Language crossing in the Balkans

I've just realised that — so far — I've been in four countries, spanning four language families (Finno-Ugric / Romance / Slavic / Greek) and three different alphabets in a row!

No surprise that I feel so confused …

A note to our fellows western travellers: I'm sorry, but you can't beat the Old Continent!

And now… for something completely different:

Treviso, close to Venice

After the first two nights in Budapest I had to change host. After a while that I was moving my casetta all around Budapest, I decided to just stop, have a beer, and — with a bit of luck — connect to some wireless connection waiting for my host to come home.

So, once arrived in my new host area, I chose a nice-looking bar. I asked the bartender about a wireless connection and she pointed me to the bar on the other side of the street. But, having been the bartender so nice to me, I just moved on the seat that were closer to that other bar, opened my laptop and checked the signal: it was fairly good.


After a while the other bartender noticed my computer, and smiled telling me that he has one too. We started the usual chat — where are you from, this is your first time in Budapest, how long you'll stay here, and so on — but when I was going with my good old « Treviso … — three seconds pause, just in case — … close to Venice » he smiled and said: « Ah, Treviso, I've been there! »

I almost fell off the chair, and asked more about it. It sorted out that fifteen years ago he and his wife used to go to Treviso to buy leather jackets, that in Hungary were too expensive!

When you travel alone you get more chances of knowing interesting people. The chances of getting bored to deeath are also high, but let's look at the silver lining :-)

Budapest

First thing first: if you are in Budapest and you are the happy owner of a laptop — that's me — you'll notice soon that quite a few cafes have free wireless connection. I wrote this post while having a fresh beer in a random bar.

Me-so-happy!

Second thing you notice is that public transportation is quite efficient — although expensive. Young and not-so-young people — that's me, again — tend to go to clubs with tram or bus, avoiding the need of killing random people when driving home completely drunk after clubbing all night long.

Just in case you are wondering, the bus photograph was taken at 1:30 AM.

A note for the Italian Government: move clubs and pubs into the cities and provide a few not-expensive night bus servvices, instead of complaining for the "Stragi del sabato sera".