Not much to say today. We haven't done much, mainly been shuffling. We've made it to Budapest though. The new thing I've learnt about myself is about showers. I can go tramping and not shower for days, and be fine. However what I can't do is handle cold showers. The last 3 days I've had to cope with cold showers, and I can barely handle it. And when I say cold, I mean cold. Not luke warm, not a little chilly, but ICE cold. This morning it was so cold that it hurt my head when I tried to wash the shampoo out. Shivering in your shower is not fun.
Hoping the showers here are warm, if not, well I don't know what I'll do, but it wont be pretty. Here is a place called the downtown hostel. The place has a really homey feel to it, which is both nice and a little strange.
Last night we got to Vienna ok, and even managed to walk to the hostel which was nice, no figuring out a new metro system upon arrival. Our hostel was ok. Our room was actually around the back, through another door. The hostel seemed to have various rooms in various buildings on the block. We basically just sorted emails, food and went to bed last night. We did talk to one of our roommates a little though. A very chatty American girl. She was travelling alone, and it was pretty obvious she was getting lonely. It was nice to talk to her though, she was more like us than any of the other travellers we've met so far. Doing quite a bit of sightseeing, not going out and getting drunk every night. It was a relief to find out we weren't the only ones.
This morning we rolled out of bed and made our way to the train station. Turns out getting a train to Budapest was simple. No reservations required, we just activated our tickets and jumped on. The sun came out as well, which cheered me up a great deal. I was feeling pretty happy on the train. Notice the was. My mood hasn't completely deserted me, but it has been a bit dented. Arriving in Budapest I felt a little like we were arriving in Barcelona all over again. It was hot, and we were in jeans and thermals, we were pretty tired, and we couldn't find the entrance to the metro. Also this time we had no local curreny, and we couldn't find an ATM. I just changed some of the euros I had, so we could at least get on the metro. Not a great idea to change money at one of the exchange places, but it had to be done. We eventually found the metro. Speaking of which, seems they're pretty tough on their metros around here. We were watched as we validated our tickets, and checked as we left the metro. The metro was a bit of a different experience though. Standing at the platform and this train that looks like its from the oldest dimmest darkest days of the communist era pulls up. And then there are two guys standing in the doorway in pseudo military gear. Budapest is the least safe I've felt so far on this trip. It'll be fine, its just different. When we got off the train someone tried to stop us and offer us a taxi, and then 2ms later another and another, and then one for accomodation. They were fairly easy to dodge, but its quite different to the other places we've been so far.
Once we'd navigated the metro we got a bit lost finding our hostel. Luckily our hostel was within the map in the lonely planet. We found it eventually, but its still not fun wandering the wrong way twice while you're carrying heavy packs, you're too hot, and you haven't eaten since breakfast.
The final drama of the day (well fingers crossed, we still have to find dinner) was in getting money out. Theres an ATM quite close to the hostel. Sweet. So we strolled down there to get money and some lunch. I went first, fine. Soph went second. She did what I had done, and we talked, and the money didn't come out. We thought huh, I hope it hasn't charged for that. Tried again, it said she had her pin wrong. Tried again, still wrong. Tried her other card, same thing. So we have no idea whats going on there. Thank god there's two of us, and that my card is working. We'll try again tomorrow, maybe at a different bank machine.
So. Theres our travels for the last couple of days. We moved on from Cesky, which was good, I loved Cesky, but we'd fallen quite deep into a limbo feeling. Plus it was freezing cold the day we left. Hopefully we'll get out and see the better side of Budapest tomorrow.
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