Marci and Steve Go Back to Europe

  I am asking the vast blog audience Marci has created for some help.....   I have seen the same curious thing in 4 counties now ( Czech Rep., Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia) , and I have no idea what it is.  Have attached photos, but basically this is a wooden hut, on stilts, always in a farm field.     It is almost always way in the back of the field.  What is this called? What is it used for? I am a real believer in crowdsourcing, and the 'wisdom' of groups...so,I figure that between my foreign   friends, and my more rural friends that someone can enlighten me. No prize for this, but I will share the answer with all, and who the smart person is... Thanks, Steve Schwartz

A blink through Slovakia Today we left for the High Tatras, about four hours from Budapest and a convenient stop on the way to Krakow. You probably never heard of these mountains, you may not even know that Slovakia used to be the other half of the Czech Republic, hence Czechoslovakia, from our childhood. The directions said four hours, translated to Schwartz, six or seven hours because the journey is part of the fun. The roads were small and winding climbing higher and higher. A quick lunch stop in a mountain village, whose name is not memorable, but whose pizza is, unfortunately. But we didn't know that til later; we only had it with veggies. .....in the middle of nowhere, but of course, Free WiFi..... We arrived in this tiny alpinish village, home of summer hikers and winter skiers with the ski runs and dramatic cliffs as a background. Now this town is tiny with nothing more than about 15 small pensions and one grand old hotel that looked a bit faded and smelly on line. Our choi...

Budapest-Strolling About and Rolling Out After our leisurely day of almost nothing but swimming, we had to cram in as much walking, seeing, drinking, eating and feeling Budapest as possible in one long day.  Coffee, post office (yet another box and another $75 to send home more of our clothing we no longer needed and a few souvenirs), and then into St. Stephen's Cathedral to see another ornate interior of dark rose and dark gray marbles, detailed decorative painting in lieu of the usual bright mosaics and the shriveled blackened hand relic of St. Stephens.  Planning and cramming the day was a bit difficult as the sites are more spread out than in other city centers with only three metro lines that connect at one station. So, we figured we would knock off the northern most site first, the huge and spectacular looking Parliament. It was already hot enough that we were walking only on the shady side of the street and I had even started copying the Japanese tourists and was using ...

Chapter I      Fly, train, bus, or taxi but don 't DRIVE to Budapest On our last morning in Vienna, we headed to the Museum Quartier to the Leopold Museum to see some Austrian art. Vienna has a lot of art museums in the 'quartier',  which I assumed was an area of the Museumplatz street where many could be found. Not true. The Museum Quartier, much like Europe's definition of palaces or castles, is a collection of buildings. You walk through an archway of what looks like a large non-descript building and you are in a giant courtyard, with museums on every side in every shape, material and style. The courtyard is designed for 'hanging out' and filled with funky large molded plastic furniture meant for lounging in the sun and cafes for drinking.  It was already maybe 85F and too hot for sun or coffee and only  9am  so too early for beer so we instead headed for the art. Yet again, we found Austrian masters, previously unheard of to us, who reminded me of ...