St. Petersburg, Russia--February 22 - March 1

My colleague, George, and I flew up to St. Petersburg to JetBrains R&D headquarters. We spent a week in the office and attended a bunch of meetings. It's always great to spend some face time with our developers.

St. Petersburg seems like the bastard child of Vienna, Stockholm and Mexico City. Like Vienna, the city has wide avenues and impressive neoclassical architecture. Not unlike Stockholm, the city is situated across a number of islands, which is why there are so many bridges--600 I'm told--and each of them uniquely beautiful. Unfortunately, the city's broken infrastructure reminds me of Mexico City. Terrible pollution, roads in disrepair, and suicidal sidewalks covered in ice.

Not unlike other parts of the world, there seems to be a HUGE difference between the rich and poor. I lost count of the number of expensive German and Italian cars I saw while there. I also lost count of the number of seemingly homeless people, wandering the city at all hours looking for their next meal or drink.

That said, I had a wonderful time in St. Petersburg and found the people, architecture, cuisine, and art inspiring and interesting. It has a terrific night life. George and I would normally start by having dinner from 10 to 12 pm, then drinks and or clubs until 5 am. We went to new restaurants, clubs and watering holes each night and were always surprised by what we found and who we met.

I spent most of my last full day there in the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest museums in the world, with 3 million works of art, and one of "the oldest art galleries and museums of human history and culture in the world. The vast Hermitage collections are displayed in six buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the Russian Tsars."

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Budapest, Hungary -- December 26 - 30, 2008

It's 6:20 a.m. and we're waiting for the metro at Florenc. We've got exactly 10 minutes to make it to Holesovice station to catch our train. No problem...right?

We really, really enjoyed the first two hours of the train ride to Budapest.

"I knew we should have taken a left turn at Bratislava."

We finally made it! The train, after breaking down near the Hungarian border, arrived at Budapest two hours late. It's strange how exhausting it is to sit on a train for 9 hours. Luckily, our rented flat was nearby.

Once again, we turned to craigslist.org to find accommodation. We'd much rather stay at a local apartment than a hotel. The place we rented in Budapest, a 3-bedroom, 2-bath apartment only 15 minutes from the train station was great. We were surprised twice by the apartment. First, by the price, less than 50 Euro per night. Second, by the soothing sounds of the discotheque next door that played until 4 a.m. every night. Good times.

The next morning, the first thing on our list was a visit to the wonderful Szechenyi Baths. The bath complex, located inside the grounds of the city park, offers a number of indoor and outdoor pools. We opted for the outdoor pool experience. We planned poorly by not taking any big towels, bathrobes or sandals with us. The experience of changing into a swimming suit, showering, then making a wet, barefooted mad dash in sub zero temps to the warm pools is one we're sure to remember.

Finally, after hours of soaking in the warm waters of the Szechenyi Baths, we dressed and went back outside to face the cold. Time to catch the metro and go back downtown for lunch, then on to Chain Bridge and Capitol Hill.

"Wow mommy, this metro is really old." The metro line running from downtown to Szechenyi Park is the second oldest metro line in the world, built in time for Budapest's 1,000th birthday celebration in 1896.

After crossing the majestic chain bridge, we rode a funicular to the top of capital hill where we proceeded to die from hypothermia.

It was so cold on capital hill that we started to wonder if the statues we saw were really statues at all and not... (insert Soylent Green style joke here).

Andy and Melinda practicing some tai chi at the top of capital hill.

Szoborpark, Budapest

While in Budapest we just had to see its famous communist statue park. The park lies in a remote suburb of the city and features a collection of Soviet-era statues including Lenin, Marx, Engels, local Hungarian Commie leaders, and several worker-hero statues which were removed after the fall of the Communist regime in Hungary in 1989.

Did I mention that the park is in a remote suburb of the city? Take our advice and spring for the tourist package. It includes round-trip bus transportation from the city center and entrance to the park. It sure beats taking public transportation with a toddler, especially in cold weather.