The Good, The Bad...and The Ugly?

snowy, icy, cold...poor magnolia

Preamble
So, I have finally returned from a 11-day adventure that took me from Finland to Italy to Hungary and back again.  Don't get me wrong, I had loads of fun...but...well...let's just say it was an adventure and sometimes it's really nice to be home again.  I have decided to divide the story of this adventure into two sides, like a record.  There's the A-side with the songs you want to hear, but then there's the B-side...perhaps a bit uglier.

Mmm...street meat! 

A-Side
The A-side of this adventure began with a relaxing morning train ride from Joensuu to Lappeenranta, a relatively similar town to the South. After a relaxing stopover coffee, we found our way to the airport where I boarded my first ever RyanAir flight.  Yes, the tickets were a very good price...but you also pay in other ways.  Obviously the luggage, food, drinks...but also constant advertising everywhere!  This includes the overhead compartments with energy drink commercials, to the PA system with alcohol ads, to the cabin stewards unenthusiastically flashing garish scratch-and-win cards in lopsided handfulls up and down the aisle.  Upon arriving in Milan, we took a scenic bus ride away from the airport and spent our stopover time in a little town on the edge of a lake in the foothills of the Alps.  It was spring in Italy and it felt so good to be in the green hills where the birds have returned!!  Italian pizza dinner with Bellinis.  Then there was the train back to a different airport, where we spent the night with another friendly traveler we met at the airport.  The next morning we were up bright and early to board our plane to Munich.

Ahh..Munich!

Munich was great.  April and I met up with two friends (one Finnish, one German) during our time in Munich and enjoyed many cultural experiences!  We dined on Bratwurst and many other kinds of homemade sausages and pretzels.  We drank fantastic local beer, which was a pleasure after months of expensive Finnish beer (if you have tasted Finnish beer, you will better understand the quality-value issue here).  We also visited some standard tourist sites such as Nymphenburg Castle.  There is a concentration camp memorial site, Dachau, just out of the city that is very worthwhile to visit.  Public transit gets you most of the way there and once at the site there is excellent information which is well presented.  There were tall poplars lining the main "road" down the centre of the barracks, which are just foundations at this point.  It was very eerie to think of everything those poplars had stood through over the years; from the construction of the camp, through the war, to the demolition of the camp, then finally the cleanup and establishment of the memorial. 

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

After Munich, we took a train across the Austrian border to Salzburg.  I find traveling by train to be relaxing, and the cheap commuter trains that we took also had excellent people-watching potential!  Apparently there were nice mountains to be seen along this journey, but the spring weather was too intense to see much beyond the green field lining the tracks. We found our hostel near a large park in a residential area, which we thought would offer some excellent "hiking" and picnicking opportunities during our stay! The next morning we woke up to a white world out our window...it seems that Finland had followed us to Austria.  The snow mostly stopped by late morning and certainly made some photos more interesting!  When in Austria, you must eat apple strudel (Apfelstrudel)!! It is excellent...particularly when warmed and accompanied by a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning.  Salzburg was picturesque.  Everything from the blue-green (silty) river and parks, to the giant fortress, and old buildings that are full of character.  April and I both noted how fantastic it was that each apartment block (the old ones) was treated more like a work of art than a development project.  This was also true in Vienna, our next stop.

In the fortress above Salzburg!  A great view...just don't lean too far over!

We spent the longest amount of time in Vienna.  It was the largest city on our trip and we also have the most friends there...for now (they're all moving elsewhere in a couple of weeks!).  It was fantastic to see   so many people who we spent so much time with before they left Finland in January!  They were also so welcoming and each offered us a different perspective as a tour guide in Vienna.  On the first night we were in Vienna, our friend was taking us on a little walking tour of the centre and we had only made it as far as the Opera House when we saw that there was a ballet on that evening.  April really wanted to see that ballet (Anna Karenina), but it was the final night, and only 5 minutes before the start time. Fortunately, there was a free showing of it where chairs were set up in front of an enormous screen and speakers on the side of the opera house.  Ultimately, we watched the entire ballet, with the sunset and stars in the background against the lit side of the opera house, on a Viennese sidewalk...it was AMAZING!  Other days in Vienna included a lot of sightseeing around the city, coffee and fine cakes in all sorts of posh cafés, and even a visit to an immense graveyard (Zentralfiedhof) that is now the resting place of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, and more than 2 million others.  I would definitely go back to Vienna, simply because there is so much more to see and do in and around the city; 4 days was simply not enough!

Building snowmen in Salzburg...on the lawn of the historic site.  Dass es verboten...probably.  We didn't stick around to find out!

We only had 2 days left (well...2.5 I guess).  We spent the first of those final days in Budapest with one of April's friends from UBC who lives there.  We did basic touristy things...climbed the hill, went to the market, visited the church in a cave (very interesting!), and of course, soaked for several hours in the Hungarian thermal baths (just like a hot springs/spa/hotel that you can find all over the world).  It was lovely...though we did smell slightly sulphureous after the fact!  After yet another early morning flight (they are the cheapest), we found ourselves in the outskirts of Milan in a town called Bergamo for a 7-hour stopover.  It's a 2€ city bust trip from the airport and offers everything a tourist could want from a town in Northern Italy: views of the Alps, restaurants with local wine and homemade pasta, cathedrals, bakeries (with an amazing panforte)...and crazy drivers on even crazier roads! Our final flight got us back to Lappeenranta just after the last train to Joensuu, so we stayed one more night on the road, then took the much anticipated train back home.

Sidewalk ballet at the Vienna Opera House!

Overall, it was lovely to visit friends while getting a taste of some other parts of Europe!  It was also lovely to get a 2-week advance on spring; although, I miss the green leaves and warm breezes I grew accustomed to!  Fortunately the snow is melting quickly now...Unfortunately that means it is raining...

the B-side story will follow! soon...I hope... In the meantime...more photos!

The theater in Vienna.  One of the many super fantastic buildings in Old Vienna

The Pest side of Budapest. The city is divided in half by the Danube River. One side is called Buda (where I was standing) and the other side is Pest (in the photo). I had no idea until I went there!

Ahh...to have an Italian back garden like this one!  A beautiful spot to spend a spring afternoon.  Unfortunately I was just standing on the wrong side of the fence when I took this photo...