In German: herzlichen Glückwunsch
One may think that travelling through Europe may not be much more adventurous and exciting than through the Middle East or the more exotic Latin America, but I guess at the end of the day it boils down to how you choose to do it - just follow the usual tourist routes or something else?
Partly because of limited funds and for the adventure, of course, we chose to do it differently. I went ahead and took a bus to Vienna from Budapest to meet a Chinese friend living in Vienna. Stayed with her for a few days and she brought me around Vienna and showed me things that tourists would normally not see!
She studied in an Arts College in Vienna and we went to check out the university. As we walked around the city, she even pointed out to sculptures that she took part in restoring and etc.
A late dinner at Xiaoshu's place. She's a really great cook! Whip something up for us in just 20mins! She said she didn't know how to cook while in China but eight years away from home, she had to learn to cook so that she can have Chinese food as and when she wants.
Vienna is really beautiful, full of these kind of buildings in the centre. People were also very discpline, no one crosses the road when it red, shops close at 6pm and streets are quiet by the time it's dark.
And after Vienna, we thought of stopping by in Prague (Czech Republic) before heading towards Berlin, with limited amount of funds, we bid goodbye to Xiaoshu and her husband and headed out to the highway to hitch a ride to Prague. Hours and two car rides later, we somehow managed to get ourselves to the Austrian-Czech border. We stood at that border for around four hours and just no one would pick us up! It seems that Austrians are just not into hitch-hiking.
The next bus station would be too far to walk, having no choice, we picked up our backpacks and crossed the border over to Czech on foot. We passed by a shabby market that looked exactly like something that you would see in Thailand that says "Asia Market'. We never thought anything like that would exist in Europe! It feels a little dodgy...We walked on...and suddenly there's this huge amusement-park-looking buildings. Can't really place it, is it a shopping mall? Amusement park? Casino? Anyway, lots of cars are going in and out of the carpark, we dropped our bags and started hitching again. This time, and Audi A2 stopped just 5mins after we started. A nice couple who saw us four hours ago in the Austrian side picked us up.
They were such a lovely couple, we checked and there would be no bus for the day anymore, so they brought us for a ride and have a look at the beautiful countryside of Austria before having for some wine and food in this lovely place. This is the only working windmill left in Austria. We spent a night at their awesome apartment on the Austrian side before heading back to Czech the next morning.
