FLASH!: No Imagination Required

We have now started uploading pictures to Picasa, an online photo storage site which comes as part of our Google accounts (free by the way…brilliant set of online information and apps) so that you lucky few readers are no longer stuck with only the few pictures we upload as part of the blog.

You can find my Picasa site here. For now my account will be the only one to have images, but Mariah’s is linked from mine in case we use hers as well.

To start I have just started uploading images from our last big trip. It takes a while to upload, so keep checking back as I get more added. After we will probably up up some other images, depending on how much space we have available.

When you click on pictures in the album you can select download off to the right of the page if you would like to have a copy for yourself. It seems you can order prints through the Picasa sight, though I haven’t tried this yet, but you could also download the image and take it on a disk to your local print developer for prints as well. For most of the images I have higher resolution versions that what are up on the Picasa site (to conserve space) so if you want to make a larger print of any image you are welcome to email me and I can send over the larger format image (which will make for better prints).

Blah blah blah…we hope you enjoy and if you have any questions or special requests feel free to let us know.

The Short And Dirty: Back In…Grey?

Well, when I started this blog the intention was to keep everyone apprised of what was going on in our lives without having to send individually crafted emails to everyone I know (yes, I am lazy like that). And, at the start…when I had no job, that was working relatively (I was only behind for a week or so there for a while) well. But now, despite Mariah’s strong efforts, the blog has been lagging behind on feature length stories, so I think I will amend the blog to include this semi-regular possibly-but-not-likely-weekly update which will give you the short and dirty (not too dirty though…this is a family blog) version in summary of what we are doing. I know this will require some restraint on my part, since I have the tendency to prattle on about everything to an extent that loyal readers wake up drooling over their keyboards with some lovely square indentions on their faces, but I will do my best. Here goes:

Unfortunately I can’t remember where my blog life left off in order to find a starting point, so I will just summarize a lot… We both have jobs and are enjoying them relatively well – especially in regard to the great people we are working with (this I know both of us have touched on). For me the work wasn’t fully what I was hoping for, but at least the environment is good and I getting to work on a massive project with some good experience. The weather here this summer has been excruciatingly miserable, even for someone who is no stranger to seeing rain in the middle of summer. There have been no real sunny days aside from the month of April. I am beginning to think that April was summer and we moved straight into fall… When a random sunny day does occur we often try to get ourselves to the beach, but those are few and far between at this point. I have high hopes for August and September, but I won’t be holding my breath (because I would definitely die…).

I did manage to post about our trip to Brussels last May, but you can start looking forward to a few new holiday stories because we have just returned back from a ten day whirlwind road trip from Paris to Barcelona with a stop in…London (don’t ask – we’ll fill you in eventually). I say a few new stories because it will take multiple posts to get through all of the things we saw. We again had US traveling companions with us, our friends Mike and Tauna, but this time we weren’t crashing anyone’s honeymoon.

The short and dirty version: We flew into London for two nights, then on to Paris on the Chunnel for two nights, then we rented the car and drove up through Normandy stopping in Caen for a night, down past Mont St. Michal to Bordeaux for a night, then across the border into Spain for three nights on the beaches of San Sebastian, and finally down to Barcelona for two nights and our flight back to Ireland. We saw a little of a lot in a fairly short amount of time. It was a great adventure, although a bit more stress than I would normally like to take my holidays. In any case I now know for sure that I’m not really a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of guy (I knew this already, but now I have experiential proof). All in all, though, everything worked out well and it was a really great experience. No one died, either by accident or by strangulation brought on by long hours in a car together, which is always a bonus. Beyond sore and battered feet from walking, no one was injured either. I learned a lot about strategies for road trips, but that you will have to find in a later post.

So, now we are back from our jaunt through lush villages, sunny beaches, and aired deserts to…patches of sun, swallowed whole by overwhelming grayness and gouts of torrential rain…