Vienna and Budapest

Hello again to anyone bothering to read this.

I've just got to Brasov in Romania with Michael, and he's gone to sleep for a bit, even though he got way more sleep than me on the train, but whatever, it makes a good time to do a blog post.

Vienna was nice, and that's all there really is to say about it. Lots of nice buildings with nice shops and nice horse drawn carriages with nicely dressed drivers (or riders, I don't know). It lacked a lot of personality, just really touristy and.... nice. The hostel was pretty much the same, clean and looked good.

Day one in Vienna I just wandered around a little bit then had some drinks in the bar and met a few people. In general the people were also just nice. There was a few Australians and Canadians, no Brits. The only person that I can remember having any interesting stories was a Canadian called Jack, he said that he had been on a train on the toilet as they went through border control, and because it was at the platform he didn't want to flush it. He was adamant that on this train it just dropped straight out onto the tracks, I'm pretty sure it doesn't, but he said it's more likely the more eastern you travel. I'm in Romania and still haven't seen it (he said if you pressed the flush a hatch dropped down and you could see the railway underneath, nonsense). But back to the story, the border guys were banging on the door, and he was saying "occupied, occupado" and any other foreign sounding versions of the word occupied, because he didn't know what they were saying. Eventually he just flushed, supposedly onto the tracks, and left.

Day 2 in Vienna. I had a bigger look round at the niceness of everything, unimpressed, tourists everywhere, then went to the park and chilled out for a bit. There was a weird fish swimming close to the surface of a pond, and a duck kept pecking it and the fish would swim down then swim up again and the same thing would happen, possible proof for the 3 second memory thing, I don't know, but I can't have been enjoying it. Went back to the hostel and met some of the guys from the night before and some new people. Chatted to a guy from America with a guitar that had been deported from England. He said he had told the security that he would be playing in open mic nights in bars and stuff, which isn't paid, and they asked him "If someone gave you money though, would you take it?" and he said "If someone GAVE YOU money would you take it?". I guess it's a little cheeky, but a bit silly to deport him because he'd take money if it was given to him. He was really good on guitar, he also had a thing that went around his head that he put a harmonica on, and played that at the same time. Everyone was getting really into it, but then he had to stop because the neighbours were complaining. After that I met the guys that were in my room, and we played ring of fire, but they used rubbish rules, one of which was "never have I ever", which pretty much all drinking game enthusiasts know suck. We also had 4 is whores, which means girls drink, fun with no girls even playing.....

Day 3 in Vienna, I went to the palace, which was quite good compared to the rest of Vienna, I saw a red squirrel on the way there too, which was probably the best bit of Vienna. Then it started to rain, so I got the train to Budapest.

I nicely managed to navigate a train, metro and tram to the hostel with few problems. Dumped my stuff in the hostel and went and got something to eat. Later that night in the hostel I met two French girls, who I can't remember the name of, two German girls, called Christine and Marina, and an Australian called Belinda. We kind of watched the Champions league final in the hostel, but mainly just had a few drinks and chatted.

The next day me, Belinda, Marina and Christine went up to the castle/parliment /palace things on the hill in Buda, there was a good view from the top, and we watched the changing of the guards which was silly and dragged out, like those kind of things normally are. Then we went to the top of the Basilica, which had a great view. I think all cities should have at least one thing that you can go to the top of and see everything from high up. We then went to the island in the river and relaxed for a bit, which was good, untill some kind of ninja kendo man turned up with a bag of wooden swords and made me fight him, which was pretty weird. He was hungarian, so none of us could really understand him, he asked something about where the sports club was and we pointed in the direction, but he just stayed with us for ages.... He gave me his face mask thingy and a sword and made me fight him, I wasn't sure whether to just go nuts or to be really careful not to hit him in the head. Eventually I hit his hand by accident so we stopped, yay! Then he was showing us bits of judo and all sorts, and then he gave us his life story. We understood very little, but there was three main parts:

1. Unix operating systems and researching DNA
2. Teaching the sword fighting and judo thing
3. Teaching the organ

He managed to drag them out over about 20 mins, then he asked me to sword fight or wrestle with him again, I quickly declined and he left soon after. That night us four along with three guys from essex called Simon, Simon and Paul went out to an open air concert club thingy, we drank, danced, played a bit of table football, it was a good night.

On my second full day in Budapest I went to the Monument Park in the morning with Christine and Marina. It's where they keep all the old soviet statues and stuff, it was pretty good. The girls got some good photo's which I think are on facebook now. I took a few, but I can't be bothered putting them on yet. In the afternoon we met up with Belinda, got some pizzas delivered to the hostel, then went to the market hall which had all the usual crap that you find in these places. Had a few beers in the hostel that night, some people went out after, I didn't. Christine and Marina were leaving at 6 the morning after, so we all said goodbye when everyone went to bed.

My last day in Budapest. Michael (guy I met in Bratislava) and I had been emailing each other during our time at Budapest, which is a difficult method of conversation to use to organise a meeting time and place in another city. We were meant to have been in the same hostel, but Michael couldn't find it, so he stayed somewhere else. We'd kind of organised to meet at 11 am, so me and Belinda went to where we thought he was staying and he was at the train station he thought we would get off at, so we ended up missing each other. Me and Belinda decided to go to a park where there was a castle and stuff, when we got there we discovered there was a circus so we did the usual cheap skate traveller thing of wandering in as far as you can before you have to pay, which ended nicely with us getting to watch the second half of the circus for free, as we just happened to arrive during the interval. There was quite a lot in it, Lions, a man that juggled hats and could put them on his head in crazy ways, ridiculously bendy people, it was really good. Then we had a wander around the park a bit until it threatened to rain. That night lots of new people had arrived at the hostel as others had left, so 8 of us went for a meal, including a guy that worked for google, which sounds awesome, they have playstations and pool tables in the office. I was thinking about getting his email address and persistantly asking him for a job, but I forgot. I went to get the train that left at 23:13 for Brasov in Romania, as I had heard that Bucharest is horrible from lots of people, and surprise surprise, Michael was there, so now we're both in the same hostel in Brasov, and I think we're going to go to Bulgaria together aswell, before he goes off to Croatia and I go to Turkey.

To sumarise, vienna was nice, but Budapest was really good fun and definately worth a vist.

Also are these posts to detailed, I feel like i'm writing too much "then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this....." I dunno, tell me what you think, it's kind of hard to cut bits out.

byeeeeeeeeee