I guess in life it's all the way you look at a situation. For example, there's some days where you can wake up at 6:30A.M on a squeaky top bunk bed with five other people in a room crammed in there like a can of sardines laid out in the basking summers sun giving off a stench one of else can quite describe. Still in a bit of a haze from the devil-y delicious hot wine you were drinkin' the previous night before at one of the best ruin clubs in town (more on that to come), and suddenly you remember you have a train to catch in under an hour. You can stumble to the nearest metro station with a city map in your hands, buy a ticket determined to make it to the train station at the departure time. There are those times where one can get lost in Budapests underground metro, a city below the city for those who go to work every morning without thinking where they are, or what stop they have to get off at. For them, it comes almost naturally as if they were a zombie dragging their feet onto the subway, ready to eat up the words mumbled from their bosses overused lips. Then, sometimes those zombie people will tell you incorrect trains to get on to help you get to the train station, and eventually you realize you've passed a certain underground stop many time in the past 30 minutes. In cities, there are signs that point the way of 'EXIT' in another foreign language and, well, they can go to the exit, or they can connect to another line that you need and the planners expect everyone to be psychic to know that. Yes, there are times in life when you can be lost below ground, in an unknown city, staring at a clock and it is showing the exact time your train leaves to another city, a.k.a you missed your train and you know the next one is not coming or another two hours.

So, what does one do in a situation like that you might be asking?

Well, my first reaction was to throw down all my bags in the middle of the platform and scream until whatever the hell piece of rubble building lie cemented above me, giving a wake-up call to the unsuspecting people. I could have done that, yeah. Or, I can think to myself 'I'm lost in the labyrinth of Budapests metro city, the capital city of Hungary and I am getting a little hungry too, but I am lovin' it'... I'm not too sure if any of you caught the reference to the McDonalds slogan, for that is where I find myself once again. At the same McDonalds as when I first got into the Holy city of Buda, no wait, I'm on the Pest city of Budapest, forgive me for that. I wonder if McDonalds will sue me for using their trademarked slogan, or possibly, they will pay me lots of money for advertising their company. Hopefully the latter comes true... If only they knew how much of their free WiFi I use.

Seriously, what I am trying to get at is your attitude is all dependent on yourself and how you look at situations, nothing more, nothing less. Look at me preaching like an out dated, missing paged book aptly entitled '100 and one ways of teaching, speaking, and preaching about preaching'. Never heard of it?
It's a classic. 

Also, what I am saying is that we should learn to trust our intuition, and not the finger-pointing of a complete strangers at 7:00 in the morning when your beneath a city. But sometimes, those strangers do help as well. 

At this point in the post I would like to leave you with a quote that I over heard from a fellow genius traveler:

      "Shit doesn't roll uphill..."

No. No it does not, unless of course it is being rolled by someone in the uphill direction then, it would in fact be rolling uphill. But, I don't know who would do that shitty job (Pun).

-Autumo

Getting hungry in Hungary (catchy, ain't it)

Walking out of the train station with my iPhone battery nearly about to die... and I know it has the directions on it about how to get to the hostel. I scramble to find any piece of paper and a working pen in my little backpack before the phone dies to write down how to get to the hostel, but of course, it died. McDonalds has been my savior on more than one occasion, and for several reasons. This time it was trying to avoid the guard standing by the front door pretending like he actually cares for protecting McDonalds from hungry savages, but I escaped him and found an outlet to plug my phone into. Usually I'm going to the fast food giant to grab some disgustingly delicious food because all of the supermarkets are closed, but not this time no, this time in Pest it was different. 

Well, I have been living on the Pest side of Budapest for the past two nights, and staying here either one more night or two. I still haven't made up my mind about that fact yet. My ritual is to find the closest supermarket, preferably Lidl because it is amazingly cheap and has almost everything I need. Lidl is like Costco, expect much smaller and not everything comes in huge quantities like we all have to feed 10 children in our families. For example, I help myself to water by opening up the package that it came shipped in, unless some other thirst quencher has done the deed before me, but I usually end up buying carbonated water considering I can't read the labels. After two months of travelling Europe, I still do not like 'Mineral water', or what ever fancy terms they consider putting on the bottle to increase the price a couple cents. There is a local supermarket around the corner and it is the most money I have ever spent on food to date. I keep glaring at the receipt making sure my eyes are seeing the truth, as it states that I have spent 1,670.00 HUF on four steaks, a pre-made salad, two somewhat ripe apples, an onion and one clove of garlic. But, when I did the calculations from Hungarian forint to Canadian dollars I spent a whopping $7.67, hard to believe ain't it? The dinner was made for the night, but I knew that eventually my stomach would remind me that it needed food again the next day.

So, what to do when I'm hungry in Hungary.

As previously mentioned to those who are actually paying attention and not just skimming through this post, I made non local steaks and a garden fresh salad for the first night. Today after the free walking tour was over I found some traditional Hungarian food. Unfortunately I cannot recall the name of the first delicacy, but kürtős kalács is amazing especially with coconut shavings. Tomorrow I am hoping to find some other traditional food to post them on here to make you all drool some more.

Smoke fried Pork legs, cabbage, onions, lettuce and some white sauce.
1,200 HUF

The chimney desert: kürtős kalács

900 HUF

I'm going to go back a couple nights to when I was in Bratislava, Slovakia. I was thinking 'what can I do differently for my travelling experience', that's when I remembered CouchSurfing. After two days without any replies from any hosts, luckily, some brave soul replied back and said he would put me up for a couple days on his couch in Vienna. We set a time to meet out front of his apartment, I hopped on the train, and set forth for his pad. Now, it's not that I'm cheap... I just like to spend money other ways and not on public transport if I don't have to. I knew it would be a long walk to his house from the train station, but after a nice hour long walk with my backpacks strapped to my back dragging me down with every step I finally made it. I waited for him, and waited until an hour and a half passed by then I decided to find a McDonalds (see where it has been my savior, simply due to the free WiFi) and I booked a hostel.


I messaged him after and thanked him for considering opening up his home to me, which he subtly stated that he had been into a motor bike accident. The first thing that would pop into anyone's head is "yeah right, that's just an overused excuse that you spluttered out to me". He invited me to come back to his apartment for a beer, which I am not overly sure why I agreed to go back, possibly because I wanted to see if he actually got into his so-called accident. Sure enough, I found him with a newly equipped pair of crutches and bruises. Well, we had a beer and he then invited me over to his sisters house because she was making dinner. For the first time in two months, I had someone else cook me food... and delicious risotto and salads for that matter with free champagne and beer to boot! What else could I ask for?

That was my first adventure couchsurfing, and a memorable one to say the least.

I'll leave it at this for today.

Autumo

 

The Market

Langos 

Goulash

I sit at the table eating my spaghetti and pasta sauce, well I thought it was pasta sauce but I can't read Czech and ended up buying some olive sauce, along with free bread that is conveniently placed in the center of the table. The kettle boils in the background hinting to me that the tea is ready. I drizzle some found olive oil (just in case my olive sauce wasn't enough) over the steamed pasta and grind the black and brown pepper over top to enhance the taste, with a rolled up sleeve I dive in for my Thanksgiving feast. I can't help to imagine the delicious food that my family and friends are eating back home, but they probably can't imagine what I'm eating either, so it balances itself out. I stop, give my thanks, and continue eating.

I arrived in Brno, Czech Republic after staying in Krakow for three days. The three trains took over eight hours, with a thirty minute delay in the pouring rain in Ostrava, but once I touched the ground in Brno, I found my hostel and crawled up the ten-ish flights of stairs to make it to reception. I like to think that whomever put the hostel this high up in the flat is testing my endurance and perseverance, it's rewarding once I made it though. While waiting at the train station in Ostrava trying to avoid the downpour, a man came up to me and started speaking in what I assume to be Czech. I politely stated that I do not speak Czech, but only English, and he continued to mumble away to me in Czech expecting an answer to his question. This has happened on numerous occasions, and I've learned to do the whole 'I don't know what you're saying to me look, while holding my hands palm up to the sky with shrugged shoulders as the universal symbol of No Idea'. Since I began traveling, I have a new superpower that I wish to possess, unlike my younger wished superpower of being able to fly, I now wish that I could speak any given language at any time. Though being able to fly and do that would be quite amazing.

Getting to Brno has been an adventure.

I need to stop here and rant for one moment about getting used to different keyboards in every new country that I visit. It has taken me over 30 minutes just to write this because I keep backspacing misspelled words, etc, etc. For instance, the Y key is the Z key, but it is labeled Y with a tiny z in the bottom right hand corner, likewise for the Z key. I still can't make the right closing bracket sign without the help of the Czech girl who walks by occasionally. The @ sign I figured out by googling 'how to get the at sign on a Czech keyboard,' luckily the responder simply stated press ALT and V together, even though there is an @ sign where the 2 is but no number of buttons I press will make it appear. Or, I am looking at a key with 5 different options to choose from. DISCLAIMER: If anyone catches any spelling mistakes I swear that it is not my lack of knowledge, but I shall blame this keyboard.

Moving on...

From my last post in Belgium, I have touched soil on six countries, whether it be for two days or eleven days. Amsterdam was exactly how I pictured the city to be. Getting lost there was very easy since every street looked the same by cloning the canals one after the other, the cafe shops line the streets while a gentle breeze of their perfume lingers out from their doors. The houses look like they are about to tip over due to the slantedness of them. Yet, I can't help thinking that the residence of Amsterdam see much more than that in their beautiful city.

The hostel that I stayed at is one that I would recommend to anyone taking a gander to the Dutch capital. It is a caravan park consisting of two to three person caravans, an outdoor fully equipped kitchen with free breakfast to boot, and of course, outdoor WC's, or water closets for those who do not know the acronym. The park is situated about a 5 minute walk from a huge lake with little islands speckled everywhere in their waters... it was definitely a nice break from the hustle-and-bustle of the busy city. Two German girls taught me how to make 'little pancakes' as I will call them simply because I can't recall its' proper name. Photo attached below:

 

 

Did you know that Luxembourg is the worlds second richest country? What, Luxembourg? Where's that? Well it's a small country, positioned between... it's easier if you google rather then me blabbing on. Any who, I was using a map that suggested I go from one street to the other to make it to my hostel, so that's what I did. I made it to the first street, turned right to where the second street was supposed to be and it was a market square. Lost, I asked someone to point me to the right street, and the kind lady showed me too an elevator that connected the two streets together. First time ever that I have had to take an elevator from street to street. It makes sense though once I truly seen the city.
 

From Luxembourg, to Berlin, to Copenhagen where I found myself questioning whether or not I was still in Copenhagen. In the midst of the small suburbs lie one reckless area what is known as Christiania or Freetown to some. It's home to about 650, or 850, or 1000 citizens (depending on where the information is gathered from) living in make-shift homes spray painted, or decorated with a variety of art, and it has three simple rules that must be abided by, numero uno: Have fun, two: Don't run, and lastly, no photos. It was started by a group of Hippies in the early '70s when they took over an abandoned military barracks, and developed it into a new society so-to-speak. They remind all the tourists of the 'no photo' rule by having spray painted signs everywhere. The Løn is the currency of Christiania, but gladly accept Danish Krone as well. While walking through the crowded streets, dogging bottles and boozers, a haze from the legal pot or hash stands strolled by I couldn't help to think that this would be a bottle-pickers dream place. I think that if the world suddenly got rid of the government, and most straight-edge adults, this is what it would turn out to become. All in all, it was definitely an interesting place to see.

Flag of Christiania
 

 

That is all for right now...