Pt 2: Time to Leave the Country?

Considerations aplenty

In my last Substack, I reviewed recent places I’ve visited, enjoyed, and could consider living. I’ve decided to go farther back in my previous fourteen years of travel to explore other possibilities:

Budapest is one of my favorite cities. The view of Margaret Island from the Margaret Bridge, especially at night, is among the most beautiful I’ve seen. The history is storied, especially the heart-wrenching WWII memorial, Shoes on the Danube Bank.

Central Market Hall is a vast, indoor bizarre filled with various food booths downstairs and merchandise of all sorts upstairs.

The Dóm Square is lovely, but more importantly, there is a California-style coffee shop nearby and, even more importantly, an ice cream shop that makes cones in the shape of a rose.

I was there with a grandpa, Joe Pinter, who grew up in Szeged, Hungary, and escaped the German invasion, making his way to Austria and then the U.S.. His wife, daughters, and grandson Karl traveled to the homeland with him. We bought food at the market and took it to Margaret Island for two or three picnics there.

Grandson Karl and I attended the opera. The Hungarian State Opera House was opulent, and the performance quality was impeccable. The opera was in German, and the surtitles (above the stage) were in Hungarian. Hungarians are warm and passionate people. It is one of my very favorite trips.

From Budapest, I traveled solo to Prague, Czechia (aka the Czech Republic). It is a beautiful city with an abundant history that came alive during the free two-hour tour of the center city. Charles Bridge is iconic, and the view at night is almost as spectacular as Margaret Bridge.

The longest-running river, the Vltava River, a.k.a. Moldau, runs through Prague and is known as the "Czech national river.” At the Café Louvre during the annual strawberry festival, I had the best dessert of mascarpone cheese and strawberries drizzled with a balsamic vinegar reduction.

Café Louvre was a favorite of the great Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka. The State Opera and ballet at the National Theatre were outstanding. Czech beer is terrific. I stayed in a hostel where I made three new friends: Stephan, an Atheist from northern Germany; Marek, a Roman Catholic from Poland; and Renad, a Muslim woman from Palestine (an Architect, if I remember correctly). The four of us closed two establishments in one evening and then had breakfast together the next morning. I found that we had much more in common than separated us.

Tallinn, Estonia, is a center for choral music. The Singing Revolution was a nonviolent protest that led to Estonia's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1988, 300,000 Estonians sang patriotic songs in folk costumes at the Song Festival Grounds outside Tallinn. The event grew to over 100,000 participants each evening for the rest of the week. I was there for an international choral competition. I heard about Estonian choirs from a fellow from Denmark whom I met on the Camino. He sang in a choir that participated in a contest in Tallinn when he was younger. The center of the city is quaint and very walkable. The Euphoria Hostel was an incredibly welcoming place. Residents brought out their instruments, and there was lots of singing. The staff was friendly, and I learned much about Estonian history and the language, which shares roots with Hungarian, Finnish, and northern Norway. The choral festival provided multiple exhilarating experiences, including performances by choirs from Indonesia, Slovenia, Norway, Sweden, and Latvia, among others. In the hostel, I met an excellent photographer from Finland, Sinja Ylisiurua, whose work captures depths of meaning in all she produces and posts on Instagram.

In Helsinki, Finland, food vendors cooked fresh seafood along the wharf. I had one of the best meals I have had during all my travels: a fresh salmon filet topped with bleu cheese and a large portion of vegetables mixed with dried fish, all cooked on a griddle. I will never forget that meal!

Later, in a nearby park, I was surrounded by about 30,000 people gathered for the Havis Amanda, the Vappu celebration. It is one of the wildest events I have witnessed in my travels. Many thousands of people were having a great time.

I learned that there are about as many saunas as people in Finland. Jokaisenoikeudet, or “The Everyman's Rights,” grants anyone in Finland the right to enjoy all nature regardless of land ownership. This includes foraging for sustenance, fishing, and camping anywhere so long as the visitors respect nature, people, and property.

Stockholm, Sweden, is a favorite because of the music. I ate a soup lunch with a few hundred people before a small orchestra performed. I stayed in the Red Boat Hostel, a wooden boat painted red, permanently docked in a canal next to the bridge to the old town.

The rooms were tiny, with six beds squeezed in. I was glad to have the room to have space for my backpack. I had a fascinating conversation with a young man, an on-site staff member, and a college student. I learned the education system in Sweden provides a monthly student grant of SEK 1,250 a month ($113) to full-time students. They also offer boarding stipends, and all college tuition is free. Universal health care is provided, and there are significant resources for those who are unemployed. Because of those social services, he could focus on his studies and preparation for becoming a productive member of society.

The city is lovely with interesting churches, along with the place where the Nobel prizes are awarded. I felt very comfortable in Stockholm.

Copenhagen, Denmark, provided an unusual experience. I was given directions to a self-governed area called Freetown Christiania, a former squatted military base turned hippie commune. The “Main Street” of Christiania is called Pusher Street, an infamous market where illegal cannabis could be purchased. Many other items are for sale, but the booths catering illicit goods had curtains in front and vendors wearing ski masks. Police raids happened often and many dealers wound up in jail. Nonetheless, as I walked through the community, an odor wafted through the air from an area where dozens of people were sitting and smoking without a care in the world. Copenhagen is filled with bicycles and is otherwise very walkable.

As I passed by a church, I was lured inside by an odd-sounding organ which turned out to be one of the oldest pipe organs in the world that is still working.

Oslo, Norway, was one of the best experiences I have had. A woman I met a year or two earlier on the Camino and her husband lived in Oslo. I invited them to coffee. In turn, they invited me to stay with them for the entire week I was in Oslo. Byørg took off work and showed me around the city.

The Munch Art Museum, the Museum of the Viking Age, Vigeland Sculpture Park, Holmenkollen, a giant stainless steel ski lift from the Winter Olympics, and an evening at the striking Oslo Opera House filled the week.

I made it to the Tim Wendelboe coffee shop, aptly named after its owner and recommended by a Kansas City friend and coffee connoisseur. Otherwise, we ate at home each day. Since it was Pentecost and Byørg was an active church-goer, we went to many services, and I learned a hymn or two in Norwegian.

Bergen, Norway, is a University town. It is very walkable, and the train trip between Oslo and Bergen has to be one of the most beautiful in the world. It goes through mountains via many tunnels, and there was blindingly bright white snow for most of the trip.

I met a young lady there who had been an au pair with a family down the street from my daughter and her family’s house. I had gotten to know her since my granddaughters were friends with their children. We met and talked; I even met her boyfriend, now her husband. I also met a young man who is still a Facebook friend in the hostel where I stayed. There were some wonderful small parks and inviting places to sit and talk. The Bergen Orchestra is one of the oldest in Europe. Still, the night I attended a concert, they were not playing an ancient classical piece from an earlier century but rather the American folk opera Porgy and Bess.

I managed to book a cruise into a fjord. It was a moving and exhilarating experience as the boat wound through the mountains with the wind and rain in my face. I want to go back!

Reykjavik, Iceland, felt like one of the most exotic places I have ever been.

It is a very walkable city where English is very common. When coming in for landing far from the city, the landscape looks like a moonscape.

The people are super friendly and the population is relatively small. The guide on the free tour explained that Icelanders have an app to determine how closely related they are before starting a relationship. The population was only about 330,000 the year I was there, so the chances of countering an unknown relative were comparatively high. I found another vast and spectacular organ in the main church in the city. The Loft Hostel was super comfortable and welcoming. There were considerable waterfalls, hot springs, and geysers to visit, and a state-of-the-art thermal energy plant.
Hot water is pumped out of the ground, purified, and delivered to Reykjavik, where there is no risk of running out of hot water when showering. There are hot water pipes under the streets and sidewalks to keep them free of ice during the winter. There is a world-famous hot dog stand.

The Icelandic horses are the size of ponies and very cute, especially when they run with the tölt or roll on their backs. I rode with a group and discovered that when they run with the tölt, there is no bounce or up-and-down movement.

Healthcare there is top-of-the-line. I met an older couple from the US who said they moved there because of the quality of care available to the wife, who used a wheelchair.

Glasgow, Scotland, is a thriving place, full of great pubs and impressive old buildings. The Gallery of Modern Art has a library and a coffee shop in the basement where I did some writing. I got a library card there that allows me access to any of the libraries in the area. I was in a nice but inexpensive hotel within easy walking distance of almost anything in the downtown area.

I met up with a friend in a lovely area near Glasgow University. The subway is easy to use since it makes a single loop around the city. I happened upon a vast Pride parade filled with thousands of happy people and discovered an Italian restaurant as good as I had ever been to. As it turned out, very good friends from the church I served in Topeka were traveling in Scotland, so we shared a meal at that restaurant and another at the Green Shack on the wharf at Oban, a train ride away.

Madrid, Spain, quickly became one of my favorites when I visited there while traveling with my granddaughter, Chloe. We’d been to London, Dublin, Galway, and Paris before ending up in Madrid. It was excruciatingly hot (the Sahara heat dome) in Europe at that time. We were stressed by the heat, but Madrid provided an air-conditioned, comfortable hostel in a unique location. Five streets converged at the corner next to the hostel. Every direction we walked led to an area restricted to foot traffic, with shops and restaurants galore.

One of our favorite places was the El Mercado de San Miguel, a large, bright building with glass on all sides and a market inside. It’s no ordinary market. Each station is filled with elegant tapas. There are dozens of stalls showcasing all sorts of small foods, each meticulously constructed to produce an edible piece of art. There were wine stations and ample places to enjoy the purchases.

Chloe wanted to visit Madrid during the Pride celebration. I wore rainbow suspenders to the parade in solidarity with her, and she put glitter in my beard. It was another very happy and colorful gathering with joy overflowing.

A favorite time was an evening meal we ate at one of the outdoor restaurants on Plaza de Mayor. We spent two to three hours dining, taking our time on all three courses, even adding an espresso. It was such a relaxing time, watching children play in the plaza, talking about whatever came to mind in no hint of a rush. A bonus is that we found a restaurant, a large one, entirely dedicated to churros.

Happy New Year, friends. I’ll write more soon.

The Destination is Now,

Peter