Alrighty, we've been quite busy since our last update! After we left Florence, which was so fantastic, we went to Venice for about 36 hours, and that was plenty. Venice was beautiful and the sunsets were breathtaking, but it was expensive and so touristic. We took an overnight train to Vienna, which wasn't AS terrible as I was expecting, it definitely wasn't the best night's sleep I've ever had. The overnight saved us time and money ( and had a clean bathroom), so I can't complain.
Vienna was grand. The German language was.. difficult to say the least, but thankfully a lot of people speak English. Our hostel had a bar, with pints for 1 euro during happy hour, so I took advantage of that, had an awesome night with
Koby, some Australians, and some annoying people from the East Coast, but I definitely paid for it the next morning. Being hungover in a hostel really sucks, although our was quite clean so that was a plus. When I was able to function again, at about 3 PM, we decided to try goulash. An employee gave us directions to a good goulash place in city centre so we began our trek there. Let me just say, our map was garbage, and the street signs are confusing, so it took us about to hour and a half to find this place, whilst I was still in my hangover daze. We found the flea market that this restaurant was located in, but it was a Saturday, so the businesses and vendors were boomin'. The market was great, lots of fresh fruits, veggies, street foods, goods, etc. We finally found our restaurant after asking for directions, sat down, ordered goulash and dumplings, beer for Koby, big ol' glass of water for me, and enjoyed our delicious stew-like meal! We walked around for a bit after that, then made our way back to the hostel because I still felt like poop.
The next morning, we were determined to make up for the previous, slightly uneventful day, we got an early start to do the walking tour that our hostel puts on for free. The Wombats Hostel has three different locations in Vienna, and the walking tour left from the hostel closest to the market we were at the day before. So we made our way there, but apparently, the hostel does the walking tour every day EXCEPT for Sundays, which our hostel location neglected to tell us. So we ask what to do/see in Vienna, and head that way. We went to an area called the Museum Quartier, an area with a few museums surrounding it and places to hang out in the middle. Koby and I were hanging out in the middle and this guy approached Koby and asked if he could take a picture of his beard for his school project. Of course Koby said yes and was on cloud nine the rest of the day. The photographer also told us that there was a free, acoustic Portugal. The Man show in the same spot in a few hours! Very cool, neither of us are huge fans, but 'acoustic' and 'free' are two of my favorite things so obviously we were going to go. We had some time to kill, so we decided to go for traditional Viennese coffee and apple strudels at Cafe Central, a well known cafe in Vienna. Holy macrol, they were delicious! We enjoyed the surrounding areas for a little bit before heading back to Museum Quartier for the show. It ended up being really fantastic and they even handed out free beer! We met a nice Viennese girl who translated some German things for us and also sent us to a good place to get Wiener schnitzel. I ended up getting chicken schnitzel, because veal makes me sad, but it was really delicious anyway!
We walked around Vienna a bit more and made our way back to the hostel to make dinner and get our stuffed packed and ready to leave the next morning. We woke up early, had breakfast, then made our way across town to catch our bus to Budapest. We arrived in Budapest 3-4 hours later, and checked into our hostel. We walked around the city, grabbed dinner, and talked to others staying in our hostel. One of our roommates lives in the Sunset District of San Francisco! Small world. It was nice to meet an American because we really haven't met too many since Ireland, but we've met a hell of a lot of Australians.
This morning we woke up early, had breakfast at the hostel, and made our way towards the free walking tour. The walking tour was fantastic! Our guide was hilarious and we saw a lot of the city. We're staying on the Pest side, which is the more industrial side apparently, but we also walked to the Buda side, which is apparently where all the "lucky bastards" live. It is more of a "posh" country side. After the tour, the guide showed us a cafeteria type place that was really inexpensive. I got a mushroom stew with dumplings, and Koby got the veal stew with dumplings, both were delicious! We then stopped by a pastry place to try some Hungarian desserts, which were also delicious.
Now we are in a laundry mat doing our laundry because the one in our hostel is out of order. We plan to head back, make some dinner, then head to one of the ruin bars, which are run-down communist buildings that were turned into bars! Should we a fun night.
A few other things that don't really fit in anywhere else. Hungarian is in the top five hardest languages to learn, so I don't feel as dumb for not being able to learn any phrases, but that doesn't make it any easier to communicate! Thankfully a lot of people speak English here as well. The Hungarian currency is weird and SO confusing. The denominations are huge, like there are 10,000 bills. We looked up some conversions to help with our confusion a bit, but most the time we're still totally lost anyway. USD is on the left, Hungarian Forint(HUF) is on the right:
1- 221
5- 1106
10- 2213
15- 3318
20- 4427
25- 5530
30- 6636
40- 8848
50- 11069
100- 22121
Budapest and Vienna are quite cheap though=].
Also, it seems as though meat and cheese plates are normal for breakfast, at least in Vienna and Budapest. Like, people make sandwiches out of them for breakfast. I realllly miss scrambled eggs, and bacon. Oh, bacon.
It's quite common to charge for public restrooms. Wtf, Europe?
One of the reasons I am most excited to leave Europe and to get away from all the cigarette smoke. Really, it's disgusting and it's everywhere. I feel like I've already lost five years of my life in like five weeks.
Anyhow, we leave here Thursday afternoon, return to Vienna for a couple hours, then take an overnight train to Munich for OKTOBERFEST! We're very, very excited. We'll be celebrating our anniversary there, which isn't the most romantic, but hell, it's Oktoberfest, c'mon.
We only have about thirty-three days left =[, time is flyin'.
^^ The above was written last night in my notes while we were doing laundry, but I forgot to post it.
We went to three different 'ruin bars' last night, which are old run-down buildings, mostly old communist buildings, that are turned into bars! Some are multiple floors, have multiple bars, rooms, clubs, retro furniture and decorations. They're really awesome! So we went to one bar before to get a drink and also took a shot of palinkas, a Hungarian drink that is made from local fruits and is high in alcohol... it tasted like tequila, weird. Then we went to the ruin bars and had a good time, got gyros, and stumbled home. Budapest is awesome and crazy; some of the bars don't close until 6AM!
Anyhow, we just had breakfast and now we're going to head to one of Budapest's notorious hot baths!
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Hey Updater
Ciao de Firenze!
Its been a while since we've updated and its because we were volunteering in Southern Italy outside of a town called Martina Franca. We used a website called Helpx to contact a host and arrange a time, date and amount of time you would be available to come and help them with simple, tedious, fun or difficult tasks around their property. It could range from anything between washing dishes, building green-house to getting the eggs from the chicken coop. Unfortunately for us, our host did not elaborate on what exactly our stay would be like. Normally a host has a house with a spare room for you with at least somewhat comfortable accommodation. Our host however, had a Trullo, which isn't that bad, but it was more like a partial Trullo with one room that was a kitchen and a partial room that had the sink and fridge. It was cute, kind of, but besides that, he had two trailers, one he slept in and one we slept in. It was kind of dirty and there were spiders everywhere. Needless to say, Kelli had a hard time, I wasn't necessarily happy either but we dealt with it. Again, that is all doable, its like camping, its fun, its an experience that we can tell our friends, family and future kids about. But here's the kicker, he didn't have any running water, or a source of water on his property, he had buckets, bathtubs, big glass containers and water jugs that he had a man come fill up every so often (with the exception of our drinking water, which we went and filled up ourselves). So again, this seems manageable, until its time to shower.. If we wanted hot water we had to boil it on the stove then run it over to his make shift 'bathroom' to ensure a comfortable shower experience. The other part of this 'bathroom' had a toilet, but it was literally only a toilet. If we had to do anything other then pee we had to take a jug of water to the toilet to "flush it down." Again, this was quite the experience. So much different than what we are normally used to, it was humbling, quite humbling, to say the least. I'm glad we did it, but I wish we would have had a heads up about what we would have been getting ourselves into.
As Koby said previously, we managed. I might have cried to myself the first morning we were there because it was the opposite of what we both envisioned.. For example, we thought Gazy was a girl who lived in a nice house on some property that she needed help maintaining, and I also hoped she had an espresso machine so she could teach me the Italian secret to making those delicious cappuccinos. But nope, Gazy was a boy and we were way off on all of our other predictions as well. I'm glad we volunteered and I'm glad we're done. I would do it again if the circumstances were different, I'm just not a totally "roughin'" it type of girl. I like having running water and being able to shave my legs.
Anyway, now we're in Florence and everything is fantastic. We tried AirBnB for the first time, it great! Our 'host' is really nice. We've just been exploring and going to lots of the places that our friends have suggested. We've both been quite tired though, I think our journey is finally catching up with us. We went to Pisa a couple days ago. The tower was great! But Pisa itself is quite boring and kind of smells like poop.
After Florence, I think we're going to Venice. We booked our Oktoberfest accommodations! Which is camping for 4 days and 3 nights, they provide the tents, air mattresses, and a hot breakfast, so it should be fantastic! Our camping dates are September 27th-30th, so we have to figure out what we want to do with our time until then; I would like to go to Vienna and Budapest, but we have to see if we can afford it. It may sound ridiculous, but I feel as though we haven't done much for being here for 5 weeks because we've only been to two countries, which is why I want to go to Vienna and Budapest before Oktoberfest. Yesterday, we planned out the rest of our journey, because we'll only have 27 days left after Oktoberfest and we have a whole lot to see. We'll be going to Poland, the Baltics, back to Germany, Amsterdam, Scotland(hopefully), London(maybe), Wales, then back to Dublin. So it's a lot to cram in, but I really want to enjoy as many countries as possible while we're here!
Sorry my portion of the post is a little scattered, I've had about 4 shots of espresso today!
Its been a while since we've updated and its because we were volunteering in Southern Italy outside of a town called Martina Franca. We used a website called Helpx to contact a host and arrange a time, date and amount of time you would be available to come and help them with simple, tedious, fun or difficult tasks around their property. It could range from anything between washing dishes, building green-house to getting the eggs from the chicken coop. Unfortunately for us, our host did not elaborate on what exactly our stay would be like. Normally a host has a house with a spare room for you with at least somewhat comfortable accommodation. Our host however, had a Trullo, which isn't that bad, but it was more like a partial Trullo with one room that was a kitchen and a partial room that had the sink and fridge. It was cute, kind of, but besides that, he had two trailers, one he slept in and one we slept in. It was kind of dirty and there were spiders everywhere. Needless to say, Kelli had a hard time, I wasn't necessarily happy either but we dealt with it. Again, that is all doable, its like camping, its fun, its an experience that we can tell our friends, family and future kids about. But here's the kicker, he didn't have any running water, or a source of water on his property, he had buckets, bathtubs, big glass containers and water jugs that he had a man come fill up every so often (with the exception of our drinking water, which we went and filled up ourselves). So again, this seems manageable, until its time to shower.. If we wanted hot water we had to boil it on the stove then run it over to his make shift 'bathroom' to ensure a comfortable shower experience. The other part of this 'bathroom' had a toilet, but it was literally only a toilet. If we had to do anything other then pee we had to take a jug of water to the toilet to "flush it down." Again, this was quite the experience. So much different than what we are normally used to, it was humbling, quite humbling, to say the least. I'm glad we did it, but I wish we would have had a heads up about what we would have been getting ourselves into.
As Koby said previously, we managed. I might have cried to myself the first morning we were there because it was the opposite of what we both envisioned.. For example, we thought Gazy was a girl who lived in a nice house on some property that she needed help maintaining, and I also hoped she had an espresso machine so she could teach me the Italian secret to making those delicious cappuccinos. But nope, Gazy was a boy and we were way off on all of our other predictions as well. I'm glad we volunteered and I'm glad we're done. I would do it again if the circumstances were different, I'm just not a totally "roughin'" it type of girl. I like having running water and being able to shave my legs.
Anyway, now we're in Florence and everything is fantastic. We tried AirBnB for the first time, it great! Our 'host' is really nice. We've just been exploring and going to lots of the places that our friends have suggested. We've both been quite tired though, I think our journey is finally catching up with us. We went to Pisa a couple days ago. The tower was great! But Pisa itself is quite boring and kind of smells like poop.
After Florence, I think we're going to Venice. We booked our Oktoberfest accommodations! Which is camping for 4 days and 3 nights, they provide the tents, air mattresses, and a hot breakfast, so it should be fantastic! Our camping dates are September 27th-30th, so we have to figure out what we want to do with our time until then; I would like to go to Vienna and Budapest, but we have to see if we can afford it. It may sound ridiculous, but I feel as though we haven't done much for being here for 5 weeks because we've only been to two countries, which is why I want to go to Vienna and Budapest before Oktoberfest. Yesterday, we planned out the rest of our journey, because we'll only have 27 days left after Oktoberfest and we have a whole lot to see. We'll be going to Poland, the Baltics, back to Germany, Amsterdam, Scotland(hopefully), London(maybe), Wales, then back to Dublin. So it's a lot to cram in, but I really want to enjoy as many countries as possible while we're here!
Sorry my portion of the post is a little scattered, I've had about 4 shots of espresso today!
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