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Published: August 10th 2007
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Our Romanian trip ended with the last night at "John Lennon" and Maria's. We had a TV in our room and in an effort to find some news, we instead find "Austin Powers" dubbed in Romanian. Classic! It only left me wondering though--does "mojo" really translate well into Romanian?
Our last train ride into Hungary was again very beautiful through the Carpathians. See some of the picts of farm life and some of our fellow travelers!
We arrived in Budapest, Hungary and felt like we were in the "West" again. Huge building advertisements for McDonald's, HBO, Buger King, etc were everywhere. Looking past all that though, there is some of the most amazing architecture! All the buildings--and I mean ALL--have some decoration on them. Decorations around the windows, or sculptures edging the doors. You could go photo-crazy in this city!
Budapest is divided into two cities by the Danube, Buda and Pest. We spent the first day walking around Buda where the castle and old fortified city is located. I think we did about 8 miles in all that day--just because we're too cheap to pay for the trams. Plus, it's worth it to just look up and
Border Control
This guy had just got off our train at the border--no metal detectors and shoe-removal security measures here! see all the buildings, which you would miss on a bus/tram. All the walking was rewarded the second day by visiting the famous thermal bath of Budapest--the most amazing pool ever! There were outside pools that were 30C with jets in the bottom for your feet and rays of water being spit from the side to spray your shoulders--very nice after a day of walking. They have a palace-looking building with mazes of pools, saunas and steam baths inside. The labrinth of pools were all different degrees and different minerals to cure all your ailments. They even had one very fun circle pool that had a jet in it that swept you around the wall edge continously, in which everyone just kept plowing into each other. A fun kiddie pool for adults! Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures in the pool...
After the baths we went into a fancy cafe for cakes and coffees and Lachlan ran into a girl he went to high school with--Amy Watt (for the other Penny High peeps). It is a small world sometimes! He hadn't even seen her back home since high school and it takes going to Budapest to run into her again!
American ROCK N' ROLL!
Our fellow traveler, Giurghe (George), loved American rock. After we "diplomatically declined" to carry his cigarettes over the border, we let him use the I-pod. He played "Bad to the Bone" on repeat at full volume and then fell asleep! Craziness!
From Budapest we could've traveled through Bratislava, Slovakia or Vienna, Austria. We chose the former just to stay in the whole theme of "Eastern Europe". Didn't know anything about it, but it seemed it would be much cheaper than Vienna at any rate. There is really no reason EVER to go to Bratislava. It is a small city--especially for a capitol--with not much to do. Only the Old Town center has nice buildings, the rest of the city is just ugly Communist flats, with lots of cranes amongst them. I guess they are in a rebuilding stage. The only thing to do is cafe-hop, but after the first STRONG Vienna coffee I didn't need another one for the rest of the day, so there was that idea. We ended up just wandering the city looking for funny statues and taking photos with them. That only took four hours--of slow wandering and one LONG lunch...
We (Brigid mostly) tried to delay the inevitable of going back to the room as long as possible so we managed to wander around till 10 at night. We ended up staying in a Bratislava Univeristy dorm room that they rent out during
the summer. Poor Slovakian college students!!! It was dismal! I can't imagine living there for a school year and studying in that room. We tried to take a picture of it, but it only made it look better than it was so we aren't posting it. The hallways actually felt more like an old, abandoned high school out of some horror movie, or better yet, it felt like a old mental institution. Or maybe just because I felt like I was going mental in that room! Ugh! It was about that time I was wishing we had gone to Vienna. The only good part about it was a bar down the hall in which some very drunk locals ended up to entertain us. There is a story there, but only if you buy us a beer first! 😊
In Prague now--AWESOME city! It seems the further west we go the less border control is interested in the "Passport Amerikanie" (which they shout through the whole train), the softer the toilet paper gets and there is a proportional increase in Tesco's (Americans read: the British supermarket giant). Bratislava boasted 4 alone on a huge billboard just outside the city! This
is an example of the typical architecture on a Budpest store front. Prague is filled with McDonald's too--there is one about every 200meters off the main square. No Starbucks in this part of the world thankfully--there is no way they could compete with the excellent cafes here.
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ariadne
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He he! You'r going to all the places Jamie and I went to last summer! We should have warned you off Bratislava...