Today has been a quiet one as I spent most of the day doing research and shopping. I bought 2 new pair of shorts and 3 shirts, and will have to go through all my things tomorrow and figure out what to throw out so I can pack everything. I checked some of the shopping streets, but ended up buying most of the clothes at a big shopping mall called WestEnd (which is actually in the east end of town, strange). It also negates some of the money I was trying to save on this leg, but even with the clothes I'll only have spent about $260 for the 4 days here, so not too bad.
Deciding where to go next has been probably the biggest dilemma I've faced so far. I've changed my mind about 4 times in the last 2 days, with the options being to either go straight to Vienna next, or to loop down through Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia before getting to Austria. The advantage to the second is obviously that I get to see 3 more countries, and all 3 have been highly recommended to me by others. The disadvantages are more complicated. Bosnia isn't included on my rail pass, so I'd have to pay for it seperately, and the parts of Croatia I want to go to really require going through Bosnia to get there, so it's both or neither. That isn't so bad though - the real issue is time. Adding on the three countries really locks down my timetable to see the rest, and there are a lot of unknowns involved that could cause delays (for example, there is only one train daily from Budapest to Sarajevo, and it requires 4 border checks and may or may not be available the next two days since it's the weekend). I'm leaning towards just skipping them now, and having that extra week to spread around seeing more of the other countries instead of always having to be on the move. It will be sad to miss them, as I was really looking forward to seeing all three, but there's always future trips. Who knows though, I might change my mind again by tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment