Italy and Budapest

I'm finding it more difficult to keep up with the blog, but it's been a few days and a lot has happened.

I left Caen and met up with the guys in Milan. The train ride there was beautiful, the mountains look just like home. Milan is ok, it's not how I pictured Italy, it's very modern, the architecture isn't very old, and the streets are very wide. We went out to eat, the "Italian" restaurant we ate at was staffed by Asians. That wasn't a good sign, my pizza wasn't great. The other guys liked their pasta though. I made up for it by finding an awesome gelato place. We walked around Milan at night, there isn't much to see, some expensive boutique stores and some nice parks. We stopped at a bar located at the entrance to the park. It was just a booth and some tables with bean bag chairs. Dalton was immediately convinced it was a gay bar, I figured it just had mostly gay clientele. It was still cool sitting in the park drinking beers, made me miss patios back home.

We left Milan the next day for Venice, Italian trains so far are the worst. They're not awful, but out of the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, and France they're not the nicest. Venice is more like the Italy I imagined, it's a pretty crazy place, there's a huge bridge for trains and cars to get in, but after that it's just boats and foot traffic. We stayed in a campsite outside of Venice, we booked a cabin for 4. We were all hoping for a nice secluded cabin, with some lawn chairs, a lake or river nearby and a cooler filled with beers. Campsites in Europe suck. I now see why RVing (or caravanning as its called here) has such a negative stigma. Campsites are pretty much a place to park your rv and just sit. Our cabin was nice enough, but there was nothing to do at the site and Venice was a 25 minute bus ride away. There was a custom bike shop down the rode with some amazing Harleys though. We sat in the sun roasting, drinking, and playing games on Bryce's iPad. We spent the next day exploring Venice. The canals and pedestrian only streets are amazing, I was on a mission to find good pizza and more gelato. This can be difficult as I had one of the worst pizzas ever in Venice and one of the best. I'm also slightly disappointed that Famoso back home is still the best pizza I've had. We left Venice and headed to Vienna, Austria on a night train.

Austrian trains are really nice, but we were on a night train with no beds and the temperature in the car had to be close to 30 degrees Celsius. There's a joke somewhere in their about comparing a train ride in Austria to an oven, but I'm not sure how well Austrians dig Nazi jokes.

We only stayed in Vienna for a couple hours before heading to Budapest, everyone has recommended it so I'm excited. It'll be cheaper than everywhere else we've been. The train ride was alright, some of the Hungarian countryside is pretty behind the times. The farming communities are filled with old crumbling buildings, and small shacks. There's alot of horse drawn buggies too. Budapest is pretty cool though, it definitely feels like eastern Europe. The women are either gorgeous or hideous, and there are remnants of the communist regime, and there are some pretty old shitty looking cars, buses, and buildings. Our hostel is nice, we're in a 12 person dorm but each group of beds has its own kinda private room. Beer is incredibly cheap, and the food is great. I had some stellar goulash.

Once again we've fallen victim to a pub crawl, it was a bit of a walk from our hostel to meet everybody. So we stopped at a bunch of bars on the way. Every bar here seems pretty awesome. Many occupy the courtyard of an office or apartment building and have plenty of benches and trees, it's awesome to drink outside when the weather is so great. But this also allows everyone to smoke, my jeans still reek. Budapest seems to be the first city where the music isn't entirely western. We met more Aussies again and many more Canadians, but this pub crawl had the most variety of nationalities. Once again our obnoxious party behavior was likes by most and hated by a few. Two girls, one from Australia and one American immediately blew us off after finding out we were only 23, and not up to the level of maturity they had at 28. One German guy was also pissed when Dalton began to talk to his girlfriend. Everyone else was great though. One bar we visited had student artists come in every month and totally redecorate the whole bar, it had stuffed rabbits arcing across the ceiling. Our guide recommended we try Palinka, she compared it to schnapps and said it was a Hungarian specialty the bar had 150 different flavors, we tried grape. It was horrible, it tasted like rubbing alcohol. I immediately felt drunker and held off on any more beer.

I doubt we'll do much today, some of us are pretty hungover and after 15 hours of traveling yesterday we're still tired.

Oh, Bryce and I also bought our plane tickets to Thailand. We leave on the 4th of June. 6 and a half hours to Abu Dhabi then another 6 and a half to Bangkok, we might have a job hook up in Australia too.