IKEA!!!! He he he - so our adventures leading to Stokholm were many and varied. First we hopped a train from Sofia, Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. No biggie, nothing really went wrong except as we were sitting at a station, Ana noticed that the train had disconnected right in front of our car and we FREAKED OUT thinking that we were on the wrong part of the train and that it would go to Bucharest without us, so we grabbed all our stuff (heavy, heavy bags) and rushed to the other train. There was a woman on the train who then shook her head at us said Bucharest and pointed back to the car we were originally on. Feeling very foolish we took our stuff back to where we were. I'm sure the guy watching all this in the station got a kick out of it. So we made it to Bucharest and got on the night train to Budapest. We hadn't made any reservations on that train so we were not in a sleeper car, so we spent the night trying to sleep in seats that really were not made for sleeping and the lights in the car never went off, all night. So by the time we pulled in to Budapest - an hour later than we thought - we had missed our connection. We talked to the ticket office and they gave us an itinerary that had us leaving Budapest at 8 pm. So we were stuck in the station (because no one wants to sightsee with 20 - 50 lbs of stuff on their back) from 11 am - 8 pm. The people watching was fun and for lunch I did have a great gyro, so it wasn't a total loss. The train to Berlin was also a night train, but this time we got a sleeper car. We didn't think that we would meet a very friendly old Hungarian man who told us he was a chiropractor and tried to help Ana with her knee... I say tried because the next morning it was swollen and worse than before. He was very insistant in hoping that she would come back and he could fix it for her. We also met a guy from LA on the train, and he told us many fun stories of the "party hostels" that he had been in - frankly, we're glad we have missed those! But we did get a good night of sleep which was very needed as Mandi was getting a little bitchy!!!! We made it to Berlin without any mishaps, got on the train to Copenhagen, ended up sitting in some people's assigned seats, so we seat jumped about 3 times until we were finally settled. In Copenhagen we met a nice German man who was also on his way to Sweden, although not as far as Stockholm and wanted to converse on the train. Unfortunatly, I was not in the mood for small talk, I just wanted to relax, so we didn't go sit with him. Turned out to be a good thing because we needed reservations on that train as well, and didn't have any! Thankfully the nice man on the train sold us some reservations, then the nice lady who came on the train after him told us that the seats behind us - in a glass enclosure - were free. So we sat there and people would come by on the way to the bathroom and kinda stare at us and then move along. So I got silly and said it was a good thing that they put the gabby Americans in their own enclosure and they were probably thinking "Don't tap the glass, you'll scare the Americans!" We grabbed a quick nap around 11 pm, were off the train by 11:45 and on our way to the hostel once we figured out where southwest was! (Seriously, never go to Europe without a compass!) I would like to say THANK YOU to all the nice train employees who take pity on stupid Americans who are still trying to figure out the rail system!!! BUT - we didn't end up in Serbia!
So we are here for about 3 days, today will probably consist of a walk around the area, foodage at some point and hopefully launderizing for me! No snow yet, but Ana is still afraid of the cold... he he he - silly Texan! My one complaint about the hostel - the shower is one of those push the button things and the button does not say on for as long as I would like!!! But the good thing is that I'm finally clean!!! I had to laugh because I have a progression of the hair.. first day it's clean, nothing is done - second day in goes the headband, third day on it's bandanna on the head time! I think we've gotten some funny looks for that, too. Ana thinks it's because they either think she's a gypsy or some kind of blue flower gang. I think she's being silly, but what do I know?
All in all, this has been an amazing trip so far, and we both feel like we're trying to cram in as much as we can before we go home, which is funny because we're not going home soon, but we feel like it's been so much fun that it must be ending soon. Does that make any sense?! Probably not. Ana tells me that since I have blonde hair and green eyes, I totally fit in here with the other Europeans, I think she's looking forward to Spain and Italy where I'll be the obvious tourist! He he.
Trying to put down some thoughts on the trip so far and it's hard. I love the train traveling but I really don't want to do another marathon of 2 days crossing all of Europe. I like checking out the hostels, but I really don't like finding and booking them. Meeting people has been fun, Ana is the queen of small talk - I think it's a southern thing - and watching her is very interesting and fun. Walking the cobblestone streets and seeing all the people out in the parks in Sofia was as crazy as dodging the bikers in Copenhagen. I like that all of Europe has different "flavors" if you will and different tones to each city. There have been people trying to get into political debates with us, which we have (so far) politely declined to get into. Theresa was right - they love American politics over here and a lot of them like Obama... although the hostel guy today said that he's beeen dissapointed in Obama recently. Asked if we saw the debate and we were like, "No, we were on a train all of yesterday." Craziness! Dealing with all the currency changes has been interesting, too. We know some countries use the Euro, but so far we've only really been through Germany. Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Sweden all use their own currency. So it has been interesting dealing with that. We are planing on hitting up Finland and Norway in the next few days and hopefully getting our tour of Amsterdam after that and then heading toward Romaia again to stay with Ana's friend. This of course is all tenative as we really are keeping things as open as possible.
This just in... we may be taking a cruise to Helsinki!!! That's all from me, a word from Ana after we get something to EAT!!!!
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