The Road to Budapest

Yesterday I had to leave Belgrade and caught the 8 am bus for Budapest . When I got to the bus I dropped my bags and heard someone say something about my hockey bag . It was these 2 Serbian speaking Australians travelling around Aleksandar and his mom (Vera?) hope I got it right ;) I was short on dinars and Aleksandar actually tossed me 100 which is like $1.25 cdn to help out and I sat near them on bus since they just glowed with awesomeness ! We even made friends with the fellow behind them that we called Ferrari whose name is Simic . It was fun ! Chatted and laughed the whole ride and when we stopped after the boarder they even bought me a coffee ;) 

When we arrived in Budapest we were stopped at the side of the road in front of stadium. ?!?! Not what I expected and none of us had forints so we walked into the station down the road and nobody spoke English or even Serbian :( we stuck together helping each other and then Aleksandar found us a money exchange and a bank machine . They all took transit and I took a cab so we parted ways but I hope to see them again this weekend if we can . You guys are awesome. ! 

So I found a cab and probably got ripped off but again I don't give a shit . Paying 7000 forints to get to hotel seems cheaper then Toronto cab prices anyways and there is no way I'm dragging my bags onto transit bus or train anywhere in the world . When I got to the Radisson I dropped bags grabbed a gyros down the road and met fellow HC ambassador (Hockey Community) Zoltan Sos who is also an IIHF ref/linesman and we went for a coffee . 

Have you ever heard of The Whiskey Robber ? Well the above pic is taken in front of one of the shops he had robbed ;) it used to be a touris bureau shop . Zoltan knows I am keen to find and meet Attila Ambrus and in fact has met him before actually during the period of his life when he was playing for UTE and robbing banks !!! He didn't know at the time that even one of his coaches was an accomplice and told me a ton of intetesting stories . It won't be easy to find these guys apparently but at least I got to see one of the places he robbed and actually we walked into a shop beside and met the old couple that owns shop ..  They were in their shop the day he robbed their neighbour ;) they were smiling as they told Zoltan the story in Hungarian . Cool ! 

We walked over to the main square where the city rink is ... Everything is so beautiful here with amazing architecture and cool statues everywhere you look . But this rink smashed it all .... Apparently it's one of the biggest , oldest , outdoor rinks in all of Europe . Right in front of a castle that is a replica of a castle from Czech Rep . Earlier on Zoltan asked if I wanna go for a skate , I said no thinking it would be some rinky dink ice rink but as soon as I saw this I knew I made a mistake . It was breath taking ...  

There is a bar there so we grabbed a couple beers and hung out watching people skate as we talked about Hungarian hockey . All I could think about is why did I say no ? Why didn't I bring my skates ... Just kicking myself .  

After a couple beers we jumped on the subway which is really small ;) and headed towards my hotel . We were both a bit hungry so we went to a Mexican take out , yeah I took a big burrito to my hotel . Zoltan went home and I went to my room to gobble my food ;) I passed out early and I'm up early now ... Rainer and the rest of the guys should arrive today .... First things first , I'm going to skate on that outdoor rink ;)