 |
| Map of the park |
 |
| Niko et moi, consultant le plan du parc (on n'arrivait pas a trouver la sortie) |
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Croatia - Plitvice Photos
Croatia - Plitvice National Park
My last email got us to Croatia and my encounter with Croatian law enforcement and someone else's encounter with the grill of an oncoming truck. What I left out between those two episodes was a day of hiking in Croatia's Plitvice National Park.
Back when we were planning this trip, I had asked Quynh-Nhu and Nikolas what their vacation preferences were. Did they fancy cities, with their museums and arts? Were they more interested in the great outdoors? Or was this to be a hard-core beach vacation? The answer was yes. Meaning we'd hit the cities of Vienna and Budapest, and the beaches of Dubrovnik, with a good day of hiking in Croatia in the middle. This, of course, came as no surprise to me. Nikolas, being both German and an environmentalist, is all about Nature. And as far as Nature goes, the Plitvice Park seemed like a good destination.
Plitvice is famous for its series of cascading, crystal clear lakes -- and rightly so: they're gorgeous! They're in a heavily wooded gorge, where the water is so heavy with minerals that, over time, the pools and cascades build up into barriers that make bigger pools and cascades. The end result is a terraced waterfall effect, with one lake spilling over a lip of stone into the next lake, some several meters down. The water is perfectly clear, which gives the lakes a bright blue hue, and enables one to see all of the plants and fish below. (Btw, Jordan, I got some polarized sunglasses for this trip, and it was amazing how much better I could see all the fish - it was like having x-ray vision!) In addition to the lakes, there were the surrounding cliffs and hills, as well as one giant cave, that you could climb up to get better views. It was lovely, and I think I took roughly 8 gazillion pictures (some of which I will post separately).
The problem for me, though, was that for as lovely as the area was, it was hard to take it seriously as "Nature" or as being, in any way a rough and rugged outdoor experience. I think I've told some of you how disappointed I've been by the hiking opportunities here on the East Coast as compared to the West -- about how I did an "eight-hour, highly difficult" hike in the Shenendoah in roughly 2.5 hours without breaking a sweat. Well, this national park made the Virginia parks look downright rugged in comparison. I mean, the paths were nicely paved (no mud here!), there were little shops selling sausages and beverages at various points along the way (why starve?), shuttlebusses could take you to roughly any point along the route (why hike?) and there were 17,000 tourists strolling about. Some of them clearly expected the experience to be an encounter with the elements (or maybe actually thought it was?) and were decked out in the European equivalent of the entire REI catalog. The rest looked like they could have been strolling downtown on a Sunday afternoon.
All of which brings me to an observation: Many people in Europe consider themselves to be very pro-nature and all things natural, and some of them have a tendency to look down their noses at us poor benighted Americans who don't have a clue. And yet so far in my European travels I have yet to see anything that resembles the vast, untouched expanses of nature that that exist in the United States. Could it be that we take our nature reserves for granted and don't appreciate them as much as the Europeans think they appreciate theirs? Maybe. What's rare (or nonexistent) is always more valued than what covers millions of square miles. But I think that many Americans really do value the national and state parks that we have, and as a policy matter, we've been protecting them for a long time. In a way, it's an example of how difficult it can be for some people, who have grown up in a country the size of one of our mid-range states and which has been densely populated for at least a thousand years, to understand the perspective of someone who's grown up in a country that, for the most part, is barely 200 years old, and which covers most of a continent.
Back when we were planning this trip, I had asked Quynh-Nhu and Nikolas what their vacation preferences were. Did they fancy cities, with their museums and arts? Were they more interested in the great outdoors? Or was this to be a hard-core beach vacation? The answer was yes. Meaning we'd hit the cities of Vienna and Budapest, and the beaches of Dubrovnik, with a good day of hiking in Croatia in the middle. This, of course, came as no surprise to me. Nikolas, being both German and an environmentalist, is all about Nature. And as far as Nature goes, the Plitvice Park seemed like a good destination.
Plitvice is famous for its series of cascading, crystal clear lakes -- and rightly so: they're gorgeous! They're in a heavily wooded gorge, where the water is so heavy with minerals that, over time, the pools and cascades build up into barriers that make bigger pools and cascades. The end result is a terraced waterfall effect, with one lake spilling over a lip of stone into the next lake, some several meters down. The water is perfectly clear, which gives the lakes a bright blue hue, and enables one to see all of the plants and fish below. (Btw, Jordan, I got some polarized sunglasses for this trip, and it was amazing how much better I could see all the fish - it was like having x-ray vision!) In addition to the lakes, there were the surrounding cliffs and hills, as well as one giant cave, that you could climb up to get better views. It was lovely, and I think I took roughly 8 gazillion pictures (some of which I will post separately).
The problem for me, though, was that for as lovely as the area was, it was hard to take it seriously as "Nature" or as being, in any way a rough and rugged outdoor experience. I think I've told some of you how disappointed I've been by the hiking opportunities here on the East Coast as compared to the West -- about how I did an "eight-hour, highly difficult" hike in the Shenendoah in roughly 2.5 hours without breaking a sweat. Well, this national park made the Virginia parks look downright rugged in comparison. I mean, the paths were nicely paved (no mud here!), there were little shops selling sausages and beverages at various points along the way (why starve?), shuttlebusses could take you to roughly any point along the route (why hike?) and there were 17,000 tourists strolling about. Some of them clearly expected the experience to be an encounter with the elements (or maybe actually thought it was?) and were decked out in the European equivalent of the entire REI catalog. The rest looked like they could have been strolling downtown on a Sunday afternoon.
All of which brings me to an observation: Many people in Europe consider themselves to be very pro-nature and all things natural, and some of them have a tendency to look down their noses at us poor benighted Americans who don't have a clue. And yet so far in my European travels I have yet to see anything that resembles the vast, untouched expanses of nature that that exist in the United States. Could it be that we take our nature reserves for granted and don't appreciate them as much as the Europeans think they appreciate theirs? Maybe. What's rare (or nonexistent) is always more valued than what covers millions of square miles. But I think that many Americans really do value the national and state parks that we have, and as a policy matter, we've been protecting them for a long time. In a way, it's an example of how difficult it can be for some people, who have grown up in a country the size of one of our mid-range states and which has been densely populated for at least a thousand years, to understand the perspective of someone who's grown up in a country that, for the most part, is barely 200 years old, and which covers most of a continent.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Budapest - Public Bathing
After my last post I went to one of the fancy old public baths in Budapest. It was giant neoclassical complex built in the mid-1800s and painted bright yellow. Turned out not to be anything like the Turkish baths; instead, it was a hot springs on steroids.
We started outside, in a series of pools and fountains, alternating between the hot pool and the cool pool. They were fun and had some nice features (currents, fountains, jets, etc.), but nothing really outstanding other than being pretty. Inside, however, was a whole different matter. There were tons of little pools with finely differentiated temperatures. So, for example, we could jump from a pool that was 38 C (104 F) to one that was 25 C (77 F) and then to one that was 28 C (82 F). And then to change things up, we could step into one of saunas at, say 60 C (140 F), for a few minutes and then jump back into one of the cooler pools to cool off.
All of that was really fun, and we thought we were getting pretty good, but then we found the REAL deal: Downstairs was a sauna that had no marked temperature but was way hotter than the other saunas and felt like infinity degrees Celsius (which converts into roughly infinity degrees Fahrenheit). Just outside the door to that sauna was a basin of ice shavings. The idea was to take a slab of ice into the super-hot sauna and stay there for as long as possible, and then come out and jump into the adjacent pool that was 16 C (60 F), which was by far the coldest of all the pools and, in comparison to the sauna, was absolutely shocking. Of course I did the full rigamarole and was properly wilted in the sauna and reinvigorated in the freezing pool. It was pretty awesome.
That pretty much wrapped up our stay in Budapest. The next morning we headed out for Croatia and, more particularly, the Plitvice National Park, which is famous for its series of cascading lakes.
We started outside, in a series of pools and fountains, alternating between the hot pool and the cool pool. They were fun and had some nice features (currents, fountains, jets, etc.), but nothing really outstanding other than being pretty. Inside, however, was a whole different matter. There were tons of little pools with finely differentiated temperatures. So, for example, we could jump from a pool that was 38 C (104 F) to one that was 25 C (77 F) and then to one that was 28 C (82 F). And then to change things up, we could step into one of saunas at, say 60 C (140 F), for a few minutes and then jump back into one of the cooler pools to cool off.
All of that was really fun, and we thought we were getting pretty good, but then we found the REAL deal: Downstairs was a sauna that had no marked temperature but was way hotter than the other saunas and felt like infinity degrees Celsius (which converts into roughly infinity degrees Fahrenheit). Just outside the door to that sauna was a basin of ice shavings. The idea was to take a slab of ice into the super-hot sauna and stay there for as long as possible, and then come out and jump into the adjacent pool that was 16 C (60 F), which was by far the coldest of all the pools and, in comparison to the sauna, was absolutely shocking. Of course I did the full rigamarole and was properly wilted in the sauna and reinvigorated in the freezing pool. It was pretty awesome.
 |
| No risk of putting on weight with this lunch... |
 |
| I love (LOVE!) grilled corn on the cob from street vendors |
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Budapest - More Photos
Hostal Ginkgo
Hungarian Parliament
Fisherman's Bastion
Matthias Corvinus Church
Bridge over the Danube
Terror Museum
Hungarian Parliament
 |
| Architectural purists are horrified by this Renaissance dome on an otherwise Gothic building |
 |
| Chamber of Parliament |
 |
| Cigar Holder The MPs would leave their cigars here in the foyer when they needed to go into the chamber to vote or debate |
Fisherman's Bastion
 |
| Can you see me? |
 |
| Now can you see me? |
Matthias Corvinus Church
Great Market
Bridge over the Danube
 |
| View of Buda from the bridge |
Terror Museum
 |
| Stasi Headquarters in Budapest (complete with torture chambers in the basement) |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)