Eastern Europe: Home of Weird Accents and Pointy Buildings

I have a little bit of stalking problem (in fact, if you are reading this, I have probably Googled you at least once), and I may or may not be following my middle school English teacher's wife on Instagram who happens to be a photographer and recently went to Eastern Europe and grammed the whole thing. So, using her posts as inspiration, I am writing this next post (which happens to be the last real post!) on Eastern Europe, which has always really interested me.

One thing I would want to do in Eastern Europe is visit Prague in the Czech Republic. I would love to get to one day see this city's famous Gothic architecture, especially Old Town Square, Prague Castle, and St. Vitus Cathedral ('cause I have a weird thing for churches). I would also like to try some Czech food, even though I'm not entirely sure what it is. Originally, I was guessing somewhere along the lines of like dogs or something weird like that, but as I'm looking it up, it seems to mostly be beer, pastries, and meats with a lot of weird accents that I can't figure out how to type on this keyboard.

Inside St. Vitus Cathedral. Do you get my fancy church obsession now?
Image Courtesy of: In Mozart's Footsteps

Another place in Eastern Europe I would love to visit is Budapest. Budapest, like Prague, has a lot of really old and simply amazing architecture. I would want to visit Fisherman's Bastion and pretty much any church in Budapest. Also, I would want to take a walk along the Danube River, which runs right through Budapest, because, I mean, who doesn't love walks along rivers?! Finally, I would want to visit Miniversum, which is basically a mini village that I just found out existed. By "mini," I don't mean that it has a small population or occupies little land area, I mean like a little toy village that you would probably find in your grandma's living room or something but which sounds strangely interesting to me.

The Danube River running through Budapest. That pointy little
red building thing is Hungarian Parliament Building and makes
our capital building look like a shack.
Image Courtesy of: Wikipedia

Budapest and Prague seem like really great places, but they also tend to be very typical tourist attractions, and I think by visiting solely tourist attractions, you don't get a taste for culture and actual society in a place. I would want to spend some time visiting some less typical places in Eastern Europe to try to understand the lifestyle there better. Maybe I would spend some time in rural Austria (think Sound of Music sort of deal) or Ostroleka, some Polish town I found on Wikipedia. I would definitely want to travel by train throughout Eastern Europe to try to take in as much of the landscape as possible and maybe even meet a few Polish/Slovakian/Czech/Hungarian/whatever people while doing so.

The Grossarltal mountains in rural Austria.
Image Courtesy of: The Guardian

Eastern Europe seems like an amazing place with fascinating architecture, history, and attractions. Before I die, I definitely want to be able to experience all that this region has to offer, even that found outside the big cities.