A loooooooong trip

Well, we have left Poland behind. Just want to say a huge thanks to Victoria for letting us stay at her place. It was wonderful. After another fun day in Krakow, Dzido and I set sail for the sunny Budapest....and that is about where the wheels fell off the wagon. We got to the train station and were told that all of the seats on the train were sold out. We could still get on with our rail passes, but we'd have to stand for the 5 hour journy to Breclav (somewhere in Czech Republic where we had to change trains). So we started off standing/sitting in the hallway of the train. Luckey some seats became free once we crossed into the Czech Republic, so it wasn't too bad.

We arrived in Breclav and I must say: scariest place we have been yet. No one spoke English, but we knew that we wanted to see the Czech Republic soccer game at 6pm and our train got in at 6:15, pretty good timing. So we find the one restaurant near the train station that had the game on, so that was pretty sweet. However, the menu is all in Czech and the waitress does not understand one word of English. So we basically pointed at the menu and hoped we got some good food. Thankfully we got chicken on some kind and it wasn't so bad. Also luckey for us, I had neglected to spent 200 crowns (Czech currency) when we were there, so I could pay for the meal, which came to EXACTLY 200 crowns (sounds more than it is, works out to 20 Canadian dollars). So we watched the game until there were 15 minutes left and then we had to run for our train with the Czechs down 1-0 to Ghana. We got to the train station, saw that our train we delayed and ran back to watch the last few minutes...and see Ghana beat our beloved Czech Rep 2-0. To best honest, Ghana deserved it. They played awsome and if anyone was going to beat the Czechs I am glad it was them (no sour grapes here).

So we head back to the train station where we see that our train is now delayed even longer. We sit there playing cards until I realize I have to go to the bathroom. This is a problem because all of the toilets in the Czech Republic require you to pay, and I had just spent the last of my money on food. So I had to go digging through my bag to try and find something to pay the washroom attendant with. At last I found a couple of stray crowns. By this time, the train was delayed by 60 minutes, but soon the delay was extended to 100 minutes! Stuck in this tiny train station being harassed by some local kids for money. It was now 9pm and we had been traveling since 1pm. Thankfully the train actually did come at last and we headed on our way to Budapest.

However once we arrived we had several porblems. It was 1am, we had no local currency to take the bus, we didn't know if there would be anyone at our hostel to let us in and we were unsure we could even get to the hostel in the first place since it was a bus trip away and the busses were running on some differnt saturday night schedule. We solved the money problem with an ATM, but a 5000 note was not really good bus fare. We ruled out taking a cab because we had heard they are pretty shady here. So we found a group of backpackers from our train and basically followed them to the hostel they were going to. Although it was full, we were able to get referred to a place a little ways away that had beds. So we arrived at 2am, exhusted, and just crashed into bed. Budapest is nice I am sure, and once I have recovered from the travel I will get to enjoy it. I am sure this sounds like complaining, but it isn't. This is part of the fun of travel and since we did at last find a place to stay, it didn't work out too badly.

Back with an account of the city in a few days and hopefully some good pictures.

Paul

PS- we are going to try and find a bar to watch Game 7 at 3am, even if we have to break into some place.