A Very Lucky Girl

Our journey to Budapest started out relatively rocky. Keep in mind that we speak zero Italian. We arrived at the train station early (per usual) and scanned the board for our departure platform. Our first train was heading to Bologna, Italy where we would then board our night train. Underneath the platform listings we saw a running header that listed Firenze, Venezia and Bologna as places with cancelled trains (at least, that's what I thought it said...). We went straight to the customer service desk and took a number, wanting to confirm before properly panicking. I have never in my life been so happy to be wrong.  We located the platform and boarded our non-cancelled train at 8:20 PM with no issue. We were scheduled to arrive in Bologna at 10:35 PM with 22 minutes to catch our connecting train. However, our train from Rome ended up slowing down and we pulled into Bologna at 10:45 PM. We had 12 minutes to find our next platform. We bounded off the train and the race was o...

On our way to Vienna I wracked my brain to remember the song I just KNEW mentioned the city. I had my aha! moment after we had checked into hostel Ruthensteiner, one which I highly recommend! My only complaint is that the light turned off on me in the bathroom EVERY TIME. But this didn't happen to LDL or Gibby so who knows what I was doing wrong.  Anyway, the song is "Vienna" by Billy Joel and we made our way through the streets alternately singing the tune. Our time in Vienna didn't start out so happy...and I blame the ATM machine for that. I arrived with only 10 euros left over from my February trip to Ireland so I knew I needed to withdraw more. I typed my usual information into the machine and waited for my money. It spit my card back at me, but no money. I was convinced the machine had eaten my euros and refused to leave it until I found out for sure. LDL let me use the data on her phone to check my bank balance and I learned for some reason the transaction ...