{"id":472,"date":"2012-07-23T05:33:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T12:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/?p=472"},"modified":"2012-07-23T05:33:34","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T12:33:34","slug":"couchsurfing-behind-the-curtain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/couchsurfing-behind-the-curtain\/","title":{"rendered":"Couchsurfing behind the curtain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"peter<\/a>
peter and marcela<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week we spent a wonderful 3 days with Marcela and Peter, two\u00c2\u00a0couch surfers from Bratislava, Slovakia. \u00c2\u00a0Slovakia is a beatiful\u00c2\u00a0country, and we were happy to see it mostly devoid of the throng of\u00c2\u00a0tourists that plague Vienna and Prague.<\/p>\n

Peter and Marcela were kind enough to show us around, and even take us\u00c2\u00a0to a handful of places outside the usual tourist path. \u00c2\u00a0It was an\u00c2\u00a0exquisite treat to hear first hand accounts of the communist era, as\u00c2\u00a0well as second hand stories from the various wars of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Yano and I are big fans of couch surfing, mostly because of the rare\u00c2\u00a0opportunities to peek into the lives of locals the world over. \u00c2\u00a0Even\u00c2\u00a0though today, there’s almost nothing that can’t be surmised from a\u00c2\u00a0cursory view at wikipedia and google images, couchsurfing offers\u00c2\u00a0something that hotel traveling cannot.<\/p>\n

It is something to read about life behind the Iron Curtain, it is\u00c2\u00a0quite another to see the twinkle in Peter’s eyes as he recounts the\u00c2\u00a0first time he went to Vienna, just a few kilometers away, but on the<\/p>\n

other side of the curtain. \u00c2\u00a0He told us about the bright colorful\u00c2\u00a0displays in shops with a variety of items, to contrast with grey\u00c2\u00a0colored shops with nothing but two types of soaps in Bratislava.<\/p>\n

It was quite fascinating to hear about vacations to Yugoslavia, which\u00c2\u00a0was even poorer, and having lines of people stand behind their car\u00c2\u00a0every time they opened their car trunk, because folks thought it was\u00c2\u00a0an ad-hoc black market.<\/p>\n

\"illegal
illegal nazi memorabilia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All in all we had a wonderful time with our hosts, and were sad to\u00c2\u00a0continue our journey back into Austria to visit one of Yano’s\u00c2\u00a0schoolmates in St. Polten. \u00c2\u00a0But alas, that is also another adventure\u00c2\u00a0in our rear view mirror, and we’re on a train to Budapest, Hungary,\u00c2\u00a0where rumor has it, there is a plethora of Indian restaurants. \u00c2\u00a0My\u00c2\u00a0diet officially starts tomorrow…<\/p>\n

\"img_5811\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week we spent a wonderful 3 days with Marcela and Peter, two\u00c2\u00a0couch surfers from Bratislava, Slovakia. \u00c2\u00a0Slovakia is a beatiful\u00c2\u00a0country, and we were happy to see it mostly devoid of the throng of\u00c2\u00a0tourists that plague Vienna and Prague. Peter and Marcela were kind enough to show us around, and even take us\u00c2\u00a0to a handful … Continue reading Couchsurfing behind the curtain<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}