Detour

Since Stevie was able to get a rail pass of her own, we decided to take advantage and spend a few hours in Slovakia on our way to Vienna for the evening. We walked from our hostel in Budapest to the central station, about a 45 minute walk, when I realized I had left my camera's battery charger, complete with the battery, at the hostel. As you may imagine from how my posts are arranged, I usually take a ton of pictures, and since we didn't have time to go back before our train I was absolutely devastated. Luckily we got in touch with the hostel and they found my charger, willing to mail it back to France for me. But of course this means I can't take nearly the amount of pictures I had hoped for! Stevie was kind enough to let me use her camera to take some pictures today (we luckily use the same kind of memory card, and I have a lot of those still) so all was not lost. Still, I'm a bit upset.

In any case, we got on the train for Bratislava, a journey of about two and a half hours, arriving around noon. Not too much to see, sadly, so we just wandered around the city for a few hours. At least now we can add another country to our list!

We got on the short train ride for Vienna in the afternoon, arriving at the south train station and making our reservations for Prague the next afternoon. We then got on a tram and met up with Heather, a girl from Colorado, with whom we would be spending the night. She's lived in Vienna for a little while now, so after we dropped off our bags she took us out for a tour of many of Vienna's famous sights.

We of course had to see the Easter market, but then we found many of Vienna's famous buildings, most of which were churches or music halls. This made perfect sense to me, since the place I remember hearing about Vienna most often was orchestra in junior high and high school - many famous composers lived or spent time here so the stars on the street all bear their names.

Apparently the big Viennese intellectual tradition is to sit in a café sipping coffee and discussing revolution, so we went to the Central Café, a renowned gathering spot for centuries, and sat chitchatting and sipping espresso. It was nice to sit and relax, trying to take my mind off things that had gone wrong and focus on what good things are yet to come on what is sure to be an amazing adventure for the rest of break!

And who knows, I was thinking of getting a second battery for my camera anyway, so I may not be totally deprived of my photographic addiction for the rest of the trip - I'll see what I can find!