Lightning Tour of Eastern Europe

Since I began this blog in 2009, I have consistently managed to post something (even if it was only a few links to things elsewhere on the Internet) at least twice a month. This month is an exception, however, chiefly because I was traveling for most of the month (and in the week before my departure I was far too busy to post anything). I have only been back for a few days and so have not had time to write an account of our trip (I traveled with my family and a few of my wife's colleagues), but here is a very brief summary of the places we visited.

Istanbul, Turkey: This was a transit stop on our original itinerary, but since we were passing through, I wanted to stop for a few days, and I'm glad we did. We were there three days, which was too little even to explore all the top sites as thoroughly as they deserve, but at least we were able to see the most important ones, such as the Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia), and we even briefly crossed over to the Asian side by ferry. This is definitely near the top of my list of places I'd like to go back to.

Budapest, Hungary: This was our chief destination, as a friend who had invited us to come was studying there, though altogether we were only there about four days (three initially and one at the end). It was a very pleasant city with some nice sites, and it seems like it would be one of the better places to live in Eastern Europe, as it's nice, has plenty of good restaurants and shops, and yet is not too expensive. Regrettably, it currently has a rather bad right-wing government. We stopped to talk to a few brave protesters who are camping out in the square next to the parliament building until the current prime minister, Viktor Orban, is gone (we wished them good luck).

Krakow, Poland: We were only here for a little over a day, mainly because some in our group wanted to visit nearby Auschwitz. That was interesting but rather depressing (most of the people who really need to see it unfortunately won't go). I preferred Krakow itself, which has a very well preserved old town that is a nice place for wandering around in.

Prague, Czech Republic: We were here for about three days as well. This was also a pleasant place with a lot of interesting sites. Fortunately, though it's a bit more touristy than Budapest, it wasn't as much so as I feared. Aside from interesting places to see, it had a lot of nice little restaurants and shops. The only notable downside was that the middle of the old town square had been taken over by a noisy, over-the-top propaganda show sponsored by the Chinese government for Chinese New Year. Overall, Prague is definitely worth a visit, as are the other places we visited on this trip.

While we flew to and from Budapest, via Hong Kong and Istanbul on the way there and via Istanbul and Singapore on the way back (aside from our extended stop in Istanbul on the way out, we went to downtown Singapore for a few hours during our long layover there), we traveled by bus from Budapest to Krakow and by train from Krakow to Prague and from Prague to Budapest (the former overnight), so we did get a bit of a look at the countryside. We also passed through Slovakia on the first and third of these journeys, and the bus from Budapest to Krakow actually made a rest stop outside of Banská Bystrica, so we did set foot in Slovakia, if only for about ten minutes. If we ever get a chance to go back to that part of the world, I hope we will be able to take time to explore each of these countries in more depth.