Life is a lesson - better learn quick!!
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
My biggest piece of advice to any traveller is to have a spare couple of hundred dollars in a strong currency, ie the Euro! It has helped us out of some really interesting situations so far but none more than today… We had tickets to Budapest from Prague, only problem is that in the train stations don't cater for English in the slightest. There for you are on your own, which is fine but when it comes to international train trips it’s a bit ‘make it up as you go’.
We managed to get on the train ok, we met a couple of young guys and talked about strategies on how to get a cabin to yourself for sleeping. As we have a second class ticket we aren’t allowed to sleep in the actual sleeper compartments, which is fine because they aren’t much better anyway on Czech Trains. As the train pulls up it honestly is a race, as simple as that, absolute bedlam. Sarah ran to the front of a carriage and I ran to the back, lucky that we had seen the train early as we were watching out for it, because behind us a storm was brewing, lots of pushing and shoving as everyone realised that they might miss out!! Sarah found a room quick as I had the bags, and we settled in nicely – Pulling the curtains, locking the door and turning out the light…
Overall I would give the train a pretty good rating, but was really lucky that we had a cabin to ourselves, there was only just enough room to lie down, but was fairly comfortable. Only issue is that as you go over the border the passport control comes thru the train and stamps your passport, so you get woken up every few hours. But really it’s quick and painless.
Ok we're at the bit now that we get into trouble. We have been reading our lonely planet guide and it told us that money and hostel information would be very easy to organise at the train station so we weren’t stressing about any of this. Possibly not the best way to travel but we were very disappointed in our Prague hostel and thought that this time we would do the tourist information thing and check the hostel before paying. Our tickets had a train station printed on them and we asked a local if this was the right stop as the train pulled up to it. Yes it was the right stop, but unfortunately the ticket didn’t have the main station on it. It was the border station of Budapest. I guess most places in the world this wouldn’t be to much of a problem but we’re in eastern Europe.
We didn't realise this, as it looked like a big station from the inside of the train. But as we got off the platform and saw the station from a better angle, we realised it was a bit of a shitter. And to make it worse NO ONE spoke English - not even Engrish! (See Engrish.com if you're not sure what we mean!) We spent over an hour trying to find out just where the hell in Budapest we were, but to no avail. Also there was no way of getting money so we couldn't get on any public transport. Finally we gave up and started walking, first down a mainish looking street then deciding that it was a really long street with not a lot on it, turned back to the beginning and followed the tram tracks hoping that we would stumble onto something.
After a short distance we found a hotel in the middle of nowhere, and it really didnt look like much from a distance, but we kept walking anyway - it was the best shot we had. As we got closer we could see that it actually wasn't a small hotel and we both started to get the feeling that we had finally done something right.
Do you speak English?
A little, was the reply and from there we were sorted. The Hotel receptionist actually did have good english and we managed to get a 48 hour pass for all public transport. Thank god I had Euro's on me otherwise we would have been stuffed as Visa seemed to be a bit too advanced for them.
So three and a half hours after we first got off the train we were standing in the main station. Within the time that we had walked in and tried to read the signs to see about accomodation, someone had approached us from Hostelling International. Needless to say we booked a hostel, (which provided a free shuttle to there and then), we paid for a couple of nights and promptly fell asleep.
We went for a little walk to see our immediate surroundings after our little sleep and had dinner. Nothing to 'out there' but tomorrow we will do the big sight seeing. We have decided that we won't do anymore organised tours as they cost too much, we're just going to get the appropriate brochure and do the walk ourselves. Will give it a go anyway.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
