Escape from Budapest

Well, in a couple of hours Chris and I will be happily on our way to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It's about a 9 hour journey, so we just picked up a load of snacks for the train, and we've got books from the second hand english bookstore ready to go.

I hate to say it, but I am seriously ready to leave Budapest. It's a very interesting city, and lots to do here, but it's been about 35 degrees here every day, and I'm sick of the heat. No, scratch that, I could handle 35 degrees if I was sitting beside a mountain lake in my bathing suit. Slugging around doing sightseeing while virtually melting away is not so fun. If I wanted to sweat it out in a big dirty crowded city, I could have just stayed in Toronto!

We've also had just terrible luck here in Budapest. Every restaurant we go to is closed, every train ticket wicket has relocated. The cool Wall Street bar we went to last night hadn't done the bidding thing for over a year. Hungarians in general seem to be the most disorganized people on the planet. Doing anything in our hostel takes about a hour before they sort it out. We spent about an hour and a half at the train station yesterday trying to sort out tickets for today. They don't even have computers at the train station! They look up the schedules in a big book, and write out the tickets by hand! Poland was miles ahead of this place.

And I don't even want to think about the number of hours I've wandered around Budapest in search of real Hungarian food. Every one that's been recommended to us has been closed once we got there. So we've had Chinese food, Thai food, italian food, middle eastern food, and pretty much every other kind in the book, but I've yet to find a good bowl of Hungarian goulash.

At breakfast today I enquired about a dish on the menu that said "traditional hungarian" in the description, and mentioned potatoes and cheese, and I wanted to know what it was exactly. The very grumpy waitress (people don't really tip here, so all the waitresses are pretty dour) informed me that it was salt. "Salt?" I said? This dish is salt? "Yes," she barked. "Salt!" Umm...ok, well, I won't be getting that.

Yes, you're getting the gist of it...I'm burned out on Budapest. I am really looking forward to getting to Slovenia and swimming in some mountain lakes and sitting on the beach. And hopefully the people will be a little nicer, because I'm getting sick of being yelled at by grouchy service people.

I'm also a little down because yesterday we had to say goodbye to Antonia, yesterday night we bid farewell to the crowd of Australians, and this morning we had a sad goodbye with Jo. It's been nice travelling in a bit of a pack, and while I'm sure Chris and I will have an amazing time in Slovenia, it was nice to have a crowd of friends around.

Wow, reading over this post is kinda depressing...don't worry folks, I'm still having a good time, still laughing lots, drinking lots, and eating ice cream at least twice a day.

Hugs to all, especially to Antonia (hope you made it home ok and are feeling better) and Jo, if you're reading. And mom, sorry if I didn't call you when I said, I definitely will from Slovenia!