Leitungswasser

In the time since my last update I have been roaming the former Austro-Hungarian Empire far and wide, adventuring to do what I have never done before and have wanted to do for a very long time. The first of these activities was caving. Adam, my travelling buddy who I met in Helsinki and met up with again recently, joined me for this activity as well. The caves in Budapest are right beneath the city, which I thought was really awesome. We put on full body suits and helmets with headlamps and started off into the dark with our guide. (Before going, I was thinking "why do we need a guide?" but afterwards I was grateful since the cave was rather disorienting.) The guide took us and the rest of the group through many nooks and crannies where I had to squeeze through holes the width of my head and pull myself over ledges. The caves were made of limestone and were formed by surface water containing carbon dioxide squeezing through very small fissures in the ground and chemically eroding the limestone. I could definitely see myself exploring caves as a hobby in the future if I lived somewhere where caves abounded. Our guide was telling us how some of his friends were exploring the depths of the largest cave chamber in the world, recently discovered in Vietnam. Quite the adventure if you ask me. Anyways, here are some pictures of my spelunking trip:

That night I joined nearly everyone in the hostel for a night cruise down the river. I bumped into two sisters I had met in Prague (one lived in Ghana and the other was a flight attendant in Australia). Anyways, lots of good photos were to be had of the Buda Castle, the Hungarian parliament, and the like.

After the cruise a drunk Hungarian guy came up to us trying to help us with directions and we realized he was going to a bar near our hostel. We joined him at the bar for a while and he and his friend played Adam and I at foosball. I am alright at foosball myself and Adam is pretty good, having been on a foosball team at Oxford, but this guy and his friend were amazing. They were pulling moves I had never seen before, and managed to beat us by quite a few points in one of the games. (I have actually played quite a bit of foosball/table football since coming to Europe, its quite popular here). Oh and the bar had flying rabbits, which is obviously worth mentioning.

The next day Adam and I took a train to Vienna and went to an opera at the opera house (La Traviata by Verdi) since it seemed like a Vienna thing to do. I am very glad I went, since I had never been to an opera before. Very over-dramatic but the classical music was amazing (after all many famous composers like Mozart spent time in Vienna).

It was raining and cold most of the time we were in Vienna, but we managed to get some good photos around town during a short sun break, and eat some Wiener Schnitzel, which I gathered is from Vienna since the German name for it is Wien.

Right now Adam and I are attempting to travel to Amsterdam, but are having problems with train delays, so we will see what happens...

PS The title of this blog is the most useful German word ever, can you guess what it means?