Welcome to Slovakia

Monday morning, I did my tour of Warszawa with Kevin. After seeing all the action going on in town the day before, I had high hopes that this would be a great city to wander around and check out. The road, Nowy Swiat, between my hotel and the Hotel Bristol where Kevin was staying was lined with cafes and beautiful buildings, so I figured I'd hit one of them up at 7:30 in the morning, get some tea or coffee, and eat some pastries before starting the day. To my amazement, the street was totally dead! It had been packed the night before, so I was totally amazed about this. Few of the cafes were open, and the ones that were didn't have any bakery goods (again, a common theme in Eastern Europe). I managed to communicate with someone inside and they pointed to a grocery store down the street where I was able to get some bread, but I still couldn't believe that cafes don't open so early.

Nonetheless, I walked down to the Hotel Bristol, where they got FREE breakfast, and Kevin and I headed down towards Old Town. There were cafes everywhere down there, so surely we'd fine a good spot to do people watching there. Wrong again! It too was dead, and it was 9:30 by this point. Where had all the tourists gone from the day before? I guess we figured out that most of the people must have been tourists from nearby areas and had left town on Sunday after spending the weekend there. We actually didn't find any life in any cafes around town until the afternoon, just before we left.

Like I typically do, I figured out a general direction or loop that I wanted to see in the city and we walked around at a leisurely pace soaking it all in. Everywhere we went there weren't many people around, so I'm not sure where it is that everybody works and things like that. We made it back to the main drag (Nowy Swiat) at around 1:00 and had lunch at a restaurant there before we split up and went our seperate ways. Kevin was going to Kracow and then returning to Warszawa later in the week while I was flying to Vienna later in the afternoon.

After packing up and high-tailing it to the airport in Warszawa, I made it to my terminal and, much to my surprise and delight, I found out that they had free wireless internet access there. Since I was a few hours early for my flight, that was perfect, I could catch up on the news, on my email, and do some blogging. Of course, that didn't really happen, mostly because I've become addicted to the three series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the DVDs lent to me by Paul and Cathy. It stars Larry David, the guy who wrote Seinfeld and it is very similar to the show. Highly Recommended.

Anyway, I decided to check in to MSN Messenger and see if Roland was online, since he was the one picking me up in a few hours - or so I assumed, since I hadn't heard from him. Meeting up with Roland always proves to be interesting ever since he left my home in Los Gatos nine years ago. I've met up with him five times since then, four times in Europe and once in South America. And every single time, meeting up with him has turned into an adventure.

The first time we met up, in Italy in 1997, he had gotten on the wrong train and instead of ending up in Torino, he ended up eight hours south in Rome. Somehow he made it to town before me, however, during my disasterous trip down to Italy.

The second time, in 2000, I took a train to Budapest to meet up with him for a week while I was working in Germany - my first trip to Eastern Europe. I got off the train at Keleti Pu train station in Budapest and he was nowhere to be seen. I started walking towards the front of the train and just as I was about to greet the masses of people, he came running in and met me. Close call there.

The third time was in 2001 when we were travelling through Europe after graduation from college. We had visited Berlin and Prague and decided to go out of our way to visit Vas in Budapest, since most of the group hadn't been there before. We didn't hear from him for a while before the trip, which worried me, and sure enough, when we got to Keleti Pu train station in Budapest, he wasn't there. But this time, we never could get ahold of him. We were in town for three days and didn't hear from him once. Turns out his car had been stolen, his dad had gotten sick, he had failed some important University tests, etc. etc.

The fourth time, we met up in South America. His plane was supposed to arrive fifteen minutes after hours in Lima, Peru, but when we made a connection in Houston, he had left a voicemail saying that it was very important that I call him, he had some news. But he left no details, of course. So we walked off the plane in Lima and couldn't find him. We made our connection to Cusco a few hours later, still no word from him. We arrived in Cusco, spent the whole day there with Vanessa, still no word from him. That night he called and said that his flight from Vienna to Amsterdam was delayed, so he missed the two other connections he needed to make it to Peru and wouldn't arrive until a day later.

The fifth time, I met him and his girlfriend in Prague when I was visiting Alex and Germany for Christmas in 2003. I had made all the arrangements for accomodations (as usual) for youth hostels (as usual). But the one I had wanted to stay at was apparently full, so I booked a different one in town. Then I emailed the one I wanted to stay at to see if they had occupancy and, sure enough, they did. So I sent another email to everyone saying that I had changed our youth hostel and went ahead and cancelled the other. So when they arrived in Prague, we got a call from Roland saying the youth hostel had cancelled our reservation. WTF? So he went and got a hotel nearby the youth hostel. There was mass confusion for over an hour until we arrived in Prague and went to the youth hostel. I asked the guys at the desk what was up with our reservation and how could they cancel our reservation and where did they send my friend etc. etc. He got annoyed and said "No, your reservation is set and I haven't seen your friend". Uhhh...turns out Vas somehow missed the email that I had sent that said we cancelled the first reservation and was over at the first youth hostel. Mass chaos.

So needless to say, I was worried about him being in Vienna to pick me up. But he insisted he was leaving really early and would be waiting for me as soon as I got off the plane. Well, he had good intentions, at least. My flight was delayed an hour due to operational difficulties, so I knew that was a bad sign. Once we got airborne, though, it was all good and the flight was half as long as they said, so we must have made up some time. The flight was on the Polish airline LOT (insert Polish joke here ;o). But, actually, all the seats were a comfortable faux-leather and there was lots of space, so it wasn't too bad.

I got off the plane, gathered my luggage, got another passport stamp, and exited to a small terminal where Vas was waiting. Or supposed to be waiting. Where he wasn't waiting. So, working on autopilot, I pulled out my credit card and made an expensive call to his mobile phone to find out where he was. "We'll be there in a half hour, the drive was a disaster". But, really, what did I expect? It wouldn't be right if Vas was there on time :o).

Lucky for me, Vienna had free wireless internet as well, but I opted to relax and watch another episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I wasn't there very long before Vas arrived with Csilla, who was about a foot taller than I remember her being. I thought she was short?!? Did she get height implants? Nope, just high-heels :o) ! It was great to see them and I soon met their "child" (dog) Bennie, a black American Spaniel puppy who was waiting in the car for everyone. The drive home, through three countries, went without a problem and I was soon checking in at their hotel Banderium Pension, which Roland has been managing for two years now.

Although I wasn't given the presidential suite in this luxurious 8 room Pension, I was setup with a room that had a balcony with a table and chair overlooking the neighboring cafe. Kind of hard to complain about that! Roland and Csilla have good taste in hiring staff to work at the receptionist desk, I had a great time during my stay with discussions with Agi, Eve, and Danissa (sp.?).

After checking in, I went over to Roland and Csilla's apartment, which was a seven minute walk away (I guess they've made it enough times). It was a beautiful apartment with an awesome entertainment center and a very comfortable feel to it. Roland and I kicked back and had some good Eastern European beer (Pilsener Urquell) before going on a walk around town to try to find some cafes still open (at midnight). Unfortunately, we had no luck on a Monday night, so we called it in early (1:00am) and decided to meet up the next morning to possibly take a trip to Bratislava to go Euro shopping! If the stores weren't open (due to impending holidays), we were going to go to Siofok in Hungary to relax for a few days.

I noticed from walking around that, though they are related, Slovak is much easier to at least try to pronounce than Polish. At least they use vowels! Plus Slovak is similar to Czech, which I knew a few words of - well, one word, really - so I had a bit of a head start with this language at least....