GREECE!!

We made it to Athens on the 26th and now we're on Santorini; this is heaven on earth. I am not kidding, got to Google and google some pics of it!!! I will write about the other countries we visited later on, I just wanted to let everyone know that we're safe, sound and in heaven!

Austria and Slovenia (27/02-06/03) Updated 21-3

Feb 27th

We set foot on Vienna late that night as it has become another trade mark of our travels. Fortunately, this time, the hostel was only 3 block away from the train station.
The cultural change was again quite remarkable; the Hungarian politeness was replaced by a rather cold Germanic reception. Needless to mention, the financial aspects of our travels changed as dramatically as the languages at hand. While in Romania and Hungary our daily budget would rarely go over €20, inclusive of travels expenditures. In Vienna, on the other hand, only the hostel chopped €24 of our savings per day!

Feb 28th

Among several other things we wanted to do in Vienna, seeing Mozart's and Beethoven's former residences and eating chocolate croissants were at the top of our list. We were fortunate enough to be in Vienna on a Sunday, when most Museums and art galleries are either half-price or free! In particular, the Clock Museum was one of them; this place was really neat. Consisting of three floors overburdened with clocks, arranged in chronological order (ironically enough), the Clock Museum hosts the biggest collection of clocks in Europe. Two of them were particularly amazing: the piece de resistance, an astronomical clock of 1663 (incredibly complex clock) and an astrological one; in the shape of a sphere representing earth, this clock follows the motion of various celestial bodies that are relevant for astrological predictions.
Later on that afternoon, after paying almost €6 for a chocolate croissant and a coffee, Ellen and I decided that our visit to Vienna was destined to end eerily soon. We had plans to stop by Graz on our way to Ljubljana, maybe for a day or so, but this place was way beyond our budget. More so than Vienna!

Lovely!

La casa de Mozart

The main square in Vienna

March 1st:

Without knowing what to expect from Slovenia, we arrived at the unpronounceable capital of Ljubljana sometime after 9 pm. Actually the name becomes a lot easier if you pronounce the "js" as "ys"!!!

The Dragon Bridge

Our hostel for the night was probably the only one worth mentioning out of all of the ones we stayed at so far. The essence of this hostel (Celica) was that of a military prison, literally! The actual building is a former prison remodeled into a hostel, with every room designed by a Slovene artist. It was, by all measures, the best hostel I've ever seen. Moreover, the first floor was an art gallery, again with art pieces from Slovene artists, standing just a few feet away from the trendiest bar in Slovenia.

March 2nd:

After realizing how neat Celica is, we wanted to stay for a second night. Unfortunately, the prices, for whatever wicked reason may be, went up way too much for the next night. This propelled us to find a more suitable alternative somewhere else in Ljubljana. The hostel of choice was Aladdin's Hostel. At first it seemed rather nice, but what manifested ITSELF at night time was what got us to flee such misery of a dump for good!
Before so, we roamed aimlessly around the beautiful capital of Slovenia. The medieval Old Town surrounds a hill with a castle perched atop and is inhabited by countless coffee and pastry shop. The mood of Ljubljana is rather chill and young, perfect for our short stay in such place. One thing in particular seemed a bit hard to digest though. Horse burgers that is!! Yup, bun-horse-bun meals were advertised in a few places around Ljubljana as if they were regular Kebabs or Hot dogs!

As advertised!

Finally it was time to go back "home," the hostel that is. We have some dinner and just as we're about to finish cleaning up the area the kitchen door slams open by what seemed to be nothing but a karate kick. Stumbling and cursing in Slovene, a rather young and wasted, fellow makes his way into the kitchen. He then, unexpectedly, tells us that he is the security guard of the hostel and not to "fuck with him or he will fuck with us." This self declared paranoid-schizophrenic proceeds to bend my wrist in search of the time and offer us cocaine or marijuana to ease our stay in that dump of a place. Needless to mention how quickly we left this weirdo alone with excuses of tiredness and such. Once we entered our room, part 2 begun. The sheets were literally covered with hairs that were too dark to be Ellen's and too long to be mine. This was accompanied with some lovely yellow stains on the pillows; some resembling some popular political figures :) I mean, I've stayed in some really bad hostels, but this was nuts!
Quite early the next morning we left hell behind and, with our tails in between our legs, returned to Celica; that by an act of goodness dropped their prices back to normal.

March 3rd

After devouring our free breakfast provided by Celica, out again we went to finalize our visit to Ljubljana. The weather this day was particularly wet, which forced us to stay in the hostel and munch on some incredible Slovenian pastries for what remained of the third day of March.

March 4th

In search of the Julian Alps, we left our beloved, young and hip Ljubljana this same morning. A 2 hour bus ride ended in Bled, a quiet and dreamy town that sits on the end of a lake in the heart of the Julian Alps. The lake is home to a Lilliputian island with a church built on top and a castle, built atop one of the many mountains that surrounds Bled, oversees the entire area from above. Accompanied by a constant drizzle we embarked on a 6 km walk around this beautiful lake, who was plagued with ducks and geese. On the other hand, Bled is absolutely dead on this time of year, so any trail or outdoor activity is postponed until summer due to meters upon meters of snow!

Not a bad view!

Bled

A think I might have taken at least 20 pics of this

March 5th

Just a few minutes West of Bled lies Bohinj National Park; a handful of towns, a few lakes and the Julian Alps decorate this place, to look like something out of a fairy tale. We arrived somewhere around noon, had a few bites to eat and commenced our usual aimless walks around the area. At about 2 pm the sky complete cleared up to reveal the incredible mountain range that was disguised by the clouds before so. After being spoiled by this scenery we embarked on our way back to Bled in search of some food and shelter.

A town in Bohinj National Park

Frrrrrozen lake

March 6th

The weather, as capricious as it is, made it almost impossible for us to leave Bled; with the sun shinning on our backs we hopped on a train that was destined to arrive, that same afternoon, in Zagreb, Croatia!
Our first impression of Zagreb was unexpected. The city looked, undoubtedly, beautiful. Given that our train ride took most of our day, we had only time to have some dinner and party with quite an international crew. Davor, the hostel owner, was the heart of this part. This fun loving Croatian fellow decided to, as drunk as he was, lecture us on former Yugoslavia, Religion, God and woman! Awesome night indeed!

....out of time again, stay tuned!......

Romania and Hungary (19/02-28/02)

Greeting folks! Here is a more detailed description of our travels behind the Old Iron Curtain.

19th of February

We arrived to Bucharest on an absolutely packed flight that was overwhelmed by Romanians; whom did not hesitate to make the plane an extension of their home. Food and loud conversations were on the menu as dish d'jour.
In order to reach our first destination (a hostel in the heart of Bucharest) we were supposed to take two buses; one from the Airport to the a train station and the latter from the train station to the hostel. Easy enough, right? Wrong! It turns out that Romanian Taxi drivers are, without any doubt, the most dangerous predators in the face of the earth; constantly looking for juicy tourists to feast on. We were first attacked in the airport by literally a hoard of them, while the second attempt occurred two seconds after we arrived to the train station. Needless to say, we were warned about this before hand, but never crossed our minds how ferocious they actually are!
We finally make it into a bus and reach our destination shortly thereafter, only to find out that the address we were given was the address of an abandoned building in a noticeably shady part of town. Bear in mind it was about 10 PM and it was snowing quite heavily! Thank the heavens, "The Funky Chicken" came to our rescue. This being another hostel that was literally 3 blocks away from the latter and had plenty of empty beds available for us! We then proceeded to have some lovely traditional Romanian food and drink considerable amounts of alcohol, in the form of beer, which helped us forget the havoc that was our arrival to Romania.

Well deserved beers!

20th of Feb

Day two in Bucharest entailed: quite a bit of walking around in bitterly cold weather, a free tour through the 2nd largest building in the world (House of Parliament, right next in size to the Pentagon) and meeting Helen (one of Ellen"s good friend). Quite frankly, Bucharest is not nice. Actually, it sucks!!!It turns out that all of the "nice" buildings that once dwelled within Bucharest were demolished and replaced by awfully-looking-utilitarian ones. In case you were wondering, post WWII-Communist Russia is the one to blame for such massacre. Therefore, we unanimously decided to leave Romania's capital in order to head north in search of Transylvania and the medieval towns that linger within the Carpathian Mountains.

Parliament House

MASSIVE!

21st of Feb

A 4-hour train ride ended in Brasov, an absolutely gorgeous town located in the heart of the Carpathians. The town center has remained virtually unchanged for a good 500 years. So, most of our day entailed walking around this fabulous town and eating some Italian food downtown Brasov.

Brsov! Properly advertised atop of the mountain.

It was rather cold indeed

22nd of Feb

We left the hostel quite early for a tour around Brasov in order to make the most of the incredibly short Transylvanian days. Downtown Brasov, like many other European cities, begun in the form of a fortification; this one, in particular, was strategically placed within two mountains that meet on the north side of Brasov. Leaving only the south end of the city to defend with walls and towers. The Negrul Tulul (Black Tower) and Alba Tulul (White Tower) were strategically built, on one of the mountains, to defend the city from attackers, giving an absolutely amazing view of Brasov!
The hostel crew convinced us to join them in one of their incredibly-super-hipper tours around Transylvania. Our destination, this time, was Sanaia (a Lilliputian town about 1 1/2 hours away from Brasov). Sanaia is home to the most unbelievably beautiful and expensive castle I've ever seen, Peles Castle. This castle is the ultimate epitome of ostentatiousness. Built around 1873, it costs about 120 million Euro and took nearly 10 years to complete. But what makes Peles unique is what lies inside. Every room in this castle carries a theme with it, a world-cultural theme that is. Each room is lavishly decorated with items that were fetched from places all over the world in accordance to theme at hand. Moreover, this palace was the most modern of it's kind for a few decades, being the first one to implement centralized vacuum and heating systems.

Having some technical difficulties leaving the Alba Tulul

Down Town Brasov

Magical!

The architectural design of buildings is quite medieval

City centre

Night photos shoot!

Sanaia

Peles Castle

One of a kind

I could go all day!

23rd and 24th of Feb

Unfortunately, we had to leave Brasov behind and continue with our travels; this time, in search of Sighisoara, Dracula's birth place! As it's to expect from Romania, an incredibly packed mini-bus took us from the former to the latter. Again, it wasn't easy to escape the ferocious Taxi drivers that roamed around Brasov's bus terminal. Some offering GREAT deals; like a 7 Euro ride for 45 Euro instead! GREAT F#$%&ING deals indeed!

Downtown Sighi

Yup, that was home to Dracula

An Austrian cementary and Helen

Really neat!

Sighisoara's main plaza

Sighisoara is situated in the very heart of Transylvania. It entails a, quite compact, Old Town (the only inhabited historical site in Romania) perched on a hillock that oversees the rest of town. This Old Town is really something! It didn't take us long to feel like we where way back in medieval times walking by the building that saw Dracula take his first steps. Once we walked up, down and around town a few times we realized that there isn't much to do in Sighisoara at all; other than drinking great Transylvanian pilsners. Therefore, we booked a night train from good ol' Sighi to Budapest scheduled to depart on the 24th at around 12 PM. Again, as soon as we boarded the train the inhabitants of this beloved country made our day. There were Romanians laying all over the place: on the floor, over the dinning tables and even a few decided to hop on top of the luggage shelves. Literally nuts! At about 6:00 am we were woken up by the Hungarian immigration officers, a sign that we made it to Hungary! Actually, that wasn't the only sign at all. As soon as we crossed the border the cultural change was abysmal. Fashionable and polite Hungarians replaced the not-so-EU-yet Romanians for a good refreshing change.

A few words about Romania. Romania joined the E.U. a few years ago and according to many, things are considerably better. Nonetheless, I must remark that it still didn't feel quite EU yet in Romania. There was an appreciable amount of reckless-attitude in many areas of Bucharest and slums all around the capital.
On the other hand, Romanians are incredible people. They have an amazing culture, a beautiful country and, to my understanding, a great deal of potential to shortly become a first world country.
Lastly, their food is out of this world. It's certainly not for the faint heated, given that considerable amounts of meat are served in each and every dish!

25th and 26th

We set foot on Budapest sometime after 9:00 am. This part was a bit sad, given that Helen was scheduled to leave us a few hours later in order to return to Kosovo and continue with her military duties. After saying our respective goodbyes we hit town immediately!
For those of you that, like me, had no idea that Budapest is separated by the Danube (Dune) into Buda and Pest, might also find it interesting to note that Buda and Pest were actually two completely separate towns. They were far apart to start with, but as they grew larger and larger their respective city limits got fuzzy enough to melt both cities into the mighty metropolis that Budapest is today.

Thermal baths, glorious!

Water proof camera and hot water = fun*googleplex

Chain Bridge

Buda in the left, pest on the right and us in the middle

Hilly Buda is the residential are of Hungay's capital. Containing most of the historical buildings of Budapest; The Fisherman's Bastion and the Royal Palace linger in this side of town. Pest, contrastingly enough, is flat as a pancake and incredibly commercial. Our hostel (the Red Bus) was situated on Pest, a few blocks from the mighty Parliament. This building was modelled after London's Westminster, although it is a googolplex times more impressive.
The rest of Day I and most of Day II entailed more sight seeing and roaming around in order to get a good feeling for this very seductive city.

27th of Feb

On Day III, however, we decided to go a bit over budget and visit on the spectacular bath houses that this city has to offer. For about 3000 HUF (7 €) we bought ourselves two hours of pooled thermal waters in one of Hungary's fanciest baths; one can actually stay there all day if desired, nonetheless, 2 hours seemed like quite enough. This was a necessary break from the bitter cold that we had to endure for the past week or so.

28th of Feb

The night before this day, after carefully inspecting a map of Hungary, we decided it was a great idea to take a bus from Budapest to Visegrad, linger about this town for a few hours. Then head further north to Esztergom to then take a train to Slovakia's capital, Bratislava. So, that is what we did until we reached our second to last destination within Hungary, Esztergom. It turns out that there are no trains from Hungary to Bratislava, UNLESS the departure point is....., you guessed it, Budapest!! Henceforth, we went all the way back to Budapest, to then decide Bratislava wasn't really worth-going-to-anyway and head west, instead, towards Vienna!

A few things about Hungary before I move on to Austria. First of all, Hungarian is not an Indo-Europan language, it's Finno-Ugric. There is absolutely no way to understand what on God's green earth anybody is saying. Moreover, they have about 14 vowels and are certainly not afraid of using any of them. Secondly, Budapest is the quietest city I've ever been to; not only nobody beeps their horn at all but there is actually no city-like noises; say, even a loud conversation?!?!?! Lastly, it is admirable how polite Hungarians are! Car drivers make full stop whenever pedestrians are anywhere on sight and everyone is more than willing to give you a hand in any way possible.

.......Pictures to come...... sometime.......soon......