Oct 31
As you drive East from Budapest, cars get older and louder and blow grey smoke. You see farmers guide horses pulling wagons of hay. You see old man wearing big hats and darker, aged clothing. You see roofs on houses sag, cement facades chip away to red brick beneath. You see sidewalks crack, heave and then disappear. You see more and more people on dusty bicycles and boney mopeds.
As you drive East you find road signs to be hidden by trees or missing completely. The smooth pavement gives ways to splotches of cement and asphalt. Then holes in the road get bigger and bigger, some large enough to swallow your car. The guardrails and street lights disappear and you drive along in a pitch black, flat, foreign land. Everywhere you look is a mysterious abyss except for the thirty feet of broken road ahead, light dimly by the weak headlights on your early 80s Volkswagen.
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Oct 29
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Oct 29
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Oct 27
I have mentioned a few times how traveling throughout the world often feels like time-travel. Some places in India and Thailand had little to no signs of the modern world where they work and farm using the same tools and living in the same shelters as they have for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Even in Europe, I sometimes feel as if Ive traveled back in time. Most often its a trip to the early 1980s, when I was almost too young to remember what it was like sitting in a smoky restaurant or in a cloudy waiting room.
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Oct 26
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Oct 21
It’s one AM in Budapest. I’m stealing internet from a closed cafe and working in the van. Today I was a real tourist. Went sightseeing, bought post cards and all that.
I read in a Budapest City Guide, printed by the city of Budapest, that parking in Budapest is free on the weekends and I took that to mean any public parking spots, even the ones near the tourist attractions, which evidently was not the case because i got a parking ticket at the Citadel today. 9000 Forints is about 40 bucks. I wonder if they’ll find me if i don’t pay? I still owe the ferry company in Venice 60 bucks for riding without a ticket back in 2001. I’m such a rebel.
Oct 20
Its damn cold in Europe right now. Having been following summer weather since January, it really caught me by surprise. Weve been boiling water on the stove in the van for heat, but the damp air is starting to warp all my books. Our hopes are that as we make our way south, things will warm up again.
The rest of my travels this year are somewhat planned out. Desiree and I are making our way through Eastern Europe to Istanbul and then finally Greece where Ill put the VW in long term parking at Athens International and well fly together to Egypt. A week later, my good friend Mike will be meeting us in Cairo.
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