#5! And Best Experiences

Steph and Craig's #5 European Tourist Site is ...

Auschwitz and Birkenau, Poland. A visit to the former Nazi concentration camps is a sobering experience, and much more powerful than any museum, book or movie about the Holocaust. Both sites are preserved in park-like states, with interpretive panels throughout. And while many tourists visit, the mood is appropriately respectful and subdued.

List o' the day: Best European Experiences

These are things that you should go out of your way to experience while in Europe!

1. Albanian Hospitality
   Our guidebook mentioned that Albania's culture has firm rules dictating the gracious treatment of travelers. Even warned, we were surprised, as people in the poorest nation in Europe invited us into their homes, helped us navigate strange towns, and bought us drinks. By far our most intense European experience. Read the full story (a previous blog entry).


2. The Tour de France...
   Preferably in a camper parked along the route. But a picnic along the route would do too. Make sure you get there early enough all of the craziness, including the Caravane. Read our Tour de France blog entry.


3. Befriend an Italian
   You never know how it will happen. It might be a chance encounter, like the way we met Gaetano in Milazzo and spent a couple of hours talking even though we don't speak the same language... Or it might be your aunt's family's exchange student from 1970, which is how we met Lucy, Christian and Eric in Genoa. No matter how you meet, spend some time communicating however you can, you'll learn a ton and it will be great fun!


4. The Baths in Budapest
   First, of course, you'll have to decide which of the baths to go to. Craig and I opted for the co-ed bath in the city park so that we could share the experience, which is best described as part spa, part municipal swimming pool, all housed in beautiful buildings. There were steam rooms, saunas, cold pools, hot pools, mineral pools, and fountains, but we thought the best was the whirlpool, where about 20 people were shoved along in a perpetual current. (Play Strauss' Blue Danube to enhance this visual.)


5. Drink Local Beer in Belgium
   Find the smallest town you can, and try to taste the beer in the pub closest to the brewery. It's best if you go around 5:00, when everyone is stopping by on their way home from work (at the brewery, of course). Our favorite place for tasting is the tiny town of Tourpes. Read the full story.


6. Stroll the Champs d'Elysees on a Pleasant Saturday Evening
   Join the crowd of tourists and Parisians who are out to see and be seen! Pop into the crazy car dealerships lining the boulevard and drool over their latest concept cars. And, if you can, grab a seat at a cafe for some wine and crepes, sit back, and watch the flood of exuberance pass by.


7. Shop in Palermo
   Sicily's biggest city has the best Saturday market we've seen anywhere in Europe. Blocks and blocks are crowded with temporary stands selling fish, fruit, vegetables, toys, clothes, and the best olives we've found in Europe. The areas around the street markets are filled with small alleys of shops. We found the "outdoors" alley, where you could buy bikes and camping and fishing supplies at various tiny shops, and the "home improvement" alley, where we bought a custom-made curtain for our camper. Even better, Sicily seems to be immune to the Euro-inflation that plagues the rest of Italy.


8. Take a Break in a Vienna Coffee-House
   Their ambiences are varied; you can go upscale or beatnik, but no matter where you stop, you'll find Vienna's coffee-house tradition alive and well. You can stay as long as you'd like. Read the newspaper, play billiards even. Just don't ask for your coffee to go, and stay away from Starbucks (who, inexplicably, has a huge presence in Vienna).


9. Flamenco Dancing in Sevilla
   We opted out of the tourist shows and went straight for the club with the reputation for "serious" Flamenco. (Well, not exactly straight, Sevilla is full of crooked streets that somehow all converge on its enormous cathedral.) It's Spain, so nothing starts until at least 9:00, but here the act doesn't started until about 11:00. We waited, and were treated to some of the most emotional (not to mention physical) dancing we've ever seen.


10. Bastille Day Fireworks in Carcasonne
    Carcasonne stages the most dramatic fireworks we've ever seen on the walls of its well-preserved medieval fortress town. Unlike the American shows, which seem to be about filling the sky with as much spectacle as possible for as long as possible, this show had pauses without any big fireworks, where it looked like the old town was on fire, or that showers of liquid gold were pouring from its walls. Amazing. (And of course, pretty much impossible to get a good picture.)


11. Number 11?!
    Yes, number 11, because not everyone will want to do this one, but it is, after all, our reason for coming to Europe... Ski the Alps
    You can pick. Zermatt, Chamonix, the Dolomites, St. Anton... Check out Craig's review from last season if you need help. But if you are a snow-sports person by all means, do it! You will be blown away by the scale of the Alps, and of the snow-sports development here.

...So those are the things you can plan to do. Some of our favorite experiences though, are completely unplanned, which is what made them fun. These include:

• Stumbling on a Medieval Festival in Elche, Spain, where we followed a belly-dancing/story-telling/unicycle-riding/club-juggling troupe leading the crowd with a giant puppet and fireworks. (There's a bit more about Elche at this blog entry.)


• Being in the right place at the right time for a performance of Mozart's Requiem in one of Budapest's cathedrals


• Being bold enough to check out the William Arne Motorcirkus when we were intrigued by it at the tivoli in Malmo, Sweden. (See previous blog entry for more.)