Well, at least that last statement is true. Budapest is called the city of baths. And we had two very different experiences in these thermal spa houses, but more on that later. We arrived in Budapest by train from Vienna and we were just two metro stops away from our hostel. However getting on the […]

Hungarian for “no” is “nam”, and as we were told and soon experienced first hand, Hungarians usually say “no” with several of them. The result is that many times in public you will hear “nam, nam, nam”. This is verrrry similar to my non-Hungarian ears as the “NOM NOM NOM” of Internet fame, and several […]

After a quick boat ride up the Danube from Bratislava, we arrived in Vienna. Our only stop during the trip in what could be considered Western Europe, we had a great time just scratching the surface of what Vienna has. The biggest distinction was that in Vienna – unlike any city in Eastern Europe we […]

We spent a few nights in the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. The smallish city has a few nice pedestrian streets, a few expensive bars lining the river, a small castle, and a “UFO Bridge.” But overall we found the town boring, expensive, and lacking much of the charm of the other cities we have been […]

From Zakopane we took a bus over the Poland/Slovakia border to a city called Poprad. Once again, to our disappointment, the border crossing was anticlimactic, with no border patrol agents and barely any indication that it was an international border. The only real clue that we had crossed over into a new country was a […]

On our way to Slovakia we spent a few nights in the South Poland town of Zakopane. Zakopane is a quintessential mountain town – a hub of outdoor activities including skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. We arrived during shoulder season, so there was (unexpectedly) a little of both. Zakopane is in […]