In Budapest....

Hello all,

I am in Budapest right now until Jan 22, when I fly back to Telluride.

Wow what an "interesting" trip so far. What seemed like years ago, I started my trip on Friday in Telluride. It was snowing both in Telluride and Denver. My first flight out of Telluride was delayed and got into Denver an hour late.

It arrived 5 min before my next leg of the journey from Denver to Chicago. Well any one that knows DIA, 5 min is not a long time to get from the End of the Terminal A to the end of Terminal B. The train itself can take 5 mins. But I ran anyways. I got to the Gate and saw my plane being pushed back from the gate. Oh well, I thought.

Mary Dawn (my friend) who was supposed to be on this same flight from Denver to Chicago was delayed too (she flew from Grand Junction). So we both started the process of figuring how to get to Budapest again.

What a pain it was for me, and more of a pain for Mary Dawn. Since our flights involved multiple airlines, and our tickets had restrictions, no one wanted to change them, even thou it was Weather Delayed. To make a extremely long story short, I was finally allowed to get on a direct flight from Denver to Frankfort and then from Frankfort to Budapest.

Mary Dawn was not so lucky, she had to spend the night in Denver, then spend the night in New York, and fly out this morning. So I am here by myself until tomorrow, I think.

The flight from Denver-Frankfort was good. I was switched from my original seat to an exit row, because the person sitting there was too young. Lots of leg room, YES! Typically, I don't sleep well on planes, but I was shattered from all the effort in DIA.

I got into Frankfort a little dazed, but after I was told that I did not need to go thru security quite yet (i had a 1 1/2 hours), I bought me a water and Becks beer and just looked around.

The trip to Budapest was delayed because of a techinal problem with the plane. We had to switch planes.

Anyway, I got to Budapest airport. However, with no luggage, which was not all that surprising, since my original route was Telluride-Denver-Chicago-Munich-Budapest. I filed a luggage claim and took the miniBus to http://www.hoteltaverna.hu/.

I arrived and the hotel did not have all my reservations. My printed out hotel vouchers were either lost in all the ticket confusion in DIA, or in my luggage. Regardless, I did not have them, so thank goodness for Web Email. I was able to retrieve them online and print out for the front desk.

It was almost 24 hours since I started my trip from Telluride. I took a refreshing shower.
Note: If you see a small container of blue liquid, do NOT assume it is mouth wash. Since I did not have my luggage, I was in need of a "refreshing" cleansing of the mouth. OPPS!, it was body soap. YUCK! Not the cleansing i was looking for.... :)

I then logged on to Internet from my room. Quite expensive for Internet in the room 3990 Forints. (about $20 for 24 hours), so this will probably be the last time I use it here, since I will have access at work on Monday.

I then went out to look around Budapest. WOW!!! I went from snowy hicksville (Telluride) which does not even have a stoplight to a busy, old world city (Budapest). Very exciting.

So after a wonderful breakfast, I am off to go explore the Castle District today. Then hopefully meet up with a colleague this evening.

Unfortunately, I did not bring my cable to download my pictures from my camera. So photos from the trip will have to wait until I get back. I normally use my card reader, but for some reason it is not liking me at the moment. So we will see if I get it figured out.

Cheers,
Michael