Months after the fact, here are the pictures I took this summer while in Halstatt, Austria. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. It’s a beautiful place. I was reluctant to leave and look forward to going back at some point.
Prague
This year, for the first time since moving to Europe, I am not traveling to the US for summer vacation. Instead we spend our vacation in Europe where we were joined for two weeks by my parents and my brother Ben and his wife Heather. We spent the first week in Prague, where we rented an apartment big enough for all eight of us.
This was the first time any of us had been to Prague with the exception of Lisbeth who’d been there last at a teenager and didn’t remember much about it except that it left a positive impression. It’s a very pretty city Read More →
Istanbul
It’s hard for me to believe, but it’s been almost twenty five years since my second attempt at college.
The first attempt was brief, in 1987, immediately after graduating college. In retrospect I simply had no motivation. I dropped out and took a number of strange jobs. Some were fun but there was nothing that I cared to make a career out of. And so, two years later, I was ready to go back, and this time I was motivated — knowing full-well what the alternatives looked like.
My second attempt was entirely different than the first. I learned a lot, and met a lot of interesting people. One of these people was Emrah, a fellow student in the Computer Science department at Highlands University in my hometown. Emrah and I became friends even though it was, at times, humbling to hang out with the guy. He despised programming and math but was unquestioningly better than I was at both of them. He often encouraged me to have fun with him instead of studying for exams, but then he’d ace the exams and I’d barely get by.
After graduating from college, Emrah alternatively lived in California and his native Istanbul, where I have long intended to visit him, especially after moving to Denmark (Istanbul is only a three and a half hour flight away.) I finally managed it over Easter. It had been sixteen years since I’d seen Emrah. A lot has changed, but I still enjoy his company a great deal.
Budapest
In early September, my aunts Donna and Kay took their respective husbands Clarance and Frank on a European river Cruise. Their point of embarkation was Budapest, so we flew down to meet them and see them off. We were joined by Lisbeth’s parents, which was fantastic, because yes, they’re fun to travel with, but also we had our hands full with our two girls and needed all the help we could get.
I had very little idea what to expect. I knew that Hungary has been hit hard by the recession, and that wages are quite low, so I expected to see outward signs of poverty. I’d also heard from several people that it’s a great, clean, and afffordable city.
We saw almost no evidence of hard economic times. Nothing like Porto, or Dublin, for example. We saw only a few people begging in four days, so that surprised me. And it is indeed a clean vibrant city, with lots to see. For some reason it feels like a bigger city than it is. It feels more like London than Copenhagen, even though it’s much closer to Copenhagen in size.
Budapest is also quite affordable. Not dirt cheap, but very reasonable, especially by European standards. I particularly enjoyed the restaurants. There are a lot of them to choose from, and the quality of the food and service was quite high given the price. Plus I had what might be the best steak I’ve ever had (I’m not a big steak fan, but wow) on Ráday Street — a must-see stretch of sidewalk cafes that goes on and on for blocks.
At first it’s tempting to assume that the Hungarians in Budapest speak English pretty well. In restaurants, for example, they seem pretty fluent. But this is an illusion that often goes away once you stray off the subject of the menu.
Lisbeth found this out the hard way one night, on an urgent quest for diapers and baby-food. Read More →
Anton Chico
I spent four years of my young life going to school in Anton Chico, New Mexico. Anton Chico is a village of about 600, about 45 minutes from my hometown. It’s the kind of place with one store, and that store is clearly just a room in someone’s house, and behind the cash register there’s a curtain through which you can see the part of the family that is off duty watching TV in their living room.
The four years I spent in Anton Chico are not among my favorites. I was an outsider, and life is always harder on outsiders in a place like Anton Chico. But I was also the son of a teacher, and that didn’t help. I also didn’t speak Spanish, which put me even further outside the acceptable circles.
I suppose kids are the same anywhere, but Anton Chico seemed rough to me then and seems rough to me now. I got roughed up and pushed around regularly. I lived in a state of fear, and even though my life was never in danger, that fear made a permanent impression. To this day, every time I walk into a new situation, I wonder if I won’t be ambushed. I can’t help but tense up, and think about how I might best defend myself if someone steps out from behind a door and clobbers me. Read More →
Portugal
Last month we traveled to Portugal with my parents for a seven-day river cruise. We flew to Porto (a city I must admit I’d never heard of before) and sailed from there up the Douro river, in the heart of Portuguese wine country. I learned a lot. For one thing, Portuguese sounds nothing like Spanish in my opinion.
Porto is surprising. It’s pretty big for one thing — especially for a city I didn’t know existed. It is second only to Lisbon in size, with about 1.3 million people.
Porto is a city of sharp contrasts. The airport is modern and pleasant, with a metro line that takes you downtown quietly and efficiently. The metro stations reminded me a little of Copenhagen’s metro stations. And then you climb the stairs to the street and BAM! – there’s the contrast. Porto is full of beautiful old buildings… many of which have clearly been abandoned and some of which appear ready to be condemned. Read More →
El Porvenir
When we were still in New Mexico last month we attended a church retreat in El Porvenir. I took these on the last night, as kids made smores (kids don’t just roast marshmallows anymore, apparently.)
Capulin
Last week we went to Capulin, a volcano in Northern New Mexico. It’s about 90 minutes from Springer, the town where I was born and my grandparents still live. But, like the Sandia Tram, it’s something that I’d never seen.
The volcano doesn’t look like much when you’re approaching, and I thought it would turn out to be pretty lame, but when you start to climb, the view gets fantastic almost immediately. (There are hiking trails, but apparently none of them go from the bottom to the top, so you have only one choice — drive to the top.)
Stockholm
Mom and dad were here for two weeks and we filled that time pretty well with moving, but we also went to Stockholm, which was neat because none of us had ever been there before. (And considering how much traveling Lisbeth has done, that’s pretty surprising.)
We opted to take the train instead of fly even though flying was cheaper. The train is just more relaxing, and gave us a chance to see the Swedish countryside, which is very pretty, with a lot of hills and rocky outcroppings (which you certainly don’t see very often in Denmark.) Plus it’s a fast train. It goes about 200 kph, or 124 mph, which means it only takes about five hours to get to Stockhom.
Notes to self: Travel
I just got back from Christmas with my family in New Mexico. (Lisbeth is due on Februry 5th, so she stayed in Denmark and had Christmas with her family.) This was the first time I’d had two stopovers, and I was a little surprised at how much difference that one stop makes the trip. I saved about $400 doing it this way, so that’s $200 each way… but I’m not sure it’s worth it.
It’s not really the layover that’s the problem. I don’t mind having time to stretch my legs, and if it’s no longer than three hours, the time isn’t really the issue. The problem is that each layover increases the chances of a missed, delayed or cancelled flight. Coming into I came very close to missing my flight in Houston. So that’s one lesson — saving some money can cause a missed flight. But I noticed a few other things about air travel on this trip. Read More →
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