Escape Velocity

It’s an unassuming approach to the border crossing between Hungry and Romania. This is our first hard border since Calais, even though on paper both countries are Schengen and as such this ought to be a soft border. It’s easy peasy if you enter via air or sea, but on land they still have this foreboding inspection facility, so what the hell, it’s business as usual.

You just know you’re going to get the full Monty inspection of all the official forms and papers you have and especially close scrutiny of your face against the picture in your passport. No smile, no welcome into their country like we’ve become accustomed to. They weren’t happy with our proof of insurance, but they didn’t stop us either. I guess old Soviet-satellite habits die hard. I took a beat before I dropped Escape Velocity into gear just to quiet the heart down. [As of January 2025 this is now a soft border.]

We noticed immediately that these were not going to be the Hungarian roads we were used to, but poorly maintained in comparison.

By afternoon we rolled into Bulgarus, which for 150 years was my paternal ancestors’ home town.

I think It’s safe to say I am not to the manor born.

Just finding Bulgarus was a major goal. Generation after generation of my ancestors were recorded in the parish records, and finally we’re here.

A lot of the German families began leaving the area in the early 1900s, both for economic reasons, and because Hungary threatened to force cultural assimilation and military service. Recruiters from the United States enlisted workers for the steel mills in the Midwest. That’s how my grandfather and most of his family ended up in and around Pittsburgh.

Many of the Donauschwaben families remained but World War I and World War II took a toll on any goodwill Romania may have felt toward Germans.

By the 1970’s Nickolas Ceausescu’s nationalist threat of “Romania for Romanians” put paid to what was left of any ethnic Germans. The German government paid Ceausescu 60,000 marks per person to buy their freedom from this communist nation. Ceausescu’s cult of personality soon lost its charm and in a popular uprising he and his wife were arrested by the military while trying to escape in a helicopter. Their personality ended with a firing squad.

I haven’t unpacked what it all means but it’s evident squatters have taken over and stripped many of the abandoned buildings. We watched a Roma woman fetch water from the graveyard tap and carry it back to the derelict house she was apparently living in. On her way past the van she stuck out her hand for money.

Like their roads Romanian graveyards have been left to their own devices.

The overgrowth made hunting for specific names on old worn tombstones exhausting in the oven of Romanian summer heat.

I’m sure Bulgarus was a much more pleasant town in the early 1900’s but poor ground is poor ground and ethnic tension is ethnic tension.

Our wet Slovakian weather continued and glued us to the inside of the van waiting for sunshine.

Eventually Jack got bored and said we may as well be driving so we continued south through more Pennsylvania look-alike terrain.

As we approached the Hungarian border the sky suddenly brightened and so did we.

Where we can park the van makes a big difference in how we experience a city. In Budapest we found the perfect place on the edge of the city and near both the bus and the metro. In minutes we were at stop #1 on the self-guided audio tour I downloaded. This has been my approach here in Europe. If there’s a free walking tour we take that, or if there’s a free-to-download audio guide we do that.

We started with a walk through an enormous city park where we searched for statues of Bela Lugosi, George Washington and a tiny Dracula.

We appreciated the beautiful weather after the rain we’d had the last few days.

Budapest is huge and there’s more than you could possibly see in a year, let alone a day, but top of my list was the central market, a restored Neolithic hall where I could have spent a week and a lot of money. Markets are always my happy place.

Jack indulges my love of markets but he does occasionally need to be fueled with coffee and a pastry. We found this fun cafe with a choice of international brews. We didn’t do a taste test but we did rest our legs for the next stint.

Why is there a statue of TV detective Columbo in the middle of Budapest?

We wanted to visit the Holocaust Memorial Park but the area was closed for security reasons and we could only photograph the Emanuel Tree through the fence. Each leaf bears the name of a local Holocaust victim and I’m disappointed we didn’t get to see it close up.

Much of our visit to Budapest was about finding public art. We sought out this memorial to Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz who saved more than 60,000 Jews from the Nazis by creating safe houses and providing transit documents. He was awarded “Righteous Among the Nations” by the state of Israel.

Oh sure, we should be eating traditional Hungarian food, but when we find eggs Benedict, we have to go for it.

There were so many more places we wanted to visit in Budapest but our feet gave out before our desire to see them all. Down at the river we thought we might book a sunset cruise but it was right out of our budget. So we settled for a beer.

Prague, Krakow, Budapest. We’ve loved them all and they all deserve more than a quick visit. Some day maybe we’ll be back. But the calendar reminds us we have a long way to go and a dwindling number of Schengen days to get there.

We drove south and parked in a beautiful field. Tomorrow we head for the Romanian border.

When one finds oneself in the Auschwitz parking lot sitting at the operations office table in Escape Velocity after a rough day, physically and mentally, you can expect some simple solutions. Our short term goal is Budapest. Laying a ruler on a map from Auschwitz to Budapest will describe the in-depth planning going on. It’s the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid plan.

The eagle-eyed Escapees among you will notice that Slovakia is directly in our  path, but we weren’t in the mood for details. We do know that Slovakia uses the Euro. And we know we’ll have to buy insurance when we arrive at the Turkish border and we’ll have to pay in Euros. We have only zloty and koruna, and too little to exchange for Euros. It’s been a real surprise to find so many EU countries that are not using the Euro, and as far as we can tell Slovakia is the last country we’ll transit before Turkey where we can get Euros. So our only goal for Slovakia is to find an ATM and get a pile of Euros before driving to Hungary.

It’s raining and Marce found a small parkup on our route, but it’s quite tilted and a tight squeeze. We got out the ramps and made it work.

We awoke to a light rain tapping out a tune on the roof and cornflakes with coffee. On our navigation screen I noticed a purple dot almost overlaid on our own position cursor, which means there’s some kind of heritage item of interest near by. The rain lightened up so I hopped out of Escape Velocity but all I could see was a small forested village nestled in a mountainous terrain. I walked around for a few minutes. Turning around I happened to look up and my jaw bounced off the pavement. Three hundred fifty feet up was a castle in the scudding clouds, perched on a rocky outcrop.

I fetched Marce and we tried to find out how to get up there. Sure enough, down the street I could see a small hut which is probably going to house a ticket office. When we asked, the woman in the ticket kiosk just pointed up an impossibly steep, slippery, cobbled, ankle wobbler of a path.

Marce more than hung in there. 

Finally we made it to the permanent slippery draw bridge at the entrance.

If this place looks at all familiar it turns out it’s probably because this castle stood in for Count Orlok’s Transylvanian Castle in the 1922 film Nosferatu. I’d say it was well chosen. It has a creepy Eagle’s Nest kind of vibe.

The original wooden fortification was built up here on this rocky outcrop in 1241 in the kingdom of Hungary, after the Mongol sacking of Oravsky Podzamok. Borders, names and people moved and changed around a lot back then. (Come to think of it, they still do. My family couldn’t even answer the question, “Where are you from?” without a ten minute history lesson which was impossible to comprehend. I don’t think even they fully understood it.)

Where was I? Oh yes, the tunnel.

We are constantly climbing.

Marce gets the Eagle’s Nest Medal.

What goes up must come down. This is where the slippery part really came into play.

We moved Escape Velocity from the tilted parking lot down to a more level place by the river just as the rain resumed.

We cannot get by Auschwitz. We should not even try, as great as the temptation is, because Auschwitz belongs to us, is branded into our history, and – to our benefit! – has made possible an insight that could be summarized as, ‘Now we finally know ourselves.’

Gunter Grass

I don’t know what I can say about visiting Auschwitz — or any Nazi death camp — that hasn’t already been said. We went out of a sense of duty to bear witness and we knew it wouldn’t be easy.

Entrance is free but you must book a time slot. You can explore on your own or pay for a guided tour in one of 20 different languages. We chose the tour, and it was helpful to be escorted around the enormous grounds to specific buildings and displays. However, we didn’t learn more from the guide than we already knew about the Holocaust and the death camps. The true value of visiting is to experience firsthand the place we’ve seen so many times in newsreel footage and movies.

As we entered through the famous gate I felt a wave of fear and sadness and it stayed with me even after we walked outside hours later.

We were immediately struck by the rows of multistory brick buildings. The image we had of Auschwitz was of the low wooden barracks we’d seen on film in countless documentaries and feature films so the brick buildings surprised us. We learned they were originally built as army barracks and were repurposed and modified during construction of the camp.

We followed our guide from building to building. Some housed displays or photographs, some remain as they were as housing or for special purposes. We took very few photos of these often disturbing displays.

The infamous Block 10 was the site of Josef Mengele’s gruesome medical experiments.

I was glad to see these faces. Each was a person with a mother and father, a spouse, a brother, a sister, a child, not just one of six million. I wanted to read all their names, and I lagged behind our group, wanting to acknowledge every one of them. Seeing these expressions of hopelessness, fear, but also often strength, affected me almost more than any other part of our visit.

This is a reconstruction of the death wall, where thousands of prisoners were executed.

We walked and walked, into buildings, through displays, up and down staircases, then out again. The narrow pathways lined with barbed wire were as claustrophobic as the interiors.

We boarded buses for the short drive to Birkenau, the adjacent extermination camp, and this is where we recognized the long low barracks we’d seen so many times on film.

Who hasn’t seen this view? It gave us chills.

Most of the barracks had been destroyed but there are a few remaining to give you a clear picture of the living conditions.

We ended at the ruin of one of the gas chambers, destroyed by the Nazis when they evacuated the camp as the Russian army approached in January 1945. Our guide left us alone with our thoughts for a while.

It was a quiet bus ride back to the visitors center. Jack and I sat on a bench across from the entrance to rest and reflect before walking home.

On our way back to the van we saw where people have left the time slot and language stickers you wear on your tour. We added ours to the lot.

Here’s the part we both can’t fathom: Oświęcim was a thriving community since the Middle Ages, then was largely cleared and destroyed by the Nazis when they built the death camp and the I.G. Farben chemical factory. After the war, after 1.1 million people were murdered at the camps, after the world learned what horrors took place there, people moved back to Oświęcim. They built homes and schools and churches and shops and playgrounds on land that certainly harbors the ashes of victims. They live within meters of the site of incomprehensible atrocities. If you believe in ghosts, they are certainly here. And I can’t imagine calling this place home.

We find ourselves in the land of Rubik’s cube. I don’t know why Kraków’s claim to fame is the Rubik’s Cube; after all, Erno Rubik was Hungarian. I guess it’s just how they roll in the Baltics. They never could get along. I don’t know what to expect of Krakow but after Prague, the Poles are going to have to really bring it, but then that would be a clear violation of Rule #2 (don’t get jaded.)

Krakow was one of the first listed UNESCO World Heritage Sites so let’s just agree to keep an open mind and enjoy this green leafy circular belt around the old walled city called the Planty. 

The  green border was created by filling in the surrounding moat and planting this green lovely garden, which brings us to the one of the original seven fortified city gates.

This place has a family fun sort of vibe but as soon as we headed towards the old central plaza — at some  40,000 sq meters it’s said to be the largest in Europe — we ran into this torture museum. 

We could never determine if they were for it or against it. 

Even the buskers are a little unusual.

After winding through Kraków’s medieval streets we gained the old town central plaza.

Yeah, it’s plenty big but we instantly found ourselves engulfed in a demonstration. It was the first of many we witnessed in Europe during the summer of 2024.

Streetside, at a quiet cafe for lunch, once again we were treated to a demonstration, this one for Ukraine.

I’d say they’re for Ukraine but against incarceration. When you grow up in the 1960’s you get a feel for these kinds of things.

These two are famous mathematicians and I think they’re hashing out a new Babach-Nicodym Theorem. Why everyone thinks it’s good luck to rub their hands is beyond me. At least it just their hands.

Just off the main plaza we found the impressive St. Mary’s Basilica.

Back on the plaza we plunge into the market, which was once a very long building called Cloth Hall.

After a half mile long shopping experience, creeping along past one vendor after another, we decided to take a break with a stroll along the Vistula River. 

It’s not every day that you come face to face with a mechanized fire breathing dragon.

Finally we saw a corner of the Wawel Royal Castle overlooking the river.

I often wonder whether these fortifications are meant to protect the nabobs from their subjects or their subjects from folks like the Tatars who in 1241 sacked and destroyed the entire town.

Once again we wandered the streets of Krakow.

A quick stop for authentic Polish food.

We liked Krakow, and it makes us wish we’d planned to spend more time in other places in Poland. But we have an appointment tomorrow with evil, so it’s time to move along.

I wrote previously about Jack’s paternal ancestors and their 18th century journey from Lorraine to Romania. My research uncovered one thin branch of that family tree originating in Czechia, right up against the border of Poland. It would be a shame to follow the main branch down the Danube without a side trip to these little villages as well. So we decided to continue East and as long as we’re here, we’ll make the pilgrimage to Auschwitz. We drove to the border.

It’s a joke between us that I claim many of the places we travel to look like Pennsylvania, the US state we both grew up in. Pennsylvania has rolling farmland, hardwood forests, old granite mountains, deep gorges, and green river valleys, so it’s not surprising to see similarities in a lot of places. If you’ve ever been to Pennsylvania, I think you’d agree this looks exactly like Pennsylvania.

We made three or four stops in the villages I’d marked on my map but just like in Lorraine, old graves are few and far between. I knew where Jack’s ancestors had lived and died but we couldn’t find them. We did find a few markers in German so we knew we were in the right place but either Jack’s ancestor didn’t have markers or they were long gone.

I loved this unusual World War I memorial.

The last village we visited was bisected by this very subtle Polish border. We couldn’t even find a graveyard there.

Disappointed and hungry, we stopped at a park for a bite to eat and to plan our next move. It was fun to watch the families enjoying the beach on a beautiful spring day.

This gentleman stood akimbo for the better part of an hour, showing his stuff. Sometimes he turned around and graced us with the posterior view. Eventually he mounted his bicycle and rode away, job done.

We crossed the border into Poland and found a parkup about an hour from Oświęcim, or Auschwitz.

Once again we were near a cemetery and we came across this plaque as we explored the neighborhood. It describes the Death March from Auschwitz in January 1945 and the prisoners who were murdered in this village.

If it’s difficult to read the inscription (click to enlarge) you can find information about the Death March from Auschwitz here.

The villagers buried the victims and erected a memorial which has evolved as the victims have been identified. Many are still only commemorated by the numbers recorded by the parish priest at the time of their burial. It’s a deeply sad place and I spent some time, as I always do at memorials, reading every name, and in this case, number.

Back at the van I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau website to schedule our visit and English language tour only to find that it was booked solid until the following week. So much for not planning ahead. I booked the next available day and we headed for Krakow. I’d love some pierogi.

They do things a little differently here in Czechia. For instance, the basement of my church in Pittsburgh was home to Sunday school, a hanging wardrobe for choir robes, and (my personal favorite) the annual strawberry shortcake festival.

In Sedlec they use the basement for a different purpose. The first clue was the entrance.

Of course to protect the sanctity of their basement no photos are allowed but as I’ve said before, accidents do happen, and when making clever objets d’ art out of one’s ancestors and then charging the Philistines coin of the realm, which in this case is not the Euro but something called Czech koruna, you’ve got to expect a fair amount of curiosity seekers. After all, it’s featured in Atlas Obscura. At least that’s where we found it. (Official photos here.)

Saint Mary’s perched on top, turns out to be a lovely chapel. 

One last shot of the forbidden ossuary from the upper floor of the chapel.

Please tell me that this is not the owners car, parked out front.

Down the road apiece is the UNESCO-listed Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist. We only ducked in because it was included in our ticket for the ossuary but the interior took us by surprise. The original church, built about 1300 in High Gothic style, burned down in 1421. From 1700 to 1708 it was rebuilt in the Baroque Gothic style. The high vaulted ceiling takes your breath away.

They’ve got their own bones here, as well as relics of Vincent of Saragossa.

So let’s see what other oddities we can dig up in the land of the koruna.

The riverside settlement now known as Prague has been occupied since the Paleolithic times due to trade routes that follow the Vitava River which meanders through the center of town. By 880 Czech Prince Borivoj moved into town and built Prague Castle overlooking the burgeoning town. It’s still considered the largest castle in the world. Yours Truly will agree it’s one of the larger numbers to have to walk around.

The first stone bridge over the Vitava River was built in 1170, known as the Judith. It collapsed in 1342. A new bridge replaced the Judith in 1357, and it’s still in use today and known as the Charles Bridge. This time they wisely chose to model it after the Old Stone bridge in Regensburg.

Prague is not one of those towns that slowly ramps up into a genuine destination as you walk in. No, it hits you straight between the eyes from the get-go.

I don’t care how jaded you are, this place does not disappoint and the crowds attest to that, but no matter how crowded, you can always find a narrow secluded and cobbled alleyway with copious quirky hidden treasures.

In a new Escape Velocity exclusive tip; ignore the sea of humanity standing shoulder to shoulder at the astronomical animated clock, known as the Orloj.

At noon grab a table at one of the bars across from the clock, order a pint of icy Pilsner Urquel and enjoy the show. We did this the third time we found ourselves in the neighborhood, and it works a charm. My kind of place.

Marce was here forty years ago when Prague was still behind the iron curtain and predictably she says it’s changed a lot. As in, there are way more people now.

It should come as no surprise that there’s no end to the myths surrounding the Orloj. For one, if the clock stops for any length of time a curse is activated, the skeleton continues to nod his head, and bad luck follows until the clock is running again.

Legend has it that the clockmaker Hanus was blinded by order of the town council so that he wouldn’t be able to repeat the secrets of the Orloj. That last one may be apocryphal. There’s another one about the Golem that Rabbi Loew made from Vitava River mud, but I’m just not going there.

Does Prague have any palaces you ask? The place is lousy with them. This one is the Kaiserstein Palace.

And across the street, St. Nicholas Church.

Not to put too fine a point on it, after this church we felt our eyes needed a rest. A short discussion later and it was unanimous for ice cream. Strolling down one of those narrow cobbled lanes in the back water of Prague you can imagine our surprise.

Giving order to the cosmos and celestial flavors as well, that Kepler was truly a renaissance man. Naturally we cast about trying to find the Clementium where Kepler did a lot of his work. Through another hole in the wall, of course, we found the Astronomical Tower and Baroque library, founded in 1556, said to be the most beautiful library in the world, housing some 27,000 of the earliest printed books including Kepler’s handwritten work. Einstein taught here and Mozart played here many times.

After wandering about the several ton bronze statue of Atlas perched on top of the astronomical tower we started to climb the stairs.

However, one is only allowed to gaze at the dimly-lit Baroque Library through its open doors. It is the most beautiful library I have ever seen.

More stairs, steps, and ladders and we entered the astronomical room to see some of the instruments used by Tycho Brahe and Kepler.

Onward and upward.

The twin spires of our Lady before Tyne, over our left shoulder, is where Tyco Brahe is said to be buried. How hard could it be to find a twin spire church in Prague? We’re keen to find out. I mean what could possibly go wrong?

It took a while but we weren’t leaving without a visit. Across the old town square and maybe a couple of zig-zags and Bob’s your uncle.

Using Tycho’s meticulous observations Kepler was eventually able to discover that the earth and planets travel around the sun in elliptical orbits, not circular, as astronomers believed before. I think it’s safe to say the two of them revolutionized the way we understand our solar system.

Prague was so much fun, from beginning to end. But now it’s time to move on.

In addition to the challenge of limited time allowed in Europe, and the challenge of avoiding green zones in our old campervan, there’s yet another challenge: paying for toll roads where there are no toll booths. Lots of RV travelers advocate avoiding toll roads altogether because in some countries it can get quite expensive. While backroads are beautiful, sometimes we just want to get somewhere.

Most of the countries we’re visiting have replaced tolls booths with cameras to read either your vehicle registration or an account barcode. And every country has its own scheme for payment. Luckily you can buy a ‘vignette’ or toll tag for each country. This used to be an actual physical sticker but now you just pay online for a set amount of time and your vehicle registration is read and recognized by the cameras. If you don’t have a vignette and end up on a toll road, you can be sure that at some point — maybe months later — you’ll receive a citation in the mail for the toll and a fine for nonpayment.

Before we entered the Czech Republic we bought a vignette valid for 10 days at a cost of 13 Euros and covering any toll road across the country. Lots of travelers don’t like paying for a vignette but we consider it a temporary road tax and we’re happy to contribute to the maintenance of the highways wherever we go. I think the system is genius, and I wish the US would come up with something like this. The last time we were in the US I spent many hours and more dollars than I should have just to pay the toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. They don’t make it easy. A one-day digital pass would make so much more sense.

Vignette secured, we made a last stop at a German supermarket where I took advantage of the wide selection of vegetarian and vegan products, including vegan braunschweiger.

Finally we crossed into the Czech Republic. I was here forty years ago when it was Czechoslovakia and as far as I can remember, it looks the same.

Our first stop was Plzeň, famous of course as the birthplace of the pale lager known as Pilsner. We enjoy the occasional Pilsner Urquel so of course we had to visit the brewery. We booked our tour for midafternoon and set off on a walk about the city.

Plzeň is Czechia’s fourth largest city, yet it’s human in scale and ringed by green space. We began by orienting ourselves with a walk around the park surrounding the old town.

One of our primary goals was a visit to the 19th century Great Synagogue. It’s the second largest in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. The interior is stunning, and despite the size the space feels intimate.

At the huge Republic Square we circled the gothic cathedral of St. Bartholomew but didn’t go in. We did find the gate decorated with angels where legend has it rubbing the head of a particular one brings good fortune. I never pass up an opportunity for luck.

These puppets caught our eye as we passed an art gallery.

At the appointed time we walked to the brewery for our tour. They’ve been making beer here since 1307 but in a method called top-fermented. In 1842 the Plzeň brewery recruited a Bavarian brewer who used local ingredients and a cool fermenting process to produce the first pale lager, what’s now called pilsner.

The tour is a well-orchestrated journey through the history of the brewery and the process of brewing this particular beverage.

A bus took us to the bottling plant, which I thought an odd place to start — at the end of the process — but it soon became clear that the stops were organized for dramatic effect rather than linear storytelling.

Our only beef with the tour was that the group was large and the spaces echo-y so we often struggled to hear the guide. Nevertheless, we enjoyed seeing the process, especially since for much of our work life we both spent a lot of time filming how things are made.

They saved the best for last, or course, the caves where the beer is fermented.

Then we all grabbed a glass and filed past one of the barrels for a sample of the not-quite-ready product.

On the way back to the van we saw a number of these critters as we crossed the bridge. We determined they are nutria, not something we see every day.