6/20/08 Friday ~ Travel Journal

Budapest, Hungary

9:46am

We are at the train station trying to make reservations for a night train tonight. This time with beds! Our hope for the day is to visit a spa that the man who rented our room to us told us about. Apparently it's very cheap and it's unisex. Jere came over from the line earlier and said that the reservations are not made in the computer - they're hand written...it's so strange to think that people still work that way. Last night Jere reminded me that this area used to be under Soviet rule and it's weird but I had already been feeling like there was that air about the town. Maybe just something I got from the movies. There was just something distinctly different there in Eastern Europe than Western Europe.

2:01pm

We just spent the last two hours in the "spa". Really it was just a cold swimming area and a warm one. There was also a dry sauna. Jere sat in the same spot where there were bubbles that started periodically. When the bubbles in his area would stop, bubbles and jet streams would start in the ring around the area he was in and the current would push people around. I laid in the sun, swam and visited the sauna. Now we're going to walk around and look at some stuff before we head to the train. (code for "I have no idea what we're going to do and we're bored") We leave at 6:05pm and arrive in Zurich, Switzerland at 6am.

2:30pm

Right now we're on an island in the Danube river. We're in a park watching a dancing fountain with music. It's been a very peaceful day and continues on as we sit in the shade listening to the music mix with the sounds of the water flowing.

4:21pm

We are in the train station ready to go. Unfortunately our train doesn't leave for two more hours. For the first time on this trip we're both regretting deciding to come here. Budapest seems nice but it's definitely not a place we enjoyed much. In hindsight we would liked to stay in Venice another day. But that's hindsight we won't focus on it. We couldn't find any postcards so this section of our journal will be void of pictures until I develop some. (we'll see if that happens)

10:30pm

We are on the night train to Zurich and are sharing a coachette with a guy from Sydney Australia named Shawn. he is so interesting! We've been talking since before our train left at 6:05pm. I love meeting new people. This is the most exciting part - not knowing who you'll meet if you don't go. If we hadn't taken this night train he would never have existed to us.