Austria to Hungary to France

Well....the past 10 days or so have been kind of a blur but I'll try to sum it up best I can.

4th of July was actually one of the best I ever had even though I was in Austria. Had two BBQs, first with Tascha's family nearby and the second one at night with some Hungarians from Budapest. Tascha hosts couchsurfing (some of you may have heard of it) and for the night was hosting 5 Hungarian girls and 1 guy who were biking around the lake that she lives by. We had a big BBQ and drank a bit and they offered to see if David and I wanted to bike to Hungary on the last part of their trip. So the next day we took some bikes and finished the trip in Sopron, Hungary. All in all it ended up being about a 100km (62 miles) bike for David and I going there and back. We ended up making pretty good friends with them though and they offered to let us stay in Budapest with one of them if we were to go....so on Tuesday, my last day at Tascha's, we decided to head over to Budapest. Start of a lonnnng couple days for me, I was awake for almost 65 hours straight....





Trying to keep things as cheap as possible, David and I tried our hand at hitchhiking to Budapest. Tascha dropped us off at a gas station on the highway and I said goodbye and we were holding up our signs for about 2 hours before we were able to get a ride from a Romanian guy. He was actually really nice and bought us both a 3-course lunch once we were in Hungary.


Budapest was fantastic though, I think it has to be one of my favorite cities in Europe so far, but maybe it was just the people we were with. David and I were only there from about 5pm to 11am but it was awesome. We stayed with our new friend Veronika and she and our other new friend Angi showed us all around the city until sunset. They seemed to know pretty much everything about Budapest so it was like we had our own personal tour guides telling us what everything was. Then we met up with the rest of the biking group at an outdoor bar and ended up staying out until about 4am or so. At this point I had been up for about 22 hours...





Before I left Budapest though, I had to see the thermal baths that everyone raves about though. Budapest is known as "Spa City" from all of the natural hot springs in the area, and some beautiful baths were built here over the past few centuries. I woke up at 6am and ran a few miles Gellert baths. I got there and just had to laugh...I was easily the only person under 45-50 there. It was full of old Hungarian men either naked or wearing cloth coverings. No wonder I was getting so many strange looks as I walked in. The baths were great though. It was cool to just sit and relax and take it all in, and walking out was the most refreshed I had felt in a long time. There wasn't any way I was taking pictures in there, but here's one I found with it all empty. Got back and it was time to start my journey to France... (awake 28/30 hours)

Boarded to train to go back to Vienna for a few hours, hung out in the park before taking my train from Vienna to Frankfurt, Germany. Got to Frankfurt about midnight, but had to take a 2-hour bus ride to the airport at 3am. My plane flew into Carcassonne, France and I took a couple trains to Toulouse, and then to Damiatte, where I am now. Arrived at the house at lunch time to see 13 other helpers at the table (still awake for about 52/54 hours) ! I've got plenty of stories from the past 4 days in France, but I'll save them for tomorrow...

Here's my list of cities so far that I've visited in Europe so you can get an idea of my route:

Florence, Italy
Rome, Italy
Orte, Italy
Venice, Italy
Purbach, Austria
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Damiatte, France

Take care everyone.....bonne nuit!

Austria Pics

Well I'm in France now, Damiatte to be exact, and I'll make a few posts to get up to speed with everything. Here are a few of my favorite pics from Austria before I sum it all up...






The pictures are of....me with my greased up food at the music festival, Tascha serving beer at the festival, my awesome new haircut before we shaved it off, me destroying stuff, Tascha's dad grilling out for the BBQ, our BBQ with the Hungarian girls before the bike ride the next day, and biking through Austria on our way to Hungary. Then it was off to Budapest!

Purbach!

Since I have limited Internet here in Austria I can’t upload pictures but I suppose I could give an update of what’s been happening here in Purbach. Like I said before, my host is Tascha and for the most part it is Tascha, David, and myself hanging out and fixing up the house. I’ll post the pictures once I get to my next place, but right now just too slow to upload.

Tascha got the house from her grandmother and has restored the entire house so far except for two rooms at the front end of it. During my time here David and I have taken up the flooring in the unfinished part and have prepared the electricity to be finished by the electrician, and also prepared the floors for cementing. We are going to pour the cement for the floor any day now, just waiting on a few things to get finished. We are (mostly David) also turning the floorboards into benches and cabinets to use around the house, knocking down/removing a brick room attached to the house, preparing the walls for plastering, doing general work on the house, and also cooking lots of great food and seeing the sights!

I have learned so much about construction that it almost makes me want to buy a run-down, foreclosed home in Chicago and fix it all up myself. I can see how satisfying it is to Tascha to restore this house into a home and I think it would be a great thing to do if the right situation came up.

I’m also continuing to learn about great food and cooking. Austria is mostly known for its fatty, heavy, greasy, and delicious foods, more specifically sausages, schnitzel, cakes and pastries, and wines. I never knew Austria produced so much wine, but everywhere we go all I see are fields and fields of grapes. Tascha’s grandfather actually owns a farm and produces a very good wine for the region and I saw where he makes it and everything…..very cool stuff.

Traveling-wise, we went to a three-day music festival called Donauinselfest last weekend. It’s a festival on the Danube River in Vienna that was pretty big with lots of artists from all over the world. There were only four that David and I recognized though…Daughtry, Razorlight, Snow Patrol, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Tascha and her friend Kati worked at a food/drink stand for the festival so David and I hung out and got free food and beer while we were there walking around.

So I’ve been to Vienna (Wien) and seen a little of the city, but mostly I’ve seen the area around where Tascha lives. Purbach is a small city of about 2,000, but it is connected with other small cities that surround the lake called Neusiedler See (Neusiedler Lake). It’s an area where locals from Vienna come to take vacations and relax….very beautiful, old and also very Austrian. I’ve been running on paths around here and it couldn’t get any better. Neusieler See is actually one of the largest lakes in all of Europe, but what’s interesting is that it is only about 6 feet deep across the entire thing! The best part about this area though is that the combination of the giant path around the lake (about 80 miles) that is completely paved along with the shallow lake makes for a perfect place to train for running races/triathlons. It really makes me wish I brought my bike here, but only running is still fantastic.

Not sure what else to say, I’m only here until July 8th before I head to Damiatte, France for a couple weeks. It’s a small town in the southwest of France, and I’m staying in a big house owned by an English woman. I love help exchanges, however I don’t necessarily like staying at a place for only 2.5 weeks at a time. But it’s really the only way if I want to see places while I’m here. I’d much rather spend a month like I did in Italy and get to know people and places that much better, this is still wonderful though.

That’s all for now, I’ll keep posting updates but no pictures for now. I’ll do all of those in one post once I get to France. Happy 4th of July everyone!

Tschuss!