Smuggling across the border.
Budapest and Vienna are beautiful but getting there is another story. We decided to take a maxi-taxi (something akin to a mini-bus) from Romania to Budapest (it's much cheaper and supposedly faster) but little did we know what we were in for. The bus left at 9 at night, but actually left at 945, the first sign that something was amiss. But we coasted along, and I mean coasted on the icy bumpy road at 80km and finally after many, many stops along the way we hit the border. It was at this point that I realized maxi-taxi's had little to do with transporting people from place to place and everything to do with smuggling. We waited an hour at the border as our driver entered the duty free and bought each of us onboard the legal limit of tax free cigarettes (two cartons). The cartons were dutifully passed out among the passangers and we proceded to cross the border, except the police would not let us cross. No, it was not the cigarettes..they were fine ( just business as usual) but apparently we were in a van that didn't have the right paperwork to cross the border. So we waited. We waited for two and half hours at the border for the correct car to pick us up. And we waited without heat. I swear I thought i would have to amputate my toes. Tara and I were huddling together for warmth when finally the car came and we unloaded and reloaded our luggage and were off. There was still no heat but we finally made it frozen toes and all to budapest. Glorious budapest, I love that city. There are no blocs, no concrete remnants of communism, it is europe. They have a mall, I mean a real mall that accepts credit cards. I nearly died from culture shock. We ate indian food and I ate so many kebabs. But the trippiest thing I think was meeting Lisa ( and then we met Brian in Vienna). Things were all of a sudden the same but we were in budapest and it was too nice. We spent the new years in the center of Budapest. There were homemade fireworks and tons of champagne. I got soaked. I kissed two Italian boys ( on the cheek!) and we kissed a Hungarian vendor to get a discount on a party favor for Lisa. Hungarian men are good looking, but the language is like waking up with a hangover headache in china ( freaking hard) Now I've brought back Lisa and Brian (it took us over 24 hours) back to Valcea. I should put myself on a diet now because I am going to be homesick when they go and I know that it's going to take some major eating and writing to get over them being here. I will miss them.