Europe 08 Here we go, my first trip out of the states and its a big one, 48 days (thanks ZOOM!)

Well it seems my readership is demanding more content and I must oblige them. Vienna was swarmed with Croatians and Turks for the Euro Cup football (soccer) matches. They have sectioned off large portions of the city to accommodate the fans in areas they call "Fan Zone", kinda like they did for live aid in Philly, tons of 50ft high TVs for people who cant get tickets the match. We really only spent one day tromping around Vienna and looking back on it I wish it was more. Alas, our free four star hotel in Bratislava was calling our name. We did manage to see the Imperial palace and gardens which were grand on a scale hard to imagine. In the city center the majority of the sights were either blocked off or difficult to see because of the Fan Zone but getting to see the excitement of the crowds during the matches was worth it. After seeing the sites we went to an Austrian hippy party where everyone sat on the floor and they filled the tubs w/ way to many cans of beer and not nearly enough ice. ick warm beer. They really don't drink anything ice cold over here, ice is scarce here and we actually enjoy having it when we do, silly, I know, but when I get home all I want is 2 glasses of ice and enough wawa lemonade tea so I don't have to leave my bed (and by proxy the house) for 3 days. We traveled to Bratislava on bus, a very quick trip as it and Vienna are the two closest capital cities in the world. Our arrival at the train station marked the first time we were really, really, really, confused about how to get into the center of town. It doesn't help when the bus route from the station travels back across the bridge you came into the city on, through Soviet style housing blocks (read housing projects) back across another bridge and then finally into the center of town. Bratislava is known for being cheap and well..... it wasn't. Its actually like Philly in the sense that although geographical the city is rather large the portion of the city which as a visitor is actually worth seeing is rather small, I mean you can do it in a day, easy. The Slovak people were rather nice but businesses engage in some pretty harsh price gouging, they can, do and will blatantly charge you more for things just because you are a foreigner. Outside of the free hotel (no pool? four stars? umm... not so much) Bratislava was really a waste of our time. We traveled to Budapest on a completely full bus (apparently everyone else was as eager to leave as us, luckily we bought our tickets in advance as a few people were left behind). Upon arrival we had a few hours to kill so we ate and camped out at the nearest Burger King. They have a few things on the menu we don't in the states but I guarantee you that a whopper tastes exactly like it does in the states. They take their American fast food chains here pretty seriously, all the McDs and Burger kings we've been to here have been by far (including the bathrooms) nicer than their counterparts in the states. Apparently they actually pay pretty well too for local standards. Gyros seem to be the fast food of choice here, they are kinda like hot dogs stands in new york, cheap and everywhere, a good gyro goes for 500 hungarian forints, so around 3.33$ USD. Speaking of which, Dennis, trying to be "Knowledgeable" or something, asked one gyro vendor for tzatziki (a cucumber yogurt sauce that is served in Greek restaurants) to this we got a very curt and exact answer "No. We are Turks". Yeah... I'm losing track of how many locals Dennis has been scolded by. I think it all went down hill when we had to return to check additional bags after half the things he tried to take onto the plane in Ireland went allowed. On our first night in Budapest our host gave us a brief tour of the Castle in Buda (Buda and "Pehst", as the locals prefer to say, were once separate cities on each side of the river) and the riverfront in "Pehst". Budapest is famous for its Turkish style bath houses w/ "healing" thermal mineral springs. We went to one of the oldest in the city and it was quite nice. They have modernized the tradition and for instance the "baths" we went to were the size of large swimming pools, each with a different temperature, hot, medium and cold. Unfortunately I'm still peeling from the sunburn we got that day. One of the best nightclubs here is actually on an island in the center of the river, interesting, but as it is expensive by local standards you get a lot of snobbish people who are paying a whopping 3$ a beer. heh. We're on a train as I write this, our longest travel of any sort, 15 hours. Were headed through the heart of Transylvania to (possibly) visit Dracula's castle. Well actually we're headed to Bucharest, the capital and largest city of Romania but Vlad's (Drac's) Castle is only 30 minutes away. From Bucharest we'll be headed to the western coast the Black Sea to do some beach camping :) From there we'll travel down the coast for about two weeks and eventually head inwards towards Sofia Bulgaria for our flight to Rome on the 18th. Rome for four nights and then we return to London for 5 nights. Then its back to the good old US of A. Well I'm gonna try and get some Zs. I don't think Vampires bother with trains :)