I've got the job of catching you up on more than two weeks, dear blog readers, so we are going to go fast. Jess and I left Prague the day after her parents after a pleasant Hare Krishna lunch with our friend Jeff. We took a bus to Budapest, a place I knew little about but always wanted to visit. I knew the city is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, that are separated by the Danube river and the Pest is pronounced "Pesh". I thought the men must be very attractive and charming because the character Almasy from the English Patient is Hungarian and I love him. We found a lovely girl, Kriszti, to host us (over her birthday weekend, no less. So sweet!)We spent the night dancing on an island in the middle of the muddy brown river. Kriszti's friend, Gabi, was at the party and offered to host us next, as she is also a Couch Surfer. Kriszti and Gabi both live on the Buda side, but Kriszti lives in the hills and Gabi lives near the center. Jess and I spent most days wandering around the Pest side, looking for thrift stores (a constant obsession for me. I've decided I'm going to learn how to sew when I get back to the USA so I can be even more creative with my fashion...), and generally getting to know the city. We realized that maybe we were all city-ed out by the second day when we just weren't feeling like exploring anymore. After that, we decided to not worry about knowing Budapest, and just do what we felt like doing. We spent two days at the Szechenyi baths, which will cure whatever ails ya' and makes you feel like Gumbi, and a day learning the tormented history (occupations of Germans and Russians, you know) in the House of Terror museum. (SIDENOTE: every big city seems to have a house of terror or torture which are hoaky, overpriced, and only really for tourists. The one in Budapest is worth seeing for sure, but requires a lot of reading to really understand.)We had left the land of the Hare Krishnas so we ate three times at the Hummus Bar. I can't recommend the place enough. Jess and I spent an entire rainy afternoon participating in our new favourite activity: reading Stephen King's IT aloud to each other. We had the pleasure of visiting Gabi's hometown, Nyiregyhaza, where we went to the zoo and ate icecream of the future. Our time in Budapest, after we stopped putting pressure on ourselves to SEE it, was comfortable and calm. We did have one incident which I will sum up by pasting a warning email I sent to a friend of mine that is traveling in Europe as well:
Just a warning for you: If you are on a bus-metro-tram etc. and someone asks for your ticket and you do not have one (although, of course, you should always just have one) DO NOT PAY THE FINE ON THE SPOT. Tell the person that you do not have any cash on you and that you want to be taken to the police station. This happened to Jess and I today. We were on a tram and we hadnt bought tickets because the ticket machine was broken and kept eating my money so we just hopped on. A couple stops later a man asked for our tickets and at the next stop forced us to get off. He said we had to pay 6000 forint (=fifty dollars) each. We didnt have it, and anyway a friend in the Czech Republic warned us about this exact scam. The guy said he would call the police so we said, "Call the police, then". Then he talked in a walky talky and said we would have to go to an ATM with him and get the money. I said. "No way, I will settle this with the police". He said that we would have to wait a long time and it could take a couple hours. I said, "No problem, I have all day" (I really do have all day for this kind of poppy-cock). About 5 minutes later of us just standing there he got on the next tram and told us to just start walking. He was gone. FAKE COP AVOIDED! JERK, who did he think he was?
Anyway, be careful of fake cops. Tell them you want to be taken to the station and that you want to take a photo of their badge (which they will have, even though it is FAKE!) for your records.
Don't mess with us. We are expert travellers.
When we were ready to leave Budapest (because I wasn't seeing anyone who looked like Almasy) we ran into a bit of trouble. For the first time in our trip, we know where we want to end up. We plan on being in Greece by mid-August. So, we have to go south. However, there are a couple countries which we are meant to avoid (safety reasons) and a couple that we are apparently not allowed in. Without Hungarian passports, we were not permitted to go thru Bosnia, even if we weren't stopping. No huge problem, we decided to go to a town in northern Croatia instead, Split. I can sum up Croatia by saying that it is devastatingly beautiful. Our photos won't convey it enough, because it is hard to take pictures of water and sunsets. However, believe me when I say that I have never seen water so turquoise and clear or sunsets so flamming pink. The beaches in Croatia are rocky; often one must walk down one hundred stairs to reach a "beach" that is just rocks with latters into the water. Croatia is full of natural beauty, and while we did see Split in the north, Dubrovnik in the south, and the island of Hvar in between, there are many places we would have liked to explore. Couchsurfing isn't a popular concept in Croatia as the locals rent out extra rooms in their houses to tourists for money, so we took advantage of the beauty fully by camping. Dubrovnik was our favorite place in Croatia because, in addition to the natural wonders, it had a more interesting cultural scene whereas the other towns are full of tourist activity almost exclusively. We went to a war photo museum that reminded me again how horrible war is, and how against the war in Iraq I am. Seeing real, unfiltered, images of the atrocities in Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq side-by-side was powerful. I felt for a couple of hours afterwards a need to express how discusting and useless war is, but also the familiar hopeless/helpless feeling. Think. Please think. And then vote. Think and vote.
Generally, Croatia provided Jess and I with the opportunity to enjoy nature so fully that it was easy to watch the beautiful sunsets. Every day was spent, to its maximum, swimming and walking. Feeling healthy, physically and mentally, Jess and I headed south to Montenegro.
