The month was May, and I woke up in a tiny hostel in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Day two of my trip began with free breakfast at the hostel (always a highlight) and then a visit to St. István’s Basilica, Budapest's largest church. In my previous post, I mentioned that St. István was Hungary's first Catholic king and harbored a penchant for gruesome violence wholly unbefitting of a saint. But hey, at least his church looks cool. 

Construction started in the mid-1800s but took five decades in all. The church is still tied with the Parliament for the title of tallest building in town

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It was early May, and I was ready to escape Berlin and take another ridiculously long and cheap bus ride in the dead of night (departure was 2 a.m.) to another new and exciting city... this time, my destination was Budapest, Hungary! I went not only since everyone who goes comes back with good reviews, but also because I was able to meet up with my USC friend Catherine, who was studying abroad there, each night to enjoy the nightlife. 

I had my trusty Rick Steves guidebook, of course. From Rick, I learned everything important there is to know about Hungary and its capital city on the Danube. This very unique nation is populated almost completely by Magyars, who came over from central Asia and settled down here over thousand years ago. Their golden age came in the late 1800s, when Hungary and Austria ruled together over the massive, powerful Austro-Hungarian empire. Then came a major defeat with World War I, and Hungary lost half of its population and two thirds of its territory. But, despite the destruction of WWII and the cruel reign of the Soviets that lasted until 1989, the capital city is still full of impressive and ornate buildings built during the late 19th century, when Hungary was at its zenith of power, size, and influence. The city is like a giant, grand exercise in nostalgia. 

The Magyars (Hungarians) are also unique because they speak one of the toughest languages out there. Its difficulty is compounded by the fact that it has no close linguistic relatives today! Needless to say, I did not pick up much Hungarian.

Anyway, enough of that. On to the photos!

I started out on the west side of the river, the Buda side. This photo was taken from the Pest side of the river looking towards the Royal Palace on the Buda side, where I planned to spend the afternoon. In case it's not immediately clear to you, Buda + Pest = Budapest

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With one day down, my Easter weekend trip to Amsterdam was already half over. No matter - an art museum, bike ride, and tour through the Red Light District was definitely doable in one day! I had done more in less time before, after all. 

First stop of the day - the Rijksmuseum, the largest museum in the Netherlands

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The Easter holiday in early April meant an extra long weekend away from work, so it was a chance not to be missed - my friend and fellow Berliner Amy and I knew we had to travel somewhere, and AMSTERDAM was our selected destination!

We stuck to my preferred cost-effective method of travel: overnight bus. The 9-hour ride there was a little less comfortable than usual, though, since the bus had no bathroom and I had to sit next to a stranger who wound up falling asleep on my shoulder. To top it off, we arrived early in Amsterdam... at 4:45 am, an hour before the first train into the city. This was going to be a long day. 

But after the trip's inauspicious start, things quickly got better as we headed into the city and joined a walking tour. We learned that Amsterdam started out as a humble fishing village in the 12th century before becoming a hugely important port city home to many wealthy merchants.  The famous canals were dug in the 17th century for water management and defense purposes. Although almost half of them have been filled in over the years, the city still boasts 65 miles of waterways, most of which are lined by expensive canal houses.

The Beurs van Berlage, built at the turn of the 20th century, was once the home of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, which is the oldest stock market in the world

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Unique, underground, alternative, exhilarating... even dangerous: all are words that pertain to the activity that is the subject of this post! How exciting! The activity in question? Urban exploring (urbex) - the exploration of man-made structures, particularly abandoned ones. Having seen urbex photography online for years and years, I finally got a chance to try my hand with it on one Saturday afternoon in late March, when my good friend Sarah led me to an abandoned S-Bahn (commuter train) station in Berlin called Siemensstadt. 

Siemensstadt is named for the behemoth of a company that is known as Siemens. Siemens was founded in Berlin during the city's industrial heyday in the 1800s (a while back I wrote here about how important industry used to be for the city). In 1897, the firm opened a big complex of worker housing, administrative offices, equipment plants, and factories in northwest Berlin, and the area came to be known as Siemensstadt (Siemens City). The commuter train line that we were visiting was built in 1927 to ferry Siemens workers who did not live in the area to the big Siemensstadt campus. The tracks largely survived WWII, but the Siemensstadt line met its end in 1980. At that point, an East German rail authority was still running all of Berlin's S-Bahn commuter trains, even the ones on the other side of the wall in West Berlin (such as the Siemensstadt line). West Berliners, not keen on financially supporting the oppressive East German government by purchasing train fares for the S-Bahn, boycotted the S-Bahn system. Between the boycott and a train worker strike, that was that - close to half of the S-Bahn lines in Berlin were shuttered, including the line that served Siemensstadt station. Today, both the S-Bahn trains and Siemens workers remain absent from Siemensstadt. It was the perfect spooky setting for us to do some exploring!

Our first look at the former station

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On that weekend in late March, I wasn't done with my trip through Poland after just Poznan - I had all of Sunday to see Warsaw. But first, I had to get there.

After spending Saturday in Poznan, I went to the very outskirts of town to catch a late-night bus from there to the Polish capital. But I found that the bus station was completely boarded up and closed, so I had to brave the below-freezing weather for an hour at 11 pm before the bus finally showed up and I folded myself into my tiny seat. Then we were off, and we arrived in Warsaw early... which, in this case, was not good news for me, since it meant we were there at 4:15 am and I had managed to get about 4.5 hours of sleep. Traveling by bus is certainly not glamorous! But for 7 euros, it did the job. I shook off my tiredness and set out into the city at about 7 am. 

Warsaw, population 1.7 million, has been the capital of Poland since 1596. During World War II, the entire city was nearly completely (over 85%) destroyed by the Nazis, particularly during a bout of retaliatory bombing after a major uprising in the city 1944. But Warsaw and its residents have risen from the ashes and rebuilt the metropolis on the banks of the Vistula River. 

Warsaw's most striking building is not its most beloved by a long shot. The Palace of Culture and Science was commissioned by Stalin as a gift from the Soviet people and was inspired by the Empire State Building. It was built in the early 1950s, and 16 Soviet workers died in the process. It is still the tallest building in all of Poland

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As promised, I'm picking the blog back up now that I'm safely back home in Lake Forest, California! I have a lot of traveling behind me - I finished my stay in Berlin and whizzed off to Croatia, Montenegro, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and then Germany one last time before crossing the Atlantic. I capped the entire year off with an exhilarating 10-day stay with my sister in New York City. It was a whirlwind, but I meticulously documented it all in thousands of photos. I also added all the cities I visited on my Travel Map. Eventually, way down the line, I will have at least one blog post for every point on that map... so keep stopping by!

But for now, it's back to playing catch-up. On one Thursday afternoon in late March, my supervisor at Kompakt Medien (where I was interning) suddenly gave me the next day off work. Determined to not let this 3-day weekend go to waste, I planned a last-minute trip in record time and left the very next day. My destination? Poland! The first of the two cities that I visited was Poznan.

Poznan was definitely one of the most humble places I visited this year. But Poland's 5th-largest city still had a charming historical center that kept me entertained for a day. Poznan is also one of the oldest cities in the country, as its development first began in the 10th century!

Retro neon signs from the 1960s still adorn some buildings, such as the Philharmonic

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