Tourists in Budapest

Taking in the Danube from atop Gellert.

We had less than a day in Budapest, so we left our hotel and went for a walk, heading south towards Gellert Hill.

We went along the Danube on the Buda side, strolling beside the river, avoiding bicyclists, dodging rollerbladers, weaving past tourists stopping to snap photos of the Hungarian Parliament Building across the river – and pausing to snap our own. Then under the Chain Bridge, through a side street, browsing in a small design shop, until finally reaching the foot of Gellert Hill.

We climbed the switch-backing paths, catching glimpses of the city below, and savouring the spring flowers. We were hungry when we reached the top, but we still lingered to appreciate the view.

Then we walked down the hill, through the park on the backside of Gellert and, without really meaning to, we went to a touristic, Hungarian restaurant.

The restaurant looked traditional. There was a big, old ceramic furnace in the corner and red,table clothes with traditional Great Plains-ish patterns draped atop the tables. Even the waiters seemed authentic –  grumpy, old men in white shirts idly walking around and waiting on the three occupied tables, but mostly trying unsuccessfully to look as busy as they could in a not so busy restaurant.

We sat down, ordered our food. My novice food-ordering Hungarian language skills seemed to brighten the grumpy waiter's mood. We even earned a further nod of approval when we ordered a bottle of Kadarka.

When our food arrived – which was delicious, by the way – a traditional Hungarian band was tuning up. Why would a band get ready to play so early? we wondered.

At 6:03pm, they started playing a Hungarian folk tune that sounded familiar from my years spent living above touristy Hungarian restaurants with outdoor bands on Vaci utca. At 6:04pm, a table beside the band abruptly stood up and left while the band played, eliciting an angry, hurt, surprised reaction from the first violinist.

At 6:05pm, a busload of Chinese tourists filed into the restaurant, occupying every spare table. The grumpy old waiters lept into action, taking orders and bringing drinks. As the band played, most of the tourists stared longingly into their phones. Some did talked among themselves. One old lady put her head in their hands and dozed off.

The band started playing the Blue Danube – the 2001 song... the spaceship one, not the bone smashing song, which is not a dinner-eating tune –  as the grumpy old waiters hustled from table to table, bringing food to tables filled with filled to delighted tourists. Even the dozing old lady took her head out of her hands.

The familiar tune was treated with indifference. The tourists remained glued to their phones  as they ate or poked suspiciously at their nokedli, while the violinist strolled up and down the aisles, playing his violin solo.

The dessert was served and the the band took a break. They smoked outside and sipped water at the bar. While the grumpy old waiters to carried away the plates, we drained our wine, settled our bill – which brightened our grumpy waiter's mood – and walked into Budapest's gathering dusk.

One of the prettiest parts of BP is the other side of Gellert Hill.

Britain's Blizzard... or Brizzard?

Western Europe's and Britain's recent snowpocalypse and the total chaos it caused over the weekend reminded me of an experience similar to that country's recent wintry woes.

While I was working in the dark world of tobacco advertising, I was sent on a business trip to Bristol with a few colleagues to make a few presentations. We managed to line up the trip for a Thursday, so we could spend the weekend in London.

We arrived at Luton Airport on Thursday morning to chilly, soggy weather – nothing unseasonable. This weather held up through the two-hour drive to Bristol and an entire day of meetings, a client dinner, and an evening of refinements on the presentation.

The next morning, I groggily awoke and parted the curtains.

Bristol gets a real taste of winter.  

The city was blanketed with a few inches of snow, which was still coming down. As I sipped my third coffee in the hotel restaurant, I watched people slip and slide through the snow as they stared at the winter wonderland around them. Cars fishtailed as they turned, slid as they hit the brakes, and spun their wheels with their feeble all-weather tires.

For Bristol, it was a snow day. The city's authorities told everyone to stay home. The trams stopped running. The client's office was closed. We held the client presentation huddled on couches around my lap top on a coffee table in the hotel bar for the two clients who braved the snow.

As we drove back to London in a hired car, we saw the first evidence of the existence of snow plows in Britain – the highway was clear, though there were few other cars enjoying the salted and cleared the road.

All weekend in London, the snow continued to fall. I went spent an afternoon in the Tate Modern, so my shoes could warm up and dry out. I went from pub to cozy pub with a Londoner friend, where other Londoners had escaped to drink liquid warmth by the pint. I walked down semi-empty sidewalks and slushy, snowy, unplowed roads. The only places that were reliably open all weekend were the Indian restaurants, the pubs, and curiously, the White Chapel Market.

By Sunday, we arrived to the airport hoping the Brits had learned to handle the snow, we were somewhat disappointed. The snowplows were struggling to keep the snow off the runways, delaying flights. The airport personnel let us and our fellow passengers outside onto the tarmac, unaware the flight crew was still de-icing the plane. We shivered outside in the wind and snow, waiting to be admitted onto the airplane. When the airplane took to the air, I clapped and a few other passengers joined in. We had escaped.

Spending a weekend in Britain during a snowfall, or "snowstorm" as they call it, is like living through the first day of snow in Canada – drivers forget how to drive, snowplows take a while to get to the streets, people discover they haven't put on their snow tires.

In some countries over here, a serious snowfall comes once every few years, so they're institutionally unprepared for it and most people aren't sure how the handle the snow. It's like our first snow of the winter on a near-collapse-of-society level.

Canadians – and some hearty American states – have the advantage of having a few more snowfalls to deal with throughout the year, by which time we've forgotten how to deal with snow again and we're all clueless about how to drive, walk, breath, et cetera. 

That being said, there are few better places to spend a snowstorm than in a cozy pub in England.

A Day Over in Hanover

Whenever we got lost in Hanover,
we looked for the "Witch Church' to orient ourselves.

Cities in Northern Germany are studies in contradictions.

Bremen is a blue-collared, working class city, where beer brewers and factory workers rub shoulders with students and artists. That strange mixture gives you a city that's grounded and unpretentious, yet still artistic and surprising. My kind of city.

Hamburg is a sprawl of sailors, refugees, drifters, musicians, bankers, ship owners, and old money at the mouth of the Elbe River. It's a city of work ethic and debauchery, with a worldliness that accepts everything and anything, because there are better things to do than judge someone for who they are or what they do – like make money or party.

To the south of these fine towns is Hanover, a mid-sized city that's a little tougher to pin down.

Every region in Germany speaks German a little different, from the rocks-in-your-mouth dialect in Cologne to the Bavarians' take on the language, which the rest of Germany unjustifiably snickers at. I've been told the German that Hanoverians speak is as close as you can get to the original High German. I'm no expert, but the German I heard in Hanover was definitely clearer and easier to understand for the slow-learning, novice German-speaker.

Hanover is a city that wears its white collar stiffly, but unlike other German cities, Hanover is not a city of bankers or chemists or engineers. It's a city of culture. There are theatres everywhere, an opera house with a packed schedule, and enough museums and art galleries to please every artistic inclination.

And yet, our only full day in the city was a Monday, so every museum in the city was closed. The Sprengel and its collection of 20th centuries masterpieces was off limits. The Kestnergesellschaft was a no go. The edgy, ultra-modern KUBUS was not edgy enough to be not closed for the day.

And since this is February, the Botanical Gardens and the gardens around the Schloss Herrenhaus would have been a dreary, cold walks. The giant forest in the middle of the city would have been nice, but barren. 

But this is turning into a blog post about what we didn't do, let's get down to what we did do.

We wandered around Hanover's lovely old town. We ate pizza at an amazing Italian place – by the way, the best Italian food I've eaten has been at Italian-owned restaurants in Germany, not tourist traps in Italy. We froze walking around the old city hall and the local man-made lake. We warmed up over kaffee and kuchen. We even did a little window shopping.

Clearly visiting on a Museum Monday in February meant what we didn't get a complete sense of the city's culture or its big cityforest. So a return trip with better weather on any day other than a Monday might in order. Even with 36 hours in the city, Hanover showed it's depth, we just need to time it better.