2: June 2003 Archives
Hi! I'm doing fine, but I haven't had much time to update the wanderlog. Internet cafes aren't always as convenient or as inexpensive as I would like, but I've been writing as often as I can in my paper journal so that I can update when I get a moment.
At the moment, I'm in Budapest, on Andrassy Utca (street), which is a main boulevard. We found a park in Heroes' Square (where Madonna filmed a scene in Evita, Michael Jackson shot a music video, and Elton John played two nights ago), at the end of this street, with shade and a couple of lakes and lots of ducks. We've been trying to rest a bit today as we're leaving tonight (in about three hours) for Romania, a 12-hour bus trip. As it happens, I didn't get any sleep at all last night, so I'm exhausted today. My feet are very sore, my shoulders are very sunburned, and I have all sorts of funny languages swirling in my head, but I'm having a blast. Vienna was beautiful. Claudia and I have decided to open a Freebird's franchise there, because Vienna is in dire need of burritos. Now all we need is some rich financier to help us fund our newest scheme.
More later when I've had a chance to update. It might be easier to do so from Targu Mures, where I'll be in 15 hours or so.
Sziasztok!
There are never enough hours in the day, nor enough dollars in the bank, are there? I've reserved two beds for two nights in a Vienna hostel, across town from the U-bahn station at which we will arrive. Since U-bahns are subways, that's not such a bad deal, but it'll be strange trying to figure out how to work Viennese subways after 20 or 25 full hours of travel.
I haven't left Texas yet, and already, I'm worn out.
Well, not quite the eleventh hour. I'm running late leaving for Arlington -- I was supposed to leave at 9 or 10am, but I didn't even wake up until 9:30 -- but it doesn't matter so much, since my plane doesn't leave until Monday. I was up late last night packing, and I've been running errands all morning. I'm starving, since I haven't eaten yet today. The bags are packed, and I think I have everything I need. I've got the weekend to sort it out before I leave.
My sarong hasn't arrived in the mail yet, which is a bummer. It'll probably arrive this afternoon. I still need to take my iMac to be repaired again (the screen is once again pink, which does not help my photologging), and to stop by Fry's to pick up a few electronic sundries for my trip. It's out of my way, but maybe I'll do those things, then stop back by and see if the mail has come. Sarongs have many uses.
I finally finished uploading the last of the Taniguchi pictures from a couple of weeks ago to the photolog. Enjoy. I won't be posting here much in the next few weeks, except to point to my wanderlog, which will hopefully be updated relatively frequently.
Be good while I'm away, and don't hit your brother.
--Rachel
Says Claudia: oh shit! how do you say Austria in Czech?
Banal bits of travel-related trivia, for anyone who might be interested.
- It's impossible to find a pair of Tevas in Austin, TX, in size 9.
- Sarongs are incredibly versatile, and can act as skirts, blankets, towels, hair wraps, and so forth.
- International plug adaptors are incredibly hard to find anywhere except an airport.
- I have a lot to do before I leave, and very little time to do it all.
- The Hungarian name for Targu Mures, which is C's hometown in Romania, is "Marosvasarhely." She tried to explain to me how to pronounce it, but I will never remember. There's no picking up Hungarian.
- There are geocaches and geodashes in several of the cities I'm headed to. I need to program the coordinates into my GPS and remember not to forget it.
- I managed to install Movable Type successfully on a new domain name, which I plan to use to upload pictures and travel logs during my trip. It just now occurs to me that I can probably rig up some pinging silliness so that I can publish excerpts on this weblog, as well. Even more to do in so little time.
I'm sure there's more, but this is all I can remember for now. So so excited!
It's been months, actually, since I've had a chance to spend any time at the Taniguchi gardens. Feithy, one of the Austin journallers, had been having a stressful time of it a few weeks ago, and I had suggested that she take a trip to the gardens to relax and ground herself. She hadn't had a chance to make it there on her own, so I took her and her kidlet to see them.
I had a great time. I find Feithy sort of mysterious and fascinating, and she has the coolest kidlet I've met in a while -- brilliant and very funny. It was wonderful to see the park through the eyes of people who had never seen it before, and I left more in love with the place than when I arrived. The water levels were low, which was a bit disconcerting, and some of the ponds were dirty, but I took enough pictures to keep the photolog full for a week or more.
I posted the first one this evening.
CHICAGO, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. environmental group the Sierra Club said on Tuesday it plans to run advertisements criticizing Ford Motor Co. F.N for making vehicles that are less fuel-efficient now -- on its 100th birthday -- than when it began.
The ads, scheduled to run in The New York Times and BusinessWeek magazine, note that the Model T got 25 miles to the gallon nearly a century ago. The group sent copies of the ads to journalists.
The average vehicle now made by Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford gets 22.6 miles per gallon, the ads said, with its popular Explorer sport utility vehicle getting 16 miles per gallon.
