July 27th:
Made it to Budapest pretty easy, took the subway to meet my couchsurfing host. Matthew from New York, my age, there following a girl he met back home. Seemed pretty cool online but a bit of a crazy guy in person. He claimed he was really, really busy so barely had time to meet me at the train station. Turns out all he really had to do was watch some puppies. He has been a pet sitter for like 2 weeks and it is his new passion and had this idea like 3 weeks ago so he wouldn’t have to teach English. I went to the flat he was watching and there was 1 skinny beagle/lab mutt with 5 eight week old puppies who were allowed to shit and piss anywhere they wanted. So basically a disgusting place that reaked. The people who live there were Norweagan vet students so it was weird to see all the same textbooks I have on the shelf in their living room. They do dog rescue in Budapest (called Buda Pets) and I guess this was their latestest rescue. Matthew is a drinking, smoker, and New Yorker if you can imagine. So we chill in his pet sitting flat and some British guy stops by and we tried to smoke shisha but it wasn’t really working. I offered to help clean up the shit and piss off the floor as he was giving me a place to stay. He took me up on it. For about an hour I scrubbed the Puppy room clean with a little shit mop. I asked if he had gloves and he handed me the pink dish gloves…he was actually recommending that I clean up dog shit with the dish gloves which I’m sure he would be fine with putting right back on the counter. Basically, the place was a mess and I fixed it. After, we headed to his flat (where I would be staying). He has this giant room 12 foot ceilings, bed, couch, etc right downtown. He doesn’t actually stay there though so the room was all mine.. The flat is owned by Paulo who is this crazy Hungarian who likes to impart his political views on people. I had to answer questions about the war in Iraq and George Bush (especially being from Texas), etc and calmly explain that I didn’t really have anything to do with it and I’m just here backpacking and seeing the world. He said that was typical of Americans…they sit at home and watch TV and don’t care what their leaders are doing. Paulo tried to collect rent from me but Matthew had to tell him to screw off. Also and Indian guy popped in the room to borrow Matthew’s video camera because he sees UFOs over Budapest at night and wants to catch them on video….I would have loved to go out searching with him but he said it was too cloudy. Oh well. And there is another older dog wondering around the house that was being pet sat there. So pretty interesting really but close to lots of things. We grabbed some beers with some of his friends and I ended up staying out with Jason from Kansas City. We bar hopped and came across some Australians. Pretty awesome bar named Szimpla that is indoor/outdoor, cars in the middle with the roofs taken off so you can sit in them and drink, trees growing out of things, random lamps here and there. Drank there for a while, then headed home.
July 28th: slept until noon. Went to the train station and sorted out my train ticket with some difficulty…the guy was yelling at me by the end, fuck him. So got the ticket to Zagreb (I never heard of it either) then on to Split (this is where the beaches start). Spent the next several hours walking the city and seeing the sights. Nothing too much to talk about in the blog, but see the pictures. There is the worlds largest hour glass which is like 24 ft tall and takes 1 year to finish…they flip it at like midnight on new years every year. Pretty easy city to get around. I would definitely have considered staying in Budapest longer if I didn’t already have plans in the coming week. Met back up with Matthew to help him pick up some birds (weird I know). This American couple was living here for a year and was moving back so they contacted him to find a home for the birds. In exchange they gave him a laptop and printer/scanner/copier. So basically this crazy guy gets $1000 to pick up 3 parakeets and hold on to them for a week until he finds them a home. Of course the birds were going in my room and they wake up with the sun and chirp when I’m hungover. So have to carry the bird cage, printer, laptop, bird food, etc a few blocks back to the flat. Then we chilled out and I went to a CS meet up which is a weekly wednesdy thing there. About 30 people showed up so that was fun. We bar hopped a bit, brought one of the pet sitting dogs, then ended up at the main club in town until about 3am. Along the way Matthew offered the couch in the room I was staying to a french guy. He is traveling around taking pictures of the couches and rooms on couchsurfing as a photography project. So we made our way back to the house and had a kebab along the way. This is my favorit kebab shop in the world so far as it is open all night, has many options and there is this hot girl that works there at night. I had like 4 meals there.
Next day I slept in, John went to photograph some couches so it was another day of sight seeing on my own. I’m getting a bit tired of sight seeing alone. I used to love it, but its getting a bit boring. I went to one of the Hungarian bath houses. Basically a giant 100yo building with thermal spas, pools, massages, etc. Spent 2-3 hours there. Similar to the iceland blue lagoon expereince except you don’t have to shower in front of everyone and take your shorts off while the shower police make sure you scrub your balls properly. Talked to some british people a bit then got a little sun and took off. Went over the the big castle, saw that, then headed home. 1 more night of drinking out at the same bars. Hard not to find English speakers in this part of town…various pub crawls pass through and there are like 2-3 main bar and a bunch of smaller ones so I think everyone kind of sticks to those. All walking distance home. I did find this late night retro shop which had all kinds of random stuff from the 60s and 70s…some local I’m sure, but some American stuff as well. It was a weird place…kind of a bar with stuff all over the wall but you can buy the stuff. Back to Szimpla for 1 last beer with Matthew then he took of as he was exhausted (from puppy sitting all day). I kept running into this group of people who were living in Budapest…2 swedish girls, and egyption guy, and a couple of british guys. I ended up talking to them as I overheard them talking about drinking breast milk (as a fetish) and whether it was gross or not. That led to similar discussions and I eventually said goodbye. I headed to the rooftop bar and it was rather empty compared to the previous night…appearantly people in Budapest go out and get wasted on Wednesdays then take Thursday off to recover for the weekend. I found some Americans and chatted for a while before leaving (walking down the 5 flights of stairs) and ran into the egyptian guy and swedish girl again. I walked back up the 5 flights of stairs and had 1 more beer. Now the conversation was getting really dirty. The egyption guy was like 110 lbs 5-10, dark skinned, that middle eastern type accent and prominent boney facial features. Bascially funny as shit to listen to him talk about eating girls out and what not. By now its 5am, so got the hell out and headed home.
July 30ths; Woke up, got packed and headed to the train station. Made sure and got there early and bought some food for the road. Sat there and waited for the train to come up on the little screen (usually 30 minutes before it leave). I never saw it come up so began to wonder around looking for a schedule…couldn’t find Zagreb listed anywhere. Went to the information booth and the lady informed me that it was at the other train station (which no one told me when I bought the ticket there the day before). So, 15 minutes to get to the other station. Fuck. I made sure to spend all of my hungarian money last night. Figured I would try to make it… as otherwise I would have to wait another 4 hours for the next train. Running in flip flops, bought a 2 dollar metro ticket with the credit card, took the fast way down the escaltor and didn’t even know which way to go. Hopped on the train and then looked at the map. Fortunately got on the right train. Had to make one transfer so 5 total stops to go and it was 13 minutes until the train left. Got to the train station stop as it was scheduled to leave. Out of breath, sweating, running in flip flops, took the stairs up but realized I was across the street, went back down and walked under the street and hurried to find the proper train. Got there, hopped on about 3 minutes after the scheduled time but there were no seats left and people were sitting on the floor by the door. So, I plopped down and the train left shortly thereafter and I eventually walkd down and found a seat with some Australians…but not the social friendly one. Not jerks, but didn’t care to talk. So, this is where the 8 hour laptop battery comes in handy. Wrote this blog, watched trail park boys season 7 (if I haven’t mentioned this before, go download it now!) and took the occassional nap on this 6 hour journey.
