Munchin' in Munchen

It was only half-full when I got it (I swear).

While in Munich (that's "Munchen" to the locals - hence the title of the post), Anne and Mark visited some of the many places to eat.  As previously mentioned, they quickly found a street vendor with extrem scharf in his currywurst (I think there is a cure for that now).  Now it was time to visit the big shots.  First up, the Hofbrauhaus.  (*editor's note: please excuse the egregious misuse of double dots over the "u" in "brau" and "Munchen" - this keyboard does not have the umlaut character).

The Hofbrauhaus is a huge place in the middle of Munich.  Anne and Mark made it to the third floor
(they estimate this was half-way through the hall) before being lured by the siren song of an "oom-pa" band back to ground level.  The atmosphere at this centuries-old beer hall was quite festive, even though Anne and Mark visited in the middle of the afternoon on a slow day.  In addition to the fine HB products pictured above, the Hofbrauhaus served "hocks" of several varieties (you know, ham hocks and.... other hocks) and several cabbage products.  Good times were had by all.

After leaving the Hofbrauhaus, Anne and Mark were careful to avoid turning left.  The reason is that they saw this sign to the left:

Obviously, this sign designates that area as a single-mother and child only zone.  Anne and Mark do not qualify, so they avoided that area.  This type of sign was fairly common.  On their visit to Fussen, Anne and Mark noticed this:

This one was really quite inconvenient because it was on the main walking path to the castles.  However, when visiting foreign lands, Anne and Mark try to obey local law and custom, so they avoided these areas.  This is not to say that Anne and Mark agreed with the law.  They actually felt quite uncomfortable when they saw this sign:

Discrimination of the worst kind.

Granted, Germany is allowed to make whatever type of laws they want, but a no-single mother zone?  Is that really necessary?  I don't think so.  It is certainly not very classy.



Back to the food.  Speaking of classy, on the classiness meter the Hofbrauhaus was a bit above the currywurst vendor, but that's not to say that  the currywurst vendor was inferior in any other way.  In fact, the currywurst vendor may have been a genius.  In addition to the spicy dish, the currywurst vendor also had a "ketchup-udder."  Just brilliant.  The hungry customer holds the currywurst (or whatever else) beneath the bottle and gives it a gentle squeeze.  Ketchupy goodness is then released.  How in the world did we never come up with this technology before?

Streamlined design, inspired by nature.

Later, Anne and Mark went WAY up on the classiness meter and had dinner at the Rathaus.  Although it may appear to, this does not translate as "Rat House."  (Or maybe it does, Anne and Mark do not speak German.)  What they do know is that it is a bad idea to fill up on pretzels and mustard before your entree arrives, no matter how much you might like pretzels.

Free pretzel appetizer?  I paid five bucks for a pretzel at a Twins game last summer.

 Anne and Mark visited one other place for a meal, but they are still not quite sure where this place would fit on the classiness meter.

 If you want to make the argument FOR "Classy," you have these points to work with: suit of armor on the wall (Classy), restaurant provides a bib for the patrons (Super Classy), and you are encouraged to eat with only a knife and your fingers (Uber Classy, until you cut off a finger, then Klassy).

 If you want to make the argument AGAINST this place being classy, consider that this is what happens when you leave a light tip.....

Thank heavens for abnormally thick wrists, or Mark would still be in the stocks.

And with that, Anne and Mark are on break.  See you in January...

Curry and Castles

One of the main goals of the visit to Munich was to find some spicy food.  Bulgarian cuisine can be quite good, but it is not particularly spicy - unless you count garlic as "spicy."  But Germany has pretty much everything, so Anne and Mark (particularly Anne) were excited to sample the foods there.  In particular, Anne wanted to track down some Currywurst.  Currywurst is a street food that is what it sounds like - bratwurst and curry. 

Feeling rather adventurous, Anne and Mark wandered the Christmas market until they found a currywurst stand.  But they did not stop at the first stand they saw.  Instead, they sought out a big, bad currywurst stand.  One that was so tough, it had to have a warning label.  Eventually, they found one that had the sign pictured above.  Although neither Anne nor Mark Deutsch Sprechen, they took a stab at translating this anyway.  The first word, "Achtung," is taken from a famous U2 album called "Achtung Baby" and is probably there to attract music lovers to the stand.  The second line says "extrem scharf."  We were hoping for extreme, but certainly did not want to end up scharfing on ourselves.

Anne winces her approval of the spicy currywurst.

As it turns out, this was an extremely spicy currywurst (they should have given us a warning about that!)

After snacking on the sharf currywurst, Anne and Mark ventured to the town of Fussen, which is home to two large castles.  The smaller of the two is called Hohenschwangau and the larger and more famous is called Neuschwanstein.  Anne and Mark tried to get an explanation of these names, but the best they could surmise is that in the German language, you buy two syllables and get three more free.



Hohenschwangau

Both castles are tied to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.  He grew up in Hohenschwangau and built Neuschwanstein.  He is sometimes referred to as "Mad King Ludwig," although whether he was actually insane has never been determined.  Regardless, the guy liked castles.

You know who else likes castles?  Anne. (In contrast to Ludwig, however, Anne's sanity is quite well established)  Anne is picured above on our approach to Neuschwanstein.  If this looks somewhat familiar to you, maybe it is because several other castles have been patterned after this one, including the castle in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Saint George is on Anne's right, slaying that dragon.

After wandering around the castle grounds for a bit, Anne and Mark wanted to get a look at the castle from a different angle.  They decided to take the walk over to Mary's Bridge.  Mary's Bridge is pictured below.  It was placed a good distance away from the castle, but provides a fantastic vantage point from which to see Neuschwanstein..... usually. 

Mary's Bridge - no fog problems yet.

Unfortunately for Anne and Mark, by the time they had made the trek from the castle to the bridge, it had begun to rain and the fog had rolled in.  So, its value as a vantage point was.... somewhat diminished.

Mark poses on Mary's Bridge with Neuschwanstein in the background (take our word for it)

The fog was actually a bit of an issue on the way back to Fussen.  Anne sets much more of a quick pace than Mark does (no big surprise there).  Usually, this is no big deal, but when the fog started getting thick she nearly disappeared from view all together.

Christmastime in Germany

City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks

December 8 is a holiday in Bulgaria that falls right before the end of the school year.  Anne and Mark decided to take advantage of that scheduling quirk by leaving town for a long weekend and visiting the Christmas market in Munich, Germany.  Many people associate Munich with a festival that occurs a little earlier in the year, as Munich annually plays host to a huge Oktoberfest celebration.  However, the Christmas market is no slouch, as Anne and Mark found out.

There are several markets set up around the city.  Anne and Mark looked enough like locals that they were asked to give directions once or twice.  At first, they stated that they did not know their way around, as they were not actually from around the area.  After a little thought, though, Anne and Mark decided that a flat denial was just not in the Christmas spirit.  The next time someone asked for directions, Anne and Mark decided that they would give some (left, right, left, right, up, down, up, down, B, A start?), for better or for worse.

One of the large Christmas markets starts in Marianplatz (which roughly translates to "Mary's Plaza"), which is right in the center of Munich and spreads along the adjoining streets.  If you go to Munich with a travel guide, it will send you to Marianplatz so that you can view the famous Glockenspiel.  For those who don't know, the Glockenspiel  kind of looks like a huge cuckoo clock.  Everyday at 11 and 12 o'clock, the clock chimes and the glockenspiel re-enacts a joust from four hundred years ago (or something like that).  After the home team (the Bavarian knight) wins, some little coopers do an interpretive dance.  According to our guide, the coopers were the beer makers of the time.  Unfortunately, the city was hit by plague.  As often happened with plague, they blamed it on the cats.  So they killed the cats.  This allowed the rat population (which actually spread plague) to balloon and things got really bad.  The people started quarantining themselves in their homes to avoid getting sick.  This was bad news for the coopers (because no one buys beer if they never leave their house).  So, long story short, they imported some cats from Italy, took down the rats, plague goes away, everybody wins.  The people, though, still did not know that the coast was clear.  So the coopers turned to the most logical form of communication for this type of situation - interpretive dance.  They invented a little twirling dance to symbolize that the plague was over.  The coopers in the glockenspiel do it every day.  The coopers in the city of Munich do it once every seven years, to commemorate .... well, I guess to commemorate the day that the imported Italian cats got after the German rats.  So, if you're interested in seeing the coopers of Munich do a swirling dance down the streets, head's up - the next one is in 2012.  Anyway, for some reason the Glockenspiel is a famous tourist attraction.  Anne and Mark were more impressed with the Christmas market.

The Christmas market at Marianplatz was pretty extensive.  Even so, the vendors could mostly be categorized into one of two camps: (1) arts & crafts or (2) booze.

Possibly selling arts & crafts AND booze.

Anne and Mark eventually found their way to a stand that was peddling Gluhwein, which is mulled wine.  Anne and Mark were encouraged because although the arts and crafts vendors were frequented by fellow tourists, Anne and Mark had to elbow their way past Munichians Munchkins Munichese people from Munich to get to the counter of the Gluhwwein stand.  When eating or drinking on the road, always go where the locals go.  If you need to fight past the locals - all the better.

What does that lady have in her hat?

Later, Anne and Mark took a short trip to a town called Fussen.  Fussen is much smaller than Munich, but also had a market.

Home Brew

Man Cave.

Anne and Mark have seen a few 'man caves' in their time.  Usually, this is an area of the house set aside for the benefit of the sports-watching, beer-drinking, Tim Allen and Larry the Cable Guy-appreciating members of the household.  Usually there's an old ratty sofa, a beaten up fridge that barely even keeps the beer cold, and a huge, state of the art television.  However, last Saturday, Mark took a little ride with Krassi outside of Blagoevgrad and saw the man cave to beat all man caves.  What set it apart?  How about a full, working distillery.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the distilling process is used in the production of alcoholic beverages.  And if you have one of these in your man cave you are probably either a Bulgarian or Hawkeye Pierce.

Hawkeye and BJ Honeycutt: early innovators of the man cave.

And just in case you are not convinced of the man cave cred that this place had, consider this: just to get there, we had to roll in past the welcoming fence posts/artillery shells.  Yeah, that's right.

That's got to be a pretty good break-in deterrent.

The distillation process is not for those with short attention spans, as it takes a little while.  We got there at around 8 in the morning, loaded the wine and crushed grapes into the oven and started a big fire.  Then.... well, then we waited.  After a few hours of cooking the potion, the chemistry starts working its magic and the distilled spirits start separating from the rest of the materials.  As they separate, the distilled parts rise and are directed via a series of pipes into a separate tank.

The remainder of the materials, which consists mainly of really hot crushed grape .... husks?, are fired out the back door of the furnace into a receiving pit.   

But do not worry about waste.  This is actually more of a "by-product" than "waste."  We did three cycles of distillation, so this pit was filled up twice (the third time, we distilled the product of the first two batches to get a super distilled final product, so we did not have a by-product of grape husks).  While we were there, some local farmers stopped by two or three times to take the grape husks away.  The local herds of pigs and sheep feasted on grape husks that night.  Hopefully all the alcohol had evaporated, or we could end up with some pretty silly goats.

After we started the second batch of distillation, it was about lunch time.  Since we had a man cave and a furnace, we decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try "flash grilling."  Someone ran to the store and picked up some sausages and chops.  Then the sausages and chops were placed over the inferno for at least ten or fifteen seconds and bing bang boom, lunch is served.

The Bulgarian Olympic rakia drinking team.

If you notice in the photo above, there is a half-empty bottle of rakia on the table.  The thing about man cave lunches is that they may involve a bit of booze. Mark is on a mission to experience the local culture as fully as possible and, as such, did not abstain from the local drink of choice.  (Those of you who know rakia recognize that it is a bit stronger than whiskey regularly, and this was the bottle they brought for "special" occasions, so who knows what proof it was packing)  However, Mark does not have the ability to tolerate rakia like the men in the photo above do.  

Readers paying close attention will notice that this account of events has gone from the morning until midday.  After that, the accounting of events gets a bit hazy.  Mark vaguely remembers arguing FOR artificial turf, discussing the nursing program at AUBG (*editor's note: there is no nursing program at AUBG), arguing AGAINST artificial turf and then.... well.... waking up the next morning.  Good times.

Check It Off the List - Oh, Yeah!

It's not the heat, it's the humidity that gets you.

Like many people, Anne and Mark have a list of things that they would like to accomplish.  On this list are things like living abroad, traveling, and generally enjoying our time on this planet... that sort of thing.

Separately, Mark has a list of personal goals - things he would like to accomplish in his lifetime.  (Anne is on board for some of these, but finds others to be... unworthy of effort.)  Some people (like Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson) would call this a 'bucket list,' but that seems a bit morose.  Mark is not certain what, exactly, to call his list.  (In fact, one of the first things on the list is to come up with the proper name for the list itself.)  Anne, on the other hand is fairly comfortable referring to it as "that weird list you keep in the drawer."

The photo at the top of this post is the result of an attempt to achieve a goal that Mark had set and put on the list.  On a relatively cold day in March of 2010, Anne, Mark and a guy with an oddly oversized hat jumped into a hole that had been cut in the frozen surface of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis.  Thankfully, all three survived the harrowing plunge into 36 inches of water and minutes of coldness that followed, prior to the trio reaching the safety of the hot tubs located on the shore (sadly, the oversized hat was not so fortunate and was never seen again).  After taking the plunge, item number 58 was crossed off the list.

The items on the list have few similarities.  They range from the simple to the complex, the easy to the nearly impossible.  For example, item #57 - the same job for 5 years?  Do people even do that anymore?

There are some other entries on the list that seem nearly as daunting a challenge as uniform employment for a half-decade.  Consider this section of the list of goals:

Goal #110, which now seems a bit violent, was added to the list after Mark was the victim of several unjust and malicious parking citations inflicted on him by the "City" of Milwaukee.  While writing the check to cover the fines, Mark vowed his fiery revenge, and added goal #110 to the list.  But, given the alcohol content and resultant flammability of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin as a whole quite frankly, goal #110 seems like it would be relatively easy to achieve.  Not that Mark is ever going to actually do it......

Now consider goal #112.  Drink a Duff brand beer?  Is that even possible?  Fans of the Simpsons television show will recognize Duff as the libation of choice of the residents of Springfield, and will probably also recognize the Duff brand's corporate shill, Duff Man.  Oh, yeah!

Duff Man speaks about Duff Man in the third person.  Oh, yeah!!!

Seeing Duff Man always made Mark believe that he would have so much fun if only he could taste a Duff beer.  So Mark added this to his list.  But alas, the exact location of Springfield is never revealed on the show, and Duff beer has remained elusive....

Until now.  At the end of their trip to Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Anne and Mark had a layover in Munich, Germany.  The layover was scheduled to be 4 hours long.  This is enough time to do SOMETHING, but since the airport is located out in the boonies, this is not really enough time to travel to the city and see the sights.  So Anne and Mark exited security and went to a shopping mall located just outside the airport.  In the shopping mall, they found a grocery store.  Wandering the aisles of the grocery, Mark hit paydirt.

Are you kidding me?  Duff beer 6-packs?  And not only the fact that they exist, but how awesome is it to find them while in Germany?  Not only was it legal to walk around with an open beer at 2 in the afternoon, it was kind of expected.

There have been opportunities in life that Mark has allowed to pass him by: Apple stock at $15 per share, that job offer at that other law firm, healthy dietary options available on a daily basis, etc.  Mark allowed all of these things to pass by without seizing them.  But the chance to drink a Duff beer was one opportunity that he was NOT going to let slip away.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you goal #112 - ACHIEVED!!!

The sweet taste of achievement - Oh, Yeah!!!

Victory.  Achievement.  Pride.  The emotions flowed fast and furious.  Normally, this would be quite a lot for one day.  Some of the goals on the list are achieved over years of meticulous planning and hard work.  (ok, not many, but it's possible)  To achieve a goal this quickly was almost too much to process..... But even so, the day was STILL not over yet.

At the other end of the shopping area was a McDonald's.  Anne and Mark, in a fit of 'stomach patriotism,' wandered into the restaurant looking to buy some good, old-fashioned American food.  They were surprised to encounter this:

 The McDonald's "Easy Order."  Using this machine, customers could enter their orders without interacting with the wait staff at all (someone in the back received the order and prepared it and the customer picked it up at the counter, but at no point was employee-customer interaction necessary).  Was the "Easy Order" actually easier than the conventional method of ordering food at a restaurant?  No, apparently this phrase is German for "Slow Process" as it took 2 or 3 times as long as it would have taken to fly to Chicago to pick up a Big Mac and fly back, but that delay is just a small price to pay for this sort of progress.

And more importantly, a small price to pay for Mark to achieve of one of his most recently-established life goals.

Just cross 172 right off the list.  Head's up on 170.  You know who you are.

The Old Bridge

Before returning to Bulgaria, Anne and Mark made one final day trip.  This trip was to the city of Mostar, which is located in the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Like Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina was also a part of the nation of Yugoslavia prior to its break up in the 1990s.  Unfortunately, Bosnia and Herzegovina was the location of a severe civil war after the break-up of Yugoslavia.  In many places, the remnants of the destruction caused by this war are still readily visible.

As with their trip to Split, Anne and Mark had to make multiple border crossings in each directions for their visit to Mostar.  They headed northwest from Dubrovnik along the coast.  Then they crossed into Bosnia and Herzegovina for a short stretch, and then crossed back into Croatia again.  Then, they turned north/ northeast on E73 toward Mostar and had to cross the border into Bosnia.  Why take this route?  Why enter Bosnia, leave it, and then enter it again?  According to the guide, the reason to take this route is that there is no highway leading to Mostar from that small stretch of Bosnia.  Even the people who live there have to cross into Croatia and then back into Bosnia if they want to reach Mostar.

Eagle-eyed map readers with a Catholic upbringing may recognize a city on this map called Medugorje.  Medugorje is a small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina that was put on the theological map in the early 1980s (back then, this was all still Yugoslavia) when a handful of Catholics living there claimed to have witnessed the Virgin Mary appear to them.  The Catholic Church has never officially recognized Medugorje as a miracle, a legitimate sighting or even as a holy site of any kind, but the pope did find it at least intriguing enough to set up a commission to investigate it in 2010.  Anne and Mark's tour did not stop in Medjugorje so they did not see it, but they did encounter many people on pilgrimages to the site at every place they did stop.

Artist colonies often have aesthetically pleasing flora.

Speaking of places they did stop, the first place Anne and Mark stopped in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an old fort that has been re-made into an artist's colony.  Apparently turning swords into plowshares wasn't quite right for the people who took over the fort when it was abandoned after the war.  They went further and turned their swords into paintbrushes, and have been living there ever since performing their art and making or finding what they need to survive.  

And these people were surviving pretty well.  This is not a surprise, as they must have had tremendous cardio-vascular conditioning.  The occupied portions of the place were spread along the steep side of a cliff, so it might be 100 steps to your neighbor's house just to borrow a cup of sugar.  Dealing with that every day, these people were probably in shape.  Secondly, they were artist and farmer types who made sales to the tourist types who were passing through.  This is not a bad way to survive.  On the way in, Anne and Mark bought some dates and figs, which were fantastic.  On the way out, Anne got roped into buying a bottle of pomegranate juice, so they extracted a few Euros.  Assuming this is par for the course, they probably make a decent enough living just off of the tourists passing by.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the pomegranate is the Ft. Knox of fruit.  Nearly inaccessible.  It tastes pretty good, but the amount of work necessary to get the little individual bits of fruity goodness out of the husk and ready to eat is tremendous.  Way more work than a banana.  So even though a consumer may prefer the taste of pomegranates over the taste of bananas (the second most inaccessible fruit), if given a choice, the consumer will take the banana every time because the work to access the pomegranate goodness more than offsets the difference in taste preference.

So pomegranate juice is a good idea, right?  Someone else did all the work and Anne just buys the concentrated fruit goodness?  Right?  Kind of.  The key word in that sentence is "concentrated."  It was not like juices that we are used to drinking, it was more like syrup.  Way too concentrated to drink out of the bottle.  Of course, as people who drink pomegranate juice once every.... well, never, Anne and Mark had no idea that this would be so strong.  Mark took one swig and spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if he would be able to communicate the word "insulin" to a Slavic speaker through pantomime if it became necessary.

After getting a significant sugar buzz from the pomegranate juice experience, Anne and Mark made the last leg of the trip to Mostar.

As mentioned, Mostar was the site of significant fighting during the war in the 1990s.  Whereas most of the damage in Dubrovnik has been repaired, much more of the damage in Mostar is still visible.

Mostar has a long history featuring residents of vastly different ethnicities, religions and races.  The city has long been home to significant numbers of Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims.  When war came to Mostar in the 1990s, these divisions in particular were thrust into the forefront and the city was divided, literally and figuratively.

One of the most famous features of Mostar is the Stari Most ("Old Bridge").  It was built by the ruling Ottomans in the 16th century.  In addition to being an engineering marvel ahead of its time, it became a not-so-subtle symbol of different cultures "bridging" gaps and living together peacefully.  In the war in the 1990s, the bridge was bombed many times over several months.  Eventually, it was destroyed.  Our guide opined that this was not a terribly important tactical achievement in the war, but was significant symbolically as it prevented the Muslims (on one side of the river) from reaching the Christians (on the other).

After the war was over, the people of Mostar wanted to rebuild the bridge with its original materials.  Unfortunately, some blocks of stone had sat in the river below for so long, they had become unstable and not suitable building materials.  So, as an alternative, the city rebuilt the bridge using stone from the same location as the original and using the same methods that were used in the 16th century.  It took even longer to build the bridge the second time (apparently, those guys in the 16th century were much better at certain bridge-building techniques than modern workers), but they got it done.  Now the "New Old Bridge" stands in the place where the Old Bridge used to stand, uniting the parts of the city.

That's a good looking guy in the baby blue polo shirt standing on that bridge.

How about a Bud(va)?

The second day trip that Anne and Mark took while staying in Dubrovnik was to the Bay of Kotor, which is located in the nation of Montenegro.  Our understanding is that Montenegro is the Italian word for the country.  The Slavic name would be Црна Гора, and both translate to mean something to the effect of "Black Mountain" or "Black Peaks."  It is a small country, a little smaller than Connecticut, and was formerly part of Yugoslavia.

Anne and Mark boarded their chartered bus in Dubrovnik and started off.  The trip took them across the border in Montenegro to the Bay of Kotor.  They drove completely around this fairly unique natural bay until they reached the city of Kotor.  Then they went to Budva, a resort town on the Adriatic for lunch, then back to the bay.  On the return trip however, instead of re-doing the three hour drive around the bay, they took the ferry that floats cars over the narrowest part of the bay.

The Bay of Kotor (pictured immediately above as well as at the top of this post) is a natural bay which features the advantages of being flanked by steep, almost fjord-like cliffs on both sides as well as having a dramatic natural bottleneck.  These features made the bay relatively easy to fortify and, therefore, the bay has been valued as a port for hundreds of years.  The photo at the top of the post features the Our Lady of the Rocks church, which was built on an artificial island there.  The entire drive around the bay was eye candy, with picturesque views in every direction.

After circling most of the bay, Anne and Mark reached the city of Kotor.  This city is now an inviting destination that welcomes visitors, but in the past it was a well fortified entry point from the sea.

For most of its history, the water reached up to the city walls (shown above) and this small gate was the only way to enter the city.  (Now, the water is kept about 100 feet away and the area in front of the walls is a public space)  In the photo below, you can see the city walls reaching all the way to the top of the surrounding mountainside.  The Kotorians Kotorese Kotorites people of Kotor were not about to attacked from any direction with putting up a fight.

The wall was closed.  Otherwise Anne and Mark were totally going to climb to the top of it.

Despite all of this fortification, Anne and Mark entered the city with little resistance.  Once inside, they looked around and sat down for a morning cup of coffee.  The cafe was next to the water pump shown below.  When the city was on lock-down because of an invading force or whatever, this pump was the only source of water for the residents (they claim that it still works, but Anne and Mark did not have the mechanical expertise to get it pumping, and being aware of this fact, they did not make an attempt).  According to the locals, people would hang around the water pump and gossip about the barbarians (more likely, the Venetians) at the gate and whatever else.  Perhaps this gossip at the water pump was the medieval equivalent of our modern office water cooler talk.

After a little idle chit-chat around the old water pump, Anne and Mark visited the Cathedral of St. Trifon.  You may remember St. Trifon from last February's celebration of St. Trifon's Day.  Well, this cathedral was dedicated to the same guy.  

This area has experienced its share of earthquakes and the cathedral has been damaged and rebuilt a few times.  You may have noticed that the two towers are not identical.  This is a fairly odd thing for church towers.  There are several local legends to explain this abnormality, although most are probably intended to scare children.  For example, one of these legends says that the tower on the right was completed, but they ran out of money before finishing the tower on the left.  See?  Scary stuff.

Anyway, back to Trifon.  The legend is that his body was in Kotor after he died and church officials were trying to transport it to somewhere else to put it to rest.  Each time they got in a boat with the body, however, a storm rose up and threw them back to the city.  After three tries, they finally took divine intervention for an answer and instead of transporting Trifon to somewhere else, they put him to rest here and dedicated a cathedral to him.

In the Orthodox Church, religious relics are held in high regard and with stored with reverence.  According to the locals, the room pictured above is filled with relics related to St. Trifon.  The most important of these, according to those who know, are the bones of the saint located in the silver box between the two kneeling angels and the head of the saint (without his nose, presumably) located in the golden case, also located between the two angels.

Before leaving Kotor, Mark took the opportunity to add another episode in his inconsistent series entitled "Donuts Around the World."  The photo below is the "before" picture.  (Imagine an empty display case, if you want to know what the "after" picture looked like)

From there, Anne and Mark traveled to the resort town of Budva.  On the way there, they stopped on the side of the road to take a look at the island of Sveti Stefan.  This is a hideout for the rich and famous.  How rich and famous?  If you have to ask, it does not apply to you.

As close as the Sveti Stefan people would let Mark get.

After this brief stop, Anne and Mark made it to Budva for sight-seeing and lunch.  Budva is a resort town and was well stocked with restaurants.

Budva on the far bank.

Budva also has an old town with city walls and gates, but not quite as extensive as Dubrovnik or Kotor.   So, having developed a case of city wall and gate fatigue (or perhaps, after having become "city wall and gate snobs"), Anne and Mark decided against exploring the city and instead spent some time in the shallows of the Adriatic.  Even though this was November, the water was pleasantly warm.

Anne rocks the "high waters."

After leaving Budva, Anne and Mark headed back toward Dubrovnik.  Most of this trip was on the highway, but a small portion of it was on the ferry that took them across the bottleneck portion of the Bay of Kotor.  This ferry trip took place very near to sunset and it was difficult not to enjoy the views.

The sun setting over the Bay.