Unbelievable!

It just gets better every day. Sunday after we used the internet we walked around a little more and then we started to walk home. We thought we knew the way and we didn't want to use a map so we just started walking. You can just guess what happened, we got lost for about an hour and a half, but it was awesome. We had a good night sleep and then we went to the train station early in the morning and took off to Budapest, Hungary.
Who in the world knew that Budapest was so amazing! I was expecting nothing, especially when we got off the train and saw how old and crappy the station was. We had some difficulty getting our next tickets, but then these nice people attacked us offering to help and telling us where to go and what to see. It was by far my favorite place yet in Eastern Europe, even better than the Czech and Krakow. We saw a big fat castle and parliament and some nice churches. To top it all off, for dinner we went to this awesome little restaurant that some guy built himself and he made really good food.
This is the parliament building.

Looking over the river from Buda into Pest (there's two cities)
That night we went to catch our next train and I nearly died. We couldn't find our booth anywhere and they kept kicking us out of all the train cars and telling us to go to the next one. Eventually we ended up in the 2nd class cars where there are no beds just seats, and our room smelled worst than any outhouse I've ever been in. We shut the door and luckily no one else came in the rest of the night so we could lay across three of the seats each. It was really dirty and kind of gross but I thought it was hilarious. The stinking police kept waking us up every hour to show them our tickets and our passports.
Early this morning we arrived in Belgrade, Serbia and it is not a very aesthetically pleasing city. We went to the castle first thing in the morning and walked around for a few hours.

Serbia is a crazy place.

One of the buildings inside is a war museum so we went into there, and it was something else. Most of it was dedicated to the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires but in the last room there were a few displays on the recent war in Bosnia with NATO. They had on display the weapons and gear of the pilot that was shot down and of a few captured ground soldiers. The explanations all talked about it as if it were an unwarranted attack on the Serbs. It was very interesting to see.

A statue near the war museum.

Serbia and Bosnia are not war-zones like they once were, life goes on just like normal here and everyone pretends like nothing ever happened, we haven't seen any resentment in any of the people. Tonight we are heading off to Zagreb, Slovenia and we'll see how that is. Our final destination is Trieste, Italy and then I'm starting the long ride up to Paris to catch the high speed to Dublin.
Just so the family knows, I'm not buying any junk while I'm here except if you tell me to. So if you want something you should write it in a comment before Thursday and I'll see if I can find what you want.

Wiener Schnitzel

Here I am in Vienna, Austria and I am once again pleasantlz surpriyed. Apparently Austrian keyboards switch the y and z because that does not look right. I think the last time I blogged I was in the Czech Republic and it was raining. I think after that we just went back to our hostel and slept. It was a waz nice hostel for how cheap it was and it was good to finallz have a decent night's sleep. The next day we went all around Prague and saw everything that we didn't see the day before. To me the coolest thing there was an enourmous monument on the top of the hill looking over the city. During the height of communist rule there stood a statue of Josef Stalin and then they burned it down and now the base remains covered in grafiti and delapidated. It is a beautiful city but a day and a half was plenty of time to cover it. We took a night train on Friday night to Krakow Poland and it was another sweet ride. Our roomies were two larger girls and an Asian lady and her daughter, all of them snored and the Asian lady made us shut the window and we seriously almost died of heat stroke.
We spent all daz Saturday in Poland. As soon as we got off the train we hopped on a bus to Auschwitz and looked around there for a few hours. It is always so sad to think how people could actually be so mean to other people and the reality of a concentration camp is the epitomy of hate cruelty. We went back to Krakow and saw the cathedrals and castles there and it was nice. We were kind of tired of walking around so we sat in the square and people watched for quite a while. We saw some good break dancers and some good pick pocketers. After all of the fun we got on another night train to Vienna.
This train ride was probably the most tame of all, we had two normal Polish girls and some old Slavic lady and her daughter. The Polish girls found out we were from Utah and then asked if we were mormons and so we talked to them about that for a minute, everyone here is so surpriyed when they find out that you're a mormon. Right when we got to Vienna we checked our stuff into a hostel and then caught a train to Bratislava, Slovakia. We spent most of the day and afternoon in Bratislava, it was alot like the Czech Republic except it was extremely hot today and we couldn't find cold waters anywhere. Needless to say that pretty much almost ruined our experience there. The rest of the evening we spent here in Vienna eating Wieners and looking at stuff. I wasn't expecting anzthing cool here but there is actually alot of sweet churches and buildings and a huge square with tons of street performers.
Tomorrow we'll be headed out to Budapest, Hungary. I'm still loving it and I think the funnest part is going to a new city, not knowing what to expect there and then finding out when you walk around it for a while. I've decided that there is no reason for anyone to spend more that one day in any European city, unless your doing some kind of historical research then you can reasonably spend two days. Also the food has been great everywhere except for that it is expensive no matter where or what you eat. Every stinking meal costs ten dollars. We have been trying to eat authentic foods and that is one of the best parts of the trip I'd say. It is also extremely entertaining trying to learn Czech and Polish and Slovakian. They all use the roman alphabet but they are Slavic languages and are pretty similar to Russian so we slowly start to pick things up. I think when I get home it will be a hobby of mine to learn other Slavic languages. That's all for now, sorry I don't have a way to transfer pictures. Blogs really stink without them and I would not read this if I were you until there was some pictures on it.

It's a Crazy Life

Holy Cow!! Pretty much this has been the craziest three days of my life. Right now I'm pouting because I realized that I left my USB cord for my camera at home so now you just have to take my word for it as I describe things until I can actually post the pictures. I had a good flight to Paris overall, I nearly had problems but then my girlfriend at the United Airlines desk hooked me up. My flight had been delayed and that would have caused me to miss my connection, but then she just pushed alot of buttons and all of a sudden I was going Continental and would arrive at about the same time. I should have kissed her, but she was a little old. My flight was beautiful and I didn't sleep a wink, just talked to an American Woman who worked in Indonesia and watched movies (not chick flicks).
When I finally got to the airport I navigated the Charles de Gaulle airport like a genius and made it out on the metro only 3 hours later. I was on my own for the day in Paris and I just walked all over the time through the city, I saw the Louvre (but not inside because the terds close on Tuesdays), the Eiffel Tower, the Musee d'orsay, and some other large buildings that looked really nice and old so I figured they were important. At night I found my shady hostel, which I was kind of nervous about; but it turned out to be decent and my roomate was a normal guy from Baltimore. I tried to sleep but it didn't work so I just layed there until about 7 in the morning and ran back to the airport to pick up my friend Jordan Briggs (for those of you who don't know we served together in St. Petersburg). I got lost in the airport until I heard some French woman paging me over the loud speaker to the information desk - it was pretty cool. Once we met up we just went and reserved train seats and went inside the Louvre. If anyone is considering going to the Louvre, I definitely recommend it, but the Mona Lisa is overrated and not a fraction as cool as all the other things there. We ate some dirty Greek food on the street and headed off to catch our train.

Nice scenery in Paris

That tiny thing back there is the Mona Lisa

The train was quite an experience indeed. The first leg we sat by two kids from Denmark who were awesome. We played hearts and Texas Hold 'em and talked about universal healthcare and education - they love it and I hate it, but it was definitely interesting to get their perspective.

We had a layover in Koln, Germany of about four hours. We got off the train with our new Danish friends and went and got some food and talked some more about Denmark and America. We had no idea that Koln was even cool and then we exited the station and 200 yards to our left was the largest and coolest gothic style cathedral I've ever seen. We had another near-crisis at the train station in Koln when the board kept giving us faulty information and we almost left the station because we thought we had two more hours. Luckily we asked some man and he told us to run back to platform five so we busted a move and sprinted and barely made it in the nick of time. This train was a sleeper and each room has 6 bunks in it, when we opened our door we see that there are 4 teenage American dudes totally wasted and passed out in our beds. We got the train lady and she slapped him and blew whistles in his ear (three woke up easily but the 4th was a challenge) but he didn't wake up until the supervisor started dragging him off of the bed. Needless to say they were morons and were being extremely annoying and we got no sleep until they got off in Berlin - good riddance it was to them. The rest of our ride into Prague was beautiful and I finally got some sleep. The day in Prague has been great so far, we got a way nice hostel and I took a shower (a rare occurence) and we got some good authentic Czech food. We've seen a couple of the sights in Old Town and now it's raining so we are sitting in here using the internet. View of Prague from the church tower

Basically that is the longest blog ever and probably extremely boring but it will be cool once there's pictures on it. Well I hope you all enjoy your vacation, because I am!

The Death of Me

I have to start this blog with an explanation, or rather a list of excuses, whichever you want to call it. Having been diametrically opposed to blogs, facebook and other things of that nature, I always thought that the day I started would be the day I dyed. I didn't have anything against people who did these things, I just thought that they contributed to a general lack of communication skills in society today; and heaven knows that that's the last thing a communicationally challenged person like me needs. It seems, though, that blogging is something like sin; it starts with curiosity, witch develops into sympathy, and the next thing you know you're all up in the very thing that will kill you. Now for your convenience I've listed my justifications below:
1. Blogging is actually not a sin and it won't kill you. In fact it, as well as other technologically advanced means of communication, has been encouraged by the most spiritually enlightened as a whey of advancing the cause of truth and righteousness.
2. Everybody is doing it. My brothers and sister each have one and they make it look so amazing - probably I'm jealous.
3. Three was my goal, butt I just can't make it happen.
So if you ever are board and you want to perpetuate and prolong the boredom, you may reed my blog; however, you should never feel obligated to do so, and you should never expect greatness.

This is me and my friend, his name is Al.

P.S. Please excuse the spelling errors