Beograd, Serbia

This is Brandle, hailing from Belgrad, Serbia. I apologize for not posting in a while, it is not very easy to find time to type on a computer out here. Well, to give you a small breakdown of my latest journey, I've spent the last month travelling through the Czech Republik, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and soon to be Croatia. I've written everyday down in my journal and I'm waiting for the moment when I can type it all up for everyone to read. For now I'll tell you about Romania. Mike and I headed to the Transylvania area...Sighisoara and Brasov. Sighisoara is just plain beautiful. It is exactly the place where you would find a vampire wandering the streets at night. The old city sits on a hill top covered in trees. The rooftops are red and very triangular, with sharp points rising high above. The buildings are all crooked and craggy, with a large church and citadel at the top. I found myself in awe as I wandered alone through these streets. There were no tourists anywhere, I got that feeling agian that I am in a special place 100 percent different from anything familiar to me. I found myself strolling along the exterior city wall along the cliffside. I sat down and eventually two things happened to me. First, a little crippled blind old lady wandered out of a tunnel and over to me. She wanted money. Instead, I wanted to give her a conversation. I only knew how to speak a few sentances in Romanian, but it worked just fine. She showed me her blind card which had her disfigured face in a small photograph inside. I expect she used this to show people what a horrible position she is in. She explained to me that there is no money to get help for her. She can not be fixed, so she just wears an eye patch to cover up her eyeball. I asked if I could photograph her and she said yes. I told her that I literally had no Romanian money. But I pulled out some Hungarian coins and she was satisfied with those. I said good bye and she was so happy, she kissed my hand as she walked away down the steep concrete steps leading to the modern city below. In the same place, a few minutes later, a boy, 9 years old named Noah came up to me like I was his best friend. He said "hey! and said follow me," motioning along the wall into some covered bushes. I walked back there with him, being cautious of course, and found a trash pit by the wall. He sat down and pulled out a soggy carton of old cigarettes he probably found in the trash. He asked if I wanted one and I said no. He asked for a light but I didn't have one. So he took the cigarette that he was currently smoking and lit the end of the soggy one he pulled from the box. He asked where I was from and I told him America. His eyes widened and he suddenly became very interested. He asked me all kinds of stuff. I asked if I could take his photo in return and he let me....A nine year old smoking a cigarette in a trash pit...it pretty much speaks for itself. He was a very friendly little boy. He wanted to take my photo as well. I trusted him and gave him my camera (ready to grab him of course if he tried to run off with it) but he took my photo and laughed because he could see it on the digital screen. Anyway, he also wanted money of course and he didn't complain when I gave him Hungarian coins. I said goodbye and he held out his hand so I shook it, and left.

Brasov is not quite as nice in my opinion. It is more of a city with more tourists. Mike and I went hiking in the mountains and ran into a local hiking by himself. When I asked if there was anything to be worried about here, he said "watch out for the bears!" So I guess there are bears here. I explained to Mike what to do in case we ran into a bear. Fortunately, I have extensive knowledge on what to do in the case of a bear attack thanks to my Mother. She would read bear attack stories to my brother and I when we were kids road tripping around the national parks of the west and Canada. If there we were to ever run into a bear, my mother had preped us to know exactly what to do. So, Mike was safe for the time being. Brasov has very steep mountains rising up right at the edge of the city with a "hollywood-esque" BRASOV sign at the top of the peak. It is beautiful but it is "city beautiful" if you know what I mean.

Now we are in Serbia. On the train ride here, I couldn't help to notice the concrete buildings of the towns we passed. Some were riddin with bullet holes and scars of war. I don't quite know the history of the past 15 years here, but I know they weren't very happy years. I'll tell you more when I find out about it.

I'll let everyone know how the sunny, crystal clear water beaches of Croatia are. Mike and I are about to take our first vacation from travelling. I know that sounds weird to some of you, but travelling is almost like a job. You have to be responsible and on top of things to survive. Well now is our time to not worry about anything and just chill for a few days. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Later,

Brandle

From Szigit to Szeged

Everywhere I go, a festival follows me.

In Budapest, we got to spend a night at the largest music festival in Central Europe (now, what actually contitutes Central Europe?), the Sziget Festival.

Prodigy was the main act the night we went, Radiohead had played a few days before. Festivals here are pretty crazy, as many people just camp for a week at the festival.

Now in Szeged, there is another music festival, similary named but not big acts. Also a camping festival, with tons going on in the city. and far cheaper! The festivals never end around the world.

The city of Szeged is in the southeast of Hungary, not too far from the Romanian border. A classic college town build with mediterranear flavor, I highly reccomend it. The people here are the friendliest that I've met in Hungary, and very open.

More next time...from Romania!

Nithin

St. Stephens is MAD

I've ran with the bulls. But nothing prepared me for last night.

Yesterday, August 20th, was the Hungarian National Holiday, St. Stephens day. St. Stephens is the founder of modern Hungary, and the country's patron saint. He is supposed to protect Hungary.

In celebration of St. Stephens day, there were festivities all day, including a arts and crafts fair, a Air Race across the Danube, and in the evening a spectacular fireworks show, when fireworks would be launched from 4 different places along the Danube river, for 25 minutes. I love fireworks, and I actually stayed in Budapest for 2 extra days just to see this fireworks show and the air show.

The air show was interesting, the weather fantastic (look how blue the sky is in the photo). But this post isn't about the airshow, its about the fireworks.

At 9PM, I met with Mike and Paul, a Californian and a Englishman, near the Danube to see the show. As we were walking, we noticed some flashes of light, and assumed they were fireworks going off early. As we got closer, we realized it was lightning. But me and Mike both had lived in the Midwest for many years, we know thunderstorms.

The fireworks started on queue, launched from the bridge literally 50 meters in front of us, and from the castle on the hill across the river. For 5 minutes we watched in awe, surrounded by thousands of people all along the river. Then, it began to get windy.

"It's gonna rain! This is gonna be awesome", I told Mike and Paul. The wind was pushing the fireworks directly over us, and distorting the explosions.

"Holy shit...look over there", said Paul. I turned. A wall of rain was about to descend on us. At least, I thought it was rain.

Ensuing was chaos. Within 5 seconds, I was competely soaked. The wind picked up, chairs started flying, and everyone started to scream and run. A stampede, of thousands of people, all running away from the walls of hail and pounding rain. The trees were bent sideways, people were being flung against building. Time to get out of here!

We ran. The water was already ankle deep, in two minutes, and the hail was stinging my skin. All around me, children were crying, women screaming. It looked like a hurricane had hit, and for a moment there, I wanted nothing more than to hold onto someone or something. I was completely terrified. I was the scene from Godzilla, with everyone screaming and running across the bridge.

The fireworks from the castle went on.

Benches were being uplifted. We lost Paul as we ran towards Mike's hostel, the wind pushing us in different directions. We had no idea where we were, or where we were going, but somehow, we got to the hostel.

We were lucky. 6 people were killed, over 250 injured, and more are missing. Budapest castle was damaged, as were numerous carts and cars. Trees toppled. The streets after the storm were eerily silent, Hungarians are still in shock. The strongest storm to hit Budapest in years, right on the eve of the national holiday. I still can't believe what I saw last night, five minutes of pure terror, from a thunderstorm, something I though I was used to, living in Kansas. But I can say, in all my years in Kansas, I have never been in a storm that strong or that violent before.

BBC has a video of the chaos.
More on the storm.

The Train ride from Budapest, Hungary to Cluj, Romania

Well, it has been a little while and there has not been much posting on this blog so I thought I would tell you all a story. Some of our fans out there may be sitting comfortably at home wondering to themselves, "I wonder what traveling (as in physically moving around on planes, trains, and automobiles) in Eastern Europe must be like?" The following is my most recent train experience (copied and pasted from my journal)...

August 16, 2006 – Kotegyan Station, Hungary
I have a bit of time to kill so let me tell you my story of traveling today. The morning started off fine enough; I had successfully stayed up all night partying away at Sziget, the weeklong music festival in Budapest. We got back to our hostel and saw the Finish guys from our hostel the night before. With them was an Irish girl who I chatted with two nights prior and two Welch kids. A guy and a girl who I am assuming were together because they ended up making out later when we were on a bridge. We saw the sun rise and talked on the bridge which was a lot of fun, I started walking back to the hostel, continuing to talk with the Irish girl who was quite a character and fun to talk with. I was going to go through my plan; instead of paying for another night of accommodation I would ride the train all day to Romania and sleep on the train. The Irish girl was a bit of a planning freak so she thought the plan was just absolutely crazy. Throwing caution to the wind I got on the metro and rode to the train station. I should have caught a bus. I think going on a train in Eastern Europe is like paddling a boat across the Mediterranean, it will be complicated, no one knows how it is done, and you only have a slight chance of getting to the place you were trying to go.

The entire train station was filled with angry people who were screwed in one way or another by Hungarian trains. I should have just left then and headed to the bus station. When I got there I talked with three different offices until I finally found the International train office. The line was just two people, me and a Spanish guy in front of me. It took the desk clerk around 25 minutes to help this man, just to ended up saying that he could not bring his bicycle into the Slovak Republic. My time with her wasn’t much better. It ended up costing me 11,000 HUN (around $55 USD) and another half hour of my time. Plus, I think I got a round trip ticket. Before I left the office, the line was out the door. This was the second moment I told myself, just cancel the ticket and go find a bus. I turn the corner into the actual terminal just to see that my train for 8:20 is twenty minutes late. My ticket was a bit complicated since I had to make two transfers. My first transfer had a 12-minute difference between the two trains. Hoping that the train would make up the difference en route (and because I didn’t want, or have time to go through the line again) I boarded the train and hoped I would make my connection.

I boarded the train, set my alarm and went to bed, ahhh peace at last! When I woke up I looked out the window at a beautiful countryside and thought for the first time that this trip was actually worth all the effort. I asked some people on the train what the next stop was, they pointed to a stop name that was at least 5 or 6 stops before my transfer. Either we had a time change and my clock was an hour off, or somehow we slowed down more and were now running an hour behind schedule. I decided to relax, sit down and enjoy the rest of the scenery.

The rest of the stops went like clock-work (only an hour behind what was written on my sheet.) 11:24 Gyoma, 11:45 Mezobereny, 11:45 Murony. Perfect, the next stop was my transfer, Bekescsaba. My clock must be just an hour off; I was going to make my transfer. Except when I got to the station not a soul spoke English, despite the fact there were over 30 people there, and I had to have talked to most of them. The first person just said, “No” when I showed him my sheet, the next conductor just studied it for a while and muttered something in Hungarian and then pointed to a far off tree, who knows what he was trying to say. The lady at the information desk looked at it, and pretty much just started helping the next person in line. So I decided to approach a kid about my age, waiting for a train, hoping that the educated youth of Hungary would have a better grasp of foreign language skills. I went through the list, “Excuse me sir, do you speak English? Espanol? Français? Deutch?” I didn’t bother trying to add Chinese to the list (the next language I am trying to half-speak). In fact, listing German as a language I speak was a bit of a stretch but lo and behold he spoke perfect German, so, still half asleep, I figure I was better off trying to mutter what I wanted in broken German than my typical mode of communication, flailing my arms about and pointing at sheets of paper. It worked, although he didn’t look that excited to help me out at all and kept inquiring if I had any cigarettes, probably in exchange for his help.

I once again walked to the information booth again, with my new Hungarian translator in tow, and found the next train to Oradea, where I was to connect to another train to get to Cluj Napoca, Romania. I thanked my new friend and walked away when I realized that this train arrived too late to make my next connection. So reverting back to flailing arm, pointing Ryan I talked with one more person and found a train to a town bordering Romania. Having already converted all my Hungarian Forint into Romanian Lei I decided if I was going to be stranded somewhere it might as well be Romania. I made it onto the right train, talk with a couple sitting in the booth next to me to make sure it was the right train (it was) and fell back asleep, perfect! They politely woke me up and pointed out we were at my stop (Kotegyan), it seems I forgot to set my alarm again, but I hopped off the train in half a daze, just to see a small white building in front of me and the train taking off behind me.


The people in the building walked outside looking at me like I was an elephant walking through New York City, I, with my big, black, American backpack couldn’t have felt more out of place either. None of the three people working at the station spoke English but unlike the last station they were very kind. I showed one lady my printed itinerary and started saying, “Cluj?” while shrugging my shoulders, and she ran inside, reemerging moments later with a stack of books, which eventually held the answers I was looking for. I have to wait at this station for another 4 hours before my next train arrives but thanks to this ladies patience and kindness she found me a train, which will arrive in Cluj only an hour and a half after my original train was suppose to arrive. Now, I haven’t arrived in Cluj, or Romania yet, but I am sitting here in this beautiful small station, with a plan and a schedule to hopefully get me there safely. Sometimes Eastern Europe is a freaking wild frontier!

August 17, 2006 – Cluj Napoca, Romania (Retro Youth Hostel)
I finally arrived! But first, the rest of my story… My next train came, but it was 30 minutes early, and one of the non-English attendants that I was talking to pointed it out. One train would only come to this station about every 30 minutes so it was good she told me, because I expected to arrive later, and it still left 20 minutes before it was suppose to? The rest of my trains were like that (in total I had to change trains 5 times). Some were on time, some left late, and some even left early! Needless to say, it appeared that no two timetables were the same, and of the two, neither would be correct! You only hope is to try to make friends around you and eventually someone will shake you and point to a train.

At Salonta, the first stop in Romania, I met a man on the train who spoke French and helped me with the passport check when customs kept asking me questions I couldn’t understand. Afterwards, he got off with me, helped me figure out my connection and offered to get a beer with me at a bar down the street. The hardest part of traveling is to know when to trust someone. Almost everyone (outside of cities) is very polite and extremely kind, most of them are legitimately being nice, some of them try to screw you somehow or demand money (or cigarettes) afterwards, and a small minority will even try to rob you. I was almost positive this guy was just a genuinely nice guy, interested why an American was traveling to Romania (it feels like I am the only one), but I decided to decline on his offer, thinking to myself I look like a huge target, and I have already taken enough chances on all the trains I have taken. I didn’t want to push my luck.

My train arrived at 11:30pm, way past when I thought it would arrive (there was indeed a time change once you enter Romania), and I was faced with a challenge of either sleeping at the train station (it was a dodgy, small looking station), stay at the over priced (85 RON, 31 USD) one star hotel across the street, or find the hostel I was planning on staying at, which involved walking through the city in the middle of the night. Plus I only had 6 Leu on me, 3 of which I direly spent on a bottle of water at the train station, so I didn’t have money for a taxi. I asked some people drinking at a bar down the street and they looked at me like I was crazy to walk to the center with all my stuff in the middle of the night. That was enough for me to know I wasn’t going to sleep in the station and I wasn’t going to chase after some hostel I didn’t know, (near Catedrala Szent Mihail?) without a map or any knowledge of this country. I had to bite the bullet and pay the extra dough to stay at the hotel.

It was the best night of sleep I have had in a long time, room to myself so it was dark, and quite. Ahhhh after 2 months of hostels even a one star hotel seems like luxury! It was a good thing I stayed, too! It took me about two hours to find the hostel today (I was taking the scenic route and trying to learn Romanian on the way) and when I arrived she told me they were full last night. All the other places around here were at least double what I paid at my one-star hotel. The city is nice, and I am planning on heading to the Maramures (most traditional part of Romania, northwest of Transylvania), in a few days, on an organized tour with the hostel. I am hoping to get some amazing footage, which means – hopefully another video coming soon! So everything worked out, 24 hours later, with a little adventure and a little hatred for the Hungarian rail system. And I am a millionaire! (1.000.000 old Romanian Lei = 100 new Romanian Lei) So far, I have traveled through 14 countries, 5 currencies and have just arrived in my second non-EU country. What adventures still lie ahead …?

Our second video has launched!

Well, I have alluded to this in a previous post and hopefully you have been anxiously awaiting this second video because it is finally edited and available to watch! Much different than our first video, this one is more of a video journal of our road trip to Bordeaux, San Sabastian, which ultimatly ended in Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls (not included in the video). It is quite an exciting flick if I do say so myself, full of drinking wine, cars breaking down, and even a chaco sandel tan-off, although it is a bit longer than I wanted, but I only have so much time to edit...

Broken into two parts (because of length) you can copy and paste the links or go to Videos section and watch the videos there!
First Part
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugrN7SGo9Ao
Second Part
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4yiUITrgLY

Enjoy!

Ryan