Budapest and Krakow

I utilized my time in Budapest for some considerably necessary r&r with my friend Erika and her chihuahua, Baby. Life on the road is marvelous, but not easy. We saw all the beautiful monuments, sculpture and architecture on Castle Hill which sits above the Danube and gives a view of the city, walked through some of the parks and took a day trip to a little town outside of Budapest called Szentendre. The food we had there inspired me- garlic herbed cream soup and chicken with lime and yogurt. I can't wait to make my own spin on these dishes. Szentendre is a curious little town with cottages and narrow winding cobblestone streets, a nice change from the residential communist buildings in Zuglo. She gave me several personal Hungarian cooking lessons. She schooled me on a few different ways to make spaetzle, chicken paprikash, letsco, vegetable and dumpling soup, and cake that we paired with Hungarian red wines. I met Erika in culinary school in New York. She is a reiki healer and heavily into tantra and claims to attain orgasm from simply hugging. She has an extensive collection of new age books and a tantra art collection but it is her English that makes her truly unique. Eleven years ago, Erika moved to New York with out knowing a word of English. Self taught, she used the city as her teacher attending comedy shows and watching Married with Children, Seinfeld and immersing herself into city life resulting in quick, witty comments accompanied by a thick Hungarian accent. I had a blast with her and Baby, I even had the apartment to myself for a few days and consumed this time with yoga, meditation, preparing my visa, flight, hostel and research for Vietnam, cooking, going for walks and reading Anatomy of the Spirit, The Four Agreements, Animal Farm and watched the documentary, the Business of Being Born. I highly recommend all of them. As much as I love chihuahua kisses in the morning, it was time for my next endeavor, Krakow, Poland.
Krakow has the most effortless beauty of any place I have ever seen, which can also be said about the people. Most of the architecture has a shabby chic quality about it with partially exposed brick with bright pink and red flowers displayed on the wrought iron balconies, others are baroque and some look renaissance. Every so often you will see a random building painted with an art deco color like yellow or a soft orange. The Wawel castle is the Krakow's claim to fame and even that has several buildings that don't look like they belong together at first glance but somehow they fit together like a puzzle and after taking a good look, you can't picture them any other way. The hostel I stayed in was about $7 a night and was very difficult to find but I turned out to be very grateful for this hidden gem. Hungary and Poland are the first places on my journey that don't use the euro. Hungary uses the forint and Poland uses the zlotych, that took some getting used to. One dollar is equal to 228 forint and about 3 zlotych. I rented a bike and pedaled around the Jewish ghetto and along the river for a few hours one day. I ate perogies like mad. A little old lady around the corner from my hostel made artisinal perogies in her cute little cafe and I went as many times as possible. I also went to a mleczny which translates to "milk bar" in English. These very small, bleak cafeterias were invented by the communists in the sixties. They are called milk bars because until the early eighties they served dairy based vegetarian meals. They were established to create cheap meals that would be available to anyone. This was definitely a cultural experience. I paid about two dollars for my no frills perogies from the most miserable woman I have ever seen in my life not to mention it was like an oven in there. While they were good and cheap, it was worth the extra money to get the perogies from the little old lady around the corner that have different cheeses and herbs inside and garnished with fried onions not to mention, made with love. I could have definitely stayed another night but the woman at the train station booked my ticket for the wrong night and you really don't want to argue with an eastern European woman, so I'm off to Prague tonight on an overnight train. Onward and upward comrades!