Day 18

* Some people are wondering why we called the Hungarian hostel employee "Attila". The answer is simple, we can't remember his name and he looks a little like Attila the Hun.


On Day 18 we simply walked around Budapest and did some window shopping. Nothing too interesting happened until our night train to Venice.

You see, originally on our itinerary, we had our night train going from Budapest to Salzburg, and then switching trains to go from Salzburg to Venice. But when we got to Budapest on Day 17 and booked our night train, we got what seemed to be a better train: one train from Budapest to Venice.

Unfortunately, I had not seen a map for some time and I had forgotten exactly where Budapest was. It was surprising to see our train cross the border into Croatia (one part of the former Yugoslavia, but not too bad of a country). It was a little worrisome to get passport checks at every stop. Then I looked at my Eurail map to make sure that we wouldn't be going through Serbia or Bosnia, and thankfully we didn't. We did have to go through Slovenia, a socialist state but a part of the European Union, where we again had numerous passport checks. Yes, once again we hardly got any sleep on a night train.

We are now safely in Venice, having arrived at 7 AM local time. This afternoon we'll be leaving for Brescia, Italy where tomorrow we'll be meeting up with Tyler's friend, Brittani.