“Just make sure to pace yourself,” a young German couple at Maurushaus told us before they left. We were sitting at the breakfast table, picking from the buffet spread of eggs, cereal, and cold meat on bread, and laying down a foundation that I would be grateful for later. Pace myself? No sweat. A single White Claw is often enough to leave my entire body red and hot as a sitting kettle. If there’s anything I know about drinking, it’s moderation.
Read MoreDay 21: Füssen
It was officially October. Füssen was shrouded in a dull gray and cold rain was pattering on the pavement just beyond our window. Hoping for a slow start to recover from yesterday’s trek, we settled on a small café featuring “breakfast eggs” (soft-boiled eggs served in stately metal cups) and yogurt muesli. The ambiance, however, was less enticing. Disappointed by the soundtrack of angsty 2000s-era love songs (Ryan Cabrera, Maroon 5, and Hoobastank), we quickly abandoned the peaceful morning plan for a trip to what our guidebook called “a real-life fairytale oasis.”
Read MoreDay 20: Herrsching
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.
Read MoreDay 19: House of Terror
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.
Read MoreDay 18: Gellért Baths
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.
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