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November 06, 2001
nealkolohic
Whew, it's been a while since I put anything here. Let's see what good stories I can share with you...
Here's a fun short one. Last week we had no school in Hungary for fall break, so several of us Budapest-ians here went to Prague to visit some friends. Prague is a beautiful city by the way, and when you come to visit me (hint, hint), you should be sure to spend some time there. The Czech prefix for "non" (as in non-sequiter or non-negotiable) is "ne" and the Czech word for "alcohol" is "alkohol". So on every menu in every restaurant is a section for "nealkolohic" items. Perhaps the correct pronunciation is "ne-alkoholic", but I'd rather hear about "neal-koholics".
The trip from Budapest to Prague was exciting for us too. If you are lazy, smart, or have lots of money to spend, you can buy a round-trip ticket on the fast, nice train for around $60 and the trip will only take about 7 hours. If you seek adventure, aren't very smart, or want desprately to save money, you can do something we call the "Bratislava Hop". Hungary and Slovakia have an agreement to make train travel between the two countries fairly inexpensive. Slovakia and The Czech Republic also have a similar agreement. Hungary and the Czech Republic do not have this useful and beneficial arrangement. So tickets from Hungary to Slovakia are cheap and tickets from Slovakia to The Czech Republic are cheap, but tickets from Hungary to The Czech Republic are kinda expensive. Luckily, the Prague-Budapest train route travels through Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. So we bought round trip tickets from Budapest to Bratislava. At Bratislava, the train makes a 10 minute stop, so 2 people ran off to buy our tickets from Bratislava to Prague. 2 of us unloaded all the luggage just in case the tickets didn't get back in time, and 1 person stayed on the train (ready to jump off if the train started moving) to guard an empty compartment for us. With about a minute to spare, the ticket buyers came running back, so we madly threw all the luggage back through the door and hopped into our waiting, "reserved", compartment. Whew! It was a great display of team work. Then all we had to do to come back was buy a ticket from Prague to Bratislava (because that's cheaper than buying a round trip ticket in Bratislava), and use the second leg of the Budapest-Bratislava ticket. Now it is a slow train, so it takes about 10 hours, but it only costs about 30 bucks this way.
Posted by neal on November 6, 2001 07:31 AM