Sleeping in the trees

My hostel in Budapest was one of the coolest so far. It was a little way's out of the city centre, which is great when you show up at midnight and public transportation has stopped for the evening. The hostel made up for it all, though. In a word - HAMMOCKS!! They're meant to be just for daytime chillin', but after a night of sleeping in my loudish, slightly stuffy room (not the hostel's fault, it was in the middle of a heat wave) I knew what I had to do. The next 4 nights were spent sleeping under the stars, and at a very reduced rate!

Budapest is also where Jeff B came to visit. It's so nice to see an old friend in the middle of this meeting new people a bunch of times a day. We just basically wandered, ate, drank, took some cool pictures (a little boy jamming to some bongo drummers makes for great video...) and hung out. Merci, Jeff. Glad you came out.

Budapest's busses seem to run on an honour system, until the bus inspectors show up at 1 am looking for tickets. I tried to pass off an old one, but even though the stamp looks like a serious of fully random holes to me, apparently it makes sense to them.

Inspector: You owe me a lot of money
Me: I don't have that much on me
Inspector: Well..give me your passport then.
Me: No.
Inspector: Well... get off my bus, then!
Me: Okay.

Budapest - Thermal baths, sleeping in the trees, a gigantic heat wave, bus inspectors, and the best seafood risotto I've ever had.

Heaven is a used English book store.

Wow, I hadn't realized it'd been this long since I'd written. Sorry, folks. I realize that reading this blog is the highlight of your day...

Umm, I think Krakow is the last thing I wrote about, so I'll carry on from there.

After that I hit Cesky Krumlov, a teeny Czech town on a river. There's a castle, and a river.. they pretty much make up all the tourist attractions. So people rent a floaty boat and drift around lazily all day. Sounds like the life, except that because I'm traveling on my own they wouldn't rent me one. And everyone at the hostel already had a partner or had already been. Heh... kind of like being the odd man out at recess or something. On the plus side, I found an English used book store. On the road, that's pure heaven. I traded in every old book I had (I always keep them until I find somewhere to trade...) and bought a big, fat one that lasted me a few decent train rides. So I sat, eating a picnic lunch and reading... ahh. Heaven. My hostel there also came with it's resident 65 year old backpacker who was telling me that I was much too uptight because I like having a Lonely Planet on me. According to him, I might as well be on a fully guided tour and not ever doing what I want. I tried explaining that a guide book is just that.. a guide. He didn't quite get it.

Vienna. Someone explain to me how there aren't more accidents there? It seems impossible to keep looking straight ahead with all the amazing buildings... Sadly, after having been in Central Europe for a while, the more westernized Vienna was quite costly. Unfortunately, eating 3 square meals of delicious Gelato a day has put me off the stuff. I haven't been able to touch it since. Hmph. I hope that goes away before Italy...

Brataslava - Is it weird to run into a bunch of people doing what appeared to be a Hebrew poetry reading at an outdoor cafe in Slovakia? Well, it was for me. Sadly, they didn't seem as excited to see me as I was to see them. Brataslava also seems to be well known for it's lack of good hostels. I stayed in a really bizarre place, it seemed to be a bunch of mattresses on the floor, strewn about some guy's house. The wonder, by the way was super-bizarre. He made me "practice" using the key to the place before he'd let me have it. And he kind of hovered over conversations. never saying anything, but never quite going away, either. I had visions of waking up and finding him watching me sleep. Eeek. When I left, I found him at the train station, harassing people to come stay with him. He then tried to convince me that my train had already gone, and I should stay another night. Lies! I spoke to some other guy, though, and he said that his hostel in Brataslava closed halfway through his stay because the building was condemned. Huh.