Right Hand Man

We were awoken at quarter to 8 by our aussie friends who were packing to leave. We got up and ready, and found a bakery to grab breakfast, as our hostel claimed to provide it, but they LIED!
We werent too sure where to go, as none of the museums open until 10 and it was only quarter after 9. So we strolled up the Danube River (this river runs through the middle of the city and divides it into Buda and Pest), marvelling at the Hungarian Parliament Building on our way to Margaret Island. The island is a beautiful park with monuments, fountains, church ruins, and a Japanese garden.
We enjoyed the scenery for a while before heading to the Ethnography Museum. This museum wins the award for being the strangest, scariest, most awkward, and confusing museum on our whole journey. There were no signs telling us where to go (which, in this building, is pretty essential) and the stuff on exhibit was mostly creepy and weird. None of it was in English either, so even if we wanted to understand it, we couldnt. The architecture of the building was the best part.
After running (almost literally) out of that museum, we headed for St. Stephens Basilica, home of St. Stephens right hand....no, for reals! His mummified right hand is in this place. Interesting...There seems to be a bias towards St. Stephen with all the churches we have been to in his name. He must have been one popular dude.
We were going to head to the Opera House, but the only way to see the inside is by guided tour at 3 and 4 o clock daily and it was only 1. Instead, we headed down Váci Utca, the pedestrianized main shopping street in Buda. We grabbed some Hungarian food on this street, then walked past the University and over the Liberty Bridge to the Gellert Hotel, where we peeked in at the hotel lobby, which is supposed to be breathtaking. It was nice, but not breathtaking - not to our standards anyway.
Then we hiked up Gellert Hill, stopping and riding down some super awesome fantastic slides (Jarrah might call this place Heaven). We went into a cave church that was built into the side of the hill, and was almost as creepy as the Ethnography Museum.
We kept hiking up this giant hill, but not qite high enough to reach the Citadel, as we were admittedly out of breath. The view of the city was beautiful from way up there, even with the somewhat gloomy day.
We champed back down the hill, passng the Gellert Monument on the way. Then we walked across the Elisabeth Bridge and headed to the supermarket for a few essentials before landing back at the hostel where we made dinner and watched a movie (Sam - we watched "The Terminal"). We made friends with an aussie guy, who never introduced himself formally, so we dont know his name. ha! He is a member of couchsurfing too. We went to a bar with him and chatted it up about our travels and experiences and home towns. When we got back to the hostel, somehow politics came up (as it has pretty much everywhere on our trip, because everyone wants to know how us Americans are going to vote, and how it is an atrocity that not everyone in the US votes - as it is the worlds most important election. Its always the same conversation) so we talked about that for a while, then headed to bed.

The Receptionist is not Receiving

We got up at 8 am for our journey to Budapest. After a tea at starbucks we headed for the train station. Our train left at 10 and arrived at 1. First things first, we immediately found an ATM because Hungarian currency is Forints, not Euros. We thought we were so clever for thinking of this, and we each retrieved 1,000 forints. After we left the ATM and did the math, we realiyed that we had only extracted 5 dollars worth of cash. Okay, but REALLY, what kind of ATM has five bucks as a withdrawal option? We went back to get more, but the line was now about 10 people long, so we agreed to deal with it later.
We found internet at a McDonalds across from the station, where we grabbed directions to our host, Ushma's house. After following her horrible directions, we found it ourselves at 2:30. No one was home and she didnt tell us a specific time to arrive, so we didnt know how long we should sit on the sidewalk and look like hobos.
We decided to head back to Mickey D's for more free internet, and we found ourselves a hostel for 12 bucks a night.
After we walked there, we were told that the receptionist was out, but he said he would be back within the next hour. So we made ourselves comfortable by Katie reading her Budapest book and Nicole trying to upload pictures for you kids back home who apparently cant rememberwhat we look like since Florence.
We sat patiently for over 2 hours, and still no receptionist. At this point it was 6:45 pm and all of the other travellers were cooking up their delicious smelling dinners while we wasted away, watching the clock from our spots on the sofa. All we could think about was finding some great restaurant and getting our hands on some authentic Halushki!
Finally we resolved to go to the supermarket and buy the ingredients for Halushki ourselves, which was interesting because Katie didnt know the Hungarian name for sour cream. We guessed, and guessed correctly. When we got back to the Hostel, the receptionist was there, but he informed us that he didnt take cash. So we had to go back out and find an ATM...at this point it was about 8 pm. We found an ATM and got back to the Hostel, gave the man our money, threw our stuff on a couple of beds, and made us some DIN DIN!
Afterwards, we made friends with two girls from Australia who were leaving in the morning for Czech. One of them has been backpacking for 6 months! We thought 5 weeks was a long time...

Black Inside?

In the morning, Katie was startled awake by a loud, firm, panicked, "KATIE!" by Nicole. Her tongue was black. Really black, like she had been sucking on licorice all night, or drawing on her tongue with a sharpie pen. She brushed her teeth a million times and it finally went away, and we made a note to call Dr. Toth, medicine woman at a decent California hour.
We grabbed breakfast and headed for the Hundertwasserhaus - an apartment building designed by Hundertwasser himself. On our way we met a very happy middle aged man named Daniel, from France. He came right up to us with a fat grin and said hello and how are we and went out of his way to walk us right to the Hundertwasserhaus, even though we didnt need or ask him to. He was in a VERY good mood. It was funny.
After the visit to the apartment building (you cant go inside), we went to the Kunsthauswein, another building designed by Hundertwasser that houses a lot of his artwork and models.
We were making our way to the Belvedere Palace and stopped to look at our map when a lady came right up to us and said cheerily, "would you like some help?" We didnt really need help, but she was so sweet we said yes anyway and she was so happy to help us!
We found the Belvedere and walked through the gardens and lower building which is known for displaying Gustav Klimts "The Kiss." We liked exploring the grounds better than the museum...
Right across the street was the train station, so we grabbed lunch and bought our train tickets to Budapest. From there we took the U-bahn (metro) to Schloss Schonbrunn, another palace in Vienna. These gardens were even more vast and beautiful than the Belvedere! Here we took the 26 room tour of the 1,440 room palace and loved every minute of it.
At that point we had had a pretty full day and it was about time to call Dr. Toth, so we started to head home. When we got Jeanette on the phone she immediately said, "Well, did she take any pepto bismol? Because that turns EVERYTHING black." Piece of cake! Nicole had, in fact, taken some pepto...she wasnt dying! YAY!
We grabbed some food at the supermarket and headed back to Mattias, put in yet another movie and made dinner. Two more movies and a greatly named ice cream bar later (it was called Magnum - Temptation), we hit the sack.
Oh, and for all of our avid readers who are curious (namely Sam), here is a list of all the movies we watched at Mattias house: Click, The Girl Next Door, Knocked Up, The Devil Wears Prada, Old School, The Italian Job, The Stepford Wives, and Meet The Parents. :)

Movies, movies, and more movies

Our first day in Vienna consisted of not much more than walking to the St. Stephens Cathedral, getting a few necessities at H&M, then Nicole feeling sick. So we headed home, put in a movie and lounged around. When that movie was over, we said "what the heack" and put in another.
At 5:45 we realiyed we were hungry and raced to the supermarket to try to get dinner before it closed at 6. We were successful. After dinner, we watched some Demetri Martin on YouTube and put in yet another movie, then hit the hay. All in all, a very successful day!
Okay, so our first real day in Vienna:
We started with a late breakfast with Jill before she headed back to Germany. (Kelly already left for Salzburg and Mattia was at work).
We saw her off to the U-Bahn (the metro) and headed for the Albertina Museum. Another unbelievable museum where again the modern art was our favorite. It was amazing!
Next stop was the Hofburg where they happened to be holding a design show and today was the last day. Unfortunately it cost a ridiculous sum of money to get in, so we went outside and suclked a little before heading to the Museum Quaters, where there are so many museums one doesn´t know what to do with oneself.
We started at the lomography shop. Which Katie´s brother recently got her into. If you don´t know about it, you should google it-it is very cool photography.
We tried to go to the Modern Art Museum, but it was closed, so we headed to the architecture museum, which was very cool! There were drafting tools over 100 yeras old, and it was set up to give a glimpse of the inside of architecture firms, and there were computers set up with demos of architecture programs like Sketup, Vectorworks, ArchiCad and Allplan. We loved it.
After these museums we headed back to our neck of the woods and grabbed some delicious dinner, then checked our email and tried to find a host in Budapest, then headed home and put on another movie and then another. Katie did a little research on the last few stops on our journey and then we fell asleep.

Dance Machines

Same day in Vienna, Part 2: We knew that Mattia had more couchsurfers staying with him, so at 7:45 Nicole thought we should try the doorbell again in case the surfers were home. Sure enough, they were! These two cute southern belles answered our beckon with pleasant smiles! No language barrier or sexual tension, it was great!
They made us feel at home, even though it wasn´t their home. They are Kelly and Jill, here on Fullbright Scholarships, teaching English in Germany, and couchsurfing during their time off.
We thought we had a couple of crazy stories, but after listening to them talk, our jaws hit the floor. We knew we were going to have a memorable time with them.
Mattia got home around 9:30 and we had dinner and got to know each other over a few beers and game of Kings Cup.
We headed out and went to a college party-one like we have never attended before. It was literally in one of the school buildings and when you walked in you thought there was a fog machine until you took a breath-it was just that muggy with cigarette smoke. DISGUSTING! It was packed with people, with large projector screens and very strange, loud music. We were there long enough to use the restroom, then we left, thank god!
We headed for a club called Empire, seeing the St. Stephens Cathedral along the way. This club was very ....interesting. Very low budget, but we had so much fun dancing our pants off. We stayed until 4 AM, and according to the pictures we danced all the way home too! Once home we fell right to sleep.

Layin´Low

Venice, Day 2:
Not much of a deviation from Day 1...We just took out St. Mark´s Square on day 2. Venice is a little town, with not much to do, just sort of stroll around and admire its unique modes of transportation. We went on the internet, which cost a horrible 9 euros, that´s $13 folks, for an hour! We went back to the supermarket and stocked up on more beer as well as snacks for the 8 1/2 hour train ride the next day.
Venice to Vienna:
After a really shitty night of sleep (we both were tossing and turning) our alarms went off almost exactly in unison at 7 am. Neither of us wanted to get up, but we managed.
After packing up all our crap and eating a quick breakfast, we dropped our hostel keys off at the main office and crossed our fingers that our train was not participating in the strike that our hostel warned us about. Lucky for us, the train was there, and still planning to leave.
So we validated our tickets (we remembered , for once) and jumped on.
The trip to Vienna was a grueling 8 1/2 hours of sitting and eating pringles, pumpkin seeds and Special K bars. The Austrian countryside was to die for though. All of the leaves on the trees were turning brilliant colors; the valleys were green with icy cold rivers running through them; the mountains were tall, with hints of snow at their peaks; the hills were scattered with ancient castles. It was really amazing.
Vienna, in contrast, is a huge metropolis in a vast flatland. We arrived a little after 5pm and immediately found some substantial food to eat. We then asked two kind-looking Austrian girls for directions and we made our way to Mattia´s house(he is our host in Vienna!) We arrived without anz misdirection and rang his bell, and...no answer.
We had a hunch he wouldn´t be there because he was supposed to email Nicole, but she hadn´t got a chance to check it. Coincidentally there was an internet place just down the street, so Nicole checked her email and sure enough, he wasn´t going to be home until 9pm.
We had also passed a Starbucks, so we agreed to take refuge there for a while.

Islands in the Sun

Our goal was to sleep in our first morning in Venice, but once again we woke up fairly early. So we packed up our dirty laundry and decided Wednesday morning was going to be all about running errands.
First stop: the train station to reserve our seats for the ride to Vienna on Friday. Which, by the way, our hostel informed us that Friday there is supposedly a strike on all public transportation. But we got our tickets for Friday anyways and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we don't get trapped here.
Second stop: the Laundry Mat. And we desperately needed some clothes washed. 12 euros and 1 1/2 hours later, we had clean clothes and headed back to our hostel to drop them off. We then set off for some food and some sightseeing. We found a great lunch, and no we didn't eat pizza people! We had some delicious pasta. Stuffed as ravioli's, we wandered around Venice. But then we came across a Gelateria and couldn't say no, no matter how stuffed we were. We strolled through the streets and ended up at the Rialto Bridge. We did a little shopping and then decided to go check out St. Mark's Square. With our sore feet and now empty tummies, we agreed to head to the supermarket for snacks and beer, then back to our cozy hostel.
We watched a little MTV, played MASH, made Cootie Catchers, wrote a poem and then went to sleep!