Day 40 - Budapest - Prague

We got up at 8, packed up and made it down to the station just on time for out 9:30 train. Since our train pass doesn't work through Slovakia we decided to take the train from Budapest to Vienna and then from Vienna to Prague, although we still have to pay for part of the ride because our passes don't work in the Czech Republic either. We got to Vienna at 12:30, to the Westbaunhof station, but then only had an hour to make it to the Sudbaunhof station across town, then buy a ticket and make it onto our train.

We got to Sudbaunhof by tram and made it luckily with time to spare. The train ride to Prague was very uneventful and we just read and listened to music the whole way. It was mostely just flat farmland from Vienna all the way to Prague. Its pretty crazy to be heading into the Czech Republic like this knowing that 10 years ago it wouldn't been next to impossible and probably very unsafe. Its absolutely crazy to think that if my grandfather had done the same route as me through Italy, Austria, Hungary and up to Germany, etc, when he was my age that i'm doing today that he would have been fighting Nazis. Maybe 60 years from now my grandkids will travel freely through the places like Iraq and Iran and the rest of the middle east. Who knows.

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K, i take that last part back about just the farmland out the window. As I was writing that on the train, it changed instantly from farmland to a gorgeous forest. Probably the best scenery we've seen yet except for maybe when we were in the Alps. The forest was a ton of different colours with all the leaves changing colours and there were a bunch of small streams adn rivers with old houses mixed in. And on top of that, the sun was going down adn we were on the west side of the train, so we got a great view of the sunset and the sky turned crazy pink and purple. Anyways, it was a pretty awesome train ride.

WE got into Prague at 6ish and found the hostel we were told to go to. Turns out it was full though so we went to another place around the corner called the Old Prague Hostel which turned out to be one of the best places we've stayed at so far. The hostel is owned by this young guy and him and his girlfriend run it. His other employee had just left and another was on holidays so him or his girlfriend were there the whole time and we ended up hanging out with him quite abit. Another thing that made the hostel so great was all the people we met. Especially after not meeting anybody in Budapest. The second we walked into the hostel we met a bunch of people; 2 American guys studying in Rome, 3 American girls studying in London (Megan, Kimberley and Lauren), a girl who just graduated from chem eng at Mac (Kate), and an Aussie girl (Sophie).

We dropped our bags off in our room, grabbed some very cheap Budvar (the 'original' Budweiser and much better) and hug out with everyone in the common room, then we all headed out for a bar. Prague is awesome at night with clubs and people everywhere. We went to one Irish pub, had a pint and watched soccer, and then went to this club where the American guys knew about a party going on for foreign students so we headed there. It was in a really busy club with a huge line, but somehow we got to skip the line cause we were with those guys. The club was pretty crazy and straight out of the movies with girls dancing on platforms hung from the ceiling and up on tables and stuff adn only played hardcore dance music. SO we hung out there for a few hours, then grabbed some sausages from a vendor and headed back to the hostel. Some of us stayed up for another hour or so hanging out in the common room then headed to bed.