St. Stephen Cathedral (Szent István Bazilika)

Was walking around outside the Cathederal and heard some people speaking in Singaporean and Malaysian accent. There are in the book publisher business and came for a book expo.

Parliament Building

A shopping mall at Vaci Ut. Vaci Ut is something like a shopping street.

Market

Budapest is a famous spa city. It has more thermal and medicinal water springs than any other capital city in the world.
Széchényi Spa

Joined a communist tour in the afternoon at 3.30pm. It’s quite educational and Gabor the tour guide talked about the history about communism in Hungary. The guide mentioned that even though Hungary achieved independence almost 20 years ago but people still have the communist mindset. Most Hungarians from the older generation still feel a sense of nostalgia about that time because during communism, goods and travels were more affordable. But right now, prices of goods are maybe 80% of Western Europe but average monthly salary is around 450 Euros so times are harder now. Hungary is still a poor country and even though the country joined EU in 2004 but the country still have not fulfill the Maastricht criteria so the country still can’t adopt the Euro currency.
Communist Style building in the city of Budapest

The only Soviet monument in Budapest. There is a fence surrounding the monument to prevent vandalism by Hungarian nationalist.

Next day, hiked up Gellert Hill which has a pretty nice view of Buda.

and Pest

Took a bus, Orangeways which is a new low cost bus company to Cluj Napoca at 3pm. Originally I was planning to go direct to Bucharest but the train ticket is quite expensive, around 80-90 Euros. The bus to Cluj Napoca cost around 4000 Forint ~13 Euros and then I can take a train from Cluj to Bucharest that should be much cheaper. At the same time, I can visit the capital of Transylvania.

Arrived in Cluj Napoca at 11pm after 6 hours bus ride, here it’s an hour faster than Hungary. Tried to find my way to the hostel by walking. The city was very quiet at night and it took around 30 minutes walk from the bus station to

Hostel Transylvania (47 RON ~11 Euros).

Met some hostel mates and went to a bar/club called My Way. Surprisingly the place was packed with young people. This made sense because Cluj is a college town with 3 big universities. One of the biggest and best university in Romania, Babe?-Bolyai University is located here as well.

Wy?wietl wi?ksz? map?
Arrived in Budapest at 8.30am. I didn’t really sleep in the train this time after my laptop and money were stolen the previous time I took an overnight train.

Budapest is the capital of Hungary and is a touristic city. Last year the country had 20 millions tourists and the population of the entire country is just around 10 millions.
Hungarian is a distinct language by its own, along with Albanian, Finnish and Greek which don’t share any roots with slavic or latin. The Hungarian language sounds pretty unique, I heard that it’s closer to Finnish than it is to English. The guide told us that the Hungarian people came from the Aral Mountains 1500km away many many years ago. There are also stories that Hungarians decendended from Attila the Hun.
An excerpt from Wikitravel “The Romans were replaced around 900 by the Magyars, who went on to found the kingdom of Hungary. The Mongols dropped in uninvited in 1241, but the Magyars bounced back and built the Royal Castle that still today dominates Buda in 1427.
In 1541, Buda and Pest fell to the Ottomans and stayed in the hands of the Turks until 1686, when the Austrian Habsburgs conquered the town. Now at peace, both sides of the river boomed, and after an abortive Hungarian revolution in 1848–49, the great Compromise of 1867 made Budapest the united capital of the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.”
On the west part of Danube river lies Buda and on the east side is Pest. Combining these 2 became Budapest.
The transporation here consisted of metro, tram and bus. A day pass cost 1550 FRT (1USD ~ 180 forint), around USD8-9 which is not that cheap. However, a monthly pass for students only cost around 3700FRT.
Crashed at Malwina’s place who I met in Belgrade 2 weeks ago. She is from Poland and studying in Budapest now. It’s very nice for her to host me.
Indoor Market

Joined a Budapest free walking tour at 2pm.
View of the Castle across the river

Castle on the castle hill

Danube River

With Malwina

View from the Buda side (west of the river)

Beef Stew Hungarian Style

Malwina brought me to hear friends flat party and then we went to White Angel club which is quite a distance away from the city.

Next day,
There are quite a number of Chinese restaurants in Budapest and I heard that there is a chinese market in Budapest so I decided to check it out. Took bus 173 to Blaha then switched to tram 28 and got off at the 6th stop. The 10th stop is another small chinatown.
There are Chinese people everywhere in the world and as a ethnic Chinese myself, I am always curious to see their way of life, their businesses in different countries and how do they assimilate in the local culture.
There are 2 sides of the Chinese market, at “Shi Hu”

they cater more to the retail side and sell many cheap clothings and other low cost paraphernalias. The market is probably a kilometer long.

I guess business is good since there are quite a few luxury cars around the market

On the other side of the road, there are many huge warehouses and shops that only cater to wholesalers. Here is where the big businesses operate. I was surprise at the numbers and the sizes of the warehouses. It’s quite busy even on Sunday and things move fast here.

Most business people here are from WenZhou, the city famous for its textiles factories and entrepreneurs. The market here looks bigger than the one in Belgrade and this doesn’t look like communism at all. There are many mercedes and BMWs so I guess business must be pretty good.

Chinese workers on Sunday

I was asking directions about Chinatown and a lady invited me to a Chinese church for dinner. Was pretty lucky to get home cooked Chinese food after on the road for some time.

Chinatown is at the 10th stops of tram 28

Nathan’s Villa hostel

is one of the nicest hostel I visited so far in Europe besides the hostel in Buenos Aires which is incredible. Nathan’s Villa is not very big but things are well placed and well thought of, the color is bright and very clean. A day pass for transporation cost 9ZL and 4.5ZL for students.
Warsaw was completely destroyed after the Germans left. Only 64 out of 986 buildings remained after the world and the city was completely rebuilt.
The southern part of Warsaw has some communist style buildings built by the soviet union. When I got here yesterday night, I thought it looked similar to Chinese cities with wide street and big buildings.

This tall tower is one of the most hated buildings and it’s a symbol that big brother is watching.

They have body sushi here too

There are now more new buildings.
Old and New

This is the only old jewish building left standing.

Stare Miasto which is the old town of Warsaw was a UNESCO heritage city. All buildings were destroyed during the war and the old city was completely rebuilt.

Visited Warsaw Uprising Museum (3ZL ~1USD),

spent around 3 hours since the museum is quite interesting and have some interactive exhibitions.

One of the catalyst which started World war II were when the Germans attacked Poland. The German attacked Warsaw on Sep 1st 1939. Even though England and France declared war on Germany but noone helped. The Nazi set up Jewish gettoes housing 450,000 people in a small neighborhood and many Jewish died of starvations. After 5 years of suffering, Warsawnians decided to stand up and fight the Germans on Aug 1st, 1944. After few months of fighting, they surrendered on Oct 5th, 1944 and the German killed 180,000 civilians and 18,000 insurgents.
After the war, before the germans left, they completely destroyed the city
Visited Akadia mall

and got a selection of cheap polish food again in Careffour, the supermarket.
Took a train to Budapest at 9pm because I managed to get a special ticket cost 125 ZL, usual price is over 300 ZL.
Train Station

Walked around the city today and spent time setting up my new laptop. My new laptop is in Polish and I went back to the shop today but they mentioned I would have to buy a new windows XP cd in English which is quite expensive.
Originally I was planning to go to Budapest on Wednesday but after my things got stolen, that cost me some time and I have to wait until Friday night for the next bus so I decided to visit Warsaw for the time being.
Walk around the city
Florianksa st.

Cheap Polish food at Carefour

There is special train called Interregio to Warsaw at 6.25pm which cost 40ZL compared to the usual one which cost 107ZL. Warsaw is around 300km away and is the capital of Poland with a population of around 1.7millions.
Waiting for the train

Arrived in Warsaw around 10.10pm.
Got to Hostel Tamka (Tamka St.) by bus 102, unfortunately the hostel doesn’t have any more dorm beds and only have private room. Walked to Hostel Nathan Villa, Pieska St. (40ZL, 10 Euros) which is around a 30 minutes walk and here I am.

Took a guided tour (80ZL)to Auschwitz. It’s around 100 km from Krakow and the trip there took around 1.5 hours.

From 1940 – 1945, around 1.2 to 1.5 millions people were killed. 80% of the people that were sent to Aushwitz were sent to the gas chamber on the first day. Those that were selected to stay at the camp were put to work. There are 3 concentration camps in Auschwitz. We spent 2.5 hours at the first one because it’s better preserved and some of the buildings were converted into museums. However, we weren’t allow to take pictures of the museum.

Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will set you free)

Inside the museums there were some belongings of the prisoners, such as human hair, shoes, bags, the gas tanks in the gas chambers. There were many tourists and I guess everyone felt a deep sense of sadness and shocked at what the Nazi did.
It was snowing and raining, the temperature is around 3C and everyone was shivering so in a way we can feel that the weather was a big blow to the prisoners. I can’t imagine how anyone can survive in this kind of camp.

The other camp is called Auschwitz Bickenau which has 300 baracks and is 20 times bigger. We only spent 30 minutes there since the camp is too big to walk around.

Inside each barack cramped around 400 prisoners.

It’s a cold and snowy day

The weather was snowing pretty heavily in the afternoon.

Finally bought a new laptop after looking around for 2 days. I bought a Asus netbook (1200 ZL, around $400) and then realized that the operating system is in Polish.
Went to a Polish restaurant with some hostel mates.

Tried Pierlogi, a kind of polish food that looks like pasta but it stuffed with ingredients such as meat, mushroom and cheese.

Met up some CS people (Basia and Cassie) at a bar called Singer, in Kazimierz – the former Jewish town which now has many bars. The bar has Singer sewing machine on every table. Kazimierz is at the south part of the old town which has a history of Jewish dwellings before the Nazi came.

The train in from Bratislava to Krakow has many carriages and the carriages split to different destinations at night. I asked 2 person that I am going to Krakow but they gave me the wrong information and I got on the wrong compartment. Got off at Kratowice at 4.30am in the morning and took another train to Krakow arriving at 6.30am.
I tried getting something out from my bag and noticed that it was ransacked. Looked around and noticed shit, my money (150 EUROS and 150-200 dollars), laptop, sunglasses were gone. Luc kily they didn’t take my passport and credit cards.
Went to the police station twice today but the translator wasn’t there and they don’t speak English. So they asked me to come back.
Stayed at Dizzy Daisy hostel (25 ZL, 1 USD ~ 2.8 ZL). Krakow has a population of around a million and it was the old capital of Poland. There are many universities and many young people and tourists here.

Took a free walking tour around the city.

Dorzec Glowny (Train Station)

Rynek Glowny

The cloth hall (the yellow building)

Wavel Castle

Spent time looking around for electronics because my netbook has become a neccessity to me. Went to Media Mart (a place which sells electronics, something like Best Buy in US)

which is at the east side of town. Electronics in Poland are slightly more expensive, I guess electronics in US is the cheapest other than Paraguay.
Then met a CS friend Ewa for coffee at night.

Wy?wietl wi?ksz? map?
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and largest city in Slovakia. It has a population of almost 450,000 and is the administrative, cultural and economic centre of the country. and the country just started using the Euro from Jan 1st this year. The transporation is using the validation system similar to other Balkan countries for trams and buses.

Bratislava

Blue Church

There is a Tesco close to my hostel and loaded up some groceries and food. Bratislava is famous for good mineral water and there are many different types of mineral water.
Walked around the city and met 3 other Malaysians studying in Germany and hung out for the day.

Another Castle

Castle, Danube river, UFO bridge and the communist style buildings across the river.

President Palaces.

There isn’t much to see in Bratislava and the old town is quite small.
Visited Aupark which is the biggest mall there.

Took a bus to Petržalka which has one the of largest communist style buildings.

At The Music Lounge.

Took the 10.55pm bus to Krakow (44.2 Euros, 7.5 hours ride)

Took a morning train to Vienna at 8.05am (29 Euros, 6 hours, switched train at Maribor). I walked from Ayda place and the walk + run took me almost 40 mins, I almost missed the train by just a minute.

Train Station

This was my second time to Vienna. Vienna is quite pretty with some very nice looking buildings and architecture. Vienna’s downtown area is a UNESCO world heritage site and has a population of 1.7 millions people. Vienna is very touristy and things are quite expensive here.

Karlskirche (St.Charles Cathedral)

Kärntner Straße (a shopping avenue)

Stephansdom (Gothic style building)

Walked around Vienna for around 4 hours with my backpack. This is the longest I have walked with full gear on.
Opera House

Took an evening bus 7pm from Vienna to Bratislava (7.7 Euro).

Vienna and Bratislava are the closest capital in the world, around 80 km apart. The bus (Slovakline) is cheaper than the train which cost 14 Euros and took 1.5 hours.

Wy?wietl wi?ksz? map?
Arrived at Bratislava and found my way to Patio Hostel. I remembered they advertised the price on the web for 8 Euros but walk in price is 15 Euros. The receptionist is quite nice to borrow me the internet to do a reservation before checking in.

To readers out there, I am sorry I haven’t been updating the blog because I have been moving to different countries daily and don’t have time to write stuffs so far. I will update soon

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Took the 9am train to Ljubljana. (90 Krona, around 18 Euros, 2.5 hours). Got a last minute replied by Ayda so I did another couch surf there.
Ljubljana is a small city with around 250,000 people. Slovenia is a small country with just 2 millions people and many of those are immigrants from the balkans.

Horse Burger is popular in Ljubljana (with horse meat,4 Euro)

My host and her slovenian co workers

By the river

View from the castle

Went for coffee with Ayda and Spela

Couch

Next day,

Since the normal ticket from Ljubljana to Vienna is around 60 Euros, I decided to try my luck on hitch hiking. Ayda dropped me at a highway, after spending some time standing a bus driver advised me to try to hitch hike at another location called Smelt. Took bus 7 and 8 there. After waited for almost 3 hours, I decided that today is not my day and went back to the train station and got a special ticket for tomorrow morning.
Unsucessful attempt to hitch hike to Vienna

Took an overnight train from Sarajevo to Zagreb. Zeljko is very nice to host me.

With Zeljko

Couch

Both Croatia and Serbia claim that Nicola Tesla is one of their own
Nicola Tesla

Statue of Ban Jelacic on a horse

Austro-Hungarian styled Jelacic Square (Trg Bana Jelacica) is the busy heart of Zagreb.

Met up with Ana and Mirna in the afternoon. Ana drove me with her scooter to the New Zagreb and then had dinner with Zeljko.