Budapest

Is it really arrogant to say I've been here before? Well I have. And it's a beautiful city so I'm glad to be back. In our original plans, (wow "original plans" we had no idea what we were getting into....) Budapest, Hungary was not on our list. But since it's halfway between where we were in Romania, and Prague, we figured it wouldn't hurt to look around for a day.

For the first time in weeks, we did not get lost at all on our way from the airport to the hostel. We even made a run, backpacks and all, to our favorite grocery store, Tesco. We missed you Tesco, and your Wally-World-type qualities. Mostly Tesco stores are in Western Europe, because we certainly didn't spot any in Romania.

The hostel we are staying at is called the Black Apple. There are stencils of black apples painted on the walls, but they really look like funky shaped cherries. It's a nice place, but the kitchen is smaller than one in a New York apartment; we're just glad it has one. Even if the stove is built into the top of the toaster oven.

We booked a dorm with five beds, since it was cheapest. And we had some nice roomies, a French girl who was going out for her birthday, and the Aussie dude. 

We talked a lot to Aussie dude when we arrived (but never got his name) since it was way too hot to actually leave the place. Oh, and this hostel doesn't have A/C. This hasn't really been a problem in the trip until now, but you just need more than a standing fan for 93 degree weather in a city. Also these ceilings are 14 feet high. Which is sort of eerie.

I got off topic. Aussie dude has a guitar with him, which gets him points on the backpacker scale of coolness, along with his green roll of duct tape, another point. But he also put on deodorant half a dozen times during our conversations that evening, so that may lose him points. (Note to self: I will write a post soon with our Backpacking Scale: Rules and Regulations. You guys will like it.) 

Despite the cool room and people...we changed rooms. The whole place had lots of windows, but it also faced the main street. And with ambulances screaming by every ten minutes sounding like an alien space ship, (I really worry for the health of this city's people) we knew there would be no sleeping that night. Our new room faces a slightly less busy street.

Well, we are off to take advantage of the free city walking tour like we did in Bucharest. We have our bottles of mineral water to fend off the heat, no worries.

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I forgot, a few pics from our last day in Targu Mures, Romania:

We got pizza!!!!! It helped with the homesick a little. But it also had corn on it, which was new.

Tessa broke the room.

One of the foods we will both miss are "cocoa shells" which are about ten times more awesome than cocoa puffs. And on this particular bag had the ingredients listed in no fewer than 20 languages. That is a record for this trip.