Tuesday, November 2, 2010

It's A Small World

Hey all! Sorry for the gap between updates. We've been through a bunch of countries between then and now!

The last post was from Budapest, Hungary. We spent a night there - it was surprisingly cheap! The exchange rate was about 200 forints = 1 USD - you could get a hot dog for just 175 forints in some places. Our private room was the equivalent of 12 euros each a night (our average hostel is 18€ for a dorm bed). 

When we arrived, we took a little bit too long getting off the train and had to hop off while it was moving. We had no plans for the city so we wandered around for a bit until we found a McDonalds. Now, usually I wouldn't spend money on fast food - but they offered free wifi and we couldn't resist. 

After stumbling around the language barrier, we booked the aforementioned hostel and set off towards it. We checked in and took it easy for the rest of the night because of our restless train ride. Our dinner was bought at a local market which was very hard to find - for some reason, various cities we've visited have appeared not to have any supermarkets. 

The next morning, we left our packs at the train station and went out to explore. Budapest is the result of two individual cities (Buda and Pest) being merged. The two sections are separated by a wide river. Pest, where we were staying, is a very modern region. It has tall grey buildings and city blocks. Buda is the old town - it's historical, with rambling streets and interesting monuments. 

We crossed the bridge into Buda and explored a park on a hill. The foliage was surprisingly beautiful...since we're from New England, I didn't expect to be particularly impressed by any of the fall colors we saw in our travels. 

We walked around for a while, saw the old palace and the Hungarian Parliament, then started walking back to the train station. It was one of the few rainy days of our trip, so we wanted to get inside. 

For dinner, we shared a pizza and had a kebab sandwich each for a total of $10. Ridiculously cheap. Then we hopped onto a sleeper train bound for Munich!

We didn't spend all that much time exploring Budapest because frankly there wasn't that much to see. It's an interesting place and very cheap - worth a night and a day on a Eurotrip like ours. I did think that the price differences were surprising...shows how much better the US economy is than that of some other countries, even in it's weakened state.

We decided to pay €20 for a bed in a sleeper car this time, since we wanted to arrive in Munich - or München, in German - well rested. The compartment was very cramped. Three beds were stacked on top of each other on both sides, with a narrow aisle in between. We had the two top bunks, and we climbed up and went to sleep. 

We weren't going through Croatia this time, so we figured we would be safe from passport checks. What we didn't figure into the equation was the possibility of inconsiderate neighbors. Somewhere around 2 in the morning, a couple came into our compartment with their two toddlers. The toddlers immediately began bawling, which woke us up. Now, even on a good day I'm known for my low tolerance of crying children. So the fact that they were keeping me up only worsened it. 

The children cried every two hours or so. I turned my music on every time this happened so that it blocked out most of it. (This had the additional bonus of alerting the parents to the fact that their kids were constantly waking me up.) I didn't end up giving the parents a piece of my mind, but it was a close thing. 

Someone came around and handed out packaged croissants and orange juice. I guess paying more has its benefits. 

We arrived in Mümchen around 7 in the morning. The hostel was close to the train station, so we walked there and checked in. We took advantage of the free wifi for an hour or so - and then some builders came in and knocked down a wall to start construction on a new elevator. That was the last we saw of the wifi. :|

The breakfast was 4€ extra but all-you-can-eat and very good. Seeing as this was our cheapest hostel yet (for 10 euro a night) I wasn't surprised we had to pay. 

Our room wouldn't be ready until 2 so we set out to explore the city. The metro system was a bit confusing at first - they crammed the many train lines, along with the tram and bus lines, onto one map. We finally figured it out, though. Turns out there are two types of train: the S-Bahn (goes out to the suburbs) and the U-Bahn (stays within the city). Or maybe vice-versa. Idk. But at any given U- or S-Bahn station, as many as 9 or 10 types of train could come through, all leading different places. Luckily they had electronic boards denoting which trains arrive when and go where. 

We went to Marienplatz, the main square of München. The bells were tolling 11 - but it was an odd tuneless melody they were playing. Apparently that bell tower is famous. 

A guy came up to us when we walked into the tourism office and said, "Hey! I didn't expect to find you guys here." I recognized his face immediately but couldn't place it until he introduced himself as Morgan. We had met him on a bus back in Buc (near Versailes) and had chatted for a bit. At that time, we hadn't even gotten his name and had never expected to see him again. Well, we were wrong! Guess it really is a small world.

After laughing a bit about how infinitesimally small the chances of such a coincidental second meeting were, we decided to see some of the sights together. 

Climbing up a nearby tower gave us some cool views of the city. München was leveled during the war, so most of it is fairly new. We walked around for a while and encountered some German primary schoolgirls twice - they were doing a project and needed foreigners or something. The first time they wanted a picture with us, and the second time they wanted us to trade something we had for something they had (like geocaching without the work). I traded a New York pen for a beautifully painted egg.

We got brezels at a nearby shop. Brezels are German baked pretzels that are bready, delicious, and large. Then we took a U-Bahn to the site of the 1980-something Summer Olympic Games. It was cool to see all of the stadiums and such - the pool had actually been converted for use by the public. 

After chasing geese around the lake - which had a car floating in it as an advertisement - we climbed a nearby hill and got another great view of the city. All in all, it was a fantastic day! (Except for the fact that I lost the egg. Morgan had been protecting it in his glasses case and I forgot to get it back. Oh well.)

The next day, we decided to go swimming. Remember that Olympic pool? Yeah, we spent most of the afternoon in it. David taught me how to dive, since strangely, I had never really learned how. And we got to jump off of the high dive! The one we went off was probably 20 feet in the air - and the highest platform was twice that. American pools would never have allowed unsupervised use of the high dive like that, so we enjoyed the freedom. It's a longer way down than it looks!

The next day, our last in München, was somewhat pointless. The city hadn't been worth 3 days, and we ended up wandering around for a bit before returning to the shop we had visited the other day. German meats are very good - they have currywurst and bratwurst and thick slices of some kind of a ham loaf and burger-things...it was delicious! We spent a lot of time in the Apple Store that day just to kill time until our night train. :P

When we went back to the hostel to collect our things, I realized I had left my charging cables in the room when we checked out. After some frantic searching, we decided the cleaning staff probably took them, so I left a request to take a look around with the reception. (It's been a week and I've had no response. Ugh.) David also left his Florence hat. 

The first train seemed uneventful. It left at 23:40 and was only 2 hours long, which meant that if we got a stickler of a conductor he could make us use two travel days. (Don't ask; we've been using an obscure loophole on our Eurails and this didn't quite fit.) Luckily nobody checked at all. But most of the way in, the train stopped for about a half hour. We looked out and saw nothing but snow, which was surprising. Eventually, I found a conductor (the nearest one was 7 cars away) and found out that another train was blocking our way and we were going to be very late. We had a connection to catch, though, and if we didn't make it, we'd be stranded in Austria at 2 in the morning. 

Our train rolled into Salzburg 10 minutes late, and we saw that our train was surprisingly still there. Haste was made and we boarded without a problem. We made the compartment into a bed like we did on the way to Venice (although this time we had to share it with a Chinese guy which was weird) and had a decent sleep. After another connection in Zurich, we made it to Lausanne, Switzerland!

We're in Prague now, and I'll write another post for here and Switzerland soon, since the combined post would be too long.

Thanks for reading - please keep commenting! We love to hear from our readers.

< Derek >

2 comments:

  1. Hungary is a beautiful place. Too bad you didn't have time to get out into the countryside. It really is completely different than the city. Sounds like you ate fast food instead of traditional Hungarian. I always went off the main streets to small cafes and had good (not so healthy but tasty) local food. You would have liked that a lot because meat is VERY much a staple in their diet and they pride themselves on their beef, lamb and pork.

    So did you get Morgan's contact info where you might be able to get the egg back when you return?

    Dad

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  2. That dive sounds terrifying.
    Did you ever manage to recover your cables?

    Chinese men... creepy.

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