We liked Budapest. Quite a bit. We wish we were staying longer. But a couple of basic issues pertaining to Hungary and its capital city threatened to trip us up every time we left the apartment. Talking about money … and talking about talk.

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I get it. Some might consider it silly, ridiculous even, to be headed for a sports bar on a Wednesday night while visiting an exotic capital city. But keep in mind that 1) the sports bar is about 50 yards away from where we are staying; 2) the bar serves food as well as beer […]

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I was in Budapest for a few days, in March of 1990, to cover the U.S. national soccer team in a pre-World Cup friendly loss, 2-0, to Hungary. (A few days later I covered the Yanks in East Berlin; East Germany won 3-0.) So this was all just the other day. Back then, Hungary already […]

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We spent most of the day on a train. From Prague to Brno (in the Czech Republic) to Bratislava (in Slovakia) to the marvelously named Szob (in Hungary) to Vac to Budapest. It was fairly direct. Not a “crow flies” kinda straight line but one that takes into account that people might actually want to […]

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On October 31, 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther posted on a church door a list of 95 issues he thought the Roman Catholic church should address. That act, just short of 500 years ago, led to the Protestant Reformation — an event which changed Europe irrevocably and next month will be observed in […]

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Much can be said for Prague. It is a jewel of a city, small enough that most of the most popular bits of it can be seen in a single day, on foot, by the energetic visitor. It offers castles, museums, dramatic vistas from hilltop perches, a wide river, shopping from one end of the […]

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So, here we are in Prague, and we have no idea what anyone is saying. The locals, in the Czech Republic, speak Czech. Fair enough. It is a Slavic language spoken by about 10 million people, though it probably is closer to 6 million if 5 million speakers of Slovakian (mutually intelligible but not quite […]

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Not much time today in the Czech capital, given that we flew out of the south of France in mid-afternoon, changed planes in Paris and landed in Prague at about 8:30. (Where the airport is perhaps best known for being named after a poet, Vaclav Havel, who was president of the Czech Republic after the […]

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This would not be as annoying if it were not about the New England Patriots. Generally, the rest of the National Football League — and their fans – hate the Patriots. Why? For the usual reasons. “They’re better than us” would be the overarching explanation. Most Super Bowl victories (five); most Super Bowl appearances (nine); […]

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This is odd. When the French take vacations, they nearly always take them in late July and August, and they overwhelmingly take them in their own country. Which means those of us in the south of the country, where the dependable sun is, can expect a major influx of visitors from the north choking the […]

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