Escape from Budapest

I'm sure the news of the impending Rail Strike was easy to find around Budapest, if you can read or understand Hungarian. We got lucky when the nice folks at the hotel alerted us to the strike when we asked where we could purchase rail tickets. After doing some quick research at the hotel, the following is a thumbnail of our escape in chronologial order.

We successfully located the international bus station, but were not very good at locating the proper line to buy international tickets, after a 30 minute wait in the wrong line, we were directed upstairs to what is best descibed as a complete disaster. Imagine the the lines at the license tab place at the end of a month. We got our number and were shocked to see that our number was called shortly thereafter. But alas, it wasn't so simple, they were calling the previous person with #117. There were 100 people in line in front of us waiting to purchase tickets at one of two windows. Rumours started to circulate that the earliest one could leave was midnight the following night. The final straw was when we saw both ticket agents take lunch at the same time.

At this point, our options were less than pleasant . . .
Take a bus to Sopron, Hungary and walk across the border into Austria.
Go down to the docks and look for a boat going upstream on the Danube (tour boats were not operating)
Wait out the Rail Strike, afterall Budapest was quite nice.
Try to find some 3rd rate bus company we read about at the hotel on wikipedia.

Amy had noticed a couple of signs for this other bus company as we traversed the main bus terminal, so we went in search of "Orangeways". Up the stairs, across the square we went following the little stickers they had plastered on the wall/floor every 20 feet or so. It was like Hansel and Gretel. We eventually stumbled into an empty office and asked where we needed to wait in line to buy tickets. We were stunned when the lady said, "Right here. Where do you want to go ?" We said Vienna, she said the bus leaves tomorrow morning. We said Bratislava, she said fork over 12 euros and be back here in three hours for a 4:30 departure.

We were convinced this was a trick, it couldn't be this easy. Perhaps we would have to get out and push the bus every now and then, or maybe they hired farm trucks to haul us to Slovakia and we would have to ride in back with the animals. Nope, it was a nice bus, with nice seats. We each got our own row. The trip was uneventful, Curt watched some movie with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, while Amy conversed with the hoarde of Aussies on the bus.

As we appraoched Slovakia, we both were dilligent in making sure we had our passports ready to go, and actually wondered what the bus stamp would look like. The well lit border station was quite massive, and completely empty. We never even slowed down.

After getting dropped of at the station in Bratislava, the trip started to get a bit more interesting. We had smuggled some Hungarian wine on the bus, and we had some pilsners while waiting in Budapest, so the booze may have started to cloud our thinking a bit. The only option for transport to Old Town was the city bus. After some grueling map reading, we decided that bus #50 was our best hope. Out to the station we went, after a quick wait, the bus showed up, Amy got on the bus, the doors closed, the bus left, Curt was left standing at the station. Disaster was averted when Amy wisely exited the bus at the next stop and walked backed to the bus terminal. Eventually, we found a cab and discovered that Slovakia was switching to the Euro on Jan. 1, and they paying for the cab was going to be easy.

That night, we explored Old Town and discovered the Slovakian Christmas market is a bit different than those in Romania and Hungary. In Bratislava, the entire town shows up to drink hot wine. The regional treat was a lefse, which both of us had enjoyed as kids. We joined in and had a rather enjoyable night in Slovakia.

We sucessfully got a train to Prague the next day, where we will be for the next few days. We had an interesting conversation on the train with an Aussie couple. It turns out that the guy's family escaped Slovakia when he was nine. They told him he was going on holiday, and they never went home. So many stories. Such fascinating history.

(Curt was the primary author of this post)