Reflections from the Road

It has now been well over a month since my journey began, and I have decided to use this post as a forum for my thoughts from the road. Thus far the entire experience has been an eye opening and contemplative event. I have met people from all over the world, seen geographical regions of certain continents where I could have never pictured being, and even learned a little about myself in the process. However, there are also certain components of traveling that I have grown to despise. Recently Splat and I were traveling overnight on a train from Brasov, Romania to Budapest, Hungary. In an attempt to be economical, we opted for a chair on the train rather than a sleeping car. Unfortunately during the middle of the night, someone grabbed Splat's bag and stole all her jewelery as well as all of our pictures from the whole trip. Although, they are just material objects and our well-being was not affected, it is difficult to know that their are people out there with the capacity to do such horrible things. Hopefully, he is reading this blog right now realizing what an asshole he is (yeah thats right I am talking to you!!!). Another aspect of traveling that seems to be catching up with me is the fact that I am constantly on the go. Sleep, which in the past has been one of my favorite activities (see CA summer at camp, year 2000), has been few and far between.

My grandmother would refer to the entire last paragraph as kvetching, and that is not my desire at all, so I believe I will now share a more positive observation. For instance, I have realized that my traveling partner has a way of adapting our lives into some sort of sadistic reality TV show. The plot goes a little like this: Splat tells me that we need to ask for directions (replace with - menus, the bill, hotel costs, food, the list goes on and on), with my most confident strut, I attempt to fulfill these wishes. The results are 9 times out of 10 not positive. I try to slow my English down (I would originally raise the volume of my voice, but I quickly discovered that people generally loathe this strategy), but no matter what I say, the person looks at me as if I have two heads. No matter how good looking these two heads may be, it rarely gets me the result I need. When I return to my traveling companion, she is normally laughing hysterically at my failure, at which point she approaches the person and figures out what we need to know with relative ease. I have begun to suspect she is fluent in a wide host of languages including but not limited to: Hungarian, Romanian, Greek, Arabic, Carney, Latin, and Swahili.

Right now we are in Budapest (on the Pest side) Hungary, and despite the weather and first day fiasco, we are really enjoying this city. It reminds of Melbourne in many ways and makes me miss Australia. I know I had much more to say, but I cannot seem to remember it all, so I will leave you for now with the aformentioned anecdotes. Hope all is well with all.