Navigating Eastern Europe

A trip to Eastern Europe will be a lot smoother if you are armed with some very important knowledge. Below, I have listed some of the key pointers to keep in mind if you decide to go to Eastern Europe.

1) There are ATMs most everywhere. Use those when you can, because while there are money exchanges everywhere too, you may find it difficult to get a good rate.

2) Be warned that public toilets often come at a price. Usually not more than the equivalent of 25 or 50 cents, but still...you need to be sure to have some change. Sometimes, there are coin-op turnstyles that admit you once you deposit your coins, but in many places, there is a toilet guard. The guard will either insist upon your payment upfront or go chasing after you once you are done, if you do not pay on your way out. You won't mind paying if the toilets are maintained nicely and are very clean, but sometimes you have to pay even when they are filthy and rundown. That's just insulting.

3) If you want bottled water - watch out. There's nothing worse than twisting open the cap and hearing the hiss of the gas coming out. Europeans love their gassy water. Depending on the country, you will have to learn to read the label and discover which words means "no" and "gas". If ordering it over the counter or at a restaurant, specify "still" or "no gas".

4) Most people in the touristy areas will speak at least a little bit of broken English. Shouting at people if they don't understand you will not help. You'd be surprised how far pointing and gesturing will get you. Always smart to know the key words of the different languages...words like "please", "thank you", "toilet", and of course, "beer".

5) Before hailing a taxi, be sure that you negotiate with the driver or else you may be taken for a ride...a very costly one. First, in some places, you may be able to negotiate a flat price, like in Prague. "400 Czech crowns? No? 450 tops!" If you can't do a flat rate, then at least make sure the driver turns on the meter and is operating only on that. If in a group, get as many in a cab as you can to save money. Also, it doesn't hurt to try to talk to the driver. Any small chit-chat will do. If he likes you, he may go the shortest route.

6) Always buy a metro card or token or whatever it is you need to ride on some of the trams, buses, and subways in Eastern Europe. Make sure you validate your ticket where necessary, too. Failure to do so could result in a hefty fine and the "I'm a naive tourist" spiel won't cut it. In Budapest, you can hop right on a bus without a ticket or validating anything, but then all of a sudden, a plain clothes guy will come up to you wishing to see your ticket. Make sure you have it.

7) Gratuities at restaurants are typically around 10%. Check the bill to make sure the gratuity is not already included, otherwise you could mistakenly double-tip. But gratuities are rarely, if ever already included.

8) Some of those Eastern European girls are hot. Oh wait, that's not really a tip, is it?

9) Eastern European beer is good. Mind the German beer...it packs more punch than you might expect. We're not talking your typical Beck's or whatever. I mean the real German beer. Polish beer is nothing to sneeze at either. Goes down easy. In the Czech Republic, the pilsner is pretty popular. In Poland, you have to do the vodka shot - the vodka with the grass in it! In Prague, you need to try at least one shot of absinthe, and in Hungary, their national drink is Unicom.

10) Live it up. Plenty of clubs and bars abound and many of them put ours in the States to shame!

The Tour

Where to begin...

My tour was amazing! So many crazy, very funny stories. Whether you're talking about my birthday in Prague where I had my first, nearly deadly experience with absinthe...Shawn waking up on a bench in the middle of the night in Budapest to find not only that his wallet had been stolen but that someone, possibly the same person, had taken a shit on him...James falling through a shop window and being left behind in the hospital, having to catch a ten hour train ride to meet up again with us in Krakow...Stephane and Natalie announcing their engagement while on the tour...Chris in Warsaw, skulling a litre of beer in just under 8.5 seconds, then repeating the same feat in Berlin...AJ running after the bus and making it just in time...AJ's never-empty bag of bananas...Shane's great laugh...the contentious fussball game at the Communist-style bar in Berlin...the Polish border guard yelling at us for tossing around a Rugby ball at the border crossing...the boy at the rest stop in Poland who let us play with his hackeysack...said hackeysack bouncing off the pavement, into the bus, and smacking an unsuspecting Kate in the eye...letting it shine every morning...the classic drinking game of "I have never ever" at the 5-level club in Prague...the toilet Nazis of Eastern Europe...the almost utterly useless Hungarian forint...the delicious kebabs and falaffels all around, especially after a big night of drinking...flying high above Vienna on the rides in Prater Park...nearly getting washed away in Krakow and basically finding the closest restaurant out of the deluge and great floods...Vaclav, our local guide in Prague, with his great accent and inflection...informing us that at one intersection, you could go left or go right, but not straignt ahead into the hill. "If you going straight this could be fatal," he said...the well-endowed animated statues in Prague, marking their territory on a map of the Czech Republic...and you can send text messages and they will adjust their pee pattern to write your message...the four or five false endings to the concert in Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna...trying to find a spot that wasn't already licked in the Wielickza Salt Mines in Poland...walking down some 800 steps into the depths of the salt mines...some 136 meters or so down into the Earth, then taking an elevator back up traveling 4 meters per second...the great bars and clubs...be it Rio, Prozac, the Underground, Joe's Beer Hall, the 5 level club (whatever that was called), Generator, the bars in Berlin, etc...the hour of power (featuring some of the best and worst 80s titles ever), Russell Stephens, the trivia contest on the nearly twelve hour bus ride from Warsaw to Berlin...the pierogies in Warsaw...the funny music that played at every stop on the subway in Budapest...the museums...the museum of terror, the Museum of Communism, the topogography of terror exhibit, the haus der musik, the Marie Curie house and museum...the Warsaw uprising monument...the car crash in Budapest...the guy crossing the border on his bike with several bottles of beer in the back...Derek's alarm failing to go off and the wake up call never received, leaving us just 15 minutes to pack and get on the bus...walking down 16 flights of stairs because that hotel, like most, only had a few tiny elevators that took forever...the German girl passed out in the club, abandoned by her friend...being called "Boston"...Rebecca doing the shot of vodka at Prozac...our Warsaw local guide complimenting us on our Polish and insisting we must be from Chicago...same guide insisting that Chicago is the real capitol of Poland, since more Poles live there than in Warsaw...our Berlin guide telling us that he was the little boy who escaped over the Berlin Wall...AJ pushing random buttons in the Jewish Quarter in Prague...Peter playing "Shine" once more on the condition that we all do the "Stop" move...the 33 girls on the "other" Contiki tour at the Kartoffelkellar restaurant...random chants of "take it off! take it off"...walking into the wrong room at the hotel in Budapest, having been given the wrong key...insisting they gave me the wrong key, but the concierge telling me they didn't know what else they could do...having to wake Kirsten to settle the matter...the various room parties...Chris finding his memory card...Chris keeping his keys in his water bottle...the water with gas and without gas...still or carbonated...the giant McNugget-like thing we ate in Czchestahowa...the debate whether people saw the real Black Madonna or not...the almost tailgate party-like atmosphere in Czchestahowa - in celebration of the Assumption...Poland's version of the McDonald's dollar menu - the 3 Zloty menu...getting less than satisfactory rates at the currency exchanges...negotiating the rates with the cab drivers...the mass hangover on the bus the morning after our final night in Prague...the boat ride down the Danube in Budapest...getting very hungry before dinner on the boat...being fed cookies to hold us over until then...the wild night I had with that Polish girl in Krakow (just kidding)...

Well that's a good start I suppose, but that only scratches the surface. This doesn't even include my three nights in Dublin...