I'm glad that my flatmate Erin and I went to the Römertherma, but I don't know if I would go again. It's quite a bit smaller than other Thermas I've been to, so I'm not sure its worth the 9 Euro for 2.5hrs at night. If we had paid another 6 Euro we could've also had access to the Saunas, but that seemed too expensive for us. Since we were there at night there weren't too many people there, so it was very relaxing and pleasant. I still have yet to go to the Strandbad (beach pools), but it's in the plan for some warm afternoon soon.
On May 1st Erin and I went to Bratislava for the day. It's only an hour and a half from Baden, and as it's a small city it was quite doable to walk around in the old city center and up to the castle. Luckily they have the Euro there, so we didn't have to change any money, and there were lots of outdoor market stands selling pretty, cheap jewelry. So we did a fair bit of shopping while wandering around the city. We also had a very good lunch at a restaurant on the main square. Erin went with more traditional Slovakian food- Oxtail soup and the Slovak version of Käsespätzle (but it was creamier and with bacon). I opted for the burger, because the description was so good and it met my expectations. It was a very juicy burger (something hard to find here in Austria) with a spicy garlic sauce, gouda, and of course lettuce onion and tomato.
For more details and pictures click here.
This past weekend Erin and I went to Budapest for 3 days (well really 2 days in the city and a 1/2 days travel on either end). It was a great little weekend trip, Budapest is a very cool city with a lot of history, culture and flavorful food. The city is certainly doable in 2 days, but I think it would also be easy to spend a lot more time there! The Hungarian language and money are a bit difficult to deal with, luckily we could get on with English or German most of the time. In fact our first night there (after drinking a Magners hard cider) Erin and I only spoke German the rest of the night, which was funny, but also good practice for us both! The money is just hard to deal with because of how many 0s there are, and the conversion rate isn't easy to wrap your mind around (or at least not mine considering I don't have a mind for numbers!).
The only real problem we had was right when we got to Budapest. The guy, George, who was the landlord for the apartment we had booked (at 10 Euro a night) told us that the apartment was actually double booked, and so we'd have to stay in a different apartment. On the walk to this apartment we talked to him and he seems like a really nice good guy, he told us that where we were going used to be a hostel, but it closed and now he was getting it fixed up to be a hostel again. He warned us that the place was a bit of a mess, but that they were going to clean it all up and it would be ready for us by that evening. True to his word when we got back after dinner there were no more beds piled in front of the bathrooms or along the walls, everything was clean and all set up nicely. Because of the change and 'inconvenience' he only charged us half price! The place that we had originally booked was in a nice area, with a few restaurants around and close to public transport, the place where we actually stayed was in a student neighborhood. It was great, the street we were on was full of restaurants serving all different kinds of food from all around the world, and all at student prices for the most part!
For more details and pictures click here.
Today I booked my train tickets to Bregenz (I only go to places that start with B these days it seems!) for this long weekend. My hostbrother Steffen is going to pick me up there and I'll be spending a few days with him in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Can't wait!
