Hotel Moskva, my hotel in Belgrade, is pretty central in the Old Town, so I took the day to explore some of the more renowned sites in Belgrade. I don't really know if there are any "renowned" sites in this city, except maybe the cathedral (which I see on every postcard or online entry about Belgrade). The cathedral was my first stop, but it's pretty remote from all the other places I wanted to go. So I made a morning of walking to the cathedral and back to the hotel. Since this is my last day in Eastern Europe, I took advantage of the price differences. If you've been following my blog, you know how cheap the past couple of weeks have been - not that I haven't tried to do all kinds of things. It's ... read more

Well folks, it's been 8 days in Romania, but tomorrow I'll be heading back to the previous time zone. I can't believe I've only got 20 more days of this trip. It's also graduation day at UGA in good ol' Athens, GA, and I have quite a few friends participating in that this morning and evening. To all of you: sorry I couldn't be there in person, but I'm proud we all get to be alumni together now. Go Dawgs! Now that I've gotten that out of my system, let me tell you about my day. It started far too early, but after another restless night in a hotel room that was far too warm, I suppose it was a relief to get the day started. I checked out of my hotel, and it was cool ... read more

So, this day was divided into three parts: morning, afternoon, and evening. Now, before you start calling me Captain Obvious, I'll have to tell you that each one of these parts had a very different character to it today. I will also say that the 6€ I paid for the hotel breakfast may be the best 6€ I've spent on this trip. The booking didn't come with free breakfast, but I'll be paying for it again, tomorrow. I always appreciate when I can look forward to good food when I wake up, especially since when I'm home, I have to make it myself, and it's seldom worth mentioning. My morning, then, was spent in the hotel. As I mentioned yesterday, I booked a pretty sweet hotel. The room is totally livable. I had asked for breakfast ... read more

I'll get to the headline story later on, but it was the most thrilling thing that happened today, for sure. There's not really a whole lot "scary" here, considering this is reputedly the birthplace of Dracula. My trip here this morning went off without a hitch. I had another awesome breakfast at my hotel, and then I took a cab - the first one of this trip - to the train station. It cost a whole $2.50, and that included the tip! I'll be taking another one tomorrow morning, and probably another one in the afternoon when I get to my next stop. They really are cheap here, so I'm going to act like I have money, since I apparently do. I'm also going in for the "splurge" hotels in Romania, at least according to wikivoyage.org, ... read more

I've made it as far east as I'll be going on this trip, and now I'm 7 hours ahead of all my friends on the East Coast. I've wanted to go to Romania for a long time, and to be honest, this part of the trip came down to a choice between Romania and the Baltic States. I initially chose the Baltic states because flights from Prague were cheaper there. Then when I decided to stay grounded, Romania became the ultimate winner for my tourist bucks. Since leaving Prague yesterday morning, I've spent 22 hours on trains. The train to Budapest was 7 hours, of which 4 were spent with the same 5 people in the 6-person cabin until we got to Bratislava, where they all got off. The remainder of the trip to Budapest was ... read more