Stephen’s Travels

In the summer of 2005, I had the unique opportunity to travel throughout Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic with a tour called the “Holocaust Remembrance Tour”. Given that I had just studied the Holocaust the previous semester, the tour was a marvelous way to experience history and tragedy in a more personal and firsthand way. The tours were very draining physically and mentally, the most heavy hitting being the memorial at Lidice. Given the serious nature of this particular location, and the trip as a whole, one might expect a high level of tact, much more so than normal. This, however, was not the case on this occasion.

As I recall, we had just taken some time walking around the memorial grounds in Lidice. After a brief walk from the memorial to the temporary visitors center, we found ourselves waiting outside for several minutes in the cool mist while the previous tour group cleared out. I don’t even remember what the next comment was regarding, but one member of our group was a bit frustrated with the circumstances and compared our tour leader (Iain, bless his heart!) to Hitler. Sigh.

Perhaps I was just extra emotional that day, but I’d say that such a comment was out of line at that time or any other time. It really bummed me out.

After my unfortunate experience in Romania it was about time to head west before my flight home from London. I left Bucharest around 5pm and ended up in Zurich, Switzerland about the same time the next day. I am over trainrides. I did some quick calculations and figured that I will spend over 1 week of time on trains this trip.

Anyways, I made a stop in Vienna for about an hour…which was just long enough to walk around in the blazing heat and get all sweaty. Luckily I found a grocery store so I could stock up on food, as I hadn’t eaten since I left Bucharest. Once my train left Vienna, it was non-stop beauty as the train zipped through western Austria and into eastern Switzerland. Zurich to be exact.

Zurich was/is one of my top five favorite cities. There was an amazing art museum, loads of shopping (though I had no money for that sort of thing), and great people watching. Most people spoke English which was nice. Actually, most people speak 3-4 languages. The city was really beautiful with a great public transport system. I really want to go back some time, you should try to get there.

No pictures of Zurich because of the whole camera incident in Romania. Oh well, at least I have a good story to tell now.

I apologise for the misleading title. They don’t. Well maybe they do, but that is a seperate issue. What some of them could use is a lesson in how to not steal cameras from travelers; namely myself. But I digress…

I decided to go to Bucharest after Budapest because one of my friends from school was going to be there and I thought it would be fun to meet up in her home country. So after my night train from Budapest, I walked the city until night time. The next day I went to the Parliamentary palace built by the ever so communist Nicolae CeauÅŸescu. The tour was nice, short and full of information. On my way back to my hostel via a delicious kebab place I found the day before, little children surrounded me and were successful in stealing my camera. What a shame. Luckily I had been removing the pictures every so often so I only lost a couple days of pictures. Sadly, I am currently unable to take pictures.

I cant remember if I let everyone know that I updated all of the pictures up through Prague, but I did. So go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesearer to see them.

Well, I decided a couple days ago to make my way even further east before heading west. So here I am in Budapest, Hungary.

At least one of the 2 people that casually read the random things I write are thinking Eastern Europe? Why? Well here is why:

First of all, There must be something good about an area if everyone is fighting over it all of the time. Secondly, it isn’t communist anymore. Thirdly, Why not.

So far I have trekked around quite a bit, seen some new things. St. Stephen’s Cathedral was very nice, thought I need to make my way back at night. I am going to go to the communist statue park tomorrow to see all of the old statues of Stalin and Lenin and that whole bunch. There was also another really great church called Matyas church, I didn’t go inside but it was crazy/cool/interesting on the outside.

Ok last but not least, I uploaded all my pictures until my new ones from here. so go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesearer for that

have a great day,

Steve