Budapest??

Our first adventure out of the country since arriving in Austria sure was an adventure.  So far, I've had 3 day weekends (Mondays off) which has been great for travelling.  This last weekend, we decided to venture to Budapest, Hungary.  Just 3 hours east of Vienna and 4.5 hours from our apartment in Pöchlarn, Budapest is close and easy to get to, or at least we thought so.

We went to Vienna on Friday night to catch an early morning train to Budapest on Saturday.  One problem occurred to me on Saturday morning, we had no passports with us.  Sure, Hungary is a member of the EU so it shouldn't be a problem, right?  That's what I thought originally, but thinking back to my last trip there a couple years ago made me think differently.  I distinctly remember the intimidating Hungarian police with their ushanka hats and tattoos stamping our passports and scoping us out as if we were smuggling drugs.  An employee at the train station also believed we were required to have them.

So, we decided to be safe and head back to Pöchlarn to grab our passports.  An hour and fifteen minutes each way, it's not next door to Vienna.  In making our decision we thought back to several movies we had seen recently in which travelers had been taken by police to a dark unknown locations, where they were interrogated and tortured.  We didn't want our year in Austria to end with this trip to Hungary ;).

Back in Vienna for the second time, we met an older American couple travelling to Budapest who had missed their previous train and needed to contact their hotel.  We came to the rescue providing a cell phone, country code of Hungary and some knowledge of the confusing phone numbering system in which numbers have a + or a 0 and all sorts of other things in front of them.  They thanked us by giving us an expensive bottle of champagne from their previous hotel.  We refused but they didn't want it.  Although we were running several hours late and had purchased several extra train tickets, at least we could celebrate in style if we ever made it to Budapest.

We lucked out and got to take the Railjet from Vienna to Budpest.  The Railjet is the fancy Austrian high speed train, which is like travelling in first class.  We arrived in Budapest later in the afternoon and walked to our "boutique Hostel" just a half mile from the train station.  Our reservation had us arriving at noon, but I never thought anything of it that we were a little late until we rang the bell to get in and there was no answer.  Hmmmm, we thought.  We made it but now have no place to stay.  Yooopi! (read about it on Angela's blog) came to the rescue.  We called the hostel number and help was on the way.

From then on, until we departed for Vienna, everything went smoothly and we had a great time.  I'll tell you more about that in my next blog entry though.

Checking the train times on Sunday night revealed a strike by the Hungarian railroad employees beginning at midnight.  Apparently this was not unheard of but worried us nonetheless.  I needed to make it back to teach on Tuesday.  All we could do was wait and see what happened though.

We had already purchased tickets for a Hungarian bath spa on Monday and we weren't about to skip that or worry too much about the trains while relaxing there.  Good news came later when we heard the strike had ended later Monday morning.  But, trains were running late and there seemed to be chaos.  Arriving at the station showed no signs of a train headed for Vienna.  Eventually, an Austrian train arrived and we thought all was fine.  The signs changed on the train saying it was headed back to Vienna and we got ready to board.  Employees were cleaning the cars out so we waited patiently.  Suddenly, the train departed with no one on it but the employees.  Hmmm, we thought.  I guess it's good we didn't get on that train but where is ours then.  Another train was waiting and said it was headed for Vienna so we headed towards it.  There were only 3 cars though and no engine to pull the train.  30 minutes passed, then 60 and no one had any idea when we'd leave if ever.  Finally, after 90 minutes a rickety old train engine arrived to pull the tiny train of 3 cars.  Typically, a train travelling between Budapest and Vienna would have at least 10 cars.  We were off!  Two hours later, a sudden stop and 15 more minutes of waiting revealed our train had engine had died.  Luckily, an Austrian one was nearby and came to the rescue.  It pulled us the remaining distance to Vienna.

In Vienna, we got on the next train towards our town.  Unfortunately, it was a regional train which means it stops at every station.  Never take a regional train for an extended trip!  The trip was already taking a long time when the conductor came on and announced that a strip of track was under construction.  That meant we had to stop and transfer to a bus for this stretch and then get back on another train!  This only affected the regional trains because all others can bypass these stations.  The 8 of us left on the train (all others were smarter and avoided this train) got off with the train conductor and he guided us to the bus like a teacher leading a class.  We took the bus and then another train.  You'd think at this point we'd be home, but no, we still had one more train to take and are only choice was another regional one.  Finally, at 10pm, 7 hours after our train was scheduled to leave Budapest, we arrived in Pöchlarn.  The icing on the cake occurred on our walk to our apartment when our shortcut walking path was also under construction forcing us to take a longer route.  At last we were home!

By the way...just to make matters worse, our passports were never stamped nor checked crossing into Hungary!