Kuna to Euro

On the 1st of January, 2023 (in less than three months as of this writing), Croatia will become the 20th member of the Eurozone, a collection of countries in Europe using the euro currency. A fixed conversion rate was set at 1 € = 7.53450 kuna. Since our previous Croatian visit in April, businesses have […]

Zagreb, Are You Tired of Seeing Me?

This is my fifth arrival into Zagreb, Croatia. I came back again because I love it here. I don’t know exactly why. I met a Californian outside a ruin pub back in Budapest, and his wife had passed, and so he had been traveling solo up from Georgia (the country) and Turkey. He had been […]

Thermal Baths

Budapest is a city worth staying in for more than one week, and I now wish I had sacrificed some Bratislava time for Budapest, but maybe I’ll need to come back one day, hopefully with someone else! What an interesting and different place! I think this is also an indication to me that I need […]

Memento Park

I’m over halfway done with this trip! Wow, some periods have felt slow, while other times have passed quickly. Budapest has been exciting but tiring, given all the many interesting things to see. I’m also frankly having a tough time with the whole workation thing. Work doesn’t seem as desirable when you’re sitting in the […]

House of Terror

On Friday afternoon I visited the House of Terror Museum – it might sound like a haunted mansion, and maybe it is, because many people died there. But it’s primarily now a museum in the same building that Hungarian representatives of the Nazis and then the Soviets used for coordinating interrogation, torture, and murder. The […]

Illiberal Democracy

Hungary has had a controversial prime minister, Viktor Orbán, since 2010. His party is the far right Fidesz. From Wikipedia: “His tenure has seen Hungary government shift towards what he has called “illiberal democracy” — citing countries such as China, Russia, India, Singapore, and Turkey as models of governance — while simultaneously promoting Euroscepticism and […]

Magyars

This excerpt from Rick Steves sums up well the feeling one gets in Budapest. It just doesn’t feel like any of the four Slavic places I’ve visited on this trip. But I will say that it is also the most touristy, I think even more than Prague! And I hear English and Spanish (why Spanish?) […]

Schindler’s List

On Sunday I visited the factory where Oskar Schindler helped keep many Krakow Jews alive, and he is credited with saving 1200 total. The museum is very well put together, and it’s super-informative, with lots of interactive exhibits and touchscreens where you can dive deeper. You could easily spend a few days there just absorbing […]

McDonald’s Going Green

In a follow-up to an earlier post photo regarding a McDonald’s sign being black (instead of red), it turns out that all European McDonald’s use different colors than those traditionally used in the US. There’s no red at all anywhere on outside signage or buildings that I’ve seen. And actually, it’s not black, but deep […]