From Istanbul, we wanted to go to Budapest. However, we didn’t fancy the train ride through Bulgaria (where I think we needed visas, not a good thing to find out at the last minute!) and Romania, which would have taken roughly 33 hours. Some Swedish lads we met in Rome did this trip. They said it’s hard to make friends with the Bulgarian border guards. So we flew. The cheapest flight on Turkish Air was to Vienna. Talk about culture shock when we landed. We left a city of 16 million, where everyone wanted to sell us a carpet. There were always calls of “Yes, please. Yes, please. Hello my friend,” as we walked down the street. When we got to Vienna, it seemed like a ghost town, where no one j-walks (Martha did her best to teach them.) Still, Vienna was cool. Big on the haute-culture tip.

Then it was off to Győr, Hungary. Smallish tourist town with some industry around the edges. The cheapest digs we could find the town were at the university campus. The student dorms were bleak, in that crumbly Cold War kitsch kinda way. Many vandals tried to brighten up the place with graffiti. The hallways were barely lit and herds of uniformed Hungarian cleaning ladies would cruise the halls every morning. Martha and I spent one morning trying to dodge them on the way out. There is only so much smiling and nodding you can do as some cute little old lady babbles in a language that isn’t related to anything else in Europe.

Budapest next. There we scored a sweet place. It was a full on flat, complete with shared kitchen and bathroom. We didn’t have to do much sharing because we didn’t have neighbours for most of the stay. In Budapest we celebrated two months of travelling. We were warned about the two month mark. Friends said that’s when things start to get rough. Well, they were right. Both Martha and I were tired and grumpy through most of our stay in Budapest. Sometimes a city can totally suffer at the hands of your mood. Not Budapest. Our flat also had the Cartoon Network. We saw Kate, Martha’s sister, who was taking advantage of all those German holidays. It was cool seeing a familiar face, if only for a short time.

Off to Berlin on an over-night train. Everything got locked up before we fell asleep! Berlin is über-cool. It’s got such a good vibe. Even the street lights ooze history. We saw the Brandenburg Scaffolding (the Gate is covered up for repairs, the scaffolding is a once in a lifetime thing!), bits of the old Berlin Wall and Men in Black II in the new Sony Centre. Our beds were in old East Berlin at a gigantic hostel, perfect for those who need to hear a lot Bob Marley or hang out with affected thrift-store fashionistas. Our time in Berlin was divided between seeing the sights and trying to arrange things for St. Petersburg (which is still going on here in Finland). We found out the hard way that travel agents actually know very little about travelling. “We only do plane tickets.” is a common response. Most of the info we needed we found (surprise!) on the Interweb. So, when our time wasn’t wasted by silly plane ticket agents, we were surfing (sadly not blogging). They did get us a cheep flight to Helsinki though.

“Um,” started Martha, “It’s opera.”

“Martha,” I said knowingly, using that don’t-mess-with-my-vast-musical-knowledge tone, “I don’t think Dorfmeister has branched into that realm of music. Sure he’s Austrian, where you receive classical training in the womb or something, but he’s stoned all the time and opera is probably too ambitious for a—”

“No Matt,” Martha said with waning patience, “Tosca is an opera.”

“Oh,” but I wasn’t done yet, “I haven’t heard of it. It’s probably by some minor hack, right?”

“Puccini.”

So, eventually we made it to Vienna. It’s the first German-speaking country I’ve ever been in. I needed to get used to the German tip. Every time I saw the word neu on a billboard or a sign, I thought of the sweeping guitars of “Hallogallo.”

Walking around Vienna, Martha and I came across a poster that had ‘Tosca’ in big bold letters.

“Wicked,” I said, “We should totally go see them… Wait a minute… Is that—”

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

So I went off about how this time it was an honest mistake. After all, Dorfmeister is Austrian and he probably lives around the corner and this Puccini guy is like Italian or something so what are the odds that he’d be on tour in Austria after we saw his poster in Portugal. Oh. Right. Puccini’s dead. Well, then for sure my money’s on the Tosca guy who’s alive…

So we took my uncultured ass to see Dutch and Flemish masters right from the art collections of the Hapsbourgs. We then chilled in the Museums Quarter to the music of two DJ’s/performance artists. They started their set playing tennis with electric guitars. Most of their music was made by blowing into latex gloves and rubbing fingers and rocks on a board. All of this was framed by arrhythmic beats and bleeps. It’s just what you’d expect from a Germanic duo with electronic gear—oh so three-in-the-morning Brave New Waves. Then we went to a modern dance performance. Xavier Le Roy “wants to dissect trite and cliché body movements conveyed through and by our mass media.”

I now call that day, “Die auf Kulture.”