Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Austria and Hungary

After dragging myself out of bed following a late night in Prague, we made our way to the train station, by which point I was incredibly thirsty. I stopped into a sketch grocery store that devoted about 80% of their shelf space to liquor and cigarettes. (They sell liquor absolutely everywhere; news stands, McDonald's, etc. and people smoke all the time; in restaurants, trains, church... it is very hard not to slap people in the face.) With a few shady characters roaming around the store, I bought some bananas, an apple, carrots, bread, iced tea and a huge bottle of water. Came to a grand total of 66 Koruny (about $3.50 Canadian). I thought it was a pretty good deal. Plus the water was probably the best water I have tasted in my life. See, they carbonate everything here in Europe, even their water, so when I took the first drink of cold water and realized that is WASN'T the gassy crap, I almost cried with joy. Meanwhile, Meghan wussed out and got a Happy Meal at McDonald's.

We made it to Vienna and immediately got lost once we stepped off the tram. While Meghan ate at McDonald's (yes, for the second time in one day), I trudged around in the snow, trying to find our hostel. Eventually, after tracking down streets with no names and getting confused by streets with the same damn name, we found our hostel by about 19:00. This hostel was decent, but the bathrooms were a huge pain in the ass. They had both an automatic light sensor and an automatic shower faucet. What this meant was that once in the shower, one has to push the faucet every 20 seconds to keep the water running. Meanwhile, the lights go off in the room every minute or so, so you have to open the shower door, wave your hand around in the dark until the sensor turned the light back on, get back in the shower, and push the faucet again. Showers therefore take about 3 hours.

Other than being the country that spawned such notables as Mozart, Freud, Hitler and Swartzenagger, Austria boasts tons of national history, as indicated by the number of museums in Vienna: about 3.2 million by my count. We toured around Vienna and decided to check out four of the museums, the largest and most interesting of which was the Natural History Museum, which had thousands of pieces of rock and thousands of stuffed birds and fish and animals. It was pretty intense before it got boring. We also continued our search for ethnic food by getting Chinese for lunch.

When we stepped off the subway in downtown Vienna, we were stopped to help a Japanese girl who looked lost and was looking for some monument or something. Although I obviously had no idea what we were looking for and didn't speak her language, for some reason I figured I could help her out. Then some Austrian lady stopped and asked if we need help. So out came HER reading glasses, and the four of us were standing there, staring at a Japanese map, while I tried to explain to the Japanese girl what some lady was telling me in German. God knows if she ever found what she was looking for.

The next day we took the plunge into the Eastern European states of the former Soviet Republic. I can imagine you may be wondering "I wonder if you can tell the difference between Eastern and Western Europe." Oh yes. You can tell. While we had seen some sketch areas in the Czech republic and in Austria, the journey from Vienna to Budapest was like a trip back in time, a trip from a modern, clean city to a... old,dirty city. Buildings became increasingly shabby and our surrounding were likened to something out of a seventies-era James Bond movie (minus the lair). More than a few times Meghan was prompted to tell me that we weren't in Kansas anymore. I've never been to Kansas, but we sure as hell weren't in downtown Charlottetown anymore either.

And so, of course the first thing we decided to do in this former Soviet Republic was to stand around outside in our bathing suits in 0 degree weather. Yes, with nothing better to do, we checked out the famous thermal baths, and they were awesome, though very very crowded. It took me a while to get oriented in the thermal bath complex, mistakenly walking into a few rooms full of naked men before finding where I was supposed to be. Once we got outside though, the baths were phenomenal. It was basically a hot tub as big as a swimming pool, naturally heated by underwater springs. There were old men were playing chess with other men stood around and watched with eager anticipation, most only able to communicate through the game, as everyone here is from any number of different countries. There were a few couples macking out in the pool (as they do everywhere in Europe), but overall, it was a good relaxing afternoon, and a fitting rest period for what is more or less halfway through the European adventure.

Now comes the fun part of our Hungarian advernture. We had planned on sticking in Budapest for the day and then catching the overnight train to Belgrade, Serbia. And so, after dinner we headed back to the train station and waited three hours for our train. Finally, when we got on our train at 23:25, we settled in for the 7-hour journey to Belgrade... except that about 45 minutes later we were told that we weren't going to Belgrade. I don't know who screwed up, but our train was apparently going to Hatvan, a small town about 80km outside of Budapest. I awoke at 1:20 on the train with Meghan and I the only people left on the train as cleaners were going through the car, which seemed to be parked in the middle of nowhere.

We got off the train and walked through the tunnel into the station and discovered that it was completely empty. Well, realtively so. It was an old Soviet-era stone building, with the door wide open, broken and barred windows and garbage all over the place. When I went to blow my nose, there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms, but there WAS a homeless man sleeping on the toilet that I scared the hell out of when he woke up as I walked into the bathroom. We got to hang out in Hatvan until 3:05, when we got to catch a train to go BACK to Budapest, which I was real thrilled about. Once there, were would wait until 13:15 to catch the next train to Belgrade. When we got back to Budapest, it was 4:00, and I slumped down on a bench, tired, cold, and totally not looking forward to sitting there for the next 9 hours waiting for the next train. To hell with this, said Meghan, and went across the street to rent a room at a hotel. I have never checked into a hotel at 4:00 before, and I'll have to hand it to her. I did not have that much initiative by that point. A bed has never felt that good.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Dresden and Prague

Towards the end of the Second World War, when the Allies were looking to bomb the hell out of any remaining Nazi strongholds, they decided to fire-bomb Dresden, a German centre of military industry. Not a very proud moment for the RAF and the USAF. This attack, with arguable logistical purposes, killed roughly 30,000 civilians and destroyed most of the city. Keeping the good times rolling, once the war was over, Dresden was taken over by the USSR a half-century or so of Soviet rule.
And this is where we ended up after riding the aimless train away from Berlin, thanks to my stupid mistake. As we were headed for Prague (just a couple hours south of Dresden) we rolled with it and hung out in Dresden, ate the atypical German breakfast of bread, random meat, Nutella, and some dumb cereal, (reminiscent of the two weeks of World Youth Day 2005 in Germany), did some laundry (the first time I had had clean clothes since London), and hopped on another train headed for the Czech Republic.

We found our hostel, Sir Toby's, by 17:00 in Prague after jumping on the tram and, as usual, walking around for a bit. Sir Toby's is in an incredible old building with a huge kitchen and great dorm rooms, with a pub, common area and chapel in the basement. It was, by far, the best hostel we stayed at throughout our travels. Though it may have been a bit of an exaggeration, I later wrote in the guest book that if I had nothing better to do, I could live there for the rest of my life. Meghan and I hung out in the pub the first night and played Scrabble (I won all three games, if you count the first two, which she quit because I was doing too well). Eventually the basement pub filled, and by the end of the night we were into some deep convos with a bunch of Canadians and some Americans who liked to pretend they were Canadian (so they would get treated better in Europe). And then there was some Brazilian dude, but he didn't say much.

After a lot of snoring from our roommate, and apparently some sleep talking about the Canadian Dollar exchange rate from me, we got up the next morning and took off on the tram to tour Prague. We took a bunch of pictures, ate at Subway (again), and then headed up the hill to see the castle and cathedral. When we reached the top the view was incredible. My first reaction was "Wow!" (Meghan's was "Holy shit!"). The trek up the 287 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the cathedral tower was incredible too. I was all like "Yeah, no big deal" but even after walking around with a back-pack for 2 weeks, that climb was rough. But again, the view was unreal.
After buying my new favorite t-shirt ("Prague: Czech it out"), we headed back for another night at the pub.

We had intended on going out on the town in Prague, but by 3:00am we were still all in the basement (six Canadians, six Americans, five Brits and a Mexican... I don't know where the Brazilian dude was) telling stupid stories and making fun of each other's countries. After sampling the local beer once or twice, and a traditional Czech shot a few times ...and then the local beer a few more times, I was sufficiently uncoordinated. I remember sitting at the computer completely no longer able to type any word in the English language properly.
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Needless to say, the 10:00 check-out time came and went the next morning without myself or Meghan noticing. Eventually we got it together headed for the train station, on our way to Vienna. Ibuprofen is your friend.