A trip to Budapest and Vienna

On Sunday my mom and I left for a trip to Budapest and Vienna. A piece of advice to all travelers planning on crossing borders: check to make sure you have your own passport! We arrived plenty early at the Graz train station, purchased all of our train tickets for the next few days, got some sandwiches for lunch, and were seated on the train 10 minutes early. For some unknown reason, I decided to look at my passport... when I opened it I saw David staring back at me... I had grabbed his passport and NOT mine! We jumped off the train, I called David, he hopped on his bike and rode like the wind to deliver me my passport. Unfortunately the train was just pulling out of the station when I came running up to the platform. However, there was another train 45 minutes later, and it's better to have noticed that I had the wrong passport while we were still in Graz and not sitting at the border of Austria and Hungary. So, it all worked out in the end.
The new train route to Budapest had us waiting in Wiener Neustadt for 2 hours for a connection, so we explored the town. We got some giant ice creams and people watched.
We arrived in Budapest around 9pm and found our way to a very friendly hostel. Here's the view of the courtyard of the building the hostel is in.

Budapest is a large city (pop. almost 2 million). Hungary just joined the EU in 2004, and it is pretty obvious that the country is still recovering from years of communism and war. It is a pretty city, but also a very dirty city. We encountered some very friendly and helpful people, but also some people who were eager to rip us off. It was an interesting experience.

A view from the castle hill on the Pest side looking over to the Buda side:

Damage from the 1956 uprising





After Budapest we went to Vienna. It was nice to be able to communicate in the native language again and not have to rely on people knowing English. We walked all over the Inner Stadt and went to the Belvedere.
A view from the train back to Graz