Trip-End Wrapup
(Shortly after crossing the border from Romania into Hungary
Matt: Holy crap! Did you see that? Those sheep were eating a tree! The sheep in Hungary are hardcore!
O's Dad: [nonchalantly] No, no, those are Romanian sheep. They cross the border to make sure the landscape in Hungary stays treeless and boring, so the Hungarians don't get too cocky.
Some other highlights of the latter part of the trip, before we came home:
More tasty goulash in Hungary. We even tried our hand at making it at home — not bad, but I'll still have to keep working on it.
Some time to explore Budapest, which of course was not, in fact, a "dirty little town"*
Breakfast in Bratislava. "Hey, it's only about a half hour out of the way, let's visit Slovakia!" We had coffee at the UFO Restaurant, perched 80 meters high on top of Bratislava's suspension bridge over the Danube. One of the coolest restaurant/lounges I've ever been to, and definitely the most scenic bathroom I've ever been to (photos to follow, eventually). We also stopped for about a half hour at a really nice mall there. I feel bad that this beautiful city suffered such an image taint from those awful Hostel movies — I, for one, left with all my fingers still attached.
A really fantastic 36 hours in Vienna. Mozart's House, a tour of the catacombs under Stephansdom Cathedral and a dizzying visit to the top of the Stephensdom bell tower, a visit to the Schönbrunn Palace, some great little coffee shops and art galleries, more bookstores per capita than I've witnessed anywhere, street musicians, street circus ponies, a magic shop, a really cool toy store — Vienna is a wonderful place, and I can't wait to go back.
Austria in general was kind of interesting. We spent a few hours driving outside of Vienna, including a couple of meals in rural guesthouse restaurants, in which I observed 1. that Austrians are a pretty friendly bunch overall (including the huge gang of bikers at the table next to us at dinner the first night), 2. that Austrian bars generally smell like pot smoke (perhaps an explanation for #1), and 3. that Austrian food and wines are tremendously underrated.
* One evening, while still in Romania, the TV cinema movie on one of the major networks was Death, Deceit & Destiny Aboard the Orient Express (also known as Terror on the Orient Express, as if it needed additional names). O's dad had just started to give us a little homily on how much better the movies aired by Romanian TV networks were than the typical Sunday Night Movie in Canada when this little gem hit the living room screen.
To call it utterly awful would gloss over the complexity of its multifaceted awfulness.
The plot: A gang of international terrorists sends special invitations to a selected group of celebrities and other wealthy individuals to take an all-expenses-paid ride on the famed Orient Express, after which said terrorists hijack the train, and demand something like 40% of each character's income (why 40?) or they'll blow up the train. Sure, cheesy, but not the worst action movie plot ever. But it was the little things that destroy it, and those little things occur about once every two minutes:
A group of the hostages somehow seamlessly transition from being terrified to playing a game of strip poker to pass the time.
One couple, trapped in a car by a man with a machine gun, escape by means of the machine gun being accidentally dropped to the floor, and by astronomical chances, not only starting to fire like crazy, but only hitting and killing terrorists, without harming any hostages.
And our personal favourite bit, one particularly obnoxious jaded rich American guy whining, "Aw, do we HAVE to stop in Budapest? It's such a dirty little town" — made worse by the fact that the character's misperception about Budapest somehow alters reality such that, when the train does stop in Budapest 10 minutes later, it's a tiny single-platform train depot in the middle of nowhere. While we were in Budapest, the family insisted that we visit one of the city's three huge train terminals, just to make extra certain that the movie didn't leave me with any ridiculous assumptions about Budapest's railway presence.
We may have to find this on DVD just to inflict its horror on others.
Matt: Holy crap! Did you see that? Those sheep were eating a tree! The sheep in Hungary are hardcore!
O's Dad: [nonchalantly] No, no, those are Romanian sheep. They cross the border to make sure the landscape in Hungary stays treeless and boring, so the Hungarians don't get too cocky.
Some other highlights of the latter part of the trip, before we came home:
To call it utterly awful would gloss over the complexity of its multifaceted awfulness.
The plot: A gang of international terrorists sends special invitations to a selected group of celebrities and other wealthy individuals to take an all-expenses-paid ride on the famed Orient Express, after which said terrorists hijack the train, and demand something like 40% of each character's income (why 40?) or they'll blow up the train. Sure, cheesy, but not the worst action movie plot ever. But it was the little things that destroy it, and those little things occur about once every two minutes:
We may have to find this on DVD just to inflict its horror on others.