Saturday, April 21, 2007

Buda or Pest

(Tom) So Tim has summed up the ladies of the night fairly well. They are everywhere. So let me tell you about Tim and Tom's bodacious train ride. By the way, the majority of our travel decisions are made at the train station when we just start throwing out cities to the person behind the window and they shoot back with times and prices. Then we yell SOLD when we hear one we like. So, while in Prague we find an overnight 9 hour train to Budapest. We get on at 11pm and secure a sleeper cabin. I should mention that we were about to get on a train to Moscow by mistake, but Tim and Tom are too smart for that and all was good. So we meet Martin after finding our little cabin. He is in charge of our car. Maybe the nicest guy I've ever met. Pretty much tells us anything we need, just let him know. So train pulls out, and Tim and I realize you can lower the window and stick your head out. I believe it was quite obvious to everyone on the train that this was all new to Tim and Tom. Eventually we went to sleep and locked our compartment as Martin warned us of the thieves.

So then at 4am, we here BANG BANG BANG....passaportes!!!! passaportes!!! and there are flashlights waving through our cabin. I nearly pissed myself. Apparently passport control checks passports a couple times per night and they have no interest in politely waking anyone up.

We pull into budapest around 730am. We leave the station and see these 3 Canadian girls we recognized from the train station in prague. Tim and Tom then quickly conversed....we have no place to stay yet, they look like they know what they're doing, let's ask them. So I say, hey we know you, yadda yadda yadda, where are you guys staying. They tell us of this great hostel they are going to. We share our map to figure out where it is. Then they act like we'd slow them down or something and start to pull away from us. Sadly for them, they know not the navigational skills of Tim and Tom, nor do they know how we conquer cities on this bodacious journey. I assess the map again, Tim checks the direction of the wind and knowing that it always blows north from the Adriatic Sea in the morning, we immediately have our bearings and head straight towards this hostel. We check in, clean up, and on our way out(45minutes later) we sit down on a bench outside just down from the hostel to formulate a game plan. Up walks the Canadians who doubted us. I stand up and announce...THAT. JUST. HAPPENED! And then Tim starts dancing around them while repeating "Shake and bake, Shake and bake" That's what happens when people doubt the bodaciousness of Tim and Tom's adventure.

So then we head out from Pest to Buda. We stroll across the Danube to Buda, then older section of the city to check out the Buda Castle and palace. Not that impressive. Then we look for this underground labyrinth we had hear about. It was pretty cool in and of itself. 1200 meters of underground caverns that at some points are 16 meters deep into the ground. But for some reason, they had decorated it with recreations of old paintings and stuff. They went a little overboard, but the caverns were cool.

Then we had a nice night on the town. We are now trying to figure out where our trip is heading. We are in an internet cafe with a guy originally from Seattle who moved here in '98 and opened a bike shop and internet cafe. He's helping us with the next stages of the journey. We may take a train to Vienna, then rent a car and drive to Halstaat Austria, then to Ljubjana, Slovenia and then check out the Croatian coast. But it's in the works. We'll keep you posted.

Until next time...

3 comments:

Leigh said...

Tom, I'm really glad you have Tim there to fight off the hookers that are constantly harassing you...What would you do without him?

Papa O'Hagan(grand see'er,all knowing one, etc) said...

Only two Irishmen would cast aside willing and able females to write blogs and seek Budda! hmmmmm.. or would they(?). I have another theory. Budda is their code for "Bodacious Unbelievable Double D A_s", and Pest is their code for "Pay Er to Stay Tonight". (now I reread the stories). Ah Ha... the code is cracked. Willie and the twins have not been so neglected after all! Love your Father!!!

Unknown said...

holy crap! that "that.just.happened." story was one of the funnier things that i cold imagine not only tom announcing, in only the way tom does, but also my brothers ensueing, "adding inslt to injury" dance. please keep up the ricky bobby quotes. please.