“You should come to Vienna to see Chris. It’s only 2 hours by train from Bratislava,” said Rick after hearing about my plan to visit Kosice, Slovakia and from there taking a train to Bratislava. It was not a bad idea even though I had literally no time to add another destination to my trip. On the other hand, this was my first trip to Europe, and I wanted to see ‘everything’ and believe that I could see ‘everything,’ I squeezed in Vienna on my last day before taking an early morning flight out from Bratislava to London.
Got a last-minute ride from www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de or rideshare.co.uk directly to Belgrade for €60. Otherwise it would be another planning hassle to figure out a way to get a cheap alternative to either Kosovo or Macedonia cheap. Buses to Budapest were all sold out. Direct train to Skopje costs 5800 ckz, too expensive for long-hour transportation.
A major accident on the highway only one hour leaving Prague delayed our trip for another 2 hours. By the time we got to Brno, it was 18.30. There, we made a stop for Branko, the driver, to meet up and had dinner with his friend. By the time we left Brno, it was already 20.00. No hope for getting to Belgrade by night now. I slept through most of the journey and woke up only once when we dropped off Sandor, the Hungarian, at Sezged, who came home for the Easter weekend. He was a Ph.D.
I’m using a mind ploy to keep myself motivated and focused in the next few months applying and getting a Czech trade license (Zivnostensky Lists). By calling this over mundane and administrative process ‘adventure,’ I hope that I won’t yank my hairs and scream murder in the next few months.
It will be almost another year before I can consider myself a permanent resident of this country I can not wait to leave. But for this to happen, I need to main a continuous legal presence of five years which is fine if I continue to work for the same company during this period. I want to have a backup just in case I get fired, lay-off or fed up and just quit (the last is more likely). By having a Czech trade license before my working visa from my current company terminates, I don’t breach the five-year requirement.
Through IAESTE, a large international group who sends student overseas on technical internship, I spent the summer of 2004 working in a software start-up in Gliwice, a small city in Silesia, Poland. I lived in a student dormitory with 30 other trainees mostly from Europe. We almost always visited other places in Poland during the weekend: former royal city of Krakow, Austwick Nazi concentration camp, Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto and the reconstructed Old Town, Zakopane, Gdansk…
The first European country I visited is coincidentally where I live now. The year before at a summer camp in California, I met Danny, a Czech guy from Prague, who ‘marketed’ his city. Some guidebook even commented that “Prague is the Paris of the Eastern Europe.”I had an internship in Poland in summer 2004, exactly one year after I met Danny and remembered all the nice things he said about the city. Seeing that Poland was neighboring the Czech Republic, I booked a flight ticket from London to Prague for a quick sightseeing trip before taking a train to Poland.
I arrived in Zurich by train from Feldkirch, Austria quite early in the morning and had almost half a day until my bus back to Prague would depart. Three days ago, I took an overnight bus from Prague to Zurich, hopped on a train from Zurich to Feldkirch Austria, my base to visit Liechtenstein. I quickly stored my backpack at the train station and inquired about the free bike service. Yup, you could rent a bike for free in one of the most expensive cities in Europe. Perhaps the city wants to encourage people to switch to bike and free the streets of cars, attract more tourists or experiment different method of advertising.
While researching for the trip, I found a travel forum that suggested biking in Liechtenstein. When I stayed in Feldkirch, Austria, a city located on the border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein, I checked with other people about biking to Liechtenstein from here but got talked down. Tourists at the hostel where I was staying all took the bus to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. At first, I didn’t want to go. My overeaten-breakfast stomach and discouraging comments from other hostelers almost convinced me to buy a day pass and hop on the Liechtenstein bus to enjoy a smooth ride. Thank god my curiosity got over my laziness, and I took bus no.2 to Hotel Gasthof Löwen to rent a bicycle. (www.hotel-loewen.at)
Feldkirch is a no-name little town in Austria. You have no business of going there unless you find yourself scratching your head and wondering how will you do Switzerland and Liechtenstein in a limited amount of time and under a shoestring budget.
Living in Central Europe is great. Where else can you make a very last-minute decision to go to another country, not one but three other countries, a few hours before the actual trip?
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
