christmas trip

so went on this trip over christmas and new years. the day before leaving i had to eat the rest of the food in the house, that was not very pleasant overall really. night train on christmas eve to vienna, austria. pretty cramped night train, awoken at 7 am with a bun and coffee, the bun more or less thrown at my face.

since it was christmas day there wasn't really anything open, took the u bahn through a ghost town basically, dropped stuff at the hostel, headed off to schonbrunn palace. pretty elaborate place, there was a small christmas market outside. coulda gone inside, but the 15 euro or something didn't really seem worth it, seen some palaces before anyway. wandered around the gardens and the 'yard' more or less, there was a zoo that i tried to snipe pics from outside, a big hill, no snow, just green grass on christmas day. some weird looking squirrels, runners with incredibly poor form, and a lot of tourists. got a hot wine at the christmas market, also eggnog with essentially 2 shots of rum and whipped cream on top. after this we headed towards the main part of the city where we stumbled on where all the government buildings, national library, stuff like that were. there were a couple art museums, so, after getting hit by some solid rain, we headed into the kunsthistorisches museum, art history museum. there was a ton of stuff in here, a lot of older art that i'm not a huge fan of, stuff like portraits of a million dudes. some of it was definitely cool for sure, the building itself was beautiful also. there was also an egyptian section, a badass statue of thesius clubbing a centaur, and some history on the habsburg empire as well. too much though, definitely pretty tired from walking around this. after the museum, went back to the palace to see a really shitty concert, scammed by some guys selling tickets outsides basically. not good. enough on that. went to eat some sushi at 'wok and more' which was pretty good, then just went back to chill at the hostel, played some pool and hung out.

woke up the next day, went to check out this st. stephen's church, there was a big mass going on, it was very cool actually. definitely one of the top 3 churches that i have seen so far, there were a lot of people though - but good to see nonetheless. took a short walk to some random park, where they used park benches to fence off the grass, rather than using benches. went to a nice small cafe 'kleines cafe' actually it was called, appropriately, to try some of this famous austrian coffee. i ordered a brauner, which is basically something like espresso with just a bit of milk. really good, i thought. and had some apfelstrudel as well. took the metro to some random stop cause we wanted to see the danube river, and ended up next to this pretty cool church, completely deserted, got some good pictures of it too. it was a nice walk on the bridge across the river, beautifully sunny day. visited this museum called haus der musik, just a pretty cool music museum. there was a room of mozart remixes that would have been perfect for a dance party. had supper at some badass restaurant in a wine cellar which was quite good actually, and so intense from the dark environment. it was like we were meeting to discuss important news from a faraway land. then we went to go see avatar in 3D. it was very, very awesome. i want to watch it again in imax 3D. such a cool movie.

woke up the next day, went for another pretty good viennese coffee, walked around a bit again, checked out the royal library and stuff like that, looked from outside of a butterfly garden, had a photoshoot in a park. went to eat at the centimeter, where we ordered 'the sword', far too much meat and fried food in one place at one time. schnitzel, pork chops, chicken wings, fries, and 5 L of beer at the table also did not help. post centimeter nap was very necessary. after this, we went to the opera for some standing room tickets for like 4 euro. the opera was 'la forza del destino' - i liked it very much, i love live orchestra anytime so i would have been happy just with that. but the singing was incredible and the translator screens on the seat in front helped a lot. it was really incredible and the opera house itself was very beautiful as well. saw all the austrians wearing their coat and tails and fur coats...one day, i will be classy enough to go back and get front row seats. great experience for now anyways.

next day the main goal was to hop on the three hour train to budapest, the ride there on the austrian train was great, equal in comfort to the swiss trains, the countryside was really awesome to see because mostly i just get to see big cities. but it was still green, in december, old looking houses and farms and little villages, great to see because it's something i don't usually think about while traveling. the train is good for that. arriving in the station in budapest was a bit hectic, got heckled by a bunch of sketchy people offering hostels and taxis and stuff, but overall not terrible at all. after withdrawing about 40000 from the bank machine (haha 1 chf/1 dollar = 180 hungarian forints) made off to navigate the metro system to find our hostel. got a nice sit down chat with the guy running the hostel and he basically told us what to do and where to go. went first to go check out these two super cool new buildings, one was an arts center where we found out that we could see a concert for about 1.50. it was nighttime and they were lit up, and right by the danube so the bridges and river and the lights were just amazing, took some time to check it out and take some pictures. went back to the main train station to meet up with everyone else, then just had some supper, went to sleep.

woke up the next day to hit up this really cool indoor market - basically they had everything there, food, clothes, fur hats, more food. whole pigs, foie gras, liquor, fruit, so many eggs, veggies, bread - yea i love markets, especially farmer/food markets. very cool. grabbed some food, cabbage roll and goulash - so hearty and cheap also and tasty. after the market we headed toward the buda castle, walked up a bit of a hill and checked out a great view of the city, and the river. after hanging out here and seeing the hungarian changing of the guards, we headed towards the thermal baths - budapest apparently is famous for them. on the way, somehow stumbled on a christmas market in the main square, which was actually really well done. had a nice warm hot white wine, and sampled the hungarian christmas delicacy known as the steaming bread tube. basically dough wrapped around a cylinder and roasted over a fire and covered in sugar/nuts/cinnamon etc. so good. hit these thermal baths - there were a lot of people there, a lot of pools as well, but besides being pretty big and looking bad ass it wasn't as great as i expected - the roman baths that i went to on the wellness weekend in switzerland were really amazing i thought, compared to these. still good though - after some good relaxing we headed back towards those awesome art buildings to catch a show - a hungarian pop star. grabbed some super cheap kebabs on the way, and the friendly shopkeeper offered all of us a small cup of cola. weird haha, they didn't really know what was going on, hadn't really heard of canada and we were just kinda wandering around in some random part of the city as well. the 1.50 tickets to the hungarian pop star meant we had to get there a bit early and standing room towards the rafters - still really good though, more comfortable than the standing room in vienna at the opera (where it was also packed and really hot) so this show was pretty good in that regard. i love live music as long as it's not horrible so this show was actually quite good. obviously had no idea what he was saying, but he was definitely rocking out. towards the end there was a violin solo type thing which was very good also. also there was an electric mandolin. went back to the hostel, to sample some 'unicum' which we had picked up at the grocery store earlier - it is a herbal liqueur of some sort - tastes absolutely horrible though. it is like jaegermeister gone rogue, and i really like jaegermeister also. yea, haha glad that i had the unicum experience though, apparently hungarians just love it. also had picked up some hungarian beer earlier - not so good, in my opinion. hung out for a bit more and just chilllled.

next day, headed back to the christmas market in the main square, of course ate some more steaming bread tube. went shopping for some ridiculous clothing, in four stores that were pretty much exactly the same. pretty cheap though and i got some sweet shirts. walked down through more of the market as well, was cold and cloudy and foggy though. walked along the river, towards some bridges and towards parliament. the buildings themselves are pretty cool i thought. didn't get pre-bought tickets so didn't actually get to go inside but it was a nice walk nonetheless. randomly took a metro and ended up somewhere in the main part of town by the food market earlier. just hung out in a restaurant and had about 70 beers before heading back, grabbing backpacks, and hopping on a night train bound for prague.

this night train arrived in prague at 3:30 am in the morning, it was tooo early. had some wine on the train, the guy running the car tried to sell me some beer also. in any case, arrived in prague in the middle of the night and proceeded to start wandering. found a mac donalds, a main square where there was a christmas market set up, walked towards the river and ended up just wandering around some cobblestone streets looking for a metro station. somehow we ended up at the hostel, which opened at 7 am, at around 6 or so i think, so just chillin in a tram shelter for awhile. luckily they had a room for us right away so grabbed some well deserved sleep for awhile. the next day was new years eve, so woke up and by the time we shook off arriving at 3 am, it was already time for supper. found this good place for some hearty food and good czech pilsner urquell. a nice little walk over charles bridge and headed over to some big famous club for new year's eve - 5 floors, nothing really that special though. a lot of guys. also handed out some terrible champagne at the door. in any case, that was another year to add i guess. got home pretty late, and then just slept and had another bit of a lazy morning.

next day, took the metro and went to walk around the town, stumbled on this beautiful hotel restaurant cafe where i had some delicious onion soup and eggs and breakfast. the washroom there also had the most majestic golden swan tap. then we found perhaps the nicest mall i have ever been in, and proceeded to walk around the city until we got to the main square where there was another christmas market going on. here was where i got the best ham i have ever had in my life, it was amazing. there were also freshly made stroopwafels as well. very cool christmas market - i think either the prague or budapest or basel ones were my favorite. somehow we ended up eating some more at another restaurant, and then basically just headed back to the hostel to chill. me and chris decided to go on a night adventure on the metro and ended up wandering around, taking some great pictures, and somehow ended up at the train station that we had arrived in. prague is really a beautiful city, in terms of buildings and architecture, cobblestone streets it is hands down the most 'badass' city i have been in. lots of architecture styles, but i would like to think that the prominent one was 'gothic' so lots of spiky spires which are really awesome. ended our adventures at mac donalds again, got some beer at the mac donalds, no big deal, some family was there with their kid, just havin some beers at the mac donalds. in any case mac donalds is pretty good once in awhile. as we were heading back, it started snowing! the first snow on the 'christmas' trip. it was very nice actually.

last day in prague. tried to get to the walking tour, ran up and down the longest escalators in the world i'm pretty sure in the prague metro - well i guess that's just one more side comment here - you never really know how far underground you are in the metro, like in madrid, munich, budapest, vienna, prague, berlin - how far are you underground?? like there could be 3 or 4 huge escalators before you get to the ground surface, it's incredible. anyways, ended up finally making it to where we're supposed to meet for the free tour. really great guy, keith, showed us around the city, pointed out some super neat things. took a bunch of pictures along the way obviously, the main churches, the lame astronomical clock, some defenestrations, the river, the bridges, the castle, jewish quarter, synagogues, and this cool bagel place also. great tour, it was definitely snowing a bunch and pretty chilly though. after the tour, i got more of the best ham in the world, and purchased a prague hat. then went grocery shopping for supplies for the long train ride home. also 10 dollars bought enough food for 3 people for like 3 days i think. so cheap.

hopped on the night train bound for home, hung out in the train car which was pretty comfortable i thought - side note, between the three night trains i would say that this last one was the most comfortable. talked to this very awesome german guy, otmar, who told us about what it was like living in germany when it was still east and west germany. super, super cool. also german people in general i have found are very outgoing, friendly, super cool, speak great english. really amazing i think, really like german people. it was a 14 hour train ride from prague to baden, but somehow the train got delayed by like 3 hours because of the snow on the tracks over the mountains, so basically didn't end up getting home till 17 or 18 hours after we had left. in any case, it was an amazing trip, and i just wish that i had more time. i would love to go back to vienna again to see some more ballet or opera or orchestra, back to budapest for sure, very friendly people that just want you to enjoy their city, lots of museums and things to see and do that i didn't really get a chance to, and back to prague because i didn't even get to go explore the castle. or have enough absinthe.

for the rest of that weekend, just chilled out and relaxed and cleaned up before having to head back to work, sigh, on monday. happy new year everyone!