Damn if German trains aren’t punctual. We pulled into the Munich Hauptbahnhofat (Central Station) at 6:20 on the dot. The overnight train wasn’t quite as smooth as our Prague to Budapest journey a few days prior. We got chastised from the conductor for having neglected to print paper copies of our tickets, and the ride was punctuated more frequently, flooding the blinds-less cabin with light, beeping noises, and juddering stops at each waypoint.

The outside is all black: steel entablature, blade walls, granite footpath. Inside, the temperature drops, and piercing string music is interspersed with grainy black-and-white war footage projected on mounted displays. An enormous T-54 tank sits in the center of the rotunda, dwarfed by thousands of passport-sized photos blown up to fill a six-story wall.

It felt like a return to Jewish life back home. For lunch, we shared a hummus platter, matzoh ball soup, chicken paprikash, and a fascinating Israeli bean stew called cholent, typically eaten on the Sabbath. We followed it up with a trip to the Dohány Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe, impeccably decorated with elements of medieval Spanish and Islamic art. The inside was a full-blown identity crisis: brass chandeliers, a choral organ that towered under two Moorish onion domes, and a rose stained-glass window. Bordering the Budapest Ghetto, the Synagogue, much like the Old New Synagogue in Prague, comprised the ill-fated holy trinity of European Jewish landmarks: graveyard, memorial, and museum.

Few places smell good after a 12-hour overnight train, and Budapest was no exception. Fresh off breakfast of a plain roll and the European equivalent of Sunny D, we were greeted at the Keleti railway station with the scent of burning trash and strong perfume. We dragged our bags for a mile before arriving at our hostel. Occupying half a floor of a tenement building, the hostel teetered on the sixth floor, with a balcony that cantilevered inward, a ring of identical apartment windows facing down. The courtyard looked like the bottom of a drained pool: cracked green tile, bruised and rutted, with puddles of stagnant water collecting in the center. None of it mattered. Budapest was the highlight of the honeymoon, as underdog as cities come. And in many ways, this was our most perfect day.

We crossed the Charles Bridge to Mala Strana, also known as “Lesser Town,” from its position on the west bank of the Vltava River. Located on the slopes just below the Prague Castle, its opposition to Prague on the right bank gives it a historic, gritty charm, characteristic of the Lennon Wall, the only place where graffiti is legal in Prague, and the pubs and eateries that line its narrow streets. Each one advertised “traditional Czech food,” which we’d deduced consisted of bread dumplings, goulash soup, and knotty shanks of meat, but we were nevertheless impressed with the abounding oddities of Prague the Lesser.