Where Is Joey Today?

¨The best part of Budapest were the graveyards¨, Tom said, goulashly

Well you may be wondering what the delay was in writing about old Hungary. The thing is that we didn´t go there as planned. We were scheduled to take a night train on Wednesday evening, thus spending Thursday afternoon in Budapest with a Friday return. We arrived to Munich airport nearly an hour and a half ahead of departure, plenty of time to go visit the Wombat Hostel (I think the 3rd stay here, confirmed it has my favorite hostel in Europe) and get back for the long ride. Well...we had a mechanical failure which delayed our arrival from the airport to the train station by about an hour. Very unGermanlike.

Well when we got there, we said, it would be better to just go the next day, and go back to the Wombat. That next day Dad and I went to Aying, and more specifically, the Ayinger brewery. We got inside and heard the next tour would be that evening...in German. Just getting inside was good enough, and I took Dad on a highlight tour (read: prior blog photos) of the town. We ended up having a great lunch at local biergarten further entrenching my puzzlement at the general idea that German food leaves much to be desired. My best meals of this trip (maybe even last one as well!) have been in Germany.

Back at the train station, we find we can´t book our train because we are too close to departure. Our only hope is to talk to the conductor and see if tickets are available. The price is more but this is a one time shot at Hungary. We get on and the guy says it is 40 euros. Awesome! I dont even need to burn a rail day at that rate. Turns out he thought we needed the beds and had train tickets. Add 100 Euros. Well thank god for those Eastern European sleeze bags, because he charged us 100 in total if we didnt get a receipt (take a guess where that money went).

The Great Train Robbery...Attempt

We were told by the same guy that we need to lock our door because there may be theives on board. That is always comforting to hear. Throughout the night I swear I was hearing things and around 5 am Dad and I both heard someone trying the door. There was zero question about it(the handle was moving). We think at that point we were in Slovenia which is puzzling given that the path to Budapest should be a direct one through Austria. What is even more puzzling is that the train was moving, where were those people going to go after they stole whatever they were going to get?


In Budapest the next morning we arranged a tour of the city. I usually HATE, with a capital H, the idea of tours. A tour is a completely impersonal way to see a city. You never walk with locals and just hit one tourist spot after another... with other tourists. This one was very different. Judy gave us a lot of cool tidbits, got us to the best lookouts and places we would not have found. I am not deluding myself into saying we saw Budapest, but we did see the highlights. Ironically, as Dad and I started to make some less than complimentary comments about the city we thought it would be a good idea to switch to Spanish. Everyone on our tour spoke Spanish. Throughout the streets...Spanish. In the cafe, I even ordered my food in Spanish. What the heck is going on there?!?! Anyway if you are going to go to these (tourist) places you might as well be with natives as you transport yourself. In other words, soaking up the local color. The train bit gave us reason to bypass that line of thought as well as having only the day in the city.

The main train station has a certain Tampa Theatre quality to it. So nice and old that you hate to tear it town but it will not suffice for the future, when Budapest starts growing in earnest. It recently was remodeled/renovated and it looks great...until you get to the edges where the nations relative poverty shows.

We got a great tour by a girl named Judy and went to both Buda and Pest. The city is magnificent, and we saw it in less that prime conditions. It is like seeing a supermodel just woke up, hung over, with a black eye and vomit all over her. When you say, dang she still looks good, that says something.

At Hero Square we saw a group of Icelandic tourists just checking the place out...huh? Then we went to the Agriculture museum. This was built a bit over 100 years ago and features something kind of neat. Every building, in this fortress was representative of a different style of architecture. Gothic, Baroque, Neoclassical, Renaissance etc. Crazy!

The Not So Blue Danube

From that area we headed over the chain bridge across the Danube to the ¨mustsee¨ Castle District, which gives you a great view of Pest. The Danube is very impressive as it carves through the two sides of the Hungarian capital. I have no hesistation recommending it to anyone in Central Europe as a day trip (at the minimum, 3-4 days would be ideal).

We got back on the train and headed back to Munich where got to the hostel and found out some stuff about Ireland. My plan was to hang out in Limerick (if only for the blog possibilities) but apparently that city is pretty dangerous. The Irish guy at the hostel was held hostage there. Nice. So he gave us some advice and I settled on a rough schedule for ol Ireland

Day One: Sleep in Dublin
Day Two: Dublin tour, Guinness brewery, Temple Bar etc.
Day Three: Pick up Em and head to Galway
Day Four: Meet some relatives
Day Five: head back to Dublin
Day Six: Head to London


Dad and I did some checking and took a rainy train trip to Bertesgarten. This is was Hitler´s infamous retreat. A long ride back put us in Munich around 8ish and we were at the Hofbrauhaus by 9ish. It was too crowded so we headed to that bar where Fabio, Merina and I had that Celebrator on tap. The food there was fantastic! Pork Schnitzel, bacon, cheese, onion, spatezel other stuff, beer. We got stuffed. For desert, I had a ¨radler¨ at the Hofbrauhaus. A Radler is near heresy but it is popular so I try everything once. It is lemonade and lager mixed. Acceptable but I´ll stick to the real stuff from now on.

Dad went to the airport and I took our day pass to the World Cup stadium, got some lunch at the Hofbrauhaus, and wrote the blog. I am off to Vienna tonight at 11:44 and expect a semi long day tomorrow of goofing around.

If I am not exhausted I will blog tomorrow night (6ish EDT) otherwise wait until Tuesday ;)



Dad and I at a Bad Hersfeld restaurant...I have a French Fry in my ear...it was funny at the time.

--Joey