Slovakia - Bratislava

16th November 2014

Leaving Budapest, we took a 3-hour ride to Bratislava. It was a really bad day for me, as it was raining (freezing) and I had cramps. The weather was really depressing, and we skipped the city tour as usual. I was just desperate to find somewhere nice and warm to sit down and rest.

We found a really great Chinese restaurant while walking downhill towards the Old Town. We had a lot of food, like soups, duck, black pepper beef, 土豆丝, and there was even 毛血旺!! I was quite surprised to find this in Europe. We ordered way too much food, but we kind of finished everything, so I was ultra bloated. Even the boss was shocked at our great appetites... Hahaha. The meal wasn't cheap, about 19€ per person, but I'm guessing it was because we ordered too much and the 毛血旺 was probably quite expensive. Nevertheless, I thought the money was well spent and I was super satisfied with the meal.

We continued walking towards the Old Town. It wasn't far, just across the small bridge.

A good view of the city from uphill, but the entire city was veiled by a thick layer of fog. 

If you go up the slope from here, you'll find great cafés.

The Old Town.

Somehow, this reminds me of China in the 90s.

The thing you see on the bridge is called UFO! There is a nice restaurant 85m above ground level, and an observation deck 10m up from the restaurant. The entrance fee was 4.35€ for students, and we took a lift up. The lift seemed similar to the one at the Eiffel Tower, since it went up in a slanted path. In the UFO, we often felt vibrations due to the movement of the lift and the wind! Pretty scary at first.

Nice ambience.

View from the deck. Still foggy!

We stayed there till 7pm! LOL. We got so comfortable up there, plus there was Wi-Fi. So you could imagine :P I ordered a Cappuccino and a huge waffle, which C and Y promised to help me eat but they didn't!!! I stuffed the whole thing down even though I was still full from lunch. It was a great waffle (with cream, bananas, strawberries) so how could I resist :P

The most prominent modern building in the vicinity!

I went up to the deck to get some night views of the city, hoping that it would help to redeem itself as the capital city. Well, the view wasn't too bad, but not very impressive either. I guess the city doesn't really have many iconic buildings to begin with, so the views just seemed a bit mediocre.

We headed to the huge shopping centre (the modern building above) just across the bridge. It was really quite big and nice inside. Reminds me of ION! Best news for us was that there was KFC inside! Haha! The KFC there was really really cheap, like you could get 20 wings for about 10€ (can't remember exactly but about there). On the same level, there were Subway and other fast food restaurants that had really cheap stuff.

After dinner, we went to a café to get free Wi-Fi and continued derping till 9pm when we headed back to the castle to assemble and go home. The bus was half an hour late again and I really wanted to punch them.

Bratislava has a really strange mix of old and modern architecture. When we first entered the outskirts of the city, there were a lot of colourful buildings that looked like HDB flats! Even surrounding the Old Town, there were some relatively modern buildings alternating amongst the remnants of the medieval town.

I was quite surprised to find out that there are actually a lot of tour groups that go to Bratislava (as we heard from the Chinese restaurant boss). I haven't heard of Bratislava before, to be honest. I know Slovakia, but what's the capital city? No idea. It was still a good experience I guess. It's rare that travellers like us could get to see something so vastly different from the usual elegance and magnificence of popular tourist destinations in Europe.

Hungary - Budapest

14th November 2014

The drive from Vienna to Budapest was supposed to be 2.5 hours, and there was a pubcrawl at about 9.30pm, but everything got delayed. The bus ride took 4 hours, again, because of traffic problems, and the bus couldn't go through some tunnels/bridges because of its height, and the driver got lost again. We arrived really late at the hostel and still had to check-in. By the time we could settle down on our beds, it was half past midnight. Fortunately we didn't buy the tickets to pubcrawl. A lot of those who did ended up not going because it was way too late. 

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15th November 2014

We woke up really late, at about 10.30pm. We were quite annoyed by our room mates, because they woke up earlier and started talking at normal volume. The girl below me was even blowing her hair while some of us were still sleeping. So damn inconsiderate. The night before, C and I bathed last, because we thought they were going to the pubcrawl so they should bathe first. It turned out that nobody went, so by the time we bathed, they had slept. We had already tried to keep our volumes down and I even considered not blowing my hair since it would be way too noisy (but fortunately the bathrooms had power plugs so I could do it in the bathroom), but the girl below me was still visibly pissed. And C turned on her lamp for a while to get ready for bed, but the girl just asked her to turn off the lights. Like hello, it's just one lamp, upstairs. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't stop you from falling asleep. Seriously, they were damn rude. And they probably were just biased against Asians. But whatever, who the hell do they think they were? And their actions just proved that they were obviously ill-bred. We should be the ones looking down on them.

Anyway, we left the hostel at about 11.30am, changed money downstairs, and had a piece of pizza at the market opposite our hostel. It was very cheap, only 1€ per person :D

I was quite surprised that Budapest was so beautiful and relatively clean. The weather was really kind too! The name of Budapest is actually the combination of Buda and Pest, which are separated by the Danube River. The river bank with the Buda Castle is of course Buda, and the other one with the Parliament is Pest.

We headed to the river to see the Buda Castle.

The Chain Bridge and Buda Castle.

Before that though, of course, we had lunch first hahaha. The beer was awesome! Goulash was good, but the portion was way too small for the price. Tiramisu was great too :D

The Buda Castle is really big. There's a funicular railway that could take you up there, or you could just walk up. We walked, and it wasn't very difficult to climb. Along the way, you could see the chain bridge, the Pest coast, and the Parliament.

Up on the castle, we could see the city very well. There are quite a lot of buildings in Budapest! And most of them looked like residential areas. Budapest is the 8th most populated city in the European Union with about 1.7 million people!

We played archery for a while. 5 shots for 2€. It was quite difficult!! I managed to hit the board but I guess I didn't use enough strength so the arrow dropped onto the floor :P

There was a small stall selling funnel cakes and it smelled so good!!! Despite being very full, we bought one to try, and immediately regretted not buying more. The queue was really long! Guess everyone was drawn to it by the fragrance in the air :D It's only about 2.30€ so you definitely have to try it!!

We came across a couple getting their wedding shots there. So romantic and beautiful :) Really envy Europeans!! For us, we could only make do with Sentosa lol.

The sky gradually turned dark and the city started to light up. This is probably one of the best night views ever.

We walked down the castle and across the Chain Bridge to the Pest bank to see the Parliament. We then had dinner at a Hungarian restaurant that was pretty expensive and the quality of food was not very high. Walking back to the hostel, we passed by a Chinese restaurant, and I was really craving for Chinese food, so I bought a box of 虾饺 and C bought a fried noodle. They tasted pretty nice!

C got an apartment near the river to stay for the night, because we were pretty disappointed with the hostel and our room mates. We moved our stuff over there, and joined the group to the boat party. It was a 2-hour party on the boat while it cruised the river, and then there was an after-party at the largest club in Budapest.

The boat party wasn't as fun as I had imagined, and a lot of people actually just sat on the upper deck the entire time and didn't party at all. I wonder what they were doing there... We wanted to get home earlier so we didn't plan to go to the after-party. Our guide told us that there would be a bus after the boat party that would take us to the club, which is near our hostel. So we boarded the bus without hesitation after getting off the boat. BUT the guide lied!!! Idiot. The bus took us way out of town and across the river, where we could only leave via a cab. So we didn't have a choice and got onto a cab. We didn't even bring money out, and only had 1500Ft left with us. The driver was nice enough to drive us back and wait for us to get our money. It cost us 25€ when it was supposed to be about 10€, so I guess the driver wasn't very honest... Nevertheless, we were glad to be home finally. It was already almost 2am! We had to wake up at 8am to get ready and check out.

I liked Budapest a lot. I think the architecture is amazing - the Castle and Parliament are huge and beautiful. We didn't have a chance to go inside, but I will be back :P At the right places, food is cheaper. The streets are quite clean and surprisingly a lot of people can speak English well. 

Austria - Vienna

13th November 2014

I joined another pm2am student trip to Vienna, Budapest, and Bratislava with C and Y. C and I bought a lot of snacks in the afternoon before departure to prepare for the long bus journeys :P 

We departed at about 10pm from Mannheim, passing by Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Munich before arriving in Vienna on Friday morning at 9am! I don't know why it took so long, and the bus driver kept getting the wrong directions!!

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14th November 2014

We had a guided city tour at the Maria-Theresien Platz. We followed the tour for like 5 minutes, and decided to just tour on our own, since we couldn't hear the guide at all. We mainly just walked around the Volksgarten and Heldenplatz, which were quite big and beautiful. The city was really clean and everywhere we walked, we could hear music being played by street artists on their accordions. 

We were quite amused by the MDCCCCXVI, because we thought it was a word,
 but turns out it was a roman number that represents 1916 :P

Beautiful garden :) Beautiful weather!

We casually walked around and took loads of pictures. Along the Universitätsring, we came across the Rathaus, or Town Hall. For some reason, all the town halls look similar, especially the one in Brussels. 

The Christmas market was supposed to open the next day, but some shops had already opened when we were there! Lucky :P There were so many cute shops selling Christmas decorations and food. 

I bought the strawberries for 1.80€. I loved the strawberries, but the chocolate was the cheap and not-so-sweet kind. I also bought a truffle chocolate (0.50€) and a rum chocolate (1€) later at another stall, which both tasted very good!

We had roast chicken for lunch at a random place near the McDonald's because we were craving for KFC but it was too far away! We bought a whole chicken and a big piece of roasted pork each, for only 15€ in total. Such a good meal :P

We explored further into the city and found the shopping streets! Lots of big brands that I can't afford, but still a nice place to walk around. 

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant. I had a glass of Chardonnay, a soup, and we shared a pizza. The pizza was pretty good! 

We were supposed to get back to Maria-Theresien Platz for the bus at 6.30pm, but apparently it got delayed an hour due to traffic, and everyone knew except us, probably because we didn't go for the city tour. BUT, it didn't make sense that they knew the bus was going to be delayed in the morning.. I don't think they told us the real reason, but whatever.

We headed to the Rathaus for another look before we boarded the bus to Budapest!

Vienna was great, but we were too exhausted from the bus journey to fully enjoy it. European cities are generally quite small, and most of the places of interest can be reached by foot. I think that's really nice and can save us a lot of money :P 

Austria - Salzburg

8th November 2014

Another day trip from Munich! Salzburg is a city at the western border of Austria. It is the birthplace of Mozart, so you would find quite some monuments or attractions that are related to Mozart.

We bought bus tickets to Salzburg because it was less than half the price of train tickets. Just 5€ per person. BUT, we missed the bus!!! -.- The central bus station was really far from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), and we had some trouble finding it. Turns out, there is an S-bahn station called Hackerbrücke, which is right beside the bus station. Sigh.

So we ended up taking the 11.30am bus instead of the 9.30am bus. And wasted 10€. We went over to the Marienplatz to shop for shoes, since my sports shoes couldn't be worn in rainy weather.

I got these for 25€ (original price was 35€), which is pretty decent. I just needed to get a cheap pair to last me for a month!

We arrived at Salzburg at about 1pm. I was so exhausted that I slept throughout the entire bus journey. The Salzburg train station is about 20 minutes from the Old Town by foot. The city is not big, so there wasn't any need to take a bus. There is a Salzburg Card which allows free entry into most museums and includes free rides on public transport as well. We didn't get it though, since it was quite a short day for us and we didn't have time to visit so many museums. Most of the attractions closed at about 4pm or 5pm.

We had Subway for lunch, then headed to the Hohensalzburg Fortress. It was the most recommended destination. Along the way, we passed by quite some points of interest. It was a bit too cloudy for me to get nice photos though :(

Mirabell Gardens

The fortress was clearly visible from most parts of the town. 

The walk up to the fortress from the foot of the hill took about 20 minutes. It wasn't a very steep climb, although you could always take the cable railway up if you're lazy (11.30€ in total) :P The entrance fee was 8€ and it included a free ride down on the cable car.

The fortress, was quite literally a fortress. I found its structure to be quite complicated and I couldn't really find my way inside... But maybe it's just me. Hahaha.

I find these little houses really cute

Lc bluffed me that this is a famous 百年老树! And I believed him!!! -.-

The walk up was so worth it! The view was really amazing, and we could see the Alps! The weather was pretty kind to us, and the sun was out by the time we got up there.

Inside the fortress, there are displays regarding its history. The construction of the fortress began in 1077, almost a thousand years ago!

We left when the sun started to set, and by the time we reached the Old Town, it was dark again. I hate it that days are so short now!!

There was this cone that looked like a mini Louvre :D

We strolled around Getreidegasse, Salzburg's shopping street, and came across the Mozarts Geburtshaus (Mozart's Birthplace)! It was seriously very inconspicuous, and looked like any other building next to it. It was already closed by the time we got there, so no chance to take a look inside.

The street was bustling with life! I liked the ambience there. We had dinner at the 中国楼, as you can see in the picture above. It was a buffet for 10.90€ during weekends, and 9.90€ during weekdays. No drinks included. The selection of food was alright for the price, and surprisingly it tasted pretty good! Meat was very tender and well-cooked, and there were big prawns as well. I ate 3 plates of stuff :P I liked the 酸辣汤 too. Drank 3 bowls!!

I was super satisfied from the dinner, and we slowly (I was way too full) strolled back to the train station. Luckily our train wasn't affected by the strike. Lol. Oh yeah, we booked train tickets back to Munich because there weren't any bus timings after 4.30pm for some reason...

I think Salzburg would make a nice day trip or 2-day trip, but not any longer. We would probably have gone to Hallstatt if we had another day!