Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

Hungary — 2, A Trip to the Rusty Steam Trains

The next day, the plan was this: in the morning everyone goes their separate ways, and in the evening, to the thermal baths. I love the railway. Therefore, when I saw some rusty steam trains in a photo, I didn't even think, but immediately wanted to go to them.

First, true, we went to grab breakfast at a hipster vegan cafe with a sky-high rating. Luckily, everything is close by. There are some pluses to living in the center, not just noise and din. The cafe is so hipster that a cake is called "too raw," and the subtitle says "100% raw, 100% vegan, 100% paleo, 100% gluten-free." Practically poison for a rational person. What can you do, I hoped I wouldn't die and gobbled it up. Together with a traditional latte, of course.

Zvarg A warned us that flip-flops are mandatory in the thermal baths. We did grab towels from home, but we messed up with the slippers. To avoid paying exorbitant prices for them in the bathhouse itself, on the way to the train station I popped into a Decathlon, it was right there anyway. I bought sets of slippers for everyone, and for myself also a lumberjack shirt. An interesting detail - the shirt turned out to have a reinforced shoulder part, apparently for carrying a backpack often.

Long story short, I finally made it to the railway station. I had installed the app in advance, so I hoped there would be no problems. Alas, this isn't Switzerland. I didn't manage to buy a ticket, try as I might. I couldn't figure out why. The ride was only two stops, to be fair. Nevertheless, closer to the second one I noticed a ticket inspector, and ran away from him to the back of the train. Luckily, I managed to jump out in time. I figured that for the way back I'd definitely buy a ticket in advance. As they say, if you want to make the Flying Spaghetti Monster laugh, tell him about your plans.

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Hungary — 1, Flight to Budapest, check-in, and walks around the center and Margaret Island

I barely had time to visit Switzerland before Hungary happened. Unfortunately, it looks like my stories are going to get less colorful. Not everyone wants to end up in posts and read about themselves. Especially when it comes to emotions and relationships. I'm already constantly self-censoring anyway, but even so, I still get in trouble. As far as I know, readers are usually more interested in stories about thoughts and feelings than dry facts and lists of places. Apparently, the only option is fiction, not documentaries.

Already a year ago, when the other dwarves and I flew to Prague, we were thinking about a new trip. There were convenient and relatively cheap tickets to Budapest. I was a bit slow on the uptake, didn't buy them right away, and so the flight + hotel ended up costing around 280 euros (for three nights). Then I added another 48 for the right to sip tea from my Chinese tea cups. Meaning, I bought a large cabin bag allowance. Because nowadays with low-costers, you can only grab a small backpack for free.

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Switzerland — 8, Lauterbrunnen: a hike to the Wengernalp station, feeding jackdaws at the Jungfraujoch peak, and also advice to eat cake

The Tageskarte story and arrival in Lauterbrunnen

In Interlaken, I easily met up with my friends, even though the connection was, as usual, only about ten minutes. The guys gave me a spare Tageskarte, and I validated it right away, keeping my previous sad experience in mind.

The thing is, when we were hiking up to the Aletsch Glacier, I started from Fiesch, and in the morning I didn't need the Tageskarte. And when we were leaving after the hike, we were in a hurry, and I forgot to validate it. As a result, at every train stop, I frantically tried to jump out and find a ticket validator, while trying not to get left behind at the station. I ran back and forth, trying to get out of the exact car that was closest to the validator. Fitness champion Anastasia and her friend were riding right next to us, and they laughed their asses off at this. As luck would have it, nothing was working out for me. Either the validator was nowhere to be seen, or it was too far to run, or I was afraid I wouldn't make it in time, and ran back in. It all ended when we arrived in a big city. I jumped out and saw a ticket inspector on the platform, just as she saw me. Fortunately, the train made a pause of a few minutes at this station, and I finally found the validator. I shoved the piece of cardboard into the slot and heard the sharp "bzzzzt" of the dot-matrix printer inside. Victory at last!

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