Whirlwind tour

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ok I'll finally give you all a run down of my quick trip through Europe. They do this stupid thing here on cheap airlines that if you don't get in 40 minutes before your flight you forefit the whole thing. So My first leg of the flight to London from Aalborg started this way. I got there 39 min before. Yeah They turned me away. I was angered. just a bit. But the lady had some compassion, or fear, I'm not really sure which, and she let me go inn if I ran the whole way and didn't stop for shopping. Sure I agreed. and sat in the terminal for half an hour before my plane got there. Stupid.

I was in London for 12 hours. 5 pm to 5 am. I went to my old hostel that I stayed in a week before, and left my bags there. Since it was Sunday and most things were closed I just hung-out in Hyde park listening to the soap-boxers in the Speakers corner. Brilliant idea that has been around for ages. The idea is that there should be a place other than in front of Parliament where people can discuss and rant and rave. So there were your typical "Come to Jesus" "Allah is great" "Hare Krishna dancing" "Mormonism stuff" and general discussion between all of them. No one got angry or upset, just I'm right you are wrong things. The best though were the people who were only there for other than religious purposes. one guy worked for the BBC and with a dvd player showed his footage of some UN forces and what they were doing in Africa along side the BBC version of his own footage. Completely different. It was an eye opening to how the media sugar-coats everything to how they want the world to view the goings on. Crazy.

Then I was off to Romania early in the morning on WizzAir (a purple and pink airplane) hahaha.

I landed in Cluj, a bigger city, not as big as Bucharest, but cheaper to fly into. It reminded me of Guatemala city. Dirty, kind of downtrodden, and not really fun. Nothing to do there. Well nothing worthwhile. So I after a couple of hours I headed into the heart of Transylvania, Brasnov. Beautiful little town in the Carpathian mountains. Nice, friendly and "clean". It was really pretty cool. I then toured around the area going to 3 cities and their castles and fortresses and whatnot. I did get to go to a monastery too. But the highlight wasn't Vlad Tepes Dracula, who had been so commercialized his face was on the plastic Halloween masks and coffee mugs. But rather it was my driver, Claudio, who looked interesting, but who would take me around to the 3 cities for half the price of anyone else. He was a former pimp (yes and he drove by his girls for me if I wanted them) who lived in a communist era apartment concrete block. We stopped there to pick up his wife and son halfway through the trip cause they wanted to go to town. AND...and I got into all of the castles half price because Claudio would take the money and give it to the security guards who would then wave me in past the lines. Awesome.

I then boarded a night train to Budapest, Hungary to meet 2 of my friends. Uneventful trip other than everyone trying to sleep on these little seats without disturbing anyone else.

Budapest is a beautiful city. We took our first day and explored the Buda side of the river. (Yes they are divided) It is smaller and older than Pest so we tackled that on our half day. Nice old castles and churches, but we were caught in a downpour at one point, and foolish man that I am gave the girls my umbrella. Soaked to the bone we headed back to the hostel. oooohhhh dinner was fantastic. I have no idea what it consisted of other than mystery meat (not like cat or horse or anything like that, just everything was cooked differently so I don't know if it was pork, turkey or chicken) and beets, and potato salad like stuff. Very tasty. Pest was next, and we say huge churches, beautiful parks, Roman baths (which we didn't go into and I'm sad about that). wow that looks like I did nothing. so short we were there. But it was enormous compared to Bratislava.

We got to Slovakia early in the day, went to the hostel and told we couldn't check in this after 3. so we wandered around the city which was beautiful and fairly well maintained. The main drag had embassies and cafes all up and down its length, along with free wifi for all who sat there. As we headed back to the hostel I saw my very first TGIFriday's. I had to go in. they still wear flair unlike our poor bartenders. Back at the hostel we encountered some bad news. We had booked beds for the wrong night, and they were full. And the next place was full, and the next. In fact there were no rooms under 5 stars available. What to do what to do. We eventually posted a help me sign on couchsurfers.com. which is exactly what it seems. No one was available in Bratislava on such short notice, but in Vienna we found a place to stay. So off we went to Austria after just a few shot hours in Bratislava.

For those of you who don't follow along with the rest of the world, Europe had the EuroCup this year in Austria and Switzerland. (spoiler alert...Spain won over Germany) Anyway, because Vienna was hosting alot of the games, all hostels and hotels had booked up a year ago, or were over 40 euro a night. Something like $60 for a spot on a bunk bed. So we stayed with some random person, who put the 3 of us up for a few nights. He was really nice, if a bit busy, so we didn't see him except late at night. We spent our days wandering around this humongous city and it's palaces and the graves of Beethoven and Mozart, and the evenings watching the football games on the TVs plastered in front of every restaurant. The streets were packed with fans from everywhere. For the Italy v Spain quarter-final there were matadors chanting at the throngs of blue wearing Italian supporters. Most were probably drunk. I heard scalpers asking for upwards of 2000 euro for that game. wow. This was definitely a city to come back to.

I'll tell you about the rest soon. It's time for dinner, my tummy is rumbling.

Oh and Happy 4th of July. For some reason they are celebrating it here too as American Day. It apparently like our Cinco de Mayo, just another excuse to party.

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