The St. Gellért Bath is one of the more modern bathhouses. Originally opened in 1918, and attached to the St. Gellért Hotel, it has a variety of  pools at various temperatures, a small coed section, and separate male and female baths. Unfortunately, I could only take photos of the main pool, as photography isn’t allowed in the mens-only section, though I doubt most of you are anxious to see how the forces of gravity affect old naked men.

I never got around to posting this video from our recent Holiday escape to Belgium/Holland, so tessék!

Perhaps it was just scientific naiveté, but everything we read prior to moving to Budapest told us it would be more temperate than New York City. Further research has shown that distance from the ocean, as well as proximity to Mountain regions (or, the Alps), means your bits are going to be frozen all winter.

That said, the worst of winter (téli) appears to be over. Supposedly, Budapest has had more snow this February than it has seen since the 90′s. Personally, if it’s gonna -15˚ Celsius outside, there might as well be snow on the ground. Of course, having to shuffle your feet across steep angled icy sidewalks and frozen cobblestone like your wading through stingray infested waters gets a little annoying. Maybe next year I’ll buy some real snow boots.

BRUSSELS:

NOKERE:

AMSTERDAM:

We were lucky enough to be invited to spend Xmas in Belgium with my friend Jennifer, an old friend from Austin, TX, who is presently enrolled in a master’s program in Brussels. After 2 days in Brussels with Jennifer and her roommates, Kim & Ryan, we took the train to Nokere to celebrate Christmas with Robyn, yet another American expat who lives in an incredible hilltop cottage in the Flanders countryside with 2 huge black german shepherds. There we had a lion’s share of mussels & frites and excellent Belgian beer, before we hopped on train to Amsterdam, where we had booked a houseboat for a couple days.

HUGE thanks to our new friends Robyn, Kim, & Ryan, not to mention Jen for inviting us in the first place. You guys definitely saved Christmas.

Fortunately, we’ve managed to find some relief to the wintertime doldrums here in Budapest, including ancient thermal bath houses, neoclassical cafés, the aptly named ruinpubs, and the market halls. All of these places are interesting enough for me to fill an entire post with photos and historical details, which I may foreseeably do in the future, but for now here’s the abbreviated version.

Budapest is probably best known for its many thermal baths. Without regurgitating the text from a guide book, I’ll tell you that there’s about 25 baths open to the public in the city. Some are incredibly ancient, and some are modern spas built in swanky upscale hotels, and personally, not somewhere I’d ever go. People have been taking advantage of the thermal springs for a couple thousand years, starting with the Celts, then the Romans, Ottoman Turks, and now the Hungarians. Most of the larger baths have a multitude of pools both indoors and outdoors, and all different temperatures. In my opinion, the outdoor pools are the best, especially in the winter, as it’s cool to bathe in a cloud of mist, plus they’re less crowded and don’t smell like a sweaty jockstrap.

While there’s cafes on almost every block here, the hundred year old renaissance influenced cafes are the ones worth checking out, as they’re unlike any coffee shop you’d find in the states. A few worth mentioning include the cafe in the Alexandra bookstore on Andrassy, and the New York Cafe. They cost a little bit more, but are still more affordable than a Starbucks.

As fans of dive bars and beer gardens, we’ve definitely taken a liking to the city’s network of romkerts, or ‘ruinpubs’ – essentially, old tenement buildings that have been completely overtaken and turned into a vast multitiered beer garden, artfully decorated floor to ceiling in found objects,  sculptures, graffiti, and mosaics.  The closest thing I’ve experienced to these places is the squatted out buildings in Berlin that function in much the same way. From what I understand, these aren’t squats – permission is granted to individuals to occupy these buildings through mysterious channels that one local acquaintance of ours likened to organized crime dealings. Either way, several of the ruinpubs we’ve been to are pretty awesome, including Szimplakert (simple garden), which we discovered through a piece in the New York Times before we left, and which is now a block and a half away from the apartment we just moved into (forgive the photos – they don’t do it justice).

Lastly, there’s the market halls. Basically, take your city’s farmers market, throw it inside Grand Central Station, and you have a Budapest market hall. Most of the downtown city districts have their own market hall, the most impressive being Nagyvásárcsarnok, aka Great Market Hall. Basically, all the bases are covered here, including plenty of produce sellers, bakers, butchers, fish mongers, and food vendors. While the chain supermarkets here are pretty awful, the market halls definitely make up for it.

Welcome to Hungary. Actually, no one told us that when we got off the plane, nor did we get showered with paprika or serenaded by a fiddler, but I’ll forgive their perceivably nonexistent bureau of tourism. Turns out Budapest is a lot like New York, only a few more centuries of patina and a deeper historical appreciation for non-ironic mustaches. Both cities have George Washington statues, subways, a river, and bridge over the river that everyone is exceptionally fond of screenprinting onto t-shirts.  The subway here is 115 years old, being the second oldest in Europe after London, and is a seemingly a couple thousand leagues deeper underground and more impervious to air strikes. If you’ve never been to Budapest, you should know it’s actually bisected by the Danube river, which if you’re from Texas like me you’ll incorrectly pronounce it as you would Ted Nugent’s nickname; as in Duh-noob. Buda is on the west and Pest (pronounced Pesht) is on the east. Buda is hilly and Pest is mostly flat. They both have tons of castles and churches where a lot of shit went down at some point. Though we’re presently staying in Buda for the month of November, it’s pretty clear were gonna find some digs in Pesht. Why? Because that’s where all the hottest clubs are, dingus!

Visual stimuli aside, we with our foreign eyes, ears, and palette are left to contend with the local language and food. Where should I start? – The Hungarian language is called Magyar, and is a real motherf___er. It’s an anomalous language distantly related to Finnish, yet has no significant similarities to any other language worldwide. As my newly purchased phrasebook smugly informs me, english has more in common with Russian and Sri Lankan than it does with Hungarian. Yay. Nearly a week and a half here studying my language book everyday and all I can say is “two beers please”. While you may contend I’m a slow learner, try this for size. In Hungarian, there is no equivalent to the english verb ‘to have’. Instead, possession is inferred(!) with ‘to be‘. So to say ‘I have a potato‘, I’m really saying ‘It is potato (mine)‘. Not confusing enough? Add about 8 new vowels that have little dots and scribbles as halos and 6 new consonants which are really just other consonants clustered together, and you’re ready to learn Hungarian. While we haven’t found one yet, we should have a tutor in the next few weeks to help us understand how many potatoes we are/have.

Lastly, there’s the food. Honestly, I arrived here expecting to hate the food, feeling bitter that I’d given up Mexican food for meat and potatoes. During our last month in New York our bucket list of things to do before leaving was comprised exclusively of eating. But now having given the food a chance, I can say it’s not that bad. I even discovered my new favorite dish, lecsó, which is finely scrambled eggs with peppers and smoked sausage. Add to that the ubiquitous Mediterranean food and I’d say we’re doing alright. Still, would I give it all up for a decent Mexican food restaurant? – Absolutely.

California starts by immediately thrusting you into the Redwoods – trees so old they are alleged to have been around before the Indians, and so large and dominating that they block out all light to the forest floor and become somewhat claustrophobic. Apparently, there were giants all up and down the coast until the logging boom of the mid 19th century. By the early 1900′s, most mills intended exclusively for giant trees had already closed, as there weren’t any left. Now, aside from a few protected parks along the coast, these giants are mostly massive stumps. I highly recommend to anyone who hasn’t, go see these forests while they’re still around.

We rode highway 101 down the coast through farmland and hippy towns, where the smell of weed seemed to waft out of every passing car. While there were no more mountains to conquer, the predominance of large and steep hills kept our legs working hard. Thankfully, the scenery overlooking every beautiful rocky cliff rewarded us after each ascent. The diversity of geography, flora, and fawna was astounding. After one 50 mile day, we rode past Redwoods, ocean vistas, herds of Elk, colonies of Sea Lions, seals, hawks, skunks, and cranes. Our last day of camping, we read a flyer warning of mountain lions in the vicinity (its advice? throw your kid on your shoulders and fight back!). Awesome.

We were fortunate to meet new cyclists almost every day, and to run into friends from days past once at the campsite. Now that we’re in San Francisco we are attempting to galvanize a few fellow travelers into meeting for a last hurrah, where we can come together to exaggerate our hardships and embellish triumphs.

We’re leaving together
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back
To earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We’re leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?

It’s the final countdown
The final countdown

Oregon treated us well.  Portland was pretty much what we expected: a generous hostess (Thank you, Jennifer!), plenty of great beer at great bars, excellent cycling infrastructure, and super tasty food carts (waffle taco!).  There was also a lot that we didn’t expect: The whole city smells like roses, nearby swimming holes with waterfalls, a surprise visit from Deanna (NYC friend), arcade games galore, and the sweetest, most wonderful kitten in the whole world (love you, Little Ricki!).

We had so much fun that we decided to stay an extra night.  It was a great one.  We made veggie tacos for Jennifer and her roommates and friends, and we drank Jen’s home-brewed beer round a fire pit.

Once back on the Oregon coast, we were treated to incredible views of the rocky coastline, excellent beach campsites, and Oregon’s Ninkasi Total Domination IPA.

We have also enjoyed coming to the realization that what we are doing is not special.  We have met so many other cyclists from around the world.  There are the two Israeli boys who are detoxing from Burning Man by riding form Portland to San Fran.  We’ve also met cyclists from Japan, Australia, and Switzerland doing all kinds of crazy trips.  There was also the family trailing 2 toddlers and riding with a seven-year-old on a tandem.  (And we thought our load was heavy!)  Most crazy of all, we met a guy riding his skateboard from Arizona to Portland.  There are a lot of badasses out there.

]]> http://noplacelikegone.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/oregon-in-144-hours/feed/ 2 noplacelikegone Wah-shoo-gan River (?) Skidmore Bluffs, PDX Little Ricky Little Ricky resisting the pull of the road Bike Porn Cape Lookout! State Park Oregon State Campground Longboarding from Arizona Newport Bridge More bike porn Clearcutting Overlooking Gold Beach t-rex Humbug sunset with fellow cyclists Fog rolling in Thanks, Oregon! http://noplacelikegone.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/goodbye-washington-hello-oregon/ http://noplacelikegone.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/goodbye-washington-hello-oregon/#comments Sat, 10 Sep 2011 04:16:50 +0000 noplacelikegone http://noplacelikegone.wordpress.com/?p=366 Continue reading →]]>

We were totally spoiled when we left Seattle (and I was still a bit jetlagged), so we decided to get right back into it with a 70 mile day (ended up being more like 80 – a record!). We caught the ferry to Bremerton and started making our way to Elma — the little town with a big girl’s name. We may be out of the mountains, but this part of the trip sure is hilly. Dustin also had a big tire blow out, which took some time to fix, so we were both mighty tired when we finally got to our destination. After our millionth dinner of burger and fries, we rode to the hostel where we would be staying the night. The “hostel” was really just an old couple’s house, outfitted with some bunkbeds for cyclists and bikers passing through.

In the morning, we had the good fortune of meeting Dr. John, who was also staying at the hostel. Dr. John is a retired psychiatrist, father of three, guitarist, surfer, devoted husband, zen master, and Texan, on a solo bike tour from Seattle to his home in central California. We quickly became friends, and since we were on the same route, we knew we would be running into him again.

During our day of hills, we encountered what looked like a dead body on the side of the road. Dustin hollered at the figure to gauge if he was alive or not, and we were greeted with the palest face we have ever seen. “Just taking a nap,” he said. Apparently meth is a bit of a problem in this part of the country. Satisfied that he was “fine,” we continued up the hill. At the top, we stopped for a snack and immediately were welcomed by Derek and his wife Sara who had seen us riding and had cycled up the hill to meet us. We were pleasantly surprised to get an offer of a place to stay, dinner, or a shower at his nearby home. We had more miles to go though, so we left with a few apples from their tree and new facebook friends.

We arrived a few hours later at the Lewis and Clark Campground within a beautiful old growth forest and were once again greeted by Dr. John, who had generously paid for the campsite. The next morning, we started our last day in Washington with a morning walk through the forest, and later a swim in the Columbia River. We punctuated our ride with a race across Puget Island to catch a ferry into Oregon. That evening, we met up with Dr. John again, who had offered to share his motel room with us in Westport. To thank him, we took him to breakfast at The Berry Patch, where we feasted on marionberry waffles, pancakes, and pie. A true bike tour breakfast.

We continued on through Oregon, passing through Astoria (super cute!) and hitting the coast, where we once again stayed at a hostel with Dr. John, now practically family. We had to finally part ways with John though, when Dustin and I turned inland to go to Portland, where I currently sit on a 2nd floor balcony/sleeping porch, our digs for the next four days. Yay!