Something tells me I’m going to like it here in Vienna. When you get off a bus and they have clever ashtrays like this giant cigarette…
…you just sort of get the feeling that this is one of those cities that has some smarts about it. Sort of like Tokyo, only with trash receptacles.
Furthermore, our CouchSurfing host Bianca met us at the bus stop and gave us a personal escort back to her flat. I already feel like I’m at home! Even more so when we sat down to dinner with the flatmates for some crepes!
I also feel at home because as odds would have, there was a “secret concert” that night by the band Port O’Brien and they happen to be from our backyard in the bay area — Oakland, CA.
I had never heard of the band before, but they had a good energy about them. They really got the crowd into the show when they passed out pots and pans and various other noise makers for people to bang on to the rhythm of their hit song Woke Up Today.
So far, Vienna has really high marks… We’ll see what else the city has in store for us when we Wake Up Today tomorrow.
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on October 6, 2008.
Filed under: Austria,Europe,Travel | 1 Comment »
There’s nothing like soaking in a tub full of Hungarians to work up a good appetite! Similar to the Turkish Baths a few hours earlier, the other highly recommended place of interest was a pizza shop called Marxim.
Tucked away on a side street behind some abandoned communist warehouses, is this communist pizza parlor. The decor is all based on old items from the city’s communist past. Communist flags hung from barbed wire fences separated the booths.
And the walls were covered with lots of propaganda imagery.
The menu of Pizza’s played off the same theme with edible items like the Gordi Gorbi.
We ended up ordering a Pizza a la Ciolkovskij
(cheese, red beans, hot meat, sauce, parika, sweetcorn)
and
Antivegetarian (Lajka’s favorite)
(cheese, ham salami, corn, bacon, tomator slices)
And the pizza’s where delicious! They are served along side a vile of extra tomato sauce too. Mmmmm.
Once all the pies were devoured we slapped some forint down on the table to pay for the meal and headed home for our last night in Budapest.
Bonus Content Alert!!
In the bottom corner of the menus was this gem:
Marxim is 17 years old. Our next Five-Year Plan:
This year we will plan which plan indicators and index numbers will predominate as the following year’s target figures with regards to the data which will come to fruition in four years time and should give us a quota for the fifth year.
A word to the wise! A recommendation from the municipal health-officer: under communism a person’s cells and suspicious (as opposed to those of the party) die and are never regenerated.
Anything else is very bad taste and new to every 5 year old.
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on October 5, 2008.
Filed under: Europe,Hungary,Travel | No Comments »
Budapest has been awesome. It’s exceeded all of my expectations by a long shot. Even despite the winter temperatures at nights, I can definitely see myself coming back here in the future. But alas, our stay here is nearing it’s end. And so in an attempt to put some icing on this cake, today was going to be a nice mellow relaxing day at a traditional Turkish bath. There are multiple baths in the city, but everyone that we met told us that the Széchenyi GyógyfürdÅ‘ baths were the place to be. From the outside it looks similar to some of the other domed buildings in Budapest (as well as the rest of Europe).
Inside the dome is yet another impressive display of upside down artwork.
Once you get your ticket, you walk into the unisex locker room and a guy in white shorts and tshirt unlocks a room for you to change into your swimming trunks.
And then it’s off to the baths! There are about 25 different size and temperature baths filled with supposedly medicinal water. We picked a nice warm pool to start out with and soaked in there for a while. After a nice relaxing soak we decided to explore some more of the grounds which was when we discovered the outdoor baths!
Oh my goodness!! You have no idea how good it felt to stand in here and just soak on the warm water. There was a fountain in the center that I stood under for about 20 minutes just letting the warm cascading water massage my neck, back and head. I could have stayed there all day getting water massages and playing chess…
…but if I did, I would have missed the whirlpool on the other side!
That outer ring has multiple jets all propelling the water in a counter-clockwise direction. As soon as you enter the circumference of the circle you get sucked into the current and thrust around the ring. I felt like such a kid again in there, it was so much fun!
A few more baths, saunas, and showers later, we got back into our clothes and headed to the other side of town for some communist dinner! A perfect ending to a perfect city.
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on October 5, 2008.
Filed under: Travel | 1 Comment »
Ugh. Not feeling so great this morning, but probably not quite as bad as this guy.
I don’t smell to good either. I smell like an ashtray. Probably because last night we spent some time inside a club called Cha Cha Cha, which I think in Hungarian translates to Cough Cough Cough. The haze you see in this photo is actually cigarette smoke. I thought I had built up a decent tolerance to lung cancer in Greece, but apparently not. This place had no ventilation and I think we were the only 3 people in there without a stogie hanging from our lip. We were really only in there for about 30 minutes, but it certainly took it’s toll on me. Luckily I have a backup lung.
After wiping the soot from my eyes this morning, and once I was able to see again, we headed down to Fatal for some lunch. A very generous helping of beef goulash! Along with some cold cucumber salad, just the way mom used to make it.
With some thick stew lining my gut, I was starting the get back into the swing of things and resuming normal health status. So it was off to parlay our way into the Parliament building.
We arrived at the building in the late afternoon and jumped in line to buy tickets. After waiting for about 15 minutes one of the guards came over and put up a sign saying there were no more tickets for the day! Crap! Now how are we going to get in!? Not ones to give up so easily, we noticed a large guided tour of people around our age still gathering near the entrance, all seemingly ignoring the newly displayed ticket sign. They must know something we don’t know, and we had every intention to find out exactly what it was! It wasn’t a moment sooner when they all starting filing through the chain fence into the courtyard of the building. So being the chameleons that we are we blended in with the crowd and scurried into the courtyard with our new found tour group. Once inside the building however…
…some of the other members of the tour started taking extra long looks at us. It didn’t help that we didn’t speak (or for that matter look) Italian. Shit. Our cover was blown! So we slinked off up some stairs to join another tour. This time it was a group of German’s. Apparently we look a lot more like 55 year old German tourist than we do 25 year old Italian tourists because we were able to resume the rest of the tour undetected with this new group.
In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the brightest of ideas. Sort of like sneaking into the White House or something. But we came all the way from California dammit! We weren’t about to be denied entrance when other people were clearly allowed in.
Feeling pretty good about getting out of their without any run-in’s with the law, we decided to go celebrate in true hero fashion at Hero’s Square.
Victory is ours!
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on October 4, 2008.
Filed under: Europe,Hungary,Travel | No Comments »
While in Thessaloniki we received some bad news while attempting to buy passes for the sleeper train to Bulgaria. Turns out our EuRail passes are only valid in 20 European countries. With time running low and Bulgaria and Serbia not free to travel, yet clearly on the way to Budapest, we had some tough decisions to make. Pay for the train tickets out of pocket at last minute prices? Fly somewhere else (that takes our passes) and resume the train travel there? Or stay in Greece and eat Gyros for another month?
Also, while in Thessaloniki we received a phone call from a huge media giant, urging us to come back to LA for an interview. Back to LA? We already had a lot of planning and rearranging to do. Could we really just fly back to LA for a weekend? What about the rest of Europe? How much would it cost? Here’s what we decided upon!
Original Plan
| Country |
City |
Arrive |
Depart |
Transport |
| Greece |
Mykonos |
|
26-Sep |
Jet Boat |
| Greece |
Athens |
26-Sep |
27-Sep |
Train |
| Greece |
Thessaloniki |
27-Sep |
30-Sep |
Sleeper Train |
| Bulgaria |
Sofia |
30-Sep |
2-Oct |
Sleeper Train |
| Serbia |
Belgrade |
2-Oct |
4-Oct |
Sleeper Train |
| Hungary |
Buda & Pest |
4-Oct |
9-Oct |
Sleeper Train |
| Chech |
Prague |
9-Oct |
14-Oct |
Train |
| Germany |
Dresden |
14-Oct |
17-Oct |
Train |
| Germany |
Berlin |
17-Oct |
22-Oct |
Plane |
| Estonia |
Tallin |
22-Oct |
24-Oct |
Ferry Boat |
| Finland |
Hellsinki |
24-Oct |
24-Oct |
Plane |
| China |
Hong Kong |
25-Oct |
|
|
New Plan
| Country |
City |
Arrive |
Depart |
Transport |
| Greece |
Mykonos |
|
26-Sep |
Jet Boat |
| Greece |
Athens |
26-Sep |
27-Sep |
Train |
| Greece |
Thessaloniki |
27-Sep |
1-Oct |
Plane |
| Hungary |
Budapest |
1-Oct |
6-Oct |
Train |
| Austria |
Vienna |
6-Oct |
10-Oct |
Train |
| Chech |
Prague |
10-Oct |
15-Oct |
Train |
| Germany |
Dresden |
15-Oct |
17-Oct |
Train |
| Germany |
Berlin |
17-Oct |
23-Oct |
Plane |
| U.S. |
Los Angeles |
23-Oct |
27-Oct |
Plane |
| China |
Hong Kong |
28-Oct |
|
|
As you can see we removed quite a few destinations from the original schedule. This is upsetting, yet at the same time we were trying to see too much in too little time. As insane as it is to fly 13 hours back to LA, it was even crazier to think we could travel to 13 cities, through 9 countries, in only 28 days. Just to put that in perspective, we would have gone from the southernmost point in Europe to about as far North as one can go within the same continent; and 80% of the 3,000km would have been traveled by slow moving trains (thanks communism).
Instead we get to slow our pace and have more days in the cities we do see. We also added Vienna which rates as the #2 most liveable city in the world. Last but not least, we get to see some friends who thought they wouldn’t see us for at least another 4 months!
So who’s in charge of our homecoming party?
Authored by: Jay on October 4, 2008.
Filed under: Travel | 2 Comments »
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