Ember Travels

Here is an interesting bit of trivia for you: the xxx symbol that you see in, well, “exotic” shops is actually derived from Amsterdam. “XXX” has been the logo for Amsterdam ever since the city was established, and it is still everywhere! At first I was a little worried and thought the city must be way too proud of its red light district, until I got my facts straight. The police uniforms are printed with xxx, its on all the local busses and the Amsterdam flag is black and red striped with the xxx logo. Amusing. The Netherlands was never on my list of places to go, until every traveller I met kept telling me how it was their favorite city (and usually for more reasons than just smoking pot). I also made a Dutch friend in Croatia who told me all about his city and how everyone rode bikes everywhere. Despite my reluctance to spend time in Western Europe, I figured that if  Amsterdam was as great as it sounded and I could ride a bike everywhere, I might be sold on the idea. Ruud picked...

There are only a few things in my life that I’ve seen that are completely mind blowing. If I were to make a list of Ember’s Wonders of the World, Xilitla, Mexico would be number one and Petrodvortes would be number two.  Alex and I made the trek outside of the city on a whim. Mike had to leave early in the morning for a trip to Finland and mentioned in passing that there was a cool palace with some fountains that we could check out if we had time. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular, heck, I wasn’t even expecting that we would actually make it to the palace (the directions seemed a bit confusing) but since we had time to kill and were looking for adventure, we threw the Lonely Planet guidebook in the backpack and jumped the metro. My apprehensions about making it to Petrodvortes were soon pushed aside. We make a sign in Cyrillic that read, “Petrodvortes” and everything else was a piece of cake. Of course no one spoke English, but at least they could point us in the right direct...

I have so many thoughts about my time in Russia, I don't know where to begin. In a way, Russia was everything I expected and everything unexpected, also. We were fortunate enough to stay with Mike, a friend of Alex's from Seattle who has been working in Saint Petersburg for the past nine months. We learned so much about the history of the city and Russian Culture from Mike and had a personal translator to top everything off.  If it weren't for Mike, the trip could have been  real  interesting. Virtually NO ONE in Russia speaks English, not even a word. The Cyrillic alphabet doesn't help Westerners either. Needless to say, I got really good at miming, so watch out for a game of charades when I get back to the U.S! The one piece of advice I got before the Russia trip was to never EVER ride in a taxi. I was told that driving there is a zoo and riding in a taxi is a sure sentence to a near death experience. Needless to say, that was the first thing we did upon ...

My good friend, Alex, from high school is studying in Finland for the semester and a few months ago we decided to plan a trip to Russia. Not knowing anything about the country (other than the normal stereotypical stuff) we thought it would be a crazy adventure. I think we are both drawn to sketchy, corrupt and slightly dangerous places, so this definitely sounded like an amazing adventure. As the departure date for our trip drew nearer, I began to question our rash decision to visit Russia. My image of the country was a tall, skinny man with pale skin, jet black slicked-back hair (and a matching goatee), clad in tight black leather pants, a leather jacket and army boots, standing on a rainy sidewalk smoking a cigarette. I guess you could call it the hardened criminal look, all I knew was that as the departure day grew nearer and said image continued to replay in my mind, I was afraid of Russia. On the night of our ferry departure, I'm busy en...

Stockholm definitely tops the list of gorgeous views while descending in an airplane. The area is made up of hundreds of green islands, throw in a few colorful aspen trees and you've got some breathtaking scenery.  During this trip, I have enjoyed getting to know cities and playing the, "let's wander around for a few hours, then find my way back with the map" game. My newest hobby seems to be flying to a new city and finding my way to a specific address without a map. You can probably imagine how that game goes. I decided to try my hand at Couchsurfing-a website that connects you with locals who you can stay with for free. I was staying with a girl named Alex and had an address and the metro stop where she lived, but nothing more. I had to ask about five people in order to actually find the metro station, but luckily virtually all Swedes speak perfect English.  After an exhausting two hours of wandering Stockholm and stopping strangers to ask for directions...

I am currently en route to Stockholm and in my favorite place, the airplane. The flight was a tight squeeze-overbooked by five people, I was imagining the worst case scenario...another night in Prague? Buying a last minute ticket? I waited at the gate, the anxiety continuing to build.  Suddenly, the gate agent motioned for me to come over and held out a boarding pass...good as gold. I couldn't believe it! I wanted to do the happy dance and hug him all at the same time. Flying standby is a real adrenaline trip. I spend the majority of my time in the airport anxiously pacing the terminal, and a small amount of time manically rejoicing with that, "ha, I won!" feeling. Probably the same kind of feeling a bank robber has when he actually gets away with the bag of loot. I'm not saying this from personal experience or anything, I'll stick to flying for my adrenaline rush thank you very much. Saturday was my one month anniversary of being a nomad. Looking back, this trip ...

Before I left on my trip, there seemed to be a popularity war between Budapest and Prague. Half of my friends said to avoid Budapest and spend my time in Prague and the other half said that I would fall in love with Budapest and Prague would be nothing more than a dot on the map. I decided that with all this controversy I would have to investigate the two cities for myself. I took the nigh bus to Prague and instantly felt at home when I saw billboards and skyscrapers-something Budapest was devoid of. What a strange thought, I never knew such urban nonsense could be so appealing.  I managed to visit almost all of Prague's sites in the first day. The city is very lively and gorgeous. It was Hitler's favorite hangout, so it remains untouched from both world wars. One of the city's biggest industries is tourism and there are tourists EVERYWHERE! The streets are jam packed with people reading maps and street vendors, a little stressful if you ask me.  Interestingly, The C...

One of the most interesting and devastating parts of my visit to Budapest was the Museum of Terror. I was debating whether to blog about it or not, but I think it will be good to document my experience and hopefully teach you something about Hungarian history. The House of Terror is a gorgeous ansturbingly eerie building on Budapest's famous Andrassy Street. It was the headquarters of the secret police during Soviet rule in Hungary. It has since been turned into a museum documenting Hungary's decade of communism.  The museum takes you chronologically through Hungarian history during the 20th century. Hungary had a very high standard of living and a thriving economy until the wars hit. After WWI, Hungary was left with only one third of its original land. This breakup had tremendous economic, political and social effects, so when WWII rolled around, the Soviets promised the Hungarians the return of their land if they agreed to side with them. This led to an 11 year span of a...

I have been having a field day in Budapest! Everything here is very cheap, so I've been eating my way through the city. The dollar slice pizza and falafel sandwiches are my favorites, not to mention the bakeries with pastries and cake slices for 80 cents and one of the highlights of my visit, 70 cent glasses of delicious Hungarian wine. I couldn't be happier. On Tuesday I went for a walking tour on the Buda side of Budapest. I met an Australian named Andy who has been traveling Europe for four months now. We started talking and really hit it off. Wine tasting in Hungary was something we both really wanted to do, so we asked the guide about some places to check out. She drew a map and informed us that anything with "borozo" in the name was a local wine cellar where we could find some authentic Hungarian wine. Finding a borozo was a bit of a scavenger hunt, but we finally spotted "borozo" gleaming off of a hanging sign on a side street. Talk about authentic Hu...

I met an American the other day and we were pondering the abstract and totally mature topic of being hungry in Hungary.  We started making jokes, and he commented, "In Hungary there are no all you can eat buffets, you would have to leave Hungary" and we carried on with the Hungary jokes for quite awhile, our Hungarian friend staring on, completely unamused. Apparently they're not as in to the hungry jokes as we are. I must say, as a child my dream was to visit Hungary, Turkey and Greece...just because they had such funny names! Coincidence or not that I've seen all those countries in the past several weeks? Some dreams you never let go... Enough of my ranting, I have found a temporary home in Budapest!  Coming in, I had no idea what to expect and the city is quite larger than I would have imagined, but for some reason it feels really comfortable. I can't put it into words, but I feel at home here and like I really fit in, despite my inability to speak Hungarian.  ...

If I could have spent a month in Dubrovnik, I would have. It was such a striking city with loads of wonderful travelers and new friends! When the evening came that I had to leave for Split I was quite sad. I hopped on a 6P.M. bus and braced myself for the four hour journey. Most of the drive was along the coast which was lined with hilly islands and small villages. I watched the sun set over the islands for the first hour of the trip and was completely awe-struck. I made the decision then and there that I WOULD return to Croatia at some point during my life and spend a few weeks exploring the islands and small villages and driving the coast. A quarter of the way into the trip, once I had settled into my seat and was enjoying some good old road trip music, I noticed an intensifying smell of burning wood combined with incense wafting into the bus. At first I didn't mind, it jut smelled like a wood burning stove on a crisp winter evening-kind of festive. Eventually, the smell grew str...