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!