Vienna

Yesterday afternoon, we left the hostel to go explore and stepped outside to find dark clouds rolling in. We decided that a fun way to see as much of Vienna as possible before the rain hit was to rent scooters and ride around the city. We ended up having a lot of fun and finished just as the rain was about to start. On our way back toward the hostel, we bought Bratwurst from a street vendor which we brought back to the hostel to eat. 

This morning, we got up early and headed to the train station to catch a train for a day trip to…Budapest! Any exhaustion was hidden behind excitement as we made our way into Hungary. Unfortunately, that excitement did not prepare us for what would happen next. Our train arrived in Tatabanya (the stop before Budapest) about half an hour late which, in retrospective, wouldn’t have been bad. It got worse when everyone on board was kicked off the train with nothing more than a sentence or Hungarian that we clearly didn’t understand. Soon after, we learned that there had been a crash on the tracks somewhere between that stop and Budapest so the train wouldn’t be able to get through. Instead, we were told to wait for busses (which showed up an hour later and then took half an hour to leave). 

The language barrier must have been the problem a second time because our impression was that the bus would take us to Budapest, but the driver’s impression was that he was taking us to another train station where we boarded another train. At this point, we had zero instructions from anyone about when we were supposed to board/disembark. There were two attendants from our original train that seemed to know what they were doing, but they weren’t sharing with everyone else. We decided that if we were going to get stranded in Hungary, it was going to be in Budapest, not in the middle of nowhere, so we kept the attendants in sight at all times and followed what they did. 

We were only on that second train for a few minutes before we followed the attendants off the train and onto a bus which dropped us at another train station. We boarded yet another train (that’s 3 trains and 2 busses if anyone’s counting) which finally took us to Budapest. Well, to Budapest’s main station which was still a metro ride away from center city. All in all, the journey from Vienna to the Budapest train station was supposed to take less than 2.5 hours, but it ended up taking about 6. 

From the train station, it took us two more metro/trams to get into city center at which point we were finally able to find lunch at a cafe next to the Danube. While we were there, we realized that the only way to get back to Vienna would be to leave immediately and retrace the series of trains and buses we took to get there (which we didn’t want to do), so we decided that the only other option was to enjoy Budapest and hope for trains to be running later that night with a backup plan to spend the night in Budapest. 

We started exploring at Castle Hill and the Buda castle which were both amazing and had great views of the Danube and the Parliament building. We then took a tram along the river toward Margitsziget island where we walked around and enjoyed the fountain show. We wanted to see more of the island, but we were very tired and realized it was already late for dinner, so we headed over to the Pest side of the island to a cute Hungarian restaurant we found. 

At the restaurant, we were told “No kitchen! No kitchen! No chef!” Apparently, the chef was on his way out and so there would be no more food (even though we got there 3 hours before closing). We wandered a little farther down the road before finding another restaurant which ended up being delicious (other than the “mixed pickles” which ended up being assorted pickled vegetables). 

After dinner, we took a short walk past the park with the Ferris wheel where they were playing salsa music and people were dancing. We also walked through a market with booths selling mostly souvenirs before reaching the tram that took us back to the train station which also happened to be the closest stop to the hotel we booked for the night. 

Since the tracks still weren’t cleared, we decided that we were going to spend the night and enjoy the private room for uninterrupted sleep and a hot shower. We hoped that the tracks would be clear and trains would be back to normal by the morning. Unfortunately, that was wishful and the trains were even more reduced by the morning. It was not even possible to retrace out series or trains/busses to catch the train outside Budapest. Instead, we were about to book seats on a bus which brought us back to Vienna. The ride was uneventful and now we are officially back to the Vienna hostel.