Monday July 20
We got the train to Budapest at 7.30am. It took 8.5 hours and was long and uneventful. I slept for the first half even though the chairs were really uncomfortable. We arrived in Budapest at 4 and went to the ticket box to secure tickets on to Bratislava, which was only a 2.5 hour trip. We had decided to do this last minute - when we realised how close it was to Budapest - and we hadn't seen any of Slovakia yet. It was to be our 11th country, 23rd city/destination and we've officially passed the 3 months away mark. Here's our list so far:
THAILAND - Bangkok, Phuket, Khao Lhak, Phi Phi Island
GREECE - Athens, Santorini, Thessaloniki
BULGARIA - Sofia, Varna
ROMANIA - Bucharest
SERBIA - Belgrade, Novi Sad
GERMANY - Berlin
SPAIN - Lloret De Mar, Barcelona, Madrid, San Sebastian, Valencia
ENGLAND - Liverpool, Redditch
HOLLAND - Amsterdam
HUNGARY - Budapest
SLOVAKIA - Bratislava
We have ended up missing out on Italy, Portugal, The Czech Republic and more of Germany due to the fact that we did Eastern Europe instead. Since we have been traveling though, we really want to see Poland, Turkey, Bosnia and maybe some of Scandinavia as well. Hopefully we land kick arse jobs in the UK and we can continue to live the dream...
The lady at the ticket office in Belgrade had tried to charge us 55 Euros each to go to Bratislava, yet we knew the train to Budapest was 16 each and I’d looked online and tickets from Budapest to Bratislava were only 16 return. So we just paid for a 16 Euro ticket to Budapest with the intent to change trains there, even though the train travelled on to Bratislava.
When we went to buy our tickets in Budapest they tried to charge us 58,000 HUF for one return ticket! This is approx. 145 Euros or 290 Aussie. She didn't speak English and just kept shrugging at me when I questioned it, so we went to the back of the line and hoped to get a different lady. The next one did speak some English and charged us the correct amount, 4400 HUF/16 Euros each for a return ticket.
We had a 3 hour wait until the train so we just sat and had beers at the pub inside the train station, we didn't feel like venturing out in Hungary that day.
Just before 8pm we boarded and we met a really nice 39yo guy in our booth on the train, he was born in Kuwait but resided in the Czech Republic. He told of lots of stories from both traveling and his personal life and so the trip passed rather quickly. He ran a shisha bar in Czech and he had a heap of pipes with him as he had a friend who sold them in Budapest. We arrived in Bratislava at nearly 11pm so we got a taxi (12.50 Euros for like 5 minutes, very expensive!). We weren't really sure how expensive Slovakia was going to be as they adopted the Euro in January this year. Generally Euro countries were expensive. I have been quoting prices in Euros even if we weren't in Euro countries as we have learned to convert to Euros not Aussie dollars since traveling because it's too painful to think is Aussie dollars. We set our budget when we left in Euros. Otherwise pints in Greece are $10-12, Flag fall in a Dutch taxi is $15, Flights to Budapest were $350 each, Hostels in Amsterdam are $54 each per night (the cheap ones anyway) etc...
We checked into our hostel, which had rave reviews, was only opened in October and was 15 Euros a night. It was called the Hostel Vegas. While we were checking in the boss came out and poured us shots of pear brandy and invited us to join the celebrations; his wife had given birth that day and he was proudly showing off the new addition. After we dumped our bags in our room we rejoined the celebrations out on the smoking balcony where we met the other people at the hostel and proceeded to be fed shots of vodka and brandy, washed down with a few beers for good measure. After a long boring day on the train this was a welcome change.
There were some Aussies we had met briefly in our hostel in Belgrade who were there and they were stoked to see us again. 2 of the 3 Aussies had Serbia backgrounds and spoke Serbian, and I gave one of them my email address so he could hook me up with someone who would teach me Serbian back home. The other one was trying to pick up a girl with enormous boobs, who looked to be in her early twenties who claimed to be a virgin though I suspected it was her way of getting attention/picking up since she started a conversation about what was the weirdest place people had had sex, only to say at the end that she never had, which seemed odd to me. This part of the story added for the benefit of Fudd - he wanted more boobs in the story :P
At one point the hostel Manager brought out sparklers too, we lit some but some we turned into sparkler bombs, which most of the people there had never seen.
After a few raucous hours on the balcony we called it a night and went to bed. The fate of the ‘virgin’ (who disappeared with the Aussie guy for a while) is unknown to me.
Tuesday July 21
We awoke to our alarm but failed to get up and have free breakfast - a trend I seem to have developed since we have been travelling. We slept in until around 10.30 and so only just missed it. We headed down the main street to find a feed suitable for me, and ended up at a fairly expensive place. Much much cheaper than Amsterdam/Berlin etc but expensive for Eastern Europe. We paid around 16 Euros for 2 meals and beer. After that we headed to a pub next door to our hostel to meet a Finish couple and a Canadian we'd met at our hostel the night before during the celebrations. The 5 of us decided to go out and check out Bratislava. It was about 33 degrees and everyone except for me was dying in the heat so we made regular pub stops for refreshment. Bratislava is quite small but pretty.
After our mission around the city we headed back to the bar next to our hostel to have dinner and beer – beers were only 1 Euro there – and proceeded to stay drinking most of the evening. The boys all started messing around with drink coasters, trying to flip them and catch them or flip them up onto things and this provided everyone entertainment (yes small things amuse small minds) for a while. Before heading to bed we drank on the balcony in the hostel for a while and met a few more people, including an American guy and another Finish guy (Jero, pronounced yerro with the r’s rolled). We called it a night around 4am.
Wednesday July 22
I actually managed to wake up for breakfast, though I was feeling a little seedy so I went back to bed afterwards. When we woke around lunch time we headed to the pub next door and met Jero for another cheap feed before setting off to see Bratislava Castle and have more of a wander around the city. It was nice but not spectacular like the one in Budapest.
Later in the day we met up with Jero at the pub next door for dinner. We couldn’t find anywhere with decent food that was cheap except the pub, so we ate pretty much every meal there. It was pretty fatty but beggars can’t be choosers :P
After dinner we went club hopping. Jero had heard a bar called Havana was good and had Cuban music, we were looking forward to something different. When we got there, the bar was playing pretty commercial music so after a really overpriced beer (3.30 Euros for a small bottle) we left. I noticed that no one at the bar (and it was busy) was drinking beer, only cocktails. During the day it seems everyone drank beer but not in nightclubs for some reason. We found another bar around the corner also called Havana and owned by the same people, which advertised Cuban music, so grabbed drinks there. Beers were 4.20 Euros for a small bottle, again most clientele were drinking cocktails (which were around 6 Euros) so again we didn’t stay long. Since we have been travelling what we look for in a nightclubs has changed slightly. Cheap drinks are more important now :P And so we moved on.
We decided to head back to the club next to the hostel. It was advertised as a chill out bar and Steve had been in on the first night briefly and he said it was ok music. We went downstairs and it was about half full, the music was average but the beer was cheap for a club, about 1.90 for half a litre on tap. A really drunk girl tried to get us to dance and over the course of that we made some new friends, this time locals. The bar emptied and was close to close so we decided to move on with our new friends. We found a place where the drinks were ok prices but the music was pretty commercial, more so than the first bar. The guys were nothing special, but the girls there were amazing. Slovakia is famed for its gorgeous women and it was easy to see why at this club. One of the people we’d met at the chill out bar, Petra, falls into this category. The guys all seemed really sleazy and rude and we had to tell guys to bugger off a few times. At one point one rather persistent guy must have pissed off the wrong girl as his was thrown across the room. There was an annoying drunk guy who was rather touchy feely with both of us and it took us a while to lose him. Petra’s friends all left and after a while we decided to leave and head to Petra’s place. We started our own dance floor at Petra’s place and had music cranked. Her friend’s rejoined her and some others we hadn’t met came over too and all was good until the landlord rocked up and we got booted out. That was around 10am. The guys from Petra’s place told us about a festival on that day which we were keen to go to but needed sleep, so we headed back to the hostel and slept.
Thursday July 23
The guys rang me around 12 and I thought I was good for waking up, that is until I saw 11 missed calls. Ooops. They said they’d meet me at the main train station at 1.30. I didn’t end up making it, needed sleep and I knew there was no way Steve was going to wake up either. We slept until 5 or 6pm and upon surfacing went downstairs and had a feed. Jaro was there too as he had also just woken up and so we began our ritual all over again!
This time we headed to a bar that our hostel receptionist had recommend (she was also really gorgeous Slovakian girl). It had some different local beers she said were good so we tried a few of the beers there including a lemon one, which was very different to the lemon/citrus beers we get back home.
After that we left to go back to the chill out bar again. There was a storm brewing, the wind was so strong things were hitting us in the legs and it was like a sting. We stood outside and watched the storm for a while and waited to see if Petra would meet us again but she had had to go to work after our night out and wouldn’t have slept so we didn’t think she would show. We headed down to the chill out bar and it was packed out. We go the last table, and as there was some space some other people took up the last few chairs and so it was that we met more people. It was a bit of a mix, an Italian girl, 2 French guys, a Swedish girl and a couple of others. We chatted to them for a hour or so before deciding we were too tired to have a massive one again.
Us with Jero
The French guys
The Chill out Bar
The very cool underground chill out bar
Friday July 24
We got up and checked out of the hostel and headed to the train station as for once we had purchased return tickets. Murphy's law would have it that upon arrive at the station we discovered the trains weren't running. The 5.53am train still had not departed and it was 11am. I thought I'd left my book at the hostel so I got the tram back, only to remember where it was when I got back to the hostel.
The train finally arrived at 3pm and we boarded and I freaked out that I'd left my towel in the station but Steve reminded me that I'd put it in my pack while we were waiting at the station.
It was to be the first few forgetful things I would do that day, the last was by far the worst and deserves it's own post.
Ruth
Friday July 31
Outside the British Museum
The inside of the British Museum
