Had a very strange time in Budapest second time around, as I ran into some of the people I met in Romania. First I was shopping for socks in the shopping centre (Marks & Sparks of course - quality counts) and a New Zealand lady I had met in Brasov suddenly walked up to me! Then later I ran into the aussies I met in Sighisoara. Ended up having a couple of beers in a bar, then went back to their hostel with some cans and got chatting to other people, including a German girl with a scottish accent because her boyfriend was scottish. How odd!
Anyway, it got to about 4.30am and I didn't fancy trying to get back to my own hostel, so just kipped down on an empty bed there, before crawling back for breakfast at 9.30. Two days later I saw someone else I had met from a distance, then later at the station while purchasing my ticket for Vienna, I ran into one of the guys from my night out, along with someone else we had both met in Sighisoara, and they had seen the same person that I saw earlier that day. Budapest is actually a large place, although it may not sound it!
I have fallen in love with it though, and decided that alongside London and Amsterdam, it is a city in which you can do nothing for weeks and not let it bother you. I also met some quite a few english people in the hostel, including a couple of girls from Maidenhead, and spent one day with them rediscovering Buda. I found that whereas with the american girls who liked to eat ice cream at about 3 in the afternoon, these girls preferred to sit down with tea and cakes, and were even considering buying their own tea set when they returned home!
So onto my final stop, Vienna. As soon as I set foot in the place I knew that I was back in western europe, the shops are the same as anywhere you would find in England, France or Canada, and immediately I was missing the eastern climes. It reminds me a little of something across between Prague, with its tourists, and Dresden with its beautiful buildings.
I've visited the picture gallery at the academy of fine arts. They had one great painting by Hieronymous Bosch of the Last Judgment. The demon creatures were very imaginative. The picture gallery at the Kunsthistoriches contains some great Breughals, and another by Furini with the same model as that I saw in Prague. They have whole rooms dedicated to Titian and Veronnese and even a couple of english paintings.
Unfortunately the Third Man museum was closed when I went past, but the Mozart House was great. It is the only house in which he lived which is still standing and was where he wrote The Marriage of Figaro. You get a free audioguide, and they have paintings of the people with whom he was associated. An excellent bit is a holographic summary of The Magic Flute with music, and you get to walk around his old apartment. They don't know what each room was used for, but it doesn't stop them speculating.
Met an american girl here who has been studying opera in London. On Friday I went to a free organ concert in one of the churches, and tonight am going to see the Vienna Imperial Orchestra playing Mozart and Strauss. A bargain at 28 euro.
I have been eating more schnitzel and also another dish of fried chicken with onion, salt and pepper and sauted potatoes all mixed up together. It was delicious. Obviously Vienna is known for its cafes, but a lot of the well known ones are a little posh for my budget, that doesn't mean I haven't been drinking the stuff, only in the cheaper more standard places, and watching the world go by.
The architecture of the palaces is incredible, and the gardens beautifully laid out, but I get the feeling that I might have appreciated it more if I had come before Hungary and Romania. I will briefly go back to football here for a second, as I watched the FA cup final in an irish bar, the actually bar having come from a pub in Cork! Man Utd were robbed by Chelsea, but then Wembley wouldn't be Wembley without a dodgy goal line decision, would it?
Ok, so I'll finish with the pieces of music for this week.
Vienna - Ultravox
Harry Lime Theme - Anton Karas
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - W A Mozart
