After what felt like far too short a visit to Prague, we traveled to Berlin for a 4 day and 5 night stay. Once again, the bus was the way to go, being cheap and fast, with wifi and coffee included in the price. We chose to stay at the Leonardo Hotel in Mitte, which is close to the former Jewish quarter, U-Bahn train system, and plenty of good restaurants. Berlin has a totally different feel than the previous ten-or-so…
After Krakow, we continued our European city tour with a visit to Wroclaw for 3 nights, and by the 3rd night I can say we actually learned how to pronounce the city’s name. We stopped there partly to break up our journey to Prague, and partly to see the city (Poland’s 4th largest) and nearby Karkonoski National Park. We were also excited to see the Jewish quarter with its synagogue, restaurants, and memorials, and (unrelated) the random dwarf statues scattered…
After a weekend in lovely Bratislava, we bused to Budapest for 4 nights in the Hungarian capitol city. This felt like somewhat of a homecoming for me since my mom’s family immigrated from Hungary to the U.S. when things started getting bad for the Jews during WWII. And while my grandmother really comes from farther east, in a town that’s now part of Ukraine, seeing the synogogues, memorials, Hebrew signage, Jewish food, etc. really made both of us feel at…
Our first order of business upon arriving in Vienna from Ljubljiana was to drink some Austrian beer, so we did just that. We ended up picking a lovely Airbnb with high ceilings and tons of space, though it wasn’t as central as we’d hoped. On the bright side, it was close to Naschmarkt which, at night, has a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating, beer on tap, and big food menus. Though we enjoyed our beers, we didn’t stay out…
I recently wrote up and emailed some instructions to one of Morgan’s (my new sister-in-law) friends on how to build one’s own chuppah. Since they were so lengthy, I thought I’d make the effort worthwhile by spreading it to the interwebs. The photos tell most of the story, but if you’re hung up on a decision, the step-by-step may help you. Buy birch poles. You can use whatever material you like for this, of course, not just birch. But birch is…