Budapest, Hungary: May 26th-28th

Understandably, we arrived in Budapest in kinda sour moods. We were tired, gross (surprise, surprise!), hungry and feeling pretty angry about the whole scam/robbery. We found our hostel, took some showers, and immediately went to the first place we could find with food...McDonalds. Sometimes the golden arches are a beautiful thing! I used to hate Micky D's, but there have been points in this trip when Shane and I both have been grateful for those golden arches.

After eating, we decided we should find the police station so we could file reports. We knew we would need them so we could get money from the insurance companies. We started searching for the police station, according to the directions given to us by the girl in reception at our hostel. Of course, we couldn't find it, so Theresa and Lone started asking people on the street and we managed to find it.

When we walked into the station, I've never seen a more frightened look on a cops face in my life. He spoke absolutely no English, so the girls and I started trying to act out what happened. I showed him our train ticket and then pretended to take Theresa's hand that she had made into the shape of a phone. It was a sight! He finally got the point and herded us into this little room and left us there. After a few mins., and man opened the door and ushered us into his office where he handed me the phone. There was a lady on the other end who explained that she was an interpreter and wanted to know what had happened. I explained everything and she apologized again and again and then welcomed us to Hungary:) She asked what would be a convenient time for us to meet her the next day so we could all file a report. We agreed to meet her at 2pm.

While Shane napped, the girls and I went for ice cream.

That night, we managed to get in touch with Alex, the guy we had met at our hostel in Poland. He had waited for us to get to Budapest, so we could all hang out. We met him for dinner that night and by the end of dinner, the waitress was his girlfriend. Alex is quite a guy. One of those smooth talkers who could talk his way in or out of anything! He has more charm than he really knows what to do with, and is a self proclaimed hopeless romantic who falls in love way too easily(our waitress being a perfect example). He was trying to practice pick up lines in Hungarian all night on her, and I think she managed to understand one all night. Finally, she just agreed to be his girlfriend, and it was a beautiful hour long relationship.

The girls all dressed up for dinner with Alex. Lune is pouting cause we kept giving her a hard time for dressing up so much. She is a girlie girl whereas Theresa and I are not:)

The gang at dinner.

Alex and his Hungarian waitress girlfriend for the night.


The next day, Shane and the girls went to the police station at 2, and I stayed at the hostel to wait for them. At about 6pm, I was getting worried, because they weren't back yet, so I went to the station. The lady told me they had left already, so I couldn't figure out what was going on. I went back to the hostel, and the girls showed up about 20 min. later. Turns out the lady at the station thought I was a friend of 2 Czech guys who had been arrested for stealing a Hungarian flag off the police station the night before. They had been released right before I got there. Shane showed up later, and we all decided that we needed to get out and actually see something in Budapest. We walked all the way to Buddha and back to Pest and saw pretty much all the major sites. We were not too impressed. Most of the buildings were not well maintained, and there was graffiti everywhere. However, we did introduce the girls to Subway that night, which was a highlight:)

The following day, May 28th, Shane and I were scheduled to take a night train to Vienna and the girls were leaving to go somewhere, but they still hadn't decided where. So, we said goodbye, agreeing to try to meet up with them in Rome. Shane and I decided to check out the famous Hungarian baths, which is what everyone goes to Budapest for. They were interesting, but nothing worth mentioning really. We rode on the oldest subway line in Europe, saw Hero's square, and called it a day. We went to the train station to wait for our train to Vienna, Austria. Just a side note, the train station in Budapest is possibly the most disgusting one in Europe.

A view of Pest from the Budda side.

Not quite sure what his was. Looked kinda like a monastary in the side of a mountain.

Another view of Pest.



Different images of the city. Here is a huge tunnel and round about and down below on the right is the Parliment building.



Unfortunately, I have already forgotten the name of this church. But, it was pretty, eh?


This is Hero's Square, which was one of the most impressive things we saw in Budapest.

Okay...by far one of the most random things we've seen so far. Native American Indians performing traditional music in Budapest???



A traditional Romanian style castle in near Hero's Square.

Robbery and Conspiracy

So this is going to be a sad sad story. On the night of May 25th, Shane, Theresa, Lone and I boarded the train to Budapest. We all sat in the same cabin so we could keep each other company, and since we had heard horror stories about night trains being dangerous, we thought, "safety in numbers."

Before I tell about our ordeal, let me give you a little insight about Eastern European trains. First of all, they are really bad (we didn't really figure this out until a week later when we took our first train in Italy and realized how nice they were.) Also, for every country you enter and exit while on the train, a few things happen. First, the passport control officer comes by to stamp your passport to show that you are leaving one country. Then, a conductor comes by to check your ticket. Next, another passport control officer comes by to stamp your passport to show that you are entering another country. So, basically, you don't really get any sleep, because every 30 min. or so, someone is knocking on your door asking for something.

So, we had been on the train for about 6 hours and we had had multiple knocks on the door to check our tickets and passports. It was the wee hours of the morning by then and we were all half asleep and half awake. A woman knocked on our door and asked to see our tickets, so we showed them. About 5 mins. later, another man came by and asked to see our tickets, so we showed them. Then, he started telling Shane and I that we had to move (keep in mind this was in extremely broken English and we were half asleep.) We finally figured out that he was telling us that we were in 1st class (we didn't know) and our tickets were 2nd class tickets, so we needed to move to 2nd class. Of course, he didn't tell us where 2nd class was, so Shane and I gathered up our packs and started walking in the direction he had motioned towards. We passed through a couple cars, and finally another conductor stoped us and told us to go the other way, because we were about to enter the sleeping car. So, we turned around (which is quite difficult in a train corridor with our huge packs.) We started walking back the way we came, and finally someone motioned us into a cabin. We went in and put our big packs on the racks above our heads. I laid down on one bench using my small day pack as a pillow, and Shane sat up and put his headphones on to listen to some music. He had his day pack propped up against him. About 10 min. later, I woke up quickly when Shane shouted, "my bag is gone!!!" We were stunned. Shane had just closed his eyes for a min. and we had the door to our cabin shut. Someone had opened our door, walked right in and took Shane's bag. He started walking up and down the train (after almost punching out the window of course) and found the bag 2 cabins down sitting on a bench. The only thing missing was his camera and the little bit of Polish money that was in his wallet. They had left the cell phone, his sunglasses and all his credit cards. Luckily, all our documents were in my pack.

About 10 mins. later, Theresa walked in and said they had been robbed too. Now, to try to explain how these cabins are set up, imagine 3 seats on each side of a small room and they face each other. The seats slide down and meet up with the one opposite it to make a bed. So, in each cabin, there are a total of 6 seats, that make 3 beds. The girls had been sleep on the two beds closest to the door (so really they were blocking their door) and they had their purses by the window on the opposite end from the door. Someone had climbed over them in their sleep and taken their bags. The didn't realize it until 2 conductors woke them up and had their purses in their hands. The conductors said they had found the purses in the bathroom and identified the girls from their passports. The girls were not as fortunate as us. They lost both their cameras, cell phones, video camera and credit cards.

When Theresa came to our cabin and told us this, we were shocked. A conductor came with her and we told him we had been robbed too. He told us the only thing we could do was to get of the train right then and go file a police report with the Slovakian police (we were passing through Slovakia) and that the Hungarian police could do nothing for us if we waited to file a report. Now, seeing as how it was around 3 in the morning, we were not about to get off that train in the middle of Slovakia. So, he told Shane and I to move back to the orginal (1st class) cabin. We started asking around the train to the few people who were onboard, and it turned out that the 4 of us were the ONLY ones who had been robbed. Later, we would put it all together and figure out that it had all been a set up and that the "conductor" who made Shane and I move was either 1. not a conductor (we had never seen him before and never saw him again) or 2. the conductors were in on the scam. Hindsight is always 20/20 I suppose. We didn't now any better than to follow what the conductor told us. Often, trains split apart at certain points and half goes one way and the other half goes another way, so we always do what they tell us.

So, Shane's camera was gone and that was not such a big deal, but we also lost a lot of pictures from Ireland and all the ones from Prague.

Poland May 23rd-25th

On May 23rd, we got on a train heading to Krakow, Poland. We were about an hour outside Krakow, when a girl knocked on our cabin door. She asked us if we were backpackers, and Shane and I looked at each other and said, "Well, yeah, I guess." So, she said she and her friend were too and invited us to join them in their cabin. That was the point in our trip where we met two crazy girls from Norway, who managed keep us laughing for the next few days. Their names were Theresa and Lone, and as soon as we stepped into the door of their cabin, we started laughing. They were traveling for 22 days around Europe and it was the first time to travel for both of them. They had absolutely no plan about where they were going or what they were going to do. Their only plan was.."there is no plan!" They had spent a night sleeping in a train station and another night in an old woman's apartment that they found them at a train station (a big "no no" when traveling).


Our friends from Norway. Theresa and Lone.

They had been sitting in their cabin writing a song about their trip (which they immediately performed for us while I used their video camera to video it.) These two adorable girls were so excited to be traveling and were so interested in our trip. They kept saying how jealous they were and that they wanted to travel around the world too. I don't think I had ever met two people so pumped up to be traveling. They even had business cards made for their trip that had their names, email address, and slogan (livin on the edge) on them. They were hysterical.

We arrived in Krakow at night, and didn't really know what to expect from the city. The girls hadn't booked a hostel anywhere, so we told them to just come with us and we would see if our hostel had any beds. When we started walking around, we were impressed with how clean the city was and how friendly the people were. Shane and I usually just keep wandering around until we find what we are looking for, but Theresa and Lone's method was simply to ask everyone who came near us if they knew where the Dizzy Daisy Hostel was. That is how we found out how friendly and helpful the Polish people were. Of course, no one actually knew where the hostel was, but we managed to get some help finding the street, and therefore found the hostel. The Dizzy Daisy quickly became one of our favorite hostels. EVERYONE who worked in reception was super friendly, and it was just a great hostel all around. The girls ended up getting 2 beds in the same dorm room as us and we were just one big happy family.

The four of us decided that we definately wanted to go to the famous Salt Mines and the 2 concentration camps in Krakow, Auschwitz and Birkenau. So, we booked an all day tour for the following day, May 24th. We woke up early to catch the shuttle and were off to the Salt Mines first. In all honesty, we were not too impressed with the mines. If you have been in a cave or a mine before, they all pretty much look like this one. The only difference with the salt mines is that their is salt everywhere. I think a lot of our disappointment came from the fact that we couldn't understand most of what our tour guide said. He had a really heavy accent, so it was difficult. He was, however, a lovely man who reminded me a lot of an older version of Mr. Bean, so I kept laughing when I looked at him.

Theresa and Shane on the tour bus on our way back from the Salt Mines.

Lune and I on the tour bus.



After the mines, we had a 2 hour break and then, we took the bus to the camps. These camps were something that Shane and I both had always wanted to see. We went to Auschwitz first and then Birkenau. Since we had booked a tour, a tour guide was included in our price. However, if we had it to do over, we would definately do it on our own. Everything is really well marked if you didn't mind taking the time to read it and you weren't rushed through. With the guide, we didn't feel like we had enough time to see everything. However, it was an experience that I am not sure we could ever put into words. One of the things that we noticed first I think was the stairs. In all the buildings, there were stairs made out of marble and each stair had a dent in the center from so many feet passing over them over the years. It was something we had never seen before and it just really hit you how many people had passed through there. Then, we saw things like the rooms full of hair, shoes, suitcases with the names and addresses still written on them, and countless other rooms that you can't even describe. It was just room after room of sadness. There was one building full of photos of the prisoners as they came into the camps and it had the date they arrived and the date they died. Most of the women and children didn't last more than 2 months. The thing that impacted Shane and I the most I think, was going into the gas chamber. When we walked in, you could just feel that the air was different, and on the walls, you could actually see claw marks. It was probably the most sobering experience of my life. You just can't put into words what it makes you feel. The fact that humans could do these things to other humans is impossible to comprehend.

One of the buildings when you first enter Auschwitz.

















This is the first building we went in where all the rooms full of hair, shoes, suitcases, etc. were.











This is just a small section of this huge room full of suitcases.

This is a little girl's shoe in the room full of prisoner's shoes.



This photo is kinda hard to see, but it is a room full of hair from the prisoners at Auschwitz.



The electric fences and guard towers surrounding the camp.





These are the gallows where they hung the man in charge of Auschwitz after the Allies came in and closed the camp.
This is us going into the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

We went to Birkenau after we left Auschwitz. Birkenau was the biggest camp and the one that most of you would have seen in photographs when you studied this part of history in school. This is the camp where the train tracks are and where the man stood in the center of the tracks and gave the signal for death or life when the prisoners got off the trains.


Looking across the vastness of this camp just makes your stomach churn. It was massive and sickening. At Birkenau, we saw the bunk rooms where the prisoners were kept and the conditions were horrible. Animals are treated better than these people.

The bunk houses where the prisoners were forced to live.

Looking out over Birkenau.

The chimneys where mostly all that was left after the Allies burnt all the bunk houses. There were still a few bunk houses left, but not too many. Just enough so that they could show people and people wouldn't forget what happened there.

We left Birkenau feeling very sober and quiet. I think we were all kinda wrapped up in our own thoughts. Perhaps Shane said it best when he said, "How can some people deny that this ever happened after seeing this place?"

Theresa and Lone were supposed to leave and go to Budapest on a night train on the 24th. We had met a nice guy at Dizzy Daisy who was orginally from Romania but lives in New York. His name was Alex and he had left the day before to go to Budapest. The girls were supposed to meet him on the 25th. However, we managed to convince them to stay with us and leave the next night instead. One way we managed to convince them to stay was by teaching Lone a line dance (she was obsessed with country music...yes a girl from Norway who loves country music.)

The gang hanging out watching a football game...Liverpool lost:(...the night that Alex left. Lune, Theresa, Shane and Alex.

The girls pretending to be gangstas. I had stolen Theresa's glasses for the evening.

So, the four of us stayed in Poland for one more day. We had a look around the city and ate the best icecream ever known to man. The city of Krakow was very nice and I really liked it there. There is a lot that we didn't get to see, but on the night of May 25th, we boarded our first night train and headed to Budapest, Hungary.

A sculpture that we saw in the main square in Krakow. Remember this sculpture, cause it pops up again in Italy.

Czech Rebulic May 16th-23rd

After our episode in Belarus, we were more than anxious to get on our plane to Prague. We arrived at the Prague airport in the afternoon on May 16th. So, for those of you who have been keeping up with our website, you know what came next. Yes!! The inevitable search for our hostel. We left the airport and according to our directions, we were supposed to find this certain bus, take it to a certain metro stop, and our hostel was about a 2 min. walk from that station. I know you are expecting a horror story right now, but there actually isn't one for once. We found the bus quite easily, everything was labeled in English at the bus stop and even on the bus. So, we were immediately in love with Prague. When we got to the metro stop, our directions were a little vague as to which exit to go out of and turn left, but we managed to get to our hostel, the A-Plus Hostel, just fine.

As soon as we walked into our room, an Aussie guy called Rod started chatting with us and was really nice, so we were feeling pretty good. We decided to take showers (of course) and get some food, because by this point we'd gone all day on a couple of apples and some airplane snacks. For those of you who know Shane...well, let's just say that he needed food! We had a restaurant in the basement of the hostel and decided not to be too adventureous and just eat there. We were pleasantly surprised with how delicious the food was. But, we could have just been starving. We were pretty knackered, so we decided to call it an early night and do our typical "wander around the city" the next day.

We got up the next morning, May 17th, had the best hostel breakfast up until that point, and set off to explore the city. Since I had been there before, I was excited to show Shane some of my favorite things from my first visit. We saw all the typical tourist sights: St. Charles Bridge, the palace, Old Town Square...I even showed Shane my hostel from my first stay (a landmark in itself.) I let Shane take all the pictures that day, because I already had some, so I nominated him to be photographer. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, a little over a week after we left Prague, Shane's camera was stolen. So, we won't be posting any photos from Prague...sorry.

That night, we decided it would be a good idea to take a ghost tour. We had enjoyed the one in Edinburgh so much, that we were looking forward to another one. We had heard that Prague was the most haunted city in Europe, so what better place to take a ghost tour. We thought for sure it would be brilliant. Well, all I can say about that is, "don't ever take a Prague Walking Tours' ghost tour!" We started the tour and after about the first 5 mins., we couldn't decide whether our guide was crazy, a little drunk, or if she was just joking. It was horrible!! It was as if she was just making the stories up as we went along...and none of them really made sense, or were at all scary. However, we had paid more than usual for the tour, and personally, I was reluctant to say anything to Shane about how bad it was. It became apparent pretty quickly that he was thinking the same thing I was though.

She would ask us these questions and refuse to move on with the tour if no one answered. So, there came a point when I just started answering all her questions and pretending to know things that I didn't, just so she would move on and we could get the tour over with! Apparently, the entire group was feeling the same way we were, because by the end we were all just laughing at how ridiculous she was. Luckily, she only told 4 stories (we totally got our money's worth on that one). OH, and just when we thought it couldn't possibly get worse, her "assistant" would stroll out (not even run) from behind a building wearing a rubber Halloween mask, carrying a plastic knife covered in ketchup. He even put on a sheet at one point that was smeared with ketchup.

The good thing that came out of this experience, besides a good laugh, was meeting a lovely couple from California. We mangaged to bond with them over the ridiculousness of the tour. Their names were Kevin and Danika and they were from LA. For those of you who remember one of our first post on this site, the Temecula one, you might recall our favorite vineyard that we visited there. It was called Ponte. Well, here is a funny story. When we met Kevin and Danika, Shane thought she looked familiar. As the night went on, we were talking with them and found out that they had gotten married at Ponte Vineyard and there photos are all over the wall when you first walk in the vineyard of their wedding. So, Shane actually had seen her before. Crazy, isn't it?! It's a small world. We also ended up meeting a guy from Colorado later that night named Dan. He was in Europe visiting his sister, and they were traveling a bit.

The next day, May 18th, we decided to go to a little town in the southern part of Czech called Cesky Krumlov. I had not visited it on my last trip to Czech, and everyone told me I missed out. So, we boarded a train and were on our way. After the train had been traveling for a little over an hour, we stopped at a station (this is pretty routine). We sat there for 15min...30 min...1hr...and just kept sitting there. Now, no one on this particular train had spoken any English to us, so every time the anouncements came over the intercom, we remained lost. Finally, a girl in our compartment took pity on us and explained that the train had been in some sort of accident and we all had to get off. So, we got off the train and along with EVERYONE else, we were smashed and crammed onto a series of buses which drove us to the next town (next train station) where we boarded another train. We waited patiently on this train and after about 30 min., someone told us that we would also need to get off this train...but, turned out that we didn't need to. We finally got to the station where we had to catch our connecting train, and after a 9 hour journey (that should have been 4), we arrived in Cesky Krumlov.

We started walking into town from the train station and ended up making friends with a guy who was kinda following us. He was another Aussie named Ashley, and we ended up dragging him along in our search for our hostel. Now, this was a really small town, but wow! We had a really hard time finding that hostel. We did finally arrive at Hostel Postel and found it closed, so we had to call the person who ran it, cause she had gone home for the day. When we finally got in, we immediately fell in love with the hostel!!! It was adorable, clean, new, and we had our own room, kitchen, bathroom and little garden area.

We also fell in love with the town. This was the first point in our trip where we actually felt like we were on vacation. It was a really small town that was more than beautiful, and it had so much character! We also discovered these amazing little dessert things that were delicious. We called them turdlows, cause we couldn't pronounce the actual name. It was dough (kinda like cinnamon roll dough) that was wrapped in a cylinder shape around this metal rod and then roasted and rolled in cinnamon, sugar and nuts. Shane was a little obsessed with them. The girls working there knew him by our second day in the town.

We had only schedule to stay in Cesky Krumlov for 3 days, but as soon as we arrived, we booked another day. We spent 4 very relaxing days there. The highlights of those 4 days including running into Rod (the guy from our hostel in Prague) and all the people who were on his tour (they were all Aussies and tons of fun), meeting a wonderful couple named Chad and Miranda, spending a few days relaxing (Shane started reading his second book in his life while we were there), and just the overall scenery.

The couple we met, Chad and Miranda, live in Prague and teach English there. When we told them that we were going to be back in Prague for one night so we could catch our train to Poland, they invited us to stay at their apartment for the night, so we wouldn't have to pay for accomadation.

So, we left Cesky Krumlov on May 22nd and got on a train heading back to Prague. When we got to the station where the train had had its "accident" on the way down, I turned to Shane and said, "this is the bad luck station." Well, when the train didn't start up again, I just laughed and thought, "you have got to be kidding me." Luckily, after about 25 min., it started up again, and we made it safely to Prague. We met up with Chad and Miranda and went back to their place where they cooked spaghetti for us. We sat around and chatted and ate, and it was a fantastic evening. We were so appreciative to them and can't wait to repay their kindness one day.

The following morning, May 23rd, we went to the train station and got on a train headed for Krakow, Poland.

Do you know about Transit Visas...we do now!

We got on our plane to Prague from Moscow on May 16th. We were in some ways relieved to leave Russian when we did. We really enjoyed being there, but it was a tense place to visit in a lot of ways. We were relieved that we had not had any problems with the police there. The majority of the people in our hostel in Moscow had been stopped by the police at some point, and 2 of the guys had had to pay off the cops. So, Shane and I felt pretty lucky that we had not had any problems. However, our sense of relief was soon to be shot all to heck!

Our travel agent had made every effort to find us the cheapest flights, and in doing so, we have made a lot of unusual transfers in random airports. From Moscow to Prague, there are loads of direct flights, but in trying to find us the best deal, our agent scheduled us to transfer through Minsk, Belarus. When we arrived in Minsk, we were to have a 4 hour layover before our plane left for Prague. When we got off the plane, we were a little surprised to see that we had to go through passport control, since we were just transferring to another flight. But, we had done the same thing in Germany, so we stood in line patiently, without a worry in the world. When it was finally my turn, I went up to the passport control officer, handed her my passport and my ticket to Prague. She started searching through my passport looking for something, and I just thought she was looking for a blank space to stamp it (at that point, my passport was almost full.) She then looks at me and says the word that you never want to hear when you don't have one..."Visa????" Confused, I attempted to explain that I was just transferring to another flight and I was not leaving the airport. Well, English was not a language she spoke, so that was a pointless attempt.

She motioned for Shane and I to step aside and wait until everyone had passed through. We stood waiting, not really sure what to think. Then, this other lady, who spoke no English, motions for us to follow her behind this locked door. So, we follow her through the door and all the lights are off, and is a part of the airport that is obviously closed. At that point, I let my imagination run wild a bit, and started imagining all sorts of horrible things that were going to happen to us. We were in a former Soviet country, and who knows! She ended up leading us to the Visa office, though, instead of some torture chamber.

At the Visa office, one of the ladies started trying to explain that we needed a Transit Visa in order to transfer planes. Evidently, Russia and Belarus have some sort of agreement, and this is the law. It ONLY happens if you fly from Russia to Belarus (of course!). She explained that if we had flown from any other country, it would be no problem. She explained that they consider flights between these 2 countries domestic flights, and that is the reason why you have to get the visa.

So, we argued and lied (sorry Parents and Mamaw & Papaw, we know we shouldn't lie, but we were desperate) and tried everything to avoid buying the visas. You see, being Americans, our visa cost was more expensive than any other nationality. We were expected to pay $180 per person. The ladies in the visa office really put up a good fight for us. They admitted that they thought it was ridiculous for us to have to pay for the visas. Even the passport control officer that was sent to question us, ended up apologizing to Shane. He tried to tell Shane that if he goes to America, he has to pay a lot of money too. Shane responded simply by saying, "Yes, but you actually want to leave the airport and STAY in America. We just want to leave Belarus!!"

My argument at one point was that if the flight is a domestic flight, our Russian Visas (that we had spent a fortune to get) should be valid there too. That argument was totally lost on them, being that their English was limited. So, I tried a different approach, claiming that we had no money and were flying to Prague to meet our friends and family who were going to provide for us there. The passport control officer didn't really buy that story either. However, he did call his boss to tell him we had no money to pay for the visas. So, his boss's solution was to buy us both tickets back to Moscow and send us back to Russia since we couldn't pay. Now, there is more than one problem with that solution...1. We didn't want to miss our flight to Prague, have to buy another one and lose our reservation at the hostel in Prague and 2. We would be arrested upon arrival in Russia since our visas expired that day. So, sadly, we coughed up the money and $360 later, with transit visas securely attached in our passports, we went to our gate to catch our flight to Prague.

We tried not to dwell on the fact that we had just had the most expensive layover in history, and just tried to look ahead and stay positive. It has made for a good story to tell people we meet, so we have gotten over being bitter about it.

Lost in Russia continued....

Our last day in St. Petersburg was the 12th. We had a flight schedule to fly to Moscow that morning around 11:20am. So, we decided the best thing to do was to wake up super early to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport. Since we had had so much trouble getting from the airport to the city, we figured we would have as much trouble getting back to the airport. So, we asked our lovely host, Andre, and a few other people for directions of how to get back to the airport. We were really hoping they would tell us that we could just hop on a bus that would take us straight there, and that we wouldn't have to get on the metro. However, this was not the case. So, we got up super early and headed to the metro. We had it all planned out in my little notebook...the names of all the stops where we were supposed to transfer (written in English and Russian) and whether it was 1, 2 or 5 stops from our last transfer point (just in case we couldn't understand the announcements or see any signs.) We felt pretty prepared. Well, as you might have guessed already, that didn't work AT ALL!! It was on May 12th that we decided 2 things...1. We hate subways! and 2. St. Petersburg had the most confusing subway system on the face of the earth! We were not happy...and of course time was running out for us to get to the airport.

Well, to make a long story short, we finally made it to the stop where we were supposed to catch a bus , the bus came and we hopped on. When I say bus, though, I am exaggerating of course. It was more of a van, CRAMMED full of people. Poor Shane was forced to stand all hunched over the entire way to the airport, while I was seated and buried under our packs. We made it to the airport though, and evidently with plenty of time to spare, because the desk for our flight had not even opened yet.

Once we arrived in Moscow, we decided to try to be a bit more prepared for our hostel search this time. We found a subway map in the airport to look at and planned out our journey to the hostel. We wrote down every transfer we needed to make, how many stops it was from one to the next, and we wrote everything in English and Russian. We left the airport and found the "bus" (really a van) that we were supposed to take and hopped on with our packs. Well, this time, we had to pay extra for our packs cause they took up a seat in the van...opps. No worries though, we were happy to have made it this far and to have such detailed directions to follow. We felt super prepared for the task ahead. Still, being the skeptic I am, I decided to ask one of the friendly passengers in the van if our plan was, indeed, correct. I noticed that the man beside Shane had taken a keen interest in the directions I had written in my handy notebook. I also noticed that this man spoke maybe 3 words of English (this is only because he kept talking to us and expecting us to understand. He was really friendly, but we just couldn't understand a word he was saying. We eventually realized that we had communicated to him that we were from Spain and he loved it! We didn't bother to correct him.) So, I showed the man the directions I had written in Russian, and tried to ask him if they were correct. He took out his subway map and studied it in detail for forever, and finally came to the conclusion that I was right. He also decided at this point that it was his duty to get us to the subway. So, when the van stopped, he herded Shane and I with him to the subway station. (This is, of course, while he is also trying to juggle 3 pieces of awkward luggage out of the van, to the station, and down the stairs. He was one of those really awkward people who is a total spaz and you can tell always has accidents, runs into things, breaks things, never has on clean clothes because he has spilt something on it, and just generally goes through life looking really uncomfortable. But, he was super nice!) So, he kinda helped us get a ticket (although we are pretty sure we didn't buy the right one, since the gate closed on Shane halfway through.) When we got on the subway, he took out his subway map again, and looked at my directions, and kept looking and counting, and then trying to communicate things to me (I didn't understand any of it). After looking from his subway map to my directions more than a dozen times (really!), he got up and asked another passenger's opinion. This was after explaining to this other passenger that we were from Spain;) He then asked another group of kids and then went back to the other man, apparently not happy with what the kids said. So, then, he called me over and I started trying to communicate with 2 Russians and they were pointing at the subway map and talking....and on and on. Eventually, they just kind of pointed and yelled for us to GO! and so we did. We got off after tons of thank you's and realized we, once again, had no idea where we were. Apparently, my original directions were not right. Go figure! So, at this point, we are standing at a stop in the subway with no idea what to do next. To make another long story short, random people ended up pointing is in the right directions (this took about 30 mins. though) and we ended up at the right stop. Finding the hostel is another story all together, but I will spare you for now:)
We found Sweet Moscow hostel with the help of a really old Russian woman. It was quite small with one of the scariest elevators I have ever been in, but it was fine. All the people that stayed there were lovely and we made lots of new friends. There was a group of 5 boys from Utah that showed up and Shane hung out with them quite a bit. I encouraged this, because I felt like we had spent enough time just the 2 of us, and he needed some boy time. We also met a couple from Melborne, OZ named Paul and Anna who were quite nice.
While in Moscow, the one thing we both really wanted to see was the Red Square. So, on the day of our arrival, after getting to the hostel and showering (cause you KNOW we were sweaty and smelly), we took off to find the Red Square. When we found it, we realized it was closed. Naturally, we had no idea why, but we thought that since we were going to be there for 4 days, we would have plenty of time.

Well, each morning we were in Moscow, we woke up and went straight to the Red Square, and each morning, it was closed. We saw other sights like the Kremlin, the Stalinist buildings, the Red October chocolate factory, churches...the usual. But, we were really mad that we couldn't see the Red Square. That was the whole point in going there. Moscow is also really really big and since we had vowed never to get on the metro again, we couldn't really see a lot. However, on our last day, one of the guys that worked at the hostel suggested a boat trip down the river. He said it was cheap, great, and you could see all the major sites. So, we went on the boat trip. It as really nice. The day was nice and sunny, and we saw all kinds of stuff. And they took us really far up the river, so we felt like we really got our money's worth. However, once we got a few miles up the river, the boat stopped and they told us to get off. If we wanted to go back on the boat, we had to pay another fee. Gotta love Russia!:) So, we decided to walk. Our walk back included passing the Red Square, so we thought we would try one more time...and it was open! We didn't get to go into Lenin's tomb, but we did get to see everything else, so we were happy!

The one thing that we have found ourselves missing is Mexican food. So, pretty much every city we go to, we search out the one Mexican restaurant and eat there. In St. Petersburg, we found a really good one, so we had high hopes for Moscow. I really don't think we could have been prepared for the restaurant we found though. We recruiting an Aussie couple to join us for dinner one night and went to this little restaurant. In Russia, going to Mexican must be a big deal, because in both restaurants we went to, everyone was super dressed up (except us of course!) But, we got to this Mexican joint in Moscow and there was a live band playing classic American rock and even some oldies, tons of dressed up Russians dancing and singing along with the music...and then there was us, trying to take it all in. The food was pretty good, but the atmosphere was what made the night. Hearing a Russian singer belt out "I vant to break free!" was classic! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and so did the Aussies. (they had been a little unsure about going there.)

So, early in the morning of May 16th, we left our hostel, jumped into our cab that was waiting, and took off for the airport. We were heading for Prague, Czech Republic. (oh and as a side note...when we called to reserve our taxi for the early morning, they asked if we wanted a Russian brand car or and American brand car. The Russian taxi was cheaper, so we went with that one..strange though!)