Michal and I left Budapest late this morning. We have excelled in our ability to quickly and efficiently pack over the last 3 weeks! If you’ve been diligently reading my blog, you know that the portion of the trip that we are currently on was not fully planned out until a couple of days ago. This is not my typical style at all. To have a little fun with it, I gave a couple of clues yesterday about where we were headed today.
We are no longer in Hungary. It is debatable if we are still in Eastern Europe. According to the UN, we’re not; but according the CIA, we are. The currency in this country is the Euro. It is the one and only country we will be in all summer that uses the Euro. The value of the US dollar was great in all the other countries, but not so great compared to the Euro. The official language here is German, but we are not in Germany.
My friends at work entertained me today by sharing their guesses. Some of those guesses were Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Bosnia. The country we are currently in is bordered by Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary. It was roughly a 2.5 hour train ride to get here from Budapest.
Look at the map of Europe. Think you have it figured out yet? Here is your final clue: the movie, The Sound of Music, takes place in this country (and the city we are in is regarded as the capital of music). You have to have it figured out by now!
Today marked an important day in my short 28 years on this planet. Our arrival in this country marked the 15th country that I have traveled to in the last 6 years! Who would have thought that such a small town girl would end up with big European dreams? There are still so many countries left to see though!
For the next two days, Michal and I will be exploring the capital city of Austria!! That’s right, we’re in Vienna! We arrived late this afternoon and will be taking an overnight train to the South part of Poland on Thursday. So the next two days will be jammed pack with sight-seeing in this beautiful city.
Tonight we learned an important lesson about Vienna. Grocery stores close at 7:30. If you’re in there at 7:25, they yell (literally yell) at you to get out. Could you imagine if Wegmans was only open until 7:30? On the positive side, they have peanut butter imported from the USA!!! It’s been over a month since I’ve had peanut butter. I’m a bit of a peanut butter addict, so needless to say, I bought that jar of peanut butter, came back to where we are staying and began eating it by the spoonful. And I will be having peanut butter and jelly for breakfast tomorrow.
It is time for bed. I need to recover from a travel day and prepare to have an incredibly busy couple of days. Thanks to all of you who participated in figuring out my travel riddle today!