Marshall in Strange Places: January 2014

The Ten Thousand Forint Curse

The ATM that spits out 10,000 HUF is an unkind ATM

Teak handed the Czech lady a 2000 crowns (about 100 Canadian dollars) bill to pay for a 20 crown little map of Prague and then apologized profusely. The lady said no worries, happily rang in the purchase and gave Teak the change.

We looked at each other in amazement. Strange.

Then it happened again. I bought two sausages and a beer with a 2000 crown banknote and the cashier did not seem to mind at all.

These reactions are a stark contrast to the perils of getting a stuck with a 10,000 (about 50 CAD) in Hungary, which happens often thanks to the twisted generosity of ATMs here.

I've had people refuse to accept payment because all I had was a 10,000 forint bill. I'm serious, she had my gelato and I had my cursed bill, and she shock her head, Nem! If it is accepted it, it's sometimes accepted with rolled eyes, audible sighs, and loud groans.

I'm not complaining – this is a first world problem, after all – but a little empathy would be nice, or recognition that a 10,000 HUF note is legal tender of the land.

My beef isn't really with the people who are forced to break 10,000 forint bills, my heart goes out to them. Instead, I blame the ATMs that refuse to give out smaller denominations. I'm blaming the machines!

Venice

The days are are still short, the dark is still coming earlier than wanted – Hungary still resembles Mordor this is the time of year, and so my mind goes to brighter times during the summer.

The original plan was not Venice. It was Trieste. But at the last minute, we fought the Hungarian bus service bureaucracy and changed our tickets for the overnight bus to the Floating City.

We arrived all bleary eyed, found our way to our penzione, which was in a 200-year-old building, where we got a late breakfast on the lovely terrace. Then we set out to explore. Venice is a strange, almost fantasy land. The city is old, there are no cars, great food and so romantic that even I noticed that it was romantic. It also helps that we had a Baroque-fairy-tale-style room.

The city feels Medieval and, at times, smells a little Medieval, but it lives up to all of its hype. It really is a beautiful place, and we were lucky enough to have incredible weather the whole time we were there, except when we overextended our visit and missed our bus to Budapest, then it thunderstormed.

There are a lot of cliches about Venice, but when you're there, not too many of the cliches are unpleasant. We ate plenty of gelato and sipped wine at cafes. Dolce vita stuff. We also found the Indiana Jones church and I took way too many artsy photos.

Looking pretty fine after an overnight bus ride.

The fancy Sissi Room.

My Venice face

A typical cliched Venice photo,
which doesn't mean it ain't pretty.

Bridge of Sighs

St. Mark's Cathedral

Syrian Tetarchs, of BFFs.

Artsy Photo!

Gondola traffic jam.

It's kind of pretty here in the summer.

A new friend.

Artsy Photo!

The Ghetto The only place we saw a tree.

Indiana Jones Church!!!!

Summer Bromance in Rome... or is it Brome?

The days are are still short, the dark is still coming earlier than wanted – Hungary still resembles Mordor this is the time of year, and so my mind goes to brighter times during the summer.

The 8am wake-up was tough after the a few wobbly pops on the piazza,
but the Colosseum was something to see in that morning light.

After our trip to Vienna, Alek and I hatched a plan to get to Rome with another Budapest buddy, Joe. Joe had to drop out, leaving just Alek and I, so apparently the Bromance would continue.

I arrived late while Alek was out with his family along the Amalfi coast. I checked into my penzione and, on my own, I went for a night-time Discovery Walk and quickly got lost.

It was night in a strange city, but I still thought it would be a good idea to get some gelato, collect myself and get un-lost, which actually meant taking a wrong turn into the Parco Del Colle Oppio beside the Colosseum.

The park is almost all fenced, which I found out when I walked the perimeter in search of the exit. I managed to find a few familiar landmarks and made my way back to the penzione and to bed, safely.

Alek was going to come in that afternoon and I would meet him after I visited the Vatican Museum. But here’s the thing: It’s really easy to get lost in all the pretty things there. And there are a lot of pretty things.

I skipped the ancient Egyptian and Etruscan rooms, going straight to the old Greek and Roman sculptures and then the Gallery of Maps – all so absorbing that you forget that you have the whole Renaissance to get through too.

I almost missed the Borgia Apartments on the way to the Raphael Rooms. Then between the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel is a collection of incredible contemporary pieces – a rarity in Renaissance-loving Rome. These would have been easily ignored if you put your head down like everyone else and charged towards the Sistine.

Then I got lost in the Sistine, but who wouldn’t get lost looking at that immense pretty thing.

Oh yeah! There was a whole other museum after that, and it’s no sideshow either. When I should have been running to meet Alek, I lingered and doddled over the Da Vinci’s and Caravaggio’s. I ended up missing dinner but that didn’t matter much, because we reunited at last over a drink... then we ordered ‘one’ more.

The flipside to all those drinks was the 8am wake-up call for our Colosseum. Alek had found a decent deal that would take us under the Colosseum and to the higher levels where few tourists are allowed to tread. It was also a sunny day, and while we were able to stick to the shade in the Colosseum, we couldn’t escape the heat for the second leg of the tour on the Palatine Hill. A combination of heat stroke and hangover is no dolce vita.

Then we Discovery Walked our way to a patio and recovered over wine and free potato chips. We ate gelato, gained our strength, visited a few churches and had another night on the town (not too late because of the heat stroke/hangover combination).

With little time left the next morning, we stopped at a final church and had a farewell gelato together. Alek caught a train to the airport and left. I wandered the town for one day on my own, hitting a few more attractions (St. Peter's, a few churches, and the Castel Sant Angelo) before I too left.